Page 7 of Finding Him

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“What are you sorry for?” I ask. Shouldn’t I be the one apologizing?

“For touching your underwear.”

I huff out a laugh, though the situation is far from funny. Now that I know what she looks like, I want to know what she feels like, what she smells like, what she tastes like.

“Why do you need to apologize for that? I told you to help yourself to my clothes.”

“Not your underwear, I mean especially…” her cheeks flush pink as her gaze lowers to the ground.

“Were you picturing me in nothing but my underwear?” I ask her.

Some girls her age are so brazen. They’d happily drop their towel to show themselves off. They’d also be more than happy to tell me exactly what they’d been picturing in their head. How is it that Nita seems sexier with her blushing cheeks and blustering apologies.

“I should be apologizing,” I tell her. “I told you to help yourself to my clothes then thought better of it. I should have let things be. I didn’t think about the fact that you might already be in here,” I have to swallow before I can even say the word, “naked.”

She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have touched your underwear. I didn’t need it. I could have just moved to the next drawer.”

I choke on my own spit at the thought of her going commando in a pair of my sweats. That’s something that would have taunted and teased me the entire time she was at the table with me eating breakfast.

“What exactly were you picturing while you looked in my underwear drawer?”

I try to keep my eyes on her face. I do my damndest. This is Drew’s daughter. I don’t know how he’d feel about me seeing her naked. She still hasn’t figured out that I can see everything from the waist down. And what I see is making my mouth water.

“You,” she squeaks. “Wearing the underwear.”

“That’s pretty modest. I was trying not to picture you naked in the shower.”

I move closer, unable to hold myself back any longer, unable to help the smile that spreads my lips. If she didn’t want me, it would be a hell of a lot easier to stay away, to keep my hands to myself.

“Really?” She looks back up at me.

“Yes. Really.”

She swallows. “Then in the spirit of honesty, I was picturing you walking naked from the bathroom, across your bedroom, to pull open this drawer just like I did and pick out some underwear.”

“If I were to rifle through your panty drawer, I’d do a lot more than caress your underwear.”

“Are you saying you’d try them on?” She looks shocked.

A loud, barking laugh escapes my chest unbidden. “No. But I would smell them.”

“Smell them? But they’d smell like laundry detergent.”

“Laundry soap can’t wash everything away. They’d still smell like you underneath.”

“Me? You want to smell me?”

“I want to do a lot more than smell you,” I admit.

She looks up at me with heavy-lidded eyes, her expression so vulnerable. She bites her lower lip and I want to suck it into my mouth.

“But I shouldn’t,” I say. “I shouldn’t touch you.”

“What if I want you to?” Nita whispers.

Fuck. I can’t resist her if she wants me even half as much as I want her. I step closer and palm the back of her head, pulling her closer as I press my mouth to hers.