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I shook my head and laughed nervously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I just hadn’t expected you to be in your underwear either, I guess. It caught me off guard.”
Holden ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m sorry if I checked you out, too.”
I should’ve just left the bathroom and covered up with a robe, but something about being near this man made me say and do things that were completely out of character. “Would you mind if I…looked a little more?”
Holden’s brows shot up to his hairline. “You want to check me out?”
My face heated. I shook my head and looked down. “Oh my gosh. I’m so embarrassed. I think the lack of sleep and stress from being locked in here made me a little bonkers. It’s just that maybe we both have some pent-up curiosity about what we look like as adults. I mean, I’ve only stolen glimpses of you without a shirt on since we were teenagers in my backyard pool. And you certainly haven’t seen me in a skimpy bottom and no bra since then. I guess I was thinking if we took a good, long look, once and for all, we might get it out of our systems.”
Holden stared at me. I could see the wheels in his head spinning. Eventually, his eyes dropped to my chest. “You have no bra on…”
I shook my head. “No bra.”
He swallowed. “Let’s do it.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Fuck yeah. I’m going to hell anyway. Might as well enjoy the ride down. But you have to stay in the bathroom, and I’ll stay on this side of the doorway.”
“Okay.” I bit my bottom lip. “You look first.”
“Why don’t we look at the same time?”
I nodded. “Good idea. How long should we do it for?”
Holden shrugged. “A minute?”
“Do you have your phone?”
“No. I thought someone broke in and you were being attacked. My phone was the last thing on my mind.”
“Mine should be on the coffee table. Do you want to grab it so we can use the timer?”
Holden walked away and came back ten seconds later. “What’s your code?”
“Zero, seven, one, three.”
He started to type and then froze before looking up at the ceiling. “That’s the day you’re getting married, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
Holden cursed as he went back to typing. “I’m so fucking going to hell.”
He called up the clock app and then turned the phone to show me. The countdown was set for one minute. His finger hovered over the green button. “You ready?”
I nodded.
Holden pressed the button, and we began to openly ogle each other. Without having to steal glances, I noticed things I hadn’t before—like how muscular his thighs were and the sexy line of hair that ran from the waistband of his underwear up to his belly button. God, I wanted to trace that with my tongue in the worst way. After about thirty seconds, Holden caught my eye. His voice was low and strained when he spoke. “Turn around.”
I swallowed and nodded. Thankfully, I had on a lacy thong and not some ugly old panties. When my back was fully facing him, Holden groaned.
“Jesus Christ. Your ass is fucking perfect.”
He stayed quiet until the timer went off. Since I’d kept my back to him for the last thirty seconds, I hadn’t really gotten to look at him for the full minute. I was about to suggest I should get a little more time, when I turned around and my eyes snagged on Holden’s boxers. Holy freaking bulge!
Holden was hard, or at least growing hard. Or maybe a tallboy beer can was trying to escape from his underwear…
Seeing my eyes grow wide, Holden looked down and used both hands to cover his crotch. “Shit. Sorry. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. I’ll be back in two minutes.”
He disappeared from my apartment for at least fifteen minutes after that. I’d started to think he wasn’t coming back when there was a soft knock at my door. I opened to find Holden fully dressed—sweatshirt, socks, sweatpants, even a hat and gloves. It was exactly the moment we both needed, because I had on a matching outfit, only I’d paired my hat and gloves with a scarf, too. We both started to crack up.
“Oh my God, Holden,” I snorted. “Have we lost it?”
He bent over in laughter. “I think so.”
After we wiped tears from our eyes, Holden held up a roll of duct tape. “I’m just going to put some duct tape on the lock so you won’t accidentally get locked in again. Tomorrow I’ll get a new doorknob set.”
I stepped aside for him to come in. “Thank you.”
After he finished taping the door, he looked around the living room. Piles of papers were spread all over the place. “Bomb go off in here?”
I sighed. “I have a presentation to make tomorrow—today—to the grant committee. I still need to finish matching the initial lab results to the participants and then compile information about the test subjects.”
