“Sunflowers.” He lifts his hooded eyes to mine. “Fitting.” He rakes his teeth over his lower lip, augmenting the throbs hitting my clit. “Though I prefer daisies. They’re delicate and sweet.”
They’re also the flowers he ordered to be grown across acres of land when he proposed.
The planning of his proposal proves it wasn’t a quick-winded decision. It took months to implement and made me truly believe he asked for my hand in marriage because he wanted me to be his wife and the mother of his children.
Vying to ignore the heartache of our lost years, I toe off my shoes and shimmer out of my jeans. “They’re my favorite print too, but they seem to have gone missing.” His eyes flare, but his mouth remains tight-lipped. “You need to give them back. In my hurry to pack, I only packed five pairs of panties.”
I struggle to keep up when he tosses out mixed signals. “That leaves four pairs too many.”
I assumed his daisies reference was to maim my heart. Only now am I wondering if he is attempting to conjure happy memories like our trip to the waterfall instigated?
I pretend I’m not being swallowed by confusion. My skills are top-notch… until I bend over to gather my jeans from the floor.
I don’t bend with my knees. With a flourish, I pop down in a way Elle Woods would be proud. I thrust my rear end out and cock my hip, giving Mikhail a bird’s-eye view of the area he made moist during our grind-up.
It is an extremely unladylike poise that has Mikhail growling like he’s a beast under attack. You’d need superhuman eye strength to see through the minute crack our entrance to the changing room caused, but Mikhail acts as if it is as gaping as the hole he left in my heart when he left.
He rushes forward to cover me with his body so fast that the briskness of his long strides cools my overheated skin.
I moan in appreciation, loving its relief.
Mikhail doesn’t hear my moan in the way I intended. I understand why. I’m only good at lying when I am trying to convince myself it is for the greater good.
When Mikhail’s heated breaths batter my earlobe, I know I should walk away, disappear into the disappointment that will inevitably surface like it did when our grind-up was busted, but for the life of me, I can’t. My heart hasn’t beaten at this rhythm for over a decade, and it was never as low as it is thudding now.
After checking that we’re still alone, Mikhail steps us forward until I’m barricaded by the massive mirror and him before his hand skates around the front of my body. He splays his hand across my stomach before slowly lowering it. As he hooks his thumb into the top of my cotton panties, his eyes lock with mine in the mirror.
I panic I’m not expressing myself appropriately when the crack of elastic settling back into place sounds through my ears a nanosecond before the sting of my panties snapping back into place slaps my skin.
It doesn’t linger for long.
“Give them to me.”
“What?” I push out slowly, acting daft.
Mikhail would never let me follow the I’m-just-a-silly-girl ruse.
“Give them to me,” he repeats, his tone neither stern nor demanding. It is more hopeful than anything.
“I…” I stop, swallow, then try again. “We…”
Out of excuses and honestly not strong enough to deny this man, I hook my fingers around the waistband of my panties and tug them down. My pace is slower this time, more teasing, and my eye contact is unbroken.
Heat burns through me when my arch to free the damp material from my ankles causes my ass to brush against Mikhail’s groin.
He’s the thickest he has ever been.
I grip my panties in my hand, almost wringing them of the wetness they would contain if they were still pressed against my vagina, before asking, “Now what?”
Mikhail licks his lips as his eyes slowly float up my body. “Now your bra.”
“Why—”
The hand on my hip squeezes, and I lose all cognitive thoughts.
I pull down the straps of my bra, roll the hooks from the back to the front, then unlatch them. I usually remove my bras by unlatching them from the back, but since that would place unwanted distance between Mikhail and me, I changed things up.
Mikhail’s hiss is silent this time. I don’t need to hear it to know of its existence, though. It ruffles the hairs on my nape and brings the wave in my stomach close to cresting.
