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“The place is fine. I am not fussy.” She lifted the corner of the blackout shades and peered out. Nothing to see. Dawn was long in coming. Lily came back to stand over the heater, rubbing her hands. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I could heat some water for tea,” he offered. “I could run down to the diner and get some—”
“No, I’m good.”
That left him speechless, at a loss. Nothing to do, nothing to say. He considered and abandoned several ways to make her laugh. What came out of his mouth surprised him. “Is your hair dyed?” he blurted.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Does it look wrong?”
“Oh, no, no,” he backpedaled. “It just seems, um, dark. For your skin. It’s pretty. Sexy. It’s just a really tough look. That’s all.”
Her chin went up. “I really am tough. Very tough.”
“Never doubted it for a second,” he said hastily.
She stared at him for a long moment. “It’s a wig,” she confessed.
Oh. A wig. Imagine that. “I see,” he murmured, and gazed at the fake coif for a long moment before taking his courage in both hands.
“Can I, uh, see your real hair?” he asked.
She looked like she was about to refuse. Then she dropped her mascara loaded eyelashes in a gummy black fan to hide her eyes, pulled off the cat-eye specs, and reached up pluck out the pins.
No moment of revelation had ever been as sexy as the moment she pulled it off, and faced him, her eyes defiant.
Her real hair was strawberry blond, curly wisps plastered fuzzily close to her head, like some retro, pin-curled twenties ‘do.
She’d been stunning as a brunette. She blew his mind as a red blonde. The harsh eye makeup and the violently red lipstick had made sense with the severe black bob, but their effect was different now. She looked vulnerable, delicate, lost. An innocent child who’d been all painted up. She’d lied about her age. He would swear to it.
She reached back, and unwound the coil of tangled hair. Fluffing it loose so fuzzy corkscrews unwound, dangling voluptuously over her shoulders. So pretty, he could hardly breathe. His fingers itched, to touch that flossy, soft mane. “Your real hair is beautiful,” he said.
She let out a sniff. Unimpressed with his compliments.
He felt that prickle again. The buzz of wrongness, danger. Something wrong with this picture. She’d declined to answer before, but he tried again, with different words, in a different tone.
“What do you want from me, Lily?” he asked softly.
She took off her coat, tossed it on the back of the couch, and shook her hair loose. “Turn off the light,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
He stared at her. This wasn’t like him. Why couldn’t he just take it at face value? A beautiful girl he hardly knew, hot for him and saying yes. It had happened before. ‘Yes’ was good. ‘Yes’ should not scare him to death. He played for time, lamely. “You mean, ah…you want…”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
The blood in his body rushed to his groin, leaving his brain dangerously undermanned. Lighten up, he lectured himself. She was just a girl. Not a cosmic love goddess, wielding the power of life or death, dangling his destiny carelessly in her hand. He cleared his throat. “Are you sure…I mean, wouldn’t it be better to wait until—”
“No,” she said.
“Look, I don’t want to come across like I don’t want this—”
“You don’t,” she said. “I know you want it.”
Her calm bothered him. So sure of herself, when he was a stammering mess. “Don’t confuse me,” he snapped. “I don’t know why I’m resisting, because my dick is about to explode. But this thing with you is important. I don’t want to start it off wrong.”
She glanced at her wrist, miming looking at a watch. “Looks like we’ll never start at all, if you have anything to say about it.”
He tried again, doggedly. “If we just do it, then it’s done. And we can’t ever undo it. We can’t ever do it over again.”
“We can’t?” She sucked in her lower lip, blinking. “Aw. How sad.”
“Don’t mock me,” he ground out. “You know exactly what I mean. The first time is a one time deal, and if we blow it—”
