Stripped (Stripped #1)(40)
Author: Jasinda Wilder

And honestly, it’s hard not to.

“I’m not trying to be difficult, I just—”

“Tell me one true thing.”

“I want you, and you’re right that I don’t want to want you. You scare me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re…so much. You’re Dawson Kellor. You’re…you’re Cain Riley. You’re the man every woman in America wants. You’re the man every man in America wishes he was.” I’m so glad for the darkness. I can speak truth in this darkness. “I want you, and it scares me, because I don’t know what to do with it. How to handle it. I don’t know how to be around you.”

“Just be you.”

“It’s not that easy. I don’t—I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am.” My voice catches, and I swallow hard. I’ve cried too much, and I won’t do it again. I refuse.

Dawson doesn’t answer, but this isn’t a pause—this is the silence of a man who knows nothing he says will make it okay, so he doesn’t say anything. It’s perfect.

After a long moment, he tugs me closer and murmurs, “Let me hold you.”

I’m still, totally tensed now. “Hold me?”

“Yeah. Just hold you. No pressure. It’s not going anywhere. Just be in the moment with me.”

“Okay…” I don’t know what he means. I’ve never been held, except when he’s comforted me while I cry. Which, it seems, is the majority of our relationship thus far.

I feel him smile, somehow I sense his amusement at my hesitancy. He slides his arm underneath me, pulls me closer, and now I’m cradled against his bare, warm chest. My head is pillowed in the hollow where arm becomes chest, and I can vaguely hear his heart beating, and his hand is skating over my shoulder blades and down to the gap where his oversized T-shirt has rucked up to bare the skin of my back. I’m pressed all along the length of his body. I find myself tracing the grooves of his abdominal muscles with one finger, and I’m just breathing. I’m not thinking, not trying not to cry, not worrying about bills, not doing homework, not stripping my clothes off. I’m just…here.

It’s absolute heaven. My eyes prick and my chest contracts, but I breathe through it.

“This is okay, right?” he mutters into my hair.

I nod. I can’t get words out, so I don’t bother trying. I’m overwhelmed by the peace I feel. He holds me, and doesn’t try to kiss me or touch me.

Sleep takes me, and it’s the best I’ve slept since my mother died.

Chapter 11

The smell of coffee wakes me up. Sunlight is bright on my closed eyelids, and I’m warm. At peace. I drowse in the comfort. There is no worry. I’m no one, just a content blot of warmth floating in nothingness.

Suspended in time where nothing matters.

And then coffee-scent wafts over me, and I drift upward to awareness. At length I open my eyes and see the white space of Dawson’s bedroom, the black screen of his trillion-inch TV, a long sliding glass door with opened blinds letting in a gloriously brilliant day and a breath-stopping view of Los Angeles.

And then the most glorious view of all: Dawson in nothing but a pair of gym shorts. His calves are tanned with a scar running diagonally across his left calf, a puckered line of lighter skin. The scar humanizes him somehow. He’s not polished and gemstone perfect. God, I got a glimpse of his body last night, but now he’s moving with feline grace through his bedroom with a huge mug of coffee in his hand, and his body ripples with each motion. There’s a slight dusting of dark hair on his chest, and a thicker trail of black hair leading from his navel to under his shorts. The sight of his nearly naked body sends shivers running through me, sends quavering spears of heat into my belly. It makes me feel…hot, inside. It makes me feel entirely feminine.

Dawson sits on the bed near my knee and smiles. He has a plate in his other hand, a toasted plain bagel with a generous slathering of cream cheese. I sit up, and my stomach rumbles as I smell the bagel.

He’s brought me breakfast. In bed. And he’s done it shirtless.

Women of America, be jealous.

I snatch half of the bagel off the plate and inhale it, washing it down with swallows of coffee. I burn my tongue, but it doesn’t register. I burn my tongue on my coffee every day.

Dawson is watching with a slightly stunned and bemused expression. “In a hurry?”

I set the bagel down slowly, wipe the corner of my lip with my thumb, and then lick the cream cheese off my thumb. I catch Dawson staring at my mouth, and I blush.

“No,” I say, fighting embarrassment. “I’m just…I’ve always eaten like that, I guess. Especially in the morning.”

“It’s cute. You act like the bagel is going to run away from you.” He laughs at my further embarrassment. “Don’t slow down on my account. Just relax.”

“Relax?” It’s an alien concept.

“Yeah.” He takes the mug from me and sips some coffee, then hands it back. “Just…chill. Take today and spend it with me. Doing whatever. Just hang.”

I’m disoriented. “What day is it?”

“It’s Saturday. It’s a little past eleven. We both slept in. Usually I’m up by six, but I slept in today.”

I gasp. “Eleven?” I haven’t slept past seven in years. “It can’t be eleven. I have a paper to finish before work tonight.”

His eyes darken and harden. They’ve been the soft, muted hazel of his at-ease mood, and they instantly shift to the stormy almost-blue of building anger. “When’s the paper due?”

“Tuesday. But I have another paper due Wednesday, and a test Monday, and I work all weekend, so I have to get it done—”

He silences me by shoving the other half of the bagel in my mouth.

“Yeah, no. You’re done working there.” His voice holds a note of command that has me bristling.

“What? What do you mean, I’m done working there?” I’m talking through a mouthful of bagel, and I swallow it and set aside the rest. “I don’t like it, but I don’t have a choice in the matter. That’s my job. It’s how I survive. If this internship works out, Kaz will hire me full-time, but I can’t quit until then. I have tuition due…Wednesday, actually, along with room and board for my dorm and food plan. I can’t…I can’t just quit.”

“Yes, you can. How about we make it a condition of the internship? Would that make it easier?”