The lock on the dressing room door turned. The door opened.
“Not one word of what you just said made any sense whatsoever,” Frederick said, stepping out of the dressing room. “But you can open your eyes now.”
I did.
My mouth fell open.
Frederick looked great in the parade of old-fashioned suits I’d seen him in since we’d met, of course. More than great. But I realized now that his consistently too-formal, out-of-date attire served as a constant reminder to me that Frederick was out of my league in every imaginable way—and completely off-limits.
Untouchable. And other.
Now, though . . .
“What do you think?” he asked. “Do I look like I fit in with modern society now?”
With difficulty, I tore my eyes from the broad expanse of his chest now covered in a forest-green Henley that fit him like a glove and met his gaze. He was fidgeting a little as I looked back at him, drumming his fingertips against his upper thigh again, and looking at me with a nervous intensity that stole the breath from my lungs.
I let my eyes trail slowly down his body, drinking him in, taking in his new shirt and the dark blue jeans that fit him so well you wouldn’t have guessed he’d had no idea what size he was twenty minutes ago. The other jeans he’d tried on lay folded in a pile on the chair beside him; his suit hung neatly on a hanger in the dressing room.
I focused on these other details to distract myself from how Frederick not only looked just as hot in more casual clothes as he did in his stuffy suits, but also how he now looked attainable in a way that was dangerous to me, specifically.
I had to avert my eyes. Looking right at him felt a little too much like looking directly at the sun.
“You look great. You look unbelievable, actually.” I heard his sharp intake of breath, only then realizing that that hadn’t quite been what he’d asked me. All he’d asked was whether he looked like he fit in. My stomach swooped, my face suddenly feeling like it was on fire. Idiot. “That is . . . that is to say—”
“You think I look great?” He was looking at me with an expression that fell somewhere between surprise and pleasure. He stepped from the dressing room, stopping when he was only a few inches away from me. I took an involuntary breath, breathing in the scent of lavender soap and new clothes that clung to him. “Really?”
His tone was so hopeful. It set off a wave of butterflies in my stomach that I tried to ignore.
I nodded—though great didn’t begin to do justice to how he looked.
“Yeah. Really.”
He gave me a bashful, lopsided smile that activated his killer dimple, then looked down at his arms. He rubbed one of his thumbs along his collarbones, and then across his chest. “The fabric feels nicer than I expected. Softer.”
I watched as he ran his hand over the material. “Oh?”
“Yes.” He paused. “Would you . . . would you like to touch it, too?”
My eyebrows shot up so high they nearly met my hairline. “What?”
“I am curious whether most shirts made in this era are as soft as this one. I thought if you touched my shirt . . .” He trailed off. “I thought maybe you could tell me whether this particular shirt was representative.”
He was staring down at his shoes like they were the most interesting things in the entire world.
I gazed up at him, blood rushing in my ears.
He . . . wanted me to touch him.
Here.
Outside of a Nordstrom dressing room.
I swallowed hard.
“Would it be . . . educational? For you?”
He nodded, still staring at his shoes. “I think so. But—” He looked at me, expression unreadable. “But only if you want to, Cassie.”
In the end, I didn’t need to think it over for too long. If it were anyone else but Frederick making this request, I’d assume this was the most transparent excuse in the world to get someone to touch them.
But this wasn’t anyone else.
This was Frederick, someone who was so formal, so prim and proper, he only stopped calling me Miss Greenberg and began referring to me by my first name after I’d asked him to several times. This was the same person who was so overcome by the sight of me in a bikini he couldn’t bring himself to speak to me for two days.
Frederick might have been the most gentlemanly person I’d ever met. If he’d wanted to find some flimsy excuse for me to put my hands on him, he’d have done it long before now.
Besides—I wanted to touch him. A lot, in fact. Whether it was a good idea to touch him was a separate matter, and one I would have ample time to think about later.
I stepped closer and put both of my hands on his chest. Part of me still half expected to feel a heartbeat, a warm and yielding male body beneath my palms. But Frederick’s chest was cool and almost unnaturally solid where I touched him, no rhythmic thumping where one would have been if he were still human.
Fortunately—or, unfortunately—my heart was beating more than enough for the both of us.
Frederick was right. The fabric of his shirt was soft. I slowly slid my hands back and forth over the waffle-knit material, reveling in how silky it felt beneath my fingertips, how delicious the contrast was with the hard planes of the chest beneath.
Now that I had the answer to his question, I probably should have stopped touching him. I should have stepped away from him and kept my hands to myself the rest of the night.
But I didn’t.
The shirt he was wearing was nice enough. But that wasn’t what kept me rooted to the spot, what kept my hands on his body long beyond what he’d probably imagined when he asked me to do this. I’d known he was muscular, but now that I was actually touching him I realized he was all but made of muscle. Had he been this physically fit when he was still human, I wondered? Or was being built like a professional athlete a physiological peculiarity unique to vampires? Either way, I could feel his pectorals bunch and flex beneath my palms as I touched him, could feel his sharp intake of breath when I grew bolder and started gently tracing his collarbones with my thumb.
His eyes were still trained on me, but growing glazed and unfocused.
“How . . .” He stopped, his eyes drifting closed. When he opened them again there was a heat in his gaze that made the department store, the rest of the world, fall away. He inclined his head towards me, his mouth scant inches away from mine. I could feel each one of his breaths against my lips, cool and sweet. My heart raced. My knees wobbled. “How does it feel?”
“Wow! Your boyfriend looks great in everything, doesn’t he?”
We flew apart at the sound of the salesperson’s voice, coming from right behind me. Frederick—now standing at least a foot away—stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, eyes downcast. He wasn’t blushing—could vampires blush? I wasn’t sure—but I sure was.