He set down the books and wandered over to my walk-in closet. “Not bad storage you have here,” he said.
“Yeah, right. Back in LA, you probably have closets bigger than my whole room.”
“That, I do. Big rooms and huge closets. I have a wine cellar with sort of an art gallery in it.”
“Art gallery?”
“More of a shrine. To the balls-out crazy former homeowner.”
“Sounds cool.”
He turned away from my closet and crawled up onto my bed without being invited. “Mm, nice bed.”
I remembered what Adrian had said the night before about his huge house making him feel bad.
“Do you think a person gets more lonely in a big house?” I asked.
He kicked off his shoes and got comfortable on my bed, lying on his back with his head on my favorite pillow.
“Why do you ask? Are you offering to stow away in my trailer and come home with me?”
“Not at all. I was just curious. I’ve never lived without family or roommates, and usually in places that are cheap, which always means small.”
He patted the bed next to him. “Come here and let’s share the story of our first apartments away from home.”
I climbed up and arranged myself next to Dalton, my cheek resting on his outstretched arm.
“You first,” he said. “Did you go away to college?”
“I did. I rented a place sight-unseen, with Shayla.”
“Brave.”
“You have no idea. It wasn’t completely sight-unseen, because we talked to the landlord by email and got some photos, but I think they must have been standing on ladders outside the rooms to take the pictures, to trick you into thinking the rooms were big.”
I was lying on my side, fiddling with the fabric of my dress over the curve of my hip, and Dalton rolled in to face me, one hand landing confidently atop mine, on my hip.
“Did you have vermin?” he asked, which sounded surprisingly sexy coming from his handsome mouth.
I whispered, “Funny you should ask. Our third roommate was rather cockroach-like. We hardly ever saw her, and she wouldn’t venture into a room with the lights on.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled at me, that cute chin-dimple of his begging to be bitten. It seemed a little odd to be starting a date with pillow talk, but nothing about our relationship so far had been conventional.
“What about your first place?” I asked.
“Bath tub in the kitchen.”
“New York?”
“Where else?” He chuckled as his hand wandered down my hip, along my leg past the hem of my dress, and then back up again under my dress, along the top side of my bare leg. I shivered from his touch, even though the room was warm and full of morning sunshine.
“Something lived in the walls,” he said. “I don’t know what, but it skittered around at night.”
Something about his expression gave me another chill.
I whispered, “Were you scared?”
“Scared of being evicted, and of catching something in the damp air and not being able to afford a doctor.”
“Did you have roommates? Other actors?”
“A few.” His expression grew complicated, and he didn’t offer more.
“Was your next apartment better?”
He brightened. “Much better. I booked some jobs, things started happening, and within a few years I was out in LA, shopping for mansions like they were cars, and shopping for cars like they were tennis shoes.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“You like shopping?”
“I like to sign up for accounts and shop online, and then I mostly make lists and look at all the things I could buy. I click them into a shopping basket and imagine them showing up at my door, but then I don’t ever finish the purchase. Well, not unless I’ve been drinking wine, and then I buy the dumbest things, like a cuckoo clock.”
His hand was heavy on my leg, and he slid it down to my knees, then brought it back up, between my thighs. My breath caught in my throat, and he stopped his hand just inches from my panties. Something about the way he gazed into my eyes made my br**sts heavy, aching to be touched.
“Um.” I was having a difficult time staying on topic with our pillow talk.
“Is that dress what you’re wearing out today?” he asked.
“Why? Is there something wrong with it? Don’t tell me you want to go hiking. I don’t mind a walk in the woods, but I don’t own proper hiking boots, or the appropriate hiking body.”
“I can see why that dress is your favorite,” he murmured, his voice low and seductive. “The blue matches your beautiful eyes.”
I broke his gaze long enough to peer over his shoulder at my door. It was nearly closed, but not clicked shut. Shayla was probably going to sleep for a few more hours, but the things I wanted to do with Dalton were closed-door things.
He continued, “If you want to wear that dress today, you should take it off right now.”
“Off?”
“Yes. It’s probably getting all wrinkled right now with you laying on it.”
He inched his hand up to a more sensitive location. Tingling sensations radiated through my lower body, focusing mainly in the area I sometimes jokingly refer to as Brazil.*
*A leg wax is for removing hair from your leg; therefore, a Brazilian is for removing the hair around Brazil.**
**With apologies to my friends from Brazil, who are probably dismayed by the whole thing. On behalf of every waxing salon who understandably doesn’t want to write the words “pudenda waxing” on their sandwich boards, I apologize.
“What about your shirt?” I whispered. “You’re getting all disheveled right now.”
“You think?”
“Your shirt would look great tossed over a stack of books.”
“I like the way you think.”
CHAPTER 17
“So, about that shirt,” I said.
“Your desire is my pleasure,” Dalton Deangelo replied.
As he spoke, he gently pinched the rolling hills of Brazil and probed for a hot spring.
I moaned, helpless with pleasure and urgency, limp from his touch and his warm breath on my face.
He leaned closer and caught my lips in his, stealing my breath and making me quiver for him. His tongue danced with mine, and in an instant we were rolling together, entwined and struggling to free ourselves from our clothes.
I got his shirt off and immediately got to work kissing his tanned, muscle-bound chest. Hey lay back, and as I licked around his nipple and gave him a sidelong look, he gestured up with his chin in a go-for-it move.