Butterface (The Hartigans #1)(7)
Figuring that if he thunked his head against the tile it would be loud enough for her to hear in the other room, he clamped his eyes closed and counted to ten instead. Then, he turned the shower knob all the way to the left, letting it linger at the apex of cold for a minute to try to clear his head and deflate his hard-on so he wouldn’t walk out like a fucking loser who’d been jerking off in the hotel bathroom by himself.
Which he was.
But she didn’t need to know that.
By the time he turned the water all the way off, music was playing in the other room. It wasn’t gonna-bang-you-against-the-wall or make-love-to-you-all-night long stuff, it sounded like what his sister Fallon listened to when she did yoga. Oh God. Thinking about his sister right now was not what he wanted to do. His dick shriveled up. Fuck. Going out there as Danny Dinky Dick was not what he wanted, either. Could he catch a fucking break?
Beyond the fact that a chick you were just thinking about while your hand was around your cock is in your hotel room, chucklehead?
He snatched the towel off the stack on the shelf and dried off. “I’ll be right out.”
“Take your time,” she said, her words coming out in a breathy rush.
That made him pause. Something was off about this. However, the blood rushing back south as soon as he heard her voice was louder than that quiet thought. Still, he was a man who always followed the letter and spirit of the law. Consent wasn’t something he took lightly.
“Is everything okay?” he asked. “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to.”
There was a short silence that lasted four hundred and eighty-two years while he stared into the dark beyond the partially closed bathroom door and felt like an idiot.
Finally, she asked in a soft voice, “Do you want me to leave?”
“Hell no.” Like he had to think about that.
She laughed. It was a smoky alto—one question answered—that went straight to his dick. “Then what’s there to talk about?”
Not a damn thing. He wrapped the towel around his hips and reached for the door.
Chapter Three
With the music from her phone filling up the dim space of the hotel room, Gina pushed past the adrenaline and anticipation pumping through her veins with enough force that she could practically hear it and reached her hands behind her back, making a desperate grab for her dress’s zipper tab. Maybe it was the pressure of the moment, maybe it was the fact that Satan had designed her dress, but she had to use all of her yoga stretching skills to reach the damn thing. Then, she had to not have an anxiety attack while in the process of inching the zipper down using only the very tips of her fingers.
She kept an eye on the bathroom to make sure Ford didn’t walk out and catch her looking like a twisted-up Cirque du Soliel reject.
Stress-induced perspiration curled the hair near her temples into frizzy ringlets. Okay, she couldn’t see they were frizzy because she’d turned off the lights, but she knew that’s what had happened.
Finally, she got the damn zipper down far enough to slide the dress over her hips right as the bathroom door started to open. Shit. She wasn’t prepared. She needed five more minutes. Didn’t he still need to condition his hair? Did guys even do that?
Shut it, Regina, this isn’t the time for stupid questions.
Right. She was right. A nervous giggle escaped. God, she was not only talking to herself, she was confirming her answers.
From her spot near the end of the bed, she could just see into the bathroom. That gave her a perfect view of Ford as he completely opened the opaque glass bathroom door. Or it would have, if total and complete panic hadn’t sent her flying onto the foot of the bed, where she scrambled on her hands and knees like a deranged gazelle on speed to the top of the bed and slid under the covers. Of course, her underwear went up her butt in the process.
She groaned out loud and squeezed her eyes shut. She’d worn her evil granny panty stomach minimizers. She hadn’t been planning on getting laid. Didn’t men know a woman had to plan for these types of things? Like, what if she hadn’t shaved in a week or was on her period? Didn’t they even consider the possibilities?
“Hey there,” Ford said, the pitch of his voice giving it a sexy gruffness.
Her belly fluttered, and her nerves melted away in the onslaught of hot desire that flooded her limbs.
“Hey yourself,” she answered as she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and used the kind of strength they talk about mothers having when they lift cars off their children to shove them down and then fling them over to where her dress lay in a puddle on the floor. Palms sweaty, she ripped off her bra before Ford stepped out of the bathroom, pausing in the pool of light coming out of the open door.
Thanks to her brief moment of sanity when she’d walked into the room and killed the lights, she had a better view of him than he did of her. Outlined by the light behind him, he stood silhouetted in the door. Broad shoulders, defined arms, and narrow hips that had a towel slung low around them. Wow. Ford was the exception to the looks-better-with-clothes-than-without rule, even when she could only see him in outlined form. She tried to think of something flirty to say, but her brain had checked out—right up until the moment when he reached for the light switch outside the bathroom door that would turn on the bedroom lights.
“No,” she said, slinking farther down under the covers. “Leave it off.”