“I just... need some water, I think. I’m thirsty.” She did a little cough that was wafer thin and just as transparent.
“I’ll get it for you.” Ethan’s unbuttoned shirt flew open as he stood. The moonlight coming in through his curtains cast his chest in shadows. He was beautiful. Defined but not overly muscled. His nipples flat and brown and begging for her teeth.
After all the people she’d fucked, this was the scenario where she couldn’t land the plane?
She’d never considered herself wicked. In fact, Naomi thought of herself as a pretty good person at the end of the day. But tonight, this disconnect between her mind and her body felt like punishment, and frankly, she was pissed.
When Ethan came back, he had two waters, one with ice and one without, that he held out for her to pick from. She took the ice water and wrapped both hands around the smooth, cold glass. The ice cubesknocking against her teeth as she took a sip helped ground her, oddly enough.
How could she tell this man—who she was more attracted to than anyone she had ever met—that maybe she wanted something less than carnal tonight?
Naomi took a deep breath while Ethan stood there, accepting her empty glass once she’d drained it.
Okay, she needed to back up. What were the facts here?
She wanted to have sex with Ethan. To feel his body in and around hers. She wanted possession of his heat and his scent and the growl that came from low in his throat. But she’d never been nervous like this before.
Not the first time she’d fucked her high school boyfriend. Not her first day on set. Never.
Sex was easy. People made it complicated with their expectations and their insecurities. Naomi had never given sex that power. She’d mastered the movements like any other dance, and as for the accompanying chemical reactions?
Well, she’d never put that much stock in those feelings.
Even the best sex with Jocelyn and Josh had never been that complex. It was just fun and nice. An expression of how much she cared about them. Hell, sometimes it was just a way to blow off steam.
Naomi had devoted most of her waking hours and many of her sleeping hours to dirty dreams of Ethan. She had employed every ounce of filthy, sexual energy she had to the idea of working him over like he was some juicy Regency wallflower and she was a highwayman with the middle namecorruption.
So now that he was laid out before her, she wasn’t... scared. Because that would be ridiculous. It was just... she wanted...
It felt like holding on to the side of a cliff, hanging by her fingertips, and if she let go, she’d fall hard. Hard enough that she might lose herself and fly apart into a million pieces.
It was a good thing she was sitting down.
Ethan dropped to the bed beside her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
“You’re not ready,” he said, gentle again, soft again, into the darkness.
Denial formed on her tongue, urgent and a little bit mean.
She was always ready. He wasn’t special. He was just a man.
Except.
She wanted to kiss every sharp point on him, every curve. But something inside her had locked up, and okay, maybe it would be braver to examine it instead of trying to suffocate it with her bare hands.
“I’m maybe, inexplicably, not ready,” she said, still a little mad, but also kind of in awe.
“You wanna talk about it?”
She shook her head. Emotion sat in her throat. A weird place for it, in her opinion.
Ethan leaned back, just a little, to look at her. Why was his face so... good? Why did his nose make her want to weep? Why did she want to find a color that matched his lips and use it to paint?
She closed her eyes against the onslaught. Breathed in and out and in again. Finally, asked her body what it wanted from her. The answer, like so much else this evening, caught her off guard.
“Can I just...” She moved so that she was above him, her knees hugging either side of his thighs, hovering, waiting for confirmation, because if she was confused, Ethan had to be completely thrown by this entire display.
“Of course.” He pulled her down so she could sit in his lap, wrapped his arms low around her back until she was flush against him, his scent draping over her like a blanket. His warmth bleeding into her body.