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He wasn’t just stopping himself from acting, he was stopping himself from wanting.
It was something he was quite accomplished at. He’d learned, early on, to master his body by thinking the right things. Dwelling on the right things. To become aroused when it was needed, to shut it down when it kept him safe.
The bathroom door opened and light spilled into the room in a thin line, that widened until he saw Julia. She was wearing sweats. Gray and baggy and low on her hips, and a black T-shirt with writing on it.
Her hair was captured in a towel on her head.
He tried to remember if he’d ever seen a woman dressed so casually. He had never had a lover. Not a real lover. He’d had clients. Women who paid to be with him. Who paid for him to be their fantasy. And they had their vanity. For him, they were always overly made up, in stiff corsets attempting to defy gravity and nature. As if he had cared. As if there was any way to make the act, or them, more palatable.
Again, he was struck by Julia’s softness. Softness she tried so hard to hide. But it was there, even though it was buried deep. And it fascinated him.
She unwound the towel and threw it back into the bathroom, shaking out her wet hair. It hung, stringy and wavy down her back. She walked to the bed and jumped into the middle of it, pulling her tablet computer from her bag and firing it up, illuminating her face with the bright screen.
She stuck headphones in her ears and started tapping at the screen furiously. Playing a game, he figured, especially when a tiny grunt of frustration escaped her lips.
He couldn’t help but smile. That passion she was such an advocate for. It was quite something to witness. Beautiful.
She was beautiful. He realized it with a jolt, realized that he wasn’t simply observing her beauty as though she were a sunset. But that he felt her beauty. That he wanted to touch it. Possess it.
It was such a strange, sharp ache. A longing that went deep. Something he was sure he must have felt before, but it seemed lost. In a different part of his life. Maybe in a different man. A different man than he’d become.
“What are you playing?”
She startled, her head popping up, her eyes wide. She pulled her headphones off.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said, hand on her chest.
“No. Sorry.”
“So you were just…skulking. In the shadows.”
“I’m lying on the couch, I’m hardly skulking.”
“Lurker.”
He laughed. Strange how she made him laugh. Normally he chose to laugh, just like he chose to smile. It wasn’t involuntary. It wasn’t spontaneous or heartfelt. But she actually pulled something from him. A reaction.
One he couldn’t control, which made him slightly concerned. Resentful, even. That this woman, who was so much a girl in many ways, had this power over him. And yet, something in him also wanted to tempt it. To take it to the edge and see what happened. It was tempting. So very tempting.
How long since anything had excited him? Since anything had made him feel heat beneath his skin.
He was tired of being cold.
And that was his very sad reality. That no matter how warm and opulent his surroundings, he never warmed up inside.
“Guilty,” he said. “I was just admiring your choice of attire.”
“You won’t even believe what Thad packed for me.”
“Your assistant?”
“Yes. He had, well, he had sexy times on his mind so he packed me some…uh…well, not my sweats. But the gift shop accommodated me.”
“I like the sweats,” he said.
Lace, silk, would not have been as compelling. Because right now, Julia was a woman as he had never seen one. Clean, bare in so many ways. Her armor reduced to nothing.
How easy it would be now, to say the right words. To go from the couch to her bed. A kiss that would turn into two kisses. Which would turn into more. He could touch her softness, feed on her heat.
A shudder went through his body. He wanted it. Wanted her. Wanted her body.
The realization of what he was planning, of what he was allowing himself to want, stopped him cold.
Someday, yes, he would take a lover. He had left it far too long. But it wouldn’t be this woman. Not now. He would not under these circumstances.
He could see it in his head.
