I finger a strand of my red hair. “You’re just realizing this now? I’ve known you for ten years. Might want to work on your powers of observation, Fred.”
He rolls his eyes. “No, I’m figuring out the perfect nickname for you.” He stands, offers me his hand, and pulls me up. “You’re Gingersnap.”
There’s a note of pride in his tone, like he’s delighted he devised this term of endearment. And I don’t mind Gingersnap. Maybe it’s the way he says it—with a touch of affection.
“Fine. I’ll be Gingersnap to you. . . Fred.”
“Then let’s do it one more time . . . Gingersnap.” His voice is a little rougher, a bit sexier, and it makes my chest tingle.
Exactly what I don’t need.
I shake it off, trying to stay loose, to stay in the friend zone.
But maybe I’m too loose, because when he’s ready to make the waist-grab move, I wiggle away.
Unintentionally.
Which means my elbow bonks the wall.
“Ouch!” I rub my elbow.
“You okay?” There’s genuine concern in his voice.
“I’m not sure I’ll live,” I say with a pout as the joint smarts.
He reaches for my arm, inspecting it then softly rubbing. “What do you want me to say at your funeral?”
He’s deadpan serious, and I nearly crack up. But I rein in my laughter, affecting a high-brow tone. “Please say she died trying to escape a most dangerous staircase undressing. Also, let my death not be in vain.” I lift my finger, an orator making a point. “Let it serve as a warning to all those intrepid readers tempted to reenact staircase disrobing.”
“You’ve given your life to a good cause,” he says with a solemn nod. “I will carry your warning to the masses.”
“You do that.”
We make our way back down the stairs, where I try to regroup. We need to fully test this scene before I can report on it in the blog and in Amy’s guide. “Okay, let me review the choreography so I know I have it straight,” I say, so I don’t mess up again. I gesture to the staircase. “I head up the stairs. I glance behind me after three steps. You give me a sexy smolder. I sashay my hips. You reach for my waist, spin me around.”
“After that, I lift your skirt,” he says. “You take two more steps up. I slide the skirt up your body. Another step. Over your head. You do this all with heels on, and boom. Top step. Birthday suit,” he says, dusting one hand against the other.
“I’m not wearing my birthday suit,” I point out, but the thought has me flustered. Or is it flushed? Is that a flush spreading over my chest at the prospect of nudity? But flushes and blushes are precisely what I want to avoid in this scenario. “I’m definitely not wearing it,” I say, to drive the point home.
“Actually, you are. We always wear our birthday suits.”
I sigh dramatically. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m wearing my birthday suit,” he says, gesturing to his frame, and for a few deliriously erotic seconds, I imagine him naked.
Strong muscles, carved abs, that sprinkling of chest hair that’s the perfect amount of manliness.
My mouth waters.
My stomach flips.
And I reprimand the hell out of my brain, the indecent wench.
Friends don’t picture friends in the buff.
“Let’s try it one more time,” I say with a crisp nod and a cool tone. “We’ll do it by the book.”
He clears his throat, his tone shifting. “Peyton, I have another idea.”
I blink. “You do?”
“I do.” He pauses, scrubbing a hand across his chin. “Do you trust me?”
The question is rhetorical. “Of course I do.”
He shakes his head, like that’s the wrong reply. “I know you trust me. But can you trust me right now? To take the lead?” His voice is gentle but somehow commanding at the same time. It’s soothing, and the question says he knows me, but he also needs me to let go. To give in to him.
Can I?
Will I stumble if I do?
His eyes lock with mine, and the intensity in his gaze is reassuring, like the security he gave me at his restaurant the other night when he said, I’ve got you.
I give the only answer I can. “I trust you.”
“Good. Then let’s do it.”
“If you say so, Fred.”
His lips curve in a crooked grin. “I do say so, Gingersnap.”
He hits play on “Wicked Game” on his phone and sets it on the table at the bottom of the stairs, and the smooth, sultry strains of Chris Isaak float through the air.
The music pulses, low and sexy, like it’s playing in my body, beating inside me. The effect is heady. It sets the mood for the scene.
A scene we’re simply acting.
That’s all this is. Acting and reenacting.
He arches a brow, glances at the stairs, then says in a rumbling, sexy voice, “Been thinking about you all day. Need to get you upstairs and get this off you.”
He has? Oh, dear God. That’s not helping me think friendly thoughts.
Wait.
That’s what the hero says in the book.
He memorized it. He learned his lines.
I’m a little relieved he didn’t mean it, and a little disappointed too.
But I zoom in on the job. Fortunately, I know my lines too. “Then come and get me,” I say, taking that first step in my Louboutins.
The second. And the third.
I glance back. He’s right behind me. I wiggle my hips, feeling daring, seductive.
This is when the hero is supposed to tug up the skirt.
But Tristan doesn’t lift his hands. Instead, he gestures faintly to the steps ahead of me.
Keep going, they say.
I take another step, unsure of how this scene will play out when he’s not quite following the choreography.
“Need you all the way naked,” he says, gruff and wildly sexy, reciting the hero’s next lines.
“So you can have your way with me,” I say, like the heroine does. I take another step, then one more.
He’s right behind me, and I don’t know what’s coming next. He’s supposed to yank my skirt up.
But he hasn’t touched it.
Instead, I feel a faint brush of strong fingers on my waist.
I shudder. The sensation is almost too much for me to make it to the top of the stairs.
But he nods, urging me on, his hands on me till I hit the landing.
This isn’t how the scene unfolds in the book. I should be naked by now. I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be doing when he joins me at the top. I feel every sensation in my body, keenly aware of him behind me and of the thread of possibility that winds around me. What will happen next? What will Tristan do?
I look up at him, my breath in my chest, my heart in my throat, his eyes on me.
“It’s safer here,” he whispers.
And I understand completely what he did.
He abandoned the moves to get me up the stairs safely.
My heart thumps harder.
“And this is where I take your dress off like he does in the book.” His words send a shock wave trembling through me.
I know what to do. I know what to say. I don’t recite the heroine’s lines. I use my own.