Page 92 of One Adult, Please

"What things?"

"Your... you. The parts of you under the vest. Those things."

He laughs. "The parts of me."

"You know what I mean. Take it off or I'm going to rip it off and then neither of us will have a tactical fish vest and that's a loss for the whole group."

He takes off the vest. It hits the floor with a soft thump, sacrificed on the altar of whatever this is becoming. His shirt follows, and then he's bare-chested in the dim light of the captain's quarters.

Beck is all angles and hard lines. There's a tattoo on his ribs, something in black ink that I can't make out in this light but looks like words. Words I'm going to trace with my fingers and maybe my mouth.

"Your turn," he says.

Right. My turn. I'm still fully clothed, hoodie and pants and the Wondie sports bra I put on this morning because it was clean and I wasn't planning on anyone seeing my underwear today. Sports bras are basically fabric traps. They require a level of physical coordination I don't possess.

I grab the hem of my hoodie. pull it over my head, and get stuck.

"Grace."

"I'm fine. The hoodie is just... it's caught on my... there's a thing."

"What thing?"

"I don't know. A head thing. It's caught on my head thing. My hair is doing a..."

Beck helps. The hoodie comes off without further incident and my hair is definitely doing something insane now. I can feel it.

"You're gorgeous," Beck says.

"My hair looks like a crime scene."

"I wasn't talking about your hair."

Oh.

"The bra is complicated," I warn him. "It's basically an escape room."

"I'll figure it out."

He steps closer. His hands find the bottom edge of the bra. He pulls it up, over my head, off my arms, and it happens so smoothly that I'm standing there topless before I fully register that the escape room has been escaped.

"How did you do that?"

"It's just fabric, Grace."

"It's never just fabric. That bra has a grudge against me personally."

"Maybe it likes me better."

"That's rude. That's my bra. It should be loyal."

He kisses me again. My objections about bra loyalty dissolve into the feeling of his chest against mine, skin on skin. His hands slide down my sides, over my ribs, finding the waistband of my pants.

The pants go. My underwear goes with them. His eyes move over me slowly.

"Beck. I'm going to need you to do something other than look. The looking is very flattering but I'm standing here naked and you still have pants and that seems like an imbalance that should be corrected."

"You want me to take off my pants."