Page 85 of Bad at Love
“Are you sure?” he asks. He nods at the glass. “You’ve had some drinks.”
“I’ve never felt more sober.” I pause, my breath shortand shallow. Anxious. “Do you still want to?”
He smiles, gives his head a shake. “You have no idea, do you?”
“About what?”
“How I feel about you.”
Okay. I didn’t think that would cause me to sway, but it does. I reach out, put my untouched glass on the desk and lean on the edge of it.
“How do you feel about me?” I whisper.
Do you love me?
Please say you love me.
“I’ll show you,” he says. “I’ll prove it. Just as you asked.”
He finishes his champagne and comes over to me and just like that, the little distance between us closes up, the moment we had to retreat into our old roles, it’s all over.
His mouth is on mine and his hands are on me and my heart is with his and I am drowning on my feet.
“You’ll go slow?” I whisper against his lips.
“I’ll go slow, I’ll go fast, I will do whatever you ask.”
I smile against him. “That was almost a poem.”
“Almost,” he says. He cups my face in his hands. “Marina, I’ve never wanted anything, anyone, in this whole bloody world as much as I want you.”
I’m choking up.
I’m turned on.
I’m a mess.
“How about I take the pressure off,” he says, his hands dropping away and leaving my skin feeling bare and cold where his warmth once was.
He takes a few steps back until his legs hit the edge of the bed.
With his eyes burning holes into mine, he starts unbuttoning his white dress shirt. Before I can process what’shappening – that he’sstrippingin front of me – his shirt is undone, pulled off, being discarded on the floor.
Holy bejeesus.
Just with the way I ogled his legs before, I’m soaking every single inch of his upper body. I’ve seen it before, on the beach. I know where his tattoos are, but I’ve never had a good look at them. I know he’s ripped but I never allowed myself to drink it all in.
Now I can. Now he wants me to look. And why not?
Lazarus Scott looks like a sex god.
I can say that without even having slept with him because honestly, this view of his body alone is worth the price of admission.
It’s always been obvious that he has these amazing, wide, broad shoulders that lead to muscled arms and a trim torso. I’ve admired that since forever, especially when he wears tight, thin T-shirts.
But now, shirtless, I can see how firm his chest is, a dusting of chest hair between his pecs, half camouflaged by the tattoos that work their way down and across his body. I wonder about their stories, their histories. The ink looks old, words and symbols and skulls and a map of England and the union jack. His body is a treasure map, something that goes beyond surface symbols.
The ridges of his washboard abs, the slim Vs of his hips as they disappear into a grey waistband, the flat plane of his belly—I want to run my fingers all over him, just to see what those kind of muscles feel like.
