When they got back to her dark bedroom, Thomas flipped on the lights.
“I want to see you naked. Take off your clothes, Sophie.”
Her heartbeat escalated in her rib cage when she heard his gruff request. Request? More accurate to call it a command, Sophie admitted as she swallowed heavily. It occurred to her that he likely could see her pulse throbbing frantically at her throat.
She wished he’d left the lights off. She wished he’d resume his consuming kiss, making her forget everything else but the need to quench her desire for him. Instead, his stare made her skin prickle in anxious excitement.
A sense of self-consciousness came over her, an awkwardness she couldn’t recall feeling so acutely since she was a teenager with breasts and hips that were suddenly bursting out of her school uniform. When it came to appearances, Sophie had been much more comfortable being an awkward pre-adolescent than a teenager. She’d hated having to think about herself as a sexual being that attracted other people’s gazes. She’d rather meld into the background while her beautiful parents dazzled the eyes of onlookers.
Her father had teased her mercilessly about her blooming body, sending hot spikes of shame through her, making her wish she could just fade into the sleek Corian and chrome kitchen counters of their Los Angeles home. She could still hear him teasing her while her mother looked on, a typical distant, vaguely amused expression on her breathtaking face.
“You’re going to be built like your mom—not a straight line on you except for those teeth we’re paying a fortune for. Meg—we should take her down to audition for that new teenager show. You know which one I mean? It’s being directed by that snot-nose kid that turned me down for that sitcom last year. We’d have him begging if he had one look at our Sophie.”
Her mother had rolled her eyes. “Sophie’s thirteen years old, Bastian.”
“If we’d started that young, who knows where we’d be?”
Sophie could still hear the trace of resentment in her father’s tone. If they’d started young . . . if they hadn’t unexpectedly been burdened by an infant girl . . .
“Sophie?”
She started at the sound of Thomas’s voice and began unbuttoning her blouse. It wasn’t like she hadn’t slept with plenty of men between the time she was eighteen and thirty-three. She’d had her share and become accustomed to taking her clothes off in front of men.
But there was something about Thomas’s incising stare here in the lit room that made her feel vulnerable for some reason, more naked than usual. It had little to do with whether her clothes were on her or not.
When she’d removed her blouse and let it drop to the carpet, she started to unfasten her bra.
“No. Take off the skirt next,” Thomas muttered. Sophie paused with her hands behind her back. He sat on the edge of the bed, his manner intent, his attention entirely focused on her. She swallowed thickly and unfastened her skirt. When it fell down her legs and bunched around her feet, she stepped out of it. She picked up both garments and neatly folded them across the back of an upholstered chair.
When she turned around, she saw amusement had joined the heat in his forest green eyes.
“Are you always so neat?”
She shivered at the impact of his gruff query.
“I’m only asking, because I tend to have a dirty mouth when it comes to fooling around,” he added wryly. He placed his hands behind him and leaned back on the bed, regarding her soberly. Sophie’s gaze flickered down over the expanse of his naked chest, fixing on his groin. Tingling heat swept through her pussy, making her clit tingle deliciously when she saw the shape of his cock outlined against the fabric of his trousers. “Do you think that’s going to bother you, Sophie?”
She glanced into his face. His voice had changed into a low purr, and she knew he’d noticed where she’d been staring. She shook her head.
“Good. Now take off your panties.”
Her mouth went dry as she stepped out of her white underwear. Her discomfort at undressing in front of him mixed with a rising sense of excitement at following his instructions. She couldn’t say for sure what turned her on more: doing what Thomas asked or seeing the growing tension in his muscles when she did.
“Give them to me,” he said when she turned and started to lay her underwear on the pile of clothing. She twisted around in surprise, pausing when she saw his stare glued to her ass. He put out his hand. She licked her lower lip anxiously.
The crotch of the panties were actually quite wet—a remnant of their heated lovemaking earlier in addition to touching and kissing Thomas just minutes ago. His outstretched hand didn’t waver, though, and neither did his demanding stare.
She stepped toward him and placed the panties in his hand.
He smiled, slow and potent, when he saw what must have been wariness on her face. His eyelids lowered. He lifted the panties to his nose. Sophie pressed her thighs and whimpered, shocked by the sharp pang of arousal that stabbed at her genitals.
“Hmmm, white cotton and sex,” he growled. His hand went to his crotch and he rearranged his erection, pausing to tug lightly at the thick head. She saw him grimace and wondered dazedly if he’d experienced the same surge of lust that shot through her body. He inhaled once more before his eyelids opened slowly. He stared at the juncture of her thighs and her body answered in kind. Her vagina tightened as another pang of desire went through her.
He tossed aside her panties. His gaze trailed up her belly and ribs.
“Now take off your bra,” he ordered thickly.
Sophie removed it fleetly, the majority of her self-consciousness gone now. All she could think of was stilling the mounting tension in her pussy. She let her bra fall to the floor, heedless of where it went, and stood before Thomas wearing only her thigh-highs and the low-heeled pumps she favored for work. Her nipples prickled and tautened under his hot stare. He reached out and put his hands on her hips.