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He pulled the straps over her shoulders in response, dropping the bra next to her dress on the floor. Then, he knelt before her, pulling her panties down, tapping her ankle, silently telling her to lift her foot so he could discard them as well.
When he rose, she resisted the urge to lift her hands to cover herself. After all, she was totally nude and he was completely dressed, a state he didn’t seem in a hurry to change.
She ran her palms over her thighs, then her stomach, back to her thighs, all while trying not to wiggle like a worm on a hook under his gaze.
“Put your hands behind your head. Lock your fingers. Hold that position until I tell you to stop.”
She blinked a few times, trying to decide if she’d heard him say what she thought he said. Was he being serious?
Gage responded to her indecision with a stern look. “Now, Penny.”
She lifted her hands, locked her fingers.
He stepped closer, drawing his finger down the middle of her chest, through the valley between her breasts.
“Breathe,” he murmured, and air flew from her lungs in a whoosh.
“I know your first instinct is to cover yourself, to shield yourself with your hands. Don’teverdo that.”
“It’s just so har—”
He didn’t let her finish, didn’t let her make an excuse. “You’ve learned how to do the hair, the makeup. You thought those things would be hard too, but you practiced and you got it. So you’re going to practice this too. You’re going to look at yourself in the mirror every damn morning, and I meanreallylook. At every single inch of yourself—your face, your body, your hair, the zits, the parts you hate, the parts you don’t hate—until you see it.”
“See it?”
“How perfect you are.Justthe way you are.”
“Oh.” It was all she could say. The only sound she could squeeze through a throat that was rapidly closing with tears. Not bad tears. Not necessarily good ones either. Just…tears.
She’d spent a lifetime studying the flaws, let a cruel nickname from school sink too deep, let it define how she carried herself. She wrapped her awkwardness around her—not like a shield but like a cloak of invisibility. Distracting people with the quirkiness so they didn’t look closer to see the real faults.
Gage stripped that cloak off, forced her to take a hard look at herself, and what she found…God, she liked what she’d found. Really liked it. He was teaching her how to love herself, something she’d never truly mastered.
“You say you want a lesson in seduction.”
She nodded, even though his words weren’t a question.
“All you have to do is look at a man with those big blue eyes and flash him one of those sweet, sexy grins of yours, and he’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”
As he spoke, he touched her, stroked her, circled her. His eyes taking in every part of her.
“All you have to do is be yourself. Your funny, intelligent, interesting self.”
Once he’d made a complete circuit, he stopped right in front of her.
“You’re beautiful, Penny. You can put your hands down now.”
She lowered her arms, but this time they hung naturally by her side. The familiar heat that colored her cheeks whenever he told her she was pretty struck. And now, as always, Gage noticed, running his knuckles down the side of her face.
No one had ever said such wonderful things to her before. Gage was a playboy, a charmer. Women fell into his bed with just one crook of his finger.
She knew all that, and yet, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he meant every word he was saying to her.
But perhaps what meant even more was the knowledge that it didn’t matter if it was a line or not. It only mattered that she believed it, felt it.
And she did.
“Gage,” she whispered.
