Except… Warren was also her husband. Not in the traditional sense, but they had a relationship beyond work. She liked him. Was attracted to him. There was nothing wrong with that. And she shouldn’t have to spend so much time justifying it to herself, either.
Also, he wasn’t asking her to do something hard. Just giving her the opportunity to play out her fantasy. If she didn’t feel comfortable doing anything other than dropping her robe and letting him look at her, he’d be fine with that. If she asked him to have drinks on the terrace while she wore the robe and never took it off, that’s exactly what would happen.
But none of that was what she wanted. What she wanted was to explore the things she felt when Warren looked at her like she was his next meal. All the things. She wanted sex in all its glory, with more orgasms than she could count, a man who could keep up and free rein to do whatever she wished without fear of being called names.
Maybe that’s what would happen. She pulled the drawer open. Shut it.
Maybe that’s not what would happen. Maybe Warren would be shocked by the positions she’d envisioned them in, horrified by the filth coming out of her mouth, or at best, dismayed that she wasn’t the straitlaced woman she’d presented herself as.
Excuses. He already knew she was a big liar. Had called her on it. She pulled open the drawer so hard it came free from the runners and landed on the carpet. Lingerie spilled over the edge in an explosion of colorful silk and lace. As metaphors went, that one was a little too perfect. The drawer couldn’t contain her secrets any better than she could.
Her phone vibrated. Warren had texted her a message: Just checking in.
He knew she was waffling. Of course he did. The man missed no tricks.
Warren: If you’re not ready for this, it’s okay. Remember, you’re in control of everything that happens.
A sharp tug in her core filled her with something powerful. She could be in control. Warren was telling her so.
How much control? Would he do things that she asked him to?
Warren: You call the shots.
Yes was apparently the answer. It was like the man had gained the ability to read her mind in the span of an hour. Intrigued against her will, she scooped up the puddle of rose silk and slipped it over her head before she could chicken out again. She had a written guarantee that she could let this evening play out precisely the way she directed. Warren would never go back on his word. She trusted him, and that alone was huge enough to warrant forgetting about everything else for a few hours.
The robe skimmed over her bare skin as she slipped it on and belted it. The fabric was nothing special as she hadn’t bought it with the intent of using it in a seduction scene. Oh, God. Was that what she was walking into?
It was if she wanted it to be. She was in charge. The tug in her core transformed into long liquid strings that yanked pieces of her free that she hadn’t realized were so deeply buried.
She was really doing this.
Instead of going to Warren’s room through the hallway, she ducked into the bathroom. The hallway was where she met him in the mornings to go to work. The bathroom connection between their rooms was more secret. She liked that they had secrets. Liked that they had an easy way to keep their personal and professional lives separate. It was almost poetic.
When she opened the door to Warren’s bedroom, she had to pause a moment to fully appreciate the scene he’d set up for her. He was, indeed, lying on the bed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs that hugged his hips. Wow. So he was just going to be lying there mostly naked, then. As visual gifts went, that one took the cake. He was a beautifully built man, not that she’d expected anything less, but reality brought her up short with a sense of wonder.
“I see you dressed for the occasion,” she said wryly to cover the fact that her pulse had just tripled.
“Why beat around the bush?” he asked with smile that did not help her pulse. At all. “Figured it was easier.”
Oddly, it was perfect. She was more dressed than he was, and she suspected that the imbalance wasn’t an accident. Hot did not begin to describe it. And he’d single-handedly eliminated whatever nervous tension might have sprung up.
But just the nervous tension. The rest of the tension was purely sexual as the atmosphere grew more charged the longer she drank in the nearly naked form reclining on the bed. It was nothing like the fantasy she’d had. In those, he’d always been a little shadowy because she didn’t really know what he looked like under his power suits.
Now she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to think of him clothed. He was sublime—still powerful, but in a much different way than he was at the office. Mouthwatering, even, strong, muscular.