by Penny Reid
His door was still shut. Good.
I snuck out of my room and slipped into the kitchen.
And found Marc already in there.
He’d popped open the wine already—my wine—and was sipping what looked like his first glass. When he saw me, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he turned to the bottle and poured a second glass.
Then he held it out in my direction, like a sort of peace offering.
I paused for only a beat before crossing to him. Wordlessly, I took the glass and nodded my thanks.
I knew I should apologize. But I wasn’t about to take all the blame. I took a swallow, leaned back against the counter next to him and stared at my feet. Casually.
A minute passed. Then another.
I heaved a sigh. Time for me to be the adult. Again. Adulting was so overrated. “Maybe…” I said, trailing off.
Marc lifted his head and cocked his head, giving me his full attention.
“Are we both bad at sex?” I asked tentatively.
“Seduction,” he corrected quickly. “Maybe we’re both bad at seduction. Not bad at sex.”
“Right. Because we haven’t gotten far enough to evaluate the sex,” I said, bitterly.
He looked about ready to refute me, but it was true, so what could he refute?
It was Marc’s turn to sigh. He took another sip of the wine. “Now this is apricot.”
“And vanilla,” I muttered. Only a few days in and already the descriptors were becoming obvious.
He picked up the bottle. “Citrus and strawberry,” he read.
“Really?” I was extremely surprised.
“Really. We’re apparently really bad at wine too.” He was smiling when our eyes met. His gaze was soft and warm, even after everything we’d said.
“Look,” he said, pivoting toward me, giving me another heart-stopping view of his perfect body and cheeky grin. “I can’t go on a bangcation like this. I need to know my wines, and I have to be oozing seduction. Parisian girls will have no patience for a bumbling guy who can’t tell an apricot from an apple.”
I shifted so I was facing him, too. Something told me his curls and smile would overcome quite a bit, but I wasn’t going to say it out loud. “And I’ll never date again if I’m always this awkward.”
“I can definitely see how it would be a problem.”
I gasped. “Dick.” I mean, it was true, but he didn’t have to be so agreeable.
“I’m commiserating,” he clarified. “I’m just as much of the problem as you are.”
“Okay, okay.” I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. He’d been going somewhere with this, and if he was thinking the same thing I was thinking…“So. Should we…?” Could we?
Marc nodded. “We could help each other practice. We could totally help each other practice.”
Finally, we were on the same page. “I can get on board with that.”
“Shall we toast?” Marc held up his glass.
I raised mine and clinked it against his. “To good wine and even better sex!”
“Seduction!” he corrected. “The sex itself is going to be awesome.”
“We’ll soon see.” I mean, when I fan-fictioned it for my comic, it definitely would be. So.
Chapter 7
The next morning, I propped my head up with my elbow and stared at Marc as he slept. Such a gorgeous sleeper. He looked less studious and fancy when he was out cold, more boyish; even with the scruff he’d been letting grow since school got out. It was like his whole face softened somehow, became almost boyish. His eyelashes were long and hit his cheeks so delicately. I wanted to reach out and touch them.
Okay, I did reach out and touch them. Which might have sort of been the thing that woke him up. I realized my mistake immediately.
I pulled my hand back like maybe he wouldn’t notice, but it was too late.
He blinked. Then sort of yelped. “Jesus! I did it again!”
It took half a second to register what he’d thought he’d done again. “No!” I exclaimed quickly. So he didn’t notice my eyelash-caress after all. “No, I just slipped in.” Unfortunately.
After we’d agreed to help each other learn wine and sex—excuse me, seduction—we’d decided that we’d both do better with a good night’s sleep before discussing it any further.
My night’s sleep had been fair enough, I guess, good might have been a stretch, though. I tossed and turned a bit, imagining, well. Imagining this—waking up beside Marc. Just with more kissing and less surprise. More eyelashes and fewer questions.
But that counted as a good night, even if it was a little light on the sleep. And now here I was, sprawled out on top of his comforter, ready to discuss. “So?”
“So…what?” he asked through a yawn.
“How do we start? When do we start?” I might have been just a little bit eager. If he kept stretching like he was we might not need to discuss anything at all. He slept shirtless, and his perfectly sculpted upper body was pretty much all the seduction I needed.
Unf.
If we didn’t get this sorted soon, I’d have to work some more alone time into my schedule. And considering I spent like twelve hours a day alone already, things were about to get completely ridiculous.
Marc rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and glanced at his alarm clock. It was already seven-thirty. He’d always been up by this time when school was in session. He didn’t need to act like it was especially early, but there he went with all the eye rubs. Stretch. Blink-blink like he didn’t know what was happening. He knew full well what was happening.
Still, it felt like he was a bit annoyed when he said, “First rule of seduction: no seduction before coffee.”
“No problem. I’ll go make some.” I leaped up, stopping at the door to ask, “How do you take it?”
He sat up to answer me. “Vanilla creamer until it’s a light tan color, not beige, but also not totally ecru, and two spoonfuls of sugar.”
I wasn’t sure, for the first moment, if I was impressed or horrified that he knew exactly where on the brown-scale ecru fell. But that wasn’t the point, I realized. I coughed. He ignored me. I coughed again, more pointedly.
“Uh, Marc?” I waited until I had his full attention before I went on. “Second rule of seduction: don’t admit to a woman that you drink your coffee like it’s dessert.”
He replied with something about how mocking someone’s personal preference was closed-minded, but I was already down the hall by then so I didn’t bother correcting him. He’d had too many last words already. It was my time to shine.
While the coffee brewed, I decided to make a quick breakfast. I was antsy anyway, and it seemed like a good use of my energy. Eggs were easy enough to whip up, and I found some bread without mold on it. It wasn’t much, but it was a meal. Some days, on my budget, it could be considered an actual feast.
Apparently neither Marc nor I were very invested in kitchenware, because I couldn’t find any serving trays even after a thorough search. Thinking creatively, as I do, I grabbed one of my large sketchbooks, and a couple of minutes later it was loaded up with two paper towels, two mugs of coffee and two plates of scrambled eggs and cheesy toast. I threw on a couple of sugar packets as the finishing touch.
Not bad, I told myself. Not bad at all.
Marc’s bed was empty when I walked in with our food, but I could hear the shower running. It turned off almost as soon as I put the tray down on the nightstand, so I knew he’d be out, gently scented, shortly. While I waited, I got comfortable on his bed, a plate of food in one hand, a mug in the other, my nightshirt bunched gently and thoughtfully to the top of my thighs. It just looked casual though, I knew cause I had taken a phone pic of myself and verified.
The bathroom door opened a few minutes later and steam poured into the room. When Marc stepped out, dripping wet, with only a towel tied low on his hips, I nearly dropped my drink. As hot as he was normally, it somehow was magnified when hot water was added. Literally doubl
e hot. The only thing stopping me from jumping him was the stupid rule about no seduction before coffee.
Note to self: revise the no seduction before coffee rule.
Marc dried his perfectly curly hair with a hand towel as he scanned up my bare legs and then landed on the plate of food sitting on my lap. I wasn’t super jealous that his curls behaved with such a minimum of work but I also wasn’t not jealous. Felt the same about the food on my lap getting his stare.
“You made breakfast?” He sounded surprised. “Why, Madison, are you trying to seduce me?”
Yes. So much yes. “Is it working?”
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction.” Phew. I couldn’t have handled it if he’d laughed and blown this off. Somehow in all our shenanigans, I’d realized I deeply cared what he thought about me. Stupid, I knew, seeing as this was just a sex thing, but still. I couldn’t help myself.
Because the man seemed intent to drive me completely crazy with lust, Marc didn’t bother putting on any clothes. He settled back on the bed still wearing only his towel.
Half a foot away from me. On his bed. Wearing only a towel.
Maybe I really was Wonder Woman because it’s a wonder I didn’t combust spontaneously.
We ate in silence. Or, he ate, and I picked at my food, too sidetracked by the naked man next to me to truly enjoy anything but the scenery. His elbow grazed against my arm as he ate, sending goosebumps down my skin. I was dizzy from his clean and manly scent—evidently he’d skipped the organic bath products this time, which was a step in the right direction for him as well. Even the way he tackled his meal was distracting. He ate thoughtfully. A couple of bites of eggs, then a nibble of toast, a swallow of coffee. Repeat.
Hot Marc had always been hot. Now I was starting to realize he was fascinating in other ways too. Like, beyond the fact that he was well-educated and had a farming hobby. The deliberation he showed in everything was just… well, the exact opposite of me. I didn’t even particularly draw deliberately, which was why I’d been drawn to the sketchy style of comics to begin with. I was always nervous I’d do art wrong. And dating wrong. And everything wrong. Hello, neuroses!
“This is good,” he said after a while.
“Thank you.” It was almost embarrassing to acknowledge with a response—it was eggs and toast. A sprinkle of cheese. How easy could a meal get? On the other hand, it was probably the most complicated thing I’d made in a long time, so I’d take it. Cheese requires a deft grating for the proper distribution, so. “How’s the coffee?”
He glanced at me warily, as though he wasn’t sure if this was another set up to mock him. “It’s perfect. Thank you for making it to my specifications.”
“How do you know I did? I could have poured garlic in there and you wouldn’t have noticed with all that sugar.” Well, I hadn’t set out to mock him. It was just too easy.
“Let me guess—you take yours black.”
I grinned. “Actually, I prefer espresso.” Black with an extra cool factor, basically.
“I’ll remember that.”
I looked up from scuttling my eggs around my plate to see that he was staring at me. No, not staring—studying. As though I were something to learn. Zounds.
It made me feel warm and buzzy inside, and maybe that was weird because it wasn’t exactly flattering to be treated like a class subject. Except, it was flattering because I wasn’t a class subject. Marc didn’t have to know me to get a passing grade. He was learning about me because he wanted to. But it was just a sex thing, I reminded myself, he was just being deliberate again.
Admittedly, being on the receiving end of his deliberation made me hot and bothered. Remember those old ads about your brain on drugs being like an egg? Well, my brain on Marc was like that. I was an actual scrambled egg. Which made mine a tad less appetizing.
It was definitely time to move this discussion along. I set my mug and half-eaten breakfast on the nightstand and blinked up at him. “You’ve had coffee now.” Hint, hint.
He raised a challenging eyebrow. “Can I finish my eggs?”
He literally had two bites left, but I waited quietly, patiently, while he ate them. “Now?”
At a snail’s pace, he wiped his mouth with a paper towel, folded it, and set it on his empty plate. Then he put his plate on the nightstand. And then he turned back to me. Two seconds before I actually screamed. “Yes, now.”
“Okay. Cool.” I moved to sit with my legs underneath me, looking like I wasn’t about to scream ever, and faced him. “We should have a thorough discussion about the do’s and don’t’s of seduction, obviously. Maybe check out some movies, read some books—”
“I like books,” he interjected.
I had a feeling the books I meant were not the same kind of books he meant, but we could work that out later. “Right. And we can try a bunch of different things out together.”
“Sure.” He seemed to especially like that idea. His pupils darkened, moving down to my lips before returning to my eyes.
It made me nervous. In a good way. In a very good way. In a change-my-undies kind of way. And yet he was still talking. Talking is the anti-sexy. Damn his mixed messages!
“But one of the biggest components of seduction is the element of surprise. If we talk about everything beforehand, it’s not going to have the same effect.”
I ran my hand along the top of my nightshirt, fidgeting with the neckline while I waited for him to process how I didn’t care and how he shouldn’t either because sexies should be happening, but—no. “Oh. Huh,” I said.
Time to abandon the bedroom eyes. It wasn’t a terrible opening, though, for what I’d been thinking, it’s just that I had expected a different response. I had expected the seduction to begin immediately, so that I could play hard to get. The only recourse was for me to roll over and just play super cool while I presented my theory.
“So. I was thinking. We can talk about all of that, but then we could take turns trying out what we’ve learned. That way we have to earn the reward. Like—no sex until we’re actually seduced.”
It had been a great idea when I’d been struggling to fall asleep. Now that I’d said it aloud, the problem with this approach stared at me blaringly—what if neither of us ever mastered seduction? Could I be doomed to never know the feel of Marc Kirby between my legs? Ye gods.
“That’s a good idea. Very scientific.” He paused. Was he thinking the same sad thoughts as me? “But what if we lie?”
He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. “Lie as part of the seduction?”
“Lie and say we’ve been seduced when we’re really not.”
Now that was a good idea. How could I let him know I was seduced right now? That just the gentle brush of his eyes on my body could cause me to immediately become naked? Maybe that was too up front. Still, though, surely there was a way I could suggest that his words could make me easily seduced.
Or that I would pretend so no matter what dumb thing he said.
Not that I was going to let on anything to him about his brilliance. “Who would lie about that?” I asked, innocently.
He shot me an incredulous look. “Really?”
“Fine. I’d lie.” I wanted to be in the man’s pants—er, towel—so bad that all he had to do was show up, and I’d be ready to take off my clothes.
“Me too,” he admitted.
“Really?”
“Really.”
My stomach did a flip-flop and I ducked my head to hide my smile. “But we could probably tell, couldn’t we? With you, anyway. On your side. Because if you weren’t seduced, you wouldn’t be, you know…in ready position. Locked and loaded. Up and at ‘em.”
I wasn’t about to bring up a similar comparison about myself. I’d been wet since he’d walked out of the shower.
He could check, if he wanted. I wouldn’t stop him.
“But what if I were hard for another reason? Because we’d been watching something sexy for example. Or because it was m
orning.”
“Or because we’d been anticipating it for so long.”
“Exactly.”
“Hmm. It would probably make sense to just go ahead and get it over with now. Forget about any seduction this one time. You know? To keep us honest.”
“That’s a good point. Again, very scientific. Get it out of our systems. It takes the anticipation factor out of the equation.”
“Yes. ‘Cause there’s definitely anticipation.”
“Definitely.”
“Do you need me to…? Should I do something specific to get you interested?”
His lips curved into one of those signature amazing smiles of his. “There’s a beautiful half naked woman lying on my bed. As long as she doesn’t make me feel like a pedophile, that’s all I need to be interested.”
There had been a compliment hidden in there, and my heart tripped over it.
“What about you?” he asked, tossing the towel to the floor.
My eyes scanned down his very naked, very aroused body.
I tried not to gape.
“I think. I think I’m good,” I stuttered. Dear god, was I good. Good didn’t even begin to describe what I was. That man was truly a sight to behold. His body was chiseled everywhere. Yes, I’d seen most of him naked before, but this was the first time I hadn’t been distracted by the situation. The first time I’d been allowed to stare. The first time I’d gotten to see the whole package, if you catch my drift.
And it was super powered.
No wonder he was into history, because Marc Kirby was a Greek god.
Marc shifted so he was on his side. “So, good morning.” He stretched his hand out to run the back of his finger along my jaw.
I shuddered. “It is now.”
“Definitely.” He moved his hand behind my neck and held me there while he moved in to kiss me.
Holy shit, this man! The way he kissed! That was a superpower too.