It was a good enough excuse. My skin was sticky with sweat and slick, and I’d rather wake up clean in the morning. Leighton flicked her gaze to Ambrose. “Of course. Ambrose, help her?”
My cheeks flamed. “I don’t need help,” I squeaked.
“You can’t get that dress off on your own.” Leighton smirked. “I figured I would shower too, so we can both go to bed clean. You use the bathroom attached to the office.”
The dresses lace-up back seemed to taunt me. I couldn’t detangle the threads on my own. Maybe it would be better to slice the ties right off, but the dress was too pretty. It would be a shame to ruin it.
It would also be a shame to fall over myself in Ambrose’s presence, but I wasn’t used to being naked around him. He’d had his head between my thighs, but I’d been another level of desperate. I’d laid on his chest beside the pool, but that touch wasn’t sexual.
How could it be anything but sexual with him undressing me?
Avoiding eye contact with the big alpha, I stomped into the office and through to the bathroom. My made-up face stared back at me in the mirror. With the layers of foundation, you couldn’t see my embarrassed flush that well.
I pressed the back of my hand to my cheek.
The flush was still hot, though.
Ambrose appeared in the doorway, leaning casually against it as he scanned me from head to toe. “I’m sure Leighton will help you, if you insist,” he said.
Biting my bottom lip, I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. You can.”
He hesitated for another second. That dark gaze peered into the deepest recesses of my soul, picking apart my motivations piece by piece. Why didn’t I want him undressing me? I didn’t even know why it felt like such an embarrassing thing, but it did.
No one except Leighton had ever undressed me.
Ambrose decided he liked whatever he saw in my soul. His footsteps—surprisingly soft for such a large man—brought him into the small bathroom until he stood behind me.
My breath caught. I saw both of us in the mirror, and he dwarfed me. His head towered above mine, brown hair pushed back from his face. His shoulders were immensely wider than mine, and his arms and chest bulkier.
He gently brushed the hair away from my neck, exposing my bare back to him.
“Lean forward, princess. Just a little bit. There’s not much room in here.”
I should have thought about that. I should have waited in the office for him to do this part. The undoing of the corset laces didn’t have to be done in the bathroom… but maybe it was worth it, to watch in the mirror. His expression was set in concentration when I leaned forward, giving him space to work.
I held my breath waiting for his warm, rough hands to touch my skin.
They didn’t.
He grabbed only the fabric, never any bare part of me. I stopped breathing any time he got close. I would feel the warmth coming closer only to vanish, leaving me bereft of contact I was increasingly desperate for.
As the top of the dress loosened, bit by bit, I grew more desperate.
Just once.
Heneededto touch me.
I’d opened myself up to it by allowing him this close. I’d been prepared despite my nerves, and now he wasn’t doing it.
“I think that’s done, little omega,” he rumbled.
He began to move back.
I panicked. “I need more help.”
Our gazes locked in the mirror. His lips were quirked—he knew exactly what he was doing to me. Was he going to make me ask? Fuck, he was, wasn’t he? He made Leighton ask. I’d heard it. It was ingrained in my memory in vivid detail.
“Do you?”
