Page 52 of Only Between Us

“Um.” I eye my dress, willing my voice to lose its tremble. “Just a quick second.”

I’m so jittery it takes more than a second to make sense of the dress, which side of the shiny purple fabric goes up and which goes down. Where to stick my arms in with these crisscrossed laces on the back.

Calm the hell down, you sex-starved nympho.

I take a breath. “I’m done. Can I come back into the room?”

“Yeah, I’m decent.”

Clutching the front of my dress to keep it from sliding down, I open the door. Brooks looks up from the tube of lipstick he picked up from the dresser, a shade that gives off the effect of love bites from a mind-numbing make-out session.

Decent?

He looks incredible in a tux, crisp white shirt, no bow tie. I go weak for this man in a T-shirt, tattoo sleeves visible. But a dressed-up Brooks Attwood could get me to rob a bank just to curry favor with him.

I shake my head in fake disgust. “Look at you. Take some pride in your appearance, for God’s sake.”

Brooks gives a husky laugh I feel right between the thighs. He gives me the same once-over. “I never thought anything could top those overalls.”

I rear back. “My overalls? Seriously?”

Either he ignores me or doesn’t hear me. His gaze rakes upward, off my body, and onto my face. It zigzags like he’s looking for something specific. Or maybe he can’t decide where to land. “You really are beautiful.”

Oh.

My stomach swoops violently. At the words; at his rapt, shameless attention. There’s something so soft in the way he looks at me now. It’s the same way he did last night, whispering his apology in the dark.

“Thank you.” I reach for his collar. Pretend to straighten it just as an excuse to touch him.

We’re on more solid footing today and… I like it.

“Mind tying me up?” I smirk when he lifts an eyebrow, and spin around, giving him my back. “The dress. I need a hand doing it up.”

Brooks sweeps the hair off my back and over my shoulder, gliding his fingers over my skin along the way. In the mirror above the dresser, I watch his gaze fall down my back. The dress is low, cutting just above my hips, with laces meant to crisscross all the way up. He ignores them and traces a finger along the upper length of my spine, mesmerized by the line of delicate star tattoos I got the day I turned eighteen.

“Attwood?”

“Yeah.” The single word comes out grainy, like it’s been dragged over gravel on the way out of his mouth.

“If you can’t handle a little bondage—”

Brooks’s eyes find mine in the mirror. In two smooth movements, he wraps the end of a lace around each hand and tugs so hard it yanks me back, forces the air from my lungs in a gasp.

“Don’t test me, little Pippen.”

Fuck.

I’m winded. From the dress, the way he looks so predatory now, gazing at my reflection in the mirror as he does up the dress with swift, harsh jerks of his hands.

“I think we can both agree there’s nothing little about me. If you want someone to toss around, you might want to look elsewhere.”

“Yeah?” I seem to have amused him. In a beat, I’m spun around, shoved back into the dresser as he steps into my space. His hand closes loosely around my neck, forcing up my chin so that I can look at him.

Yes. Please.

I grip the edge of the dresser behind me and various bottles and tubes topple over as the piece of furniture shudders.

“You look plenty small to me, Siena.” Brooks’s fingers tensearound my throat before sliding around the side to possessively hold the back of my neck, sweeping his thumb along my jaw. “Plenty easy to throw around. Do whatever the fuck I want with.”