Page 81 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors

“But I really didn’t mean to look if you didn’t want me to.”

“Come here.”

I stepped one pace closer, and the bathroom was so small that even that little step took me too close to him.“I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-mean-to-but-you-were-just-right-there-and-there’s-really-no-where-else-to-even-look.”

He touched my fingers covering my eyes, gently prying them off my stupid face. “I’m wearing more than I was earlier, when I had only a towel. At least my trousers aren’t going to come untucked and fall off.”

My imagination took off before I could catch it, giving me a sharply detailed image of his chiseled muscles, lean abdomen and sharp slanted diagonal obliques, and the striations I’d seen demarcating the strong muscles of his thighs, all meeting at his pelvis and?—

Visual!Visual!

I stared at my feet, but upon seeing his clean bare toes right in front of mine, his trouser hems covering his ankles, I squeezed my eyes shut again. “Yeah, and I couldn’t stop sneaking peeks then, either. You shouldn’t go around all Scandinavian-naked around me. I might not behave properly.”

“That’s my warning, is it?” I could hear his smile.

“Yeah, that’s your warning,” I muttered.

“You can look at me. We’re married.”

“I mean, no, we’re not. Not really. We have a contract for ‘platonic companionship’ at events. The events we’re going to, probably. I assume we’re going to. We still haven’t finished writing or signed that pre-nup.”

“When you said you’re a virgin?—”

Shame flooded me as yet more proof that no one had ever wanted me flopped out. “You don’t have to make fun of me for it. I thought I was doing something important. Itseemedimportant. Or it seemed like Jimmy wanted me to and I did.”

“I’m not making fun of you. Have you ever doneanythingwith a man? Or a woman?”

“I—there was kissing and some stuff in high school. Mostly with my ex. But I didn’t like it much.”

His voice flattened. “Oh.”

“Not, ‘oh.’ I just didn’t. When I pulled away, he thought I was being a good Christian.”

And I hadn’t known Jimmy had found kisses elsewhere.

“Why didn’t you like it?” Nico asked.

Because it was like Frenching a sloppy sea alien with mouth tentacles. “I justdidn’t.”

“Did you like it when I kissed you at our wedding?”

A lump filled my throat, and I swallowed, choking, and managed to answer, “Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Sweet longing filled me again, and my mouth went dry. “I’m sure. I didn’t want you to stop.”

He was still holding my hands, his thumbs pressed in the centers of my palms. “Have you even touched anyone?”

My throat was completely closed up with anxiety that threatened to whip me around like a dog with a floppy rope toy, so I shook my head no.

“Do you want to touch me?”

Yes.Yes, I did want to touch him.

His question was humiliating, driving me to admit that wanted to wrap my arms and legs around him and rub myself against the muscular crenelations of his body like a python trying to strangle him.

Despite all the sermonizing that Jimmy’s church had thrown at me over the years, I was not demure and gentle. I was not sweet and modest. I wanted tolickthe indentation between Nico’s heavy pecs and down between his abs and see if I could make himsquirm.