He explained, “The music came through in my room too.”
“Oh! Shit, I’m sorry.” She made a face and thought back, hoping her music choices weren’t too embarrassing. “Did I wake you up?”
“I was already awake when you turned it on. And I wouldn’t have missed that performance just now for anything.”
She made another face—this one not far off from sticking her tongue out at him. “I was just having fun.”
“I know you were.”
“I was in college when that song came out. My friends and I used to sing and dance to it like crazy in our dorm.” She smiled at the memory. It was a good one. She’d felt connected. Uninhibited. It had been a long time since she’d felt that way.
“Yeah. I remember when it came out.”
“You were way out of college then.”
“Yes.”
“You would have already been working hard at your family company. You wouldn’t have been singing and dancing to that song with your friends.”
“Uh no.” His eyes were still so warm—fond—that it made her want to shiver. “I wasn’t doing much of that then.”
“I bet you don’t even know the words.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Is that what you think?”
“Yes. It’s a girl song.” It was so much fun to tease him. He reacted every time, like he hadn’t been teased enough in his life, like he wasn’t used to it. “Not a song for men who wear suits to work.”
He gave a huff of laughter. “That’s probably true.”
“It’s fine. Not everyone is brave enough for that song. But I might have to mention that I sang the boy song with you a few weeks ago, but you won’t sing the girl song with me.”
He came all the way into her room for the first time, leaving the connecting door open. “Why would you assume I won’t sing it?”
“Because of course you won’t. I mean, you’re...”
“Uptight?” His dark eyebrows arched in an ironic question.
“That’s Lincoln’s word for you. I’d say you’re—”
“Buttoned-up.”
She giggled. “Yeah.”
“And I don’t know the words to a girl song and wouldn’t sing them even if I did?”
Something was happening. To his face. To his posture. Like he was getting ready. Growing excited without knowing why, she said, “Well, yeah. I mean...”
Her words trailed off as Carter went over to where she’d left the remote and flipped back to the song they’d been talking about.
She gasped as she heard the first notes of the intro. He’d turned the volume up from where she’d had it. “You’re really going to sing it?”
“You practically dared me to. You think I’m not up to a challenge?” He was smoking hot in his low-slung pajama pants. They clung to the thick muscles in his legs and didn’t quite cover the hint of dark hair that trailed down to his groin. He obviously worked out regularly, if the strong definition of the muscles on his chest, abs, and arms were any indication.
Ruth had to drag her eyes up to his face again. “You really know the words?”
“I know the words.”
“You have to sing for real. No faking it or holding back.”
“No holding back.” He cleared his throat and stepped closer to her. “But you have to sing with me.”
“Of course I will.” She barely got her answer spoken before the words of the song began.
Carter knew the song as well as she did. He got every word. Every beat. By the time the first verse was over, she’d let go again and was singing and dancing with a victorious joy that filled her like a drug.
Not to be outdone, Carter started dancing too. Because of his musical theater background, he was able to improvise much better steps than she could and hand motions to match the words. She tried to copy him as best she could as they both belted out the song at the top of their voices.
Carter didn’t hold back. He wasn’t self-conscious or secretly mocking or preserving any sense of dignity. He was grinning as he sang, exactly as she was. And they ended the song facing each other, both of them doing little hops in time to the music and leaning forward so they could sing right at each other.
Ruth was gasping helplessly when they finished, breathless from both the singing and the dancing. Carter was panting too. Both of them had one arm upraised in the final victorious pose of their dance. Still smiling, they stood like that in the middle of the room, gazing at each other. Trapped in the afterglow of their uninhibited performance.
His face was slightly damp from perspiration. A thick wave of hair had fallen over onto his forehead when he normally kept it so neat. He needed to shave. The dark stubble ran all the way down to his neck, taunting her with the need to feel the texture of it.
He was a nice guy. With a deeply kind heart. He worked hard. He cared for people. He always took life seriously. But he’d just shamelessly sung and danced a girl-power song with her, in his pajamas without any sort of embarrassment or irony.
He wasn’t anything she’d believed he could be.
“So,” he rasped, obviously trying to catch his breath as he lowered his arm. “There. I did it. So what do you have to say to that?”
He was warm all the way down to his core. It filled him to the brim. It seeped around the edges of his character. It shone in his deep brown eyes. All of him. So incredibly warm.
She needed that warmth. She wanted it so much. She couldn’t possibly not claim it when he was standing within arm’s length of her.
Sexy. Half-naked. Hot and breathless. All man with his broad shoulders and rippling biceps and scattering of dark chest hair.
She launched herself at him. There wasn’t any other way to describe it. She threw herself against him and grabbed his face to pull it down into a kiss.
He was still for just a moment, clearly taken by surprise. But then she felt his body changing. Coming alive. He took her head in both hands and held it as he returned the kiss, taking control of it almost immediately.
Her mind felt like it might explode with too much pleasure and excitement and energy and force. She whimpered as she opened her mouth to his demanding tongue, running her hands up and down his arms so she could feel the firm contours of his muscles.
After a minute—maybe more since it was hard to tell time in that thick blur of need and satisfaction—he broke the kiss and lowered his head to run quick, delicious kisses along her throat. “Ruth?”
She tried to answer but could only get out one syllable that sounded like, “Eh.”
“Is this what I think it is?”
He was asking her a question, even as he teased her with little kisses all over her skin. It was very distracting. She tried to focus enough to answer. “What?”
“Because I’m getting excited here. Into it. And I don’t want to get too into it if you just want this to be a kiss.”
Her eyes had fallen closed. She might have melted to the floor had he not been holding her up. But his hoarse words penetrated enough for her to understand them. She pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “I need a lot more than a kiss,” she admitted, wondering briefly if she was about to embarrass herself again by throwing herself at a guy who didn’t really want her.