Mercer takes me in his arms. “What about war?”
“There’s a little trepidation there, but you’ll be safe. You know you have to get back to teach me to balance a checkbook.” I pause, gazing into his blue eyes. “Mercy, Mercer. You are surefire handsome.” He’s always been handsome, but he was never a man I was allowed to look at closely. To know. Right now, he makes my heart skip a beat.
He grins. “That’s the real reason why you wanna wait for me.” His low voice licks up my spine. When he phrases it like that,waiting, I’m not sure I’m equipped to pause my life for anyone. Especially now that I’m starting something brand new.
I tip my head a bit. “Maybe.”
“I’m going to call Mom and tell her you’ll be my plus one for dinner, then I’m takin’ a shower in your twenty-four-karat gold bathroom. After that, I’m thinkin’ I can teach you something else right quick.”
“Not balancing a checkbook?” I raise one brow.
He shakes his head, lips brushing mine. “No one uses checkbooks anymore, Clover. Something else that needs teachin’.”
Twining my hands around his neck, I bring my lips against his in a kiss and speak against his mouth. “I’ll be a good student as long as you don’t turn into King Midas durin’ your shower.”
Unceremoniously, Mercer grabs my butt and pulls me against him as he deepens the kiss. My breath quickens and I can taste the fervor igniting between our bodies. His hands grip my backside more firmly and he caresses me before we break apart. His gaze is flicking over my face, my lips, my eyes, back to my lips. He bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. “Well my kiss didn’t turn you to gold, but I do have a firmer plan.” I grin, and back out of his grasp. Walking to the guest bathroom connected to a spare bedroom, I grab a towel out of the linen closet on our way.
Mercer cranks on the water and then glances over his shoulder. “You want to stay and watch?” The shower is large and enclosed in glass. There’s no privacy in this room until the bathroom fogs with heat and that won’t happen unless I close the door. The unfamiliar feeling of doing something wrong floods me, warning bells bouncing from one side of my mind to the other. This is a feeling I’d run from in the past—do anything in my power to avoid.Careful, Clover. Careful. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. The Wellsley name is on the line. Careful.My parents’ warnings flit through my mind and promptly vanish into a vapor. Now, I crave disobedience, I want it to inhabit my body and make me a slave to it.
“Would you mind?” I ask, tentatively taking a step toward the shower.
Mercer’s body tenses and his muscles ripple as he moves. A predator lying in wait. He pulls off his shirt and tosses it on the ground “It will be good for what I want to teach you after if you watch. Stay. Please.”
I nod, because words fail me in the moment. I’m so twisted up in the ache that it’s stolen my common sense. “Your body,” I say, swallowing hard as goosebumps skate up my neck, and down my arms. “I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted something more. It’s perfect.”
He presses his lips together, ignoring my worship. “Here’s the thing about my body,” Mercer says, tucking his thumbs into the waistband of his workout shorts and pulling them down in one movement. “It’s part of my job to look like this.”
Aside from wiping the drool dripping from my mouth, I raise one brow. “My daddy said the same thing.”
He chuckles. “Are you really talking about your daddy while staring at my dick?”
My gaze flits to his. “No, no. Of course not,” I say, rushing my words. “I get it. You have to pick up and put down heavy things. It’s just...” My words trail off as thoughts of ravaging his body with my bare hands, mouth…every single body part I own seeps into my mind.
Mercer shakes his head and enters the shower and starts washing his body. I speak louder so he can hear me under the pressure of the water. “You are fully naked, and I’ve never had a naked man inside my house. It goes against…everything. I’m nervous.”
Mercer rubs shampoo in his hair, scrubbing back and forth, a jagged movement so unlike the dainty strokes I use to clean my own hair. “Do you want me to put on clothes?” His eyes slide to the side—landing on mine.
“No!” I shout. “I prefer you this way, actually. It’s just taking some getting used to because you’re making me feel things just by being naked. You’re not even touching me. I’m looking at you and that’s enough. I didn’t know it was possible is all.”
“That’s what I was hoping for.”
“You knew it would happen? Is that how it is with all of your other women?”
Looking up to the shower spray, he rinses his hair while shaking his head. The water rolling over and down his body only adds to the appeal. He’s wet. I’m wet. My heart is hammering against my chest, egging me on. “Clover, there aren’t any other women. There haven’t been for a really long time. None that have ever mattered the way you do.”
“Forgive me, but when you look like that naked, it’s a crime there aren’t. You are practically illegal.”
He laughs and grabs a bottle of body wash, examines it, and flips it over to read the ingredients. Mercer dumps some in his palm and turns to face me. He runs his hands over his pecs and arms and then grips his perfectly sculpted, ram-rod hard shaft. His blue eyes lock on mine as water runs over his head, dripping off his long lashes and washing down the rest of his body.
I step forward again—for a better look, and because my libido is driving the movements instead of my well-trained brain. “Watch me,” he commands, arm bunching as he works his hand on himself. His eyelids are at half-mast as his hunger drives him on, into uncharted territory with me.
“I’m watching,” I murmur so low I’m sure he can’t hear me. “I can’t not watch,” I say more to myself. This is a type of eroticism I didn’t know existed. Sure, people fall into bed together and play hide the mole, but this experience is something else altogether. Watching him is illicit, gripping, something I’ll never be able to clear from my mind.
“The grip. The pace?” he asks, tilting his head, eyes raking my body.
I nod. “Got it. Can I try now?”
“Not yet,” Mercer says, slowing his fist to a sloping drag across his flushed skin. “I’m getting carried away. Let me finish cleaning up and I’ll meet you in the bedroom. Looking at you.” His jaw works. “Just looking at you, too. It does things to me, Clover. We’re on the same page there.” He doesn’t do a good job of concealing the shock his confession causes and it drives home more truth.
