“Sage.”
A hand went to my chin, and my head was tipped up until I was meeting Lucien’s bright silver eyes. He studied my face then, with the quiet implacability of a predator, and yet I felt no fear looking at him. He was perfect, so damn perfect, and now, all of a sudden, that made me feel so much less so.
Every woman had a moment of vulnerability when a stranger saw them naked. It might have only happened when you were young, showing yourself to another for the first time as a teenager, or each time you had sex, but it felt like it was different as a plus size woman. Men said they were ‘into it,’ as if your body was this…thing, not an inextricable part of you. Some fell all over themselves to make sure you knew that they were OK with your size, that need to draw attention to it setting your teeth on edge, reminding you that so many others didn’t.
There was nothing sexier than remembering all the times dickheads shouted something shitty at you as you took the dog for a walk or mocked women with your body shape on social media, called men who dared date a woman like you shitty names and… I sucked in a breath and another, my chest starting to heave until he spoke to me.
“Take a deep breath. Slower now.” His hand came to rest on the bare scoop of my décolletage, but it seemed meant to draw attention to my breathing rather than to try and cop a feel. “That’s it. Keep on taking long, slow breaths like that.”
He listened to me do just that, some weird sense of obedience throbbing inside me, forcing me to do as he said.
“An alpha’s nose tells him a lot more than a beta’s would,” he said when my breathing had evened out. “A moment ago, you were smelling like hot honey, all sweet and ready for me to lick.” My chest started to heave again, but he moved in closer. “Then something changed. What happened?”
I could’ve told him. My eyes narrowed, some need to do just that burning inside me, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to deal with any of this. I just wanted to be some skinny little thing with no cares in the world, who could whip her dress off over her head, flick her barely there bra off with a click of her fingers, and then recline on the bed, not a bulge in sight.
Except I wasn’t, and there wasn’t anything I could do about that.
I’d discussed this exact situation when Nikki insisted I squeeze into the new shapewear I’d bought, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now, and she’d shrugged and made a non-committal remark.
“By the time the dress is coming off, he won’t care about your lumps and bumps. He’ll just want to get in you,” she’d assured me.
So I reached around the back of my neck, undoing the button of the dress, and then whipped the whole garment off and over my head as the artificial lights burned above.
Lucien stared. I fucking hated it, but he did. Those silver eyes seemed to catalogue everything I’d done to prepare myself for tonight, taking in the makeup and the bra and the shapewear and the way it dug into my ribs. Right when I felt like I was about to scream, he stepped right into my space, put his hand on my waist and the other on my back, and pulled me close.
“This doesn’t look comfortable at all,” he said, running a hand down the Lycra encasing me.
“It’s not,” I almost sobbed out, feeling a rush of both frustration and pain. “None of it is. Not the clothes, the shoes, the underwear, or even the damn makeup. I don’t know why men would expect that it is, but it’s really not.”
“Then how do we make you comfortable, Sage? I wouldn’t have given a shit if you turned up in your PJs and a dressing gown. You looked beautiful tonight, but you would’ve been that even if you’d chosen to wear something that made you feel more comfortable.”
His fingers plucked at the rolled up hem of the shapewear.
“How do I take this off? Do I pull it up or…?”
I let out a hopeless little laugh that was almost a cry.
“Just give me a sec, and I’ll go into the bathroom and sort it out. It’s not an especially sexy process.”
“It can be.” His voice was almost a buzz in my ear. “You made yourself very vulnerable to me. Alphas like that very much. Everything in us wants to see problems and fix them, make everything better. Are you going to let me make everything better, Sage?”
God, how I wanted that statement to be a global one. I fancied myself a strong, independent woman, but damn me if I didn’t want to hand him a list of all of my life’s problems and say ‘Daddy, fix it.‘
But I digress.
“You grab it—” I went to demonstrate how to get the clothing off, but he batted my hands away.
“I pull it up over your head, right?”
I nodded, refusing to look up at him when I did so, but he didn’t seem to care. He surged forward, claiming my mouth with his, kissing me until I was breathless, and then he jerked away, pulling the damn shapewear up and over my head, then throwing the thing away with a violence that shocked me.
“There you are,” he said in a reverent tone, his hands sliding down my sides.
I wanted to bat his hands away, stop him from touching a part of my body I basically loathed, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to, because under all the socially determined hatred of the shape of my body was me.
Sage wanted this—to be stroked, caressed, and worshipped. She wanted this hot alpha’s body pressed against hers, to feel his big hands trace the line of her bra with his fingers and then slide them around to undo the clasp. She wanted to sob out a little gasp of pleasure as his hands covered her breasts, as his thumbs rubbed over the swollen nipples, as she felt him cup them as his head dropped down.
“I was gonna work my way up to these,” he said in a husky rasp, right before his tongue flicked across one aching peak. “But I need a little taste first.”