Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“Yes. Your grandmother seems entirely convinced that I’m irrevocably in love with you, and she knows the truth, so I’m sure we were believable to everyone else. Down you get.” I stopped outside our room.
“My feet hurt,” she whined in a small, playful voice.
“Jesus Christ. I might not be in love with you, but I’m whipped.”
She laughed as I dug in my pocket for the room key and unlocked it, then awkwardly turned the doorknob to open the door. I carried her inside, kicking the door shut with my foot.
I took her right through to the bedroom and turned. “Ready? I’ll lower you down.”
“Okay, go.” She loosened her arms, and I unceremoniously dumped her on the bed, not bothering to sit or bend down in any way whatsoever.
Grace screamed as she bounced, and I dropped her shoes on the floor, laughing at her.
“You arse!” She glared at me, fussing with her skirt. “You said you’d lower me down!”
“I did lower you down,” I pointed out. “You’re down, aren’t you?”
She scrambled off the bed onto her suspiciously capable feet and glared at me. “Well, you—you—”
“You look like you can walk just fine,” I remarked.
She froze. “All right, you caught me. I just didn’t want to walk.”
“Really? Sounds like you just wanted to cuddle me.” I loosened my tie and pulled it over my head, tossing it on the empty chair next to the drawers. “All you had to do was ask, you know.”
“You’re really running with this whole thing, aren’t you? I did not want to cuddle you. I don’t want to cuddle you.”
“Just like you didn’t want to kiss me, right?”
“Totally different things.”
“Is it?” My lips pulled to one side. “It’s okay. I’ll cuddle you if you want.”
“I don’t want.” She sniffed and walked into the bathroom, then turned and immediately came back out, looking at me. “And I’d appreciate if you’d stop insinuating it. You’ve hugged me quite enough tonight.”
“I’ll let you be the big spoon,” I called into the bathroom.
“I don’t want to be any spoon!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll be the big spoon.”
“No spoons!” she shouted back, emerging a second later, rubbing a wipe over her face to remove her makeup. “No. Spoons.”
I shrugged off my jacket and started work on my buttons. “Are you sure? I make a pretty good spoon, and you were quite happy being the big spoon just now.”
“I was not a spoon! Oh, my God, if I hear that word one more time, I’m going to lose my mind.” She went back into the bathroom yet again, and I leant against the doorframe as I slowly undid the buttons of my shirt.
I knew she could see me in the mirror, and her eyes flitted back and forth from her face to my reflection one too many times for it to be an accident. I let my lips pull up into a smirk, and she grabbed her used wet wipe and tossed it at me.
“Will you stop that?” she demanded. “You know what you’re doing!”
Laughing, I said, “I’m not doing anything. You’re the one who can’t stop looking at me.” I untucked my shirt little by little.
She glared at me through the mirror, readying her toothbrush. “You’re doing it deliberately. You could undress in there, but no, you’re there, right where I can see you.”
“Are you bothered by me undressing in front of you?” I asked, pausing.
She hesitated a second too long, stopping mid-brush of her teeth to say, “No.”
“Very convincing.” I slid in next to her and grabbed my toothbrush, putting a bit of paste on the bristles.
I brushed alongside her, both of us glancing at each other in the mirror. I had on my trousers and my shirt was still on, albeit unbuttoned, and she kept looking down at the reflection of my body then deliberately looking another way.
She finished brushing before me, then reached for some moisturiser. She was still rubbing it into her face and neck when I finished and stepped back to slowly shrug off my shirt.
“Stop it,” she warned.
“Stop what?”
“Fine. You’re not the only one who needs to get undressed.” Grace picked up all the discarded wet wipes, including the one she’d tossed at me, and put them in the little bathroom bin next to the sink. She swept her hair around to one side of her neck, unclasped her necklace, and after she’d set it down, she reached behind her dress for the zipper.
And slowly, even slower than I’d undone my buttons, pulled it down. The material of her dress fell away, revealing the soft skin of her back and the white back strap of her bra.
I caught my shirt before it fell to the floor, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The zipper came to a stop at the base of her spine, and she released the zip pull to slide the sleeves over her shoulders. She pulled her arms through the holes, one by one, and pushed the waist of the dress over her hips. Free of any constraints, the green material fell to the ground with a whoosh and pooled at her bare feet.