turned back to her and loosened his tie instead, she thought it was the most erotic display she'd ever seen. That opinion lasted only until he started unbuttoning his shirt.
She petrified in place, mesmerized by the sight. Nothing had ever been hotter than Javad's chest as he peeled off his shirt and vest, revealing the contours of his muscles. She blushed fire to the tips of her ears, but didn't want to look away. No, she wanted more, wanted to see all of him. His skin was golden all over, with dark hair between his pecs that trailed down toward the contents of his trousers. Which kind of bulged.
She felt the shift in Javad's emotion. Something serious had just changed. Her breath caught in her desert-dry throat as she realized the full implications of this new situation. The wonders really going on here, not the fiction they'd been playing out since the moment he agreed to ask his brother to sleep with her. Her shyness came tumbling back. She felt herself shrink on her stool.
If he'd tried to unzip her dress, she would have felt self-conscious, far too vulnerable. Instead, he offered himself. And what an offer. He must know how beautiful his body was, and what a display he made. He strode toward her, letting his shirt and vest drop behind him, making all her doubts flee, and all her brain cells shut down. Tonight, there was only Javad.
Forever, there would only be Javad.
He stood over her and placed one hand on either side of her, cutting off an escape she didn't want anyway. "Do you intend to touch him?"
His bare chest was so close, but she couldn't bring herself to reach out and connect to him. "Touch who?"
"My brother. When he comes." Javad almost smiled. "It will be more difficult to sleep with him if you don't."
She needed to do it. She wanted to. She even lifted her hand. Yet she couldn't move that last few inches.
He did it for her. He enclosed her fingers in his own and brought them to the center of his chest, between his pecs, where his hair began.
"It makes me feel good when you touch me," he told her, leaning in even closer. She hadn't moved her hand, so he was just encouraging her. Well, she needed it. "Does it make you feel good?"
Good wasn't the word. It was pyrotechnics. It was cayenne. It was the sun in the desert, consuming flame, and she wanted to burn.
She watched her hand caress him as if it didn't belong to her. Her other joined the first to run over both his dark nipples at once. His gold skin was smooth, his dark hair crisp to the touch. His muscles were mahogany underneath. All she wanted to do was plant kisses all over him. Lick his body everywhere he would let her.
"It makes me feel strange," she managed to squeak out, somehow.
"Have you thought of this before?" he asked. "Of running your hand down Darius' chest?"
She shook her head, no longer able to hide anything from him.
"Someone else's, perhaps?" His voice sounded as taut as the muscles as she explored. "Someone closer to you. Someone you were not sure would respond to you. Someone it would be more dangerous to touch?"
Her heart pounded painfully in her ears. This was too much intimacy. She might not be able to come back from it. She might lose herself in him forever. But she couldn't help admitting all her fear.
"I know he doesn't see me like that. He might stop caring about me at all," she told him, as if she was speaking of someone else. "He's important to me. And he might... laugh at me. I could take it from anyone else. But if he laughed at me, I would shrivel up and never be right again."
He opened his mouth to say something, but she was tired of talking. "It's too late to worry about that now."
She ran her hand down the zipper of his trousers. "I want to..." The words died on her lips, but she unbuckled his belt. "More practice."
"As you wish," he said, but he pulled her off the stool, drawing her into the modern living room, kissing her neck as they went. It felt so good that she would have fallen if she wasn't