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Shock made her hand go limp. “I don’t do that.”
She did. She so did.
How the hell had he figured that out when they hadn’t even slept together yet?
“You do. You flirt and wear outrageous clothes and advertise your availability purely as a distraction. What are you afraid I’m going to find out?”
That she longed to be the kind of woman a man wanted to stay with. Since she wasn’t, she might as well get something out of a man’s company. Orgasms worked for her.
She tossed her hair. “I’m not the one who’s afraid, McLaughlin. It bothers you that you’re so attracted to me. That’s why you want me in boring clothes, so you can keep pretending you don’t have a secret desire to do all sorts of wicked things to me. Things you know I’d like. You’re throwing all of this in my face because you’re the one who needs a distraction. Stop being such a Goody Two-shoes and take what you want.”
“What I want is for you to put these clothes on so we can go.” The catch in his voice said he wasn’t as unaffected as he’d like her to believe. “Good sex stems from intimacy. Connection. I like to have that with someone I’m sleeping with.”
I want to see the real you.
He’d meant it. That hadn’t been a ploy to get her out of an outfit he’d hated.
And all at once, she wanted to give it to him. To have this thing between them be real. She could confess all her secrets, tell him how he made her feel feminine for the first time in a long time. He wouldn’t care that she couldn’t have babies; he’d like her for her.
They’d have something between them besides sex.
That’s when her fantasy dried up and blew away. What did she know about how to be in a real relationship? Nothing, obviously, or she’d have figured out how to keep Neil around once she’d told him she’d conceived.
Dutifully, she let Logan hook her bra into place and raised her arms so he could pull the T-shirt over her head, suddenly grateful for the cover. She felt oddly exposed, as if the sheer act of informing her that he was stripping away her shields along with her outfit could actually accomplish it.
And she had enough appreciation for the psychology behind his assessment to be a little freaked that he’d come up with such a tactic. Enough that she let him pull her from the bed so he could slide her jeans over her hips and then button them, fully concealing her. It marked the first time in her life that a man had dressed her, only for her to wind up more naked than when she’d worn nothing.
The appreciation shining in Logan’s eyes as he laced his fingers with hers put a different kind of heat low in her belly. This barely-make-a-blip outfit had more effect than the in-your-face sexy one. For Logan, at least. What was she supposed to do with him?
“You’re a beautiful woman, Trinity.” He stated it like a fact, but that didn’t decrease the potency in the slightest. “Dressed like this, you make so much more of an impact, because it allows you to be the star instead of the outfit.”
Her knees did go weak at that, but she locked them. Now was not the time to get mushy over Logan McLaughlin. No time was good for that. This was all fake and designed to go his way so he could control his image. Nothing more.
She had to remember the most important rule—none of this was real. That was the reason he hadn’t undressed her and used it as an excuse to cop a feel or ogle her. He wasn’t attracted to her other than at a base level, and only then because it was involuntary physiology, not the connection he was looking for.
Good. She didn’t want that. Not with Logan, not with any man.
Except maybe she did, and she did not like that he’d uncovered a longing she’d had no idea was there. A longing she had no business indulging in, because she didn’t work like other women, couldn’t. Her body wasn’t made for pregnancy, and her ability to trust the opposite gender didn’t exist. She had to stop this nonsense cold.
“Maybe I like my clothes to be the star,” she muttered, and to her mortification, tears pricked at her eyelids. What in the hell was this man doing to her?
A better question was, why was she letting him?
“Wearing this outfit will get us the top spot on people’s social media feeds, I guarantee it,” he said mildly. “Do me one last favor and wear the shoes, though. I like it when you’re tall enough for me to put my arm around you.”
Oh, really?
The tears coupled with the unexpected exposure and longings that shouldn’t even be a factor put her in a dangerous mood. “I call BS. You like these shoes because you have secret bad-girl fantasies.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not a stretch to say I like sexy shoes on a woman. I readily admit to that.”
