Chapter 14: A Deliberate Lesson
He laughed, a soft, low sound that vibrated in the small, steam-softened space. “Tragically underserved. Exactly.”
His eyes were still on the silk, tracing the pattern of tiny flowers woven into the fabric where it lay against her sternum. The admiration in his gaze was open, uncomplicated. It was the same way he’d looked at a well-seared steak she’d made last week. Appreciative. Hungry.
Debbie’s pulse was a frantic drum against her ribs. The cool porcelain of the sink was the only solid thing in a room that seemed to tilt. She was aware of every inch of her own body, of the way the aged silk clung to places she usually kept hidden beneath cotton and denim. She was more aware of his. The clean lines of his hips, the damp that darkened the hair on his legs. The casual, unthinking masculinity of his posture.
Then she saw it.
A shift. A subtle, gathering fullness that began below. It wasn’t deliberate. It wasn’t aggressive. It was a simple, autonomic response to stimulus—to proximity, to visual input, to the charged silence. Biology. But seeing it, witnessing that pure, unconscious reaction to her, to this moment, stole the air from her lungs.
Matt’s head was slightly tilted, still smiling as he considered the concept of men’s silk lingerie. Then his own awareness seemed to click inward. His eyes, which had been fixed on her collarbone, flickered down to himself.
The change was instantaneous.
The easy grin faltered. A wash of pink, startling in its vulnerability, flooded from his neck up to his hairline. It was the first time she had ever seen him blush. He’d been embarrassed about burning the toast, annoyed at a bad grade, but this was different. This was a sharp, sudden consciousness of his own body in relation to hers.
“Shit,” he muttered, the word more a breath than a statement.
His knuckles whitened around the towel. He didn’t move to cover himself more, just stood there, caught. The blush deepened, a raw, beautiful mortification that made him look his age for the first time since he’d moved in. Not a confident, unselfconscious kid, but a young man unexpectedly laid bare.
The power dynamic, which had felt so dangerously skewed just seconds before, flipped. Her maternal instinct surged, warring violently with something darker, warmer, that uncoiled low in her belly. She wanted to put him at ease. She also wanted to watch the color rise on his skin forever.