Page 81 of The Parent Trap

She’s shivering.

Her thighs are a V around my hips. I can’t help a quick, appreciative glance at the pretty, delicate pink flower of her sex, and then meet her eyes.

She’s fearful, nervous, turned on, excited—too many emotions to keep track of. God, how do women feel so many things at once?

Yet, I’m boiling with a bunch of feelings myself. The same mixture of worry and nerves and arousal and excitement.

She cups her breasts in her hands, covering herself, shoulders turtling forward. Hunching, closing off.

I grab her wrists and pull her hands away. “No way, uh-uh. Don’t you dare cover such beautiful perfection,” I whisper. “Look at me, Delia.”

Her eyes lift to mine. Wide, electric blue, flitting in the back-and-forth search of my gaze. “I’m not perfect.”

“Nobody is. But you look perfect to me.”

“Not what you used to say,” she murmurs.

“I used to be the world’s biggest idiotandthe world’s biggest asshole, all at once.” I cup her face, and her hands clutch my wrists; I love that gesture, her hands on my wrists like this. “I’ve seen the error of my ways.”

“Just like that?”

“No, not just like that. It took ten years and a very winding path to come to this conclusion.”

“What—” a catch in her voice, as if she’s afraid of the answer. “What conclusion?”

“That I have never, ever been so attracted to, so turned on by, so…soenthralledby a woman. Any woman, ever. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “It’s just not.”

Tears leak out.

“Don’t overthink this, Delia. Please.”

“I’m not overthinking,” she whispers. “I’m…I’m over-feeling.”

“Focus on what I’m telling younow.” I cup her face, rub a thumb over the dampness at the corners of her eyes. “Look at me, Dee. Hear me.”

Her eyes open, hesitantly, fearfully. “What?” Her voice is wet and thick with tearful, overwrought emotion.

“You’re beautiful.”

She shakes her head.

“You are,” I insist. “Back there, in the water—didn’t you feel beautiful? Didn’t you feel how incredible I think you are? There’s no way you could have missed it.”

Steam writhes out the shower, skirls between us.

She nods, a small, shallow bob of her head. “Yeah.” A pause. “But that was…during…sex. Or whatever that was.”

“You think it’s going to stop being true afterward?” I ask.

A miserable shrug. “I dunno.”

“Tell me the truth, Dee. No matter what it is, how it sounds. Hurt me with the truth, if that’s what it is.”