Stripped

by Edie Harris

  Her voice was scratchy, with nerves and with sleep, when she mumbled, “You’re the first person to touch me there.” No one but the doctors, and then no one but Fiona herself.

  A kiss to her navel. “Tell me about Vegas.”

  “Can you…stop touching me, while I talk?” It was just too much sensation, too much numbness cracking open at one time for her to handle. Every time he touched her, her walls threatened to collapse, and she couldn’t tell the story if she was buried in rubble.

  A shift of limbs, a roll of bodies, and then she was tucked into his side as he lay on his back, her leg over his thighs, her arm over his ribs. Her head on his shoulder, because, she realized, he wouldn’t force her to look at him while she spoke.

  Her heart thudded in her chest, so violently it was almost painful. Those walls didn’t stand a chance.

  She exhaled, her breath skating over his collarbone. “I dropped out of college one semester before graduation—” another story entirely “—and ended up in Vegas. My first day in town, I went to an open audition at the House of Tease, this brand-new burlesque club. Later that night, I found out I got a callback.”

  Declan’s hand began to stroke along her back, encouraging her to cuddle closer.

  She did. “I hadn’t even been there forty-eight hours, and I’d found a job, dancing, that paid more money than I’d ever thought to make with my first gig out of school.” In that amount of time, she had also acquired roommates and a shared bedroom in a crumbling apartment complex, but that was irrelevant now. “I worked at the House of Tease for two years. I was good at it—burlesque.”

  “I have no doubt.” The rumble of his voice vibrated against her cheek.

  “But I…made a lot of bad choices. A lot of drinking backstage, a lot of partying until five in the morning. I wasn’t taking care of myself, because I…I didn’t care about myself.” Another consequence of leaving college too soon. Of letting someone who didn’t matter change her own opinion of herself.

  Familiar anger clawed at her throat. Her nails were digging into his side, but he didn’t complain, simply continuing to pet a steady path up and down her spine, and she forced herself to relax, to breathe. “It was an accident, really an accident. I’d been drinking in the dressing room with two of the girls, and we decided we didn’t want to troll the house floor that night, so we snuck out the back, through one of the service doors that led to an empty loading dock. There was a group of men, drunk men, already there.”

  He tensed beneath her.

  “It’s not what you think.” It was sort of what he thought. “When they saw us, they got rowdy and in our face, heckling us. One of them grabbed me. I pushed him, and he fell into one of the other guys. They started fighting and throwing punches, and I got caught in the middle. One of them had a broken beer bottle. He missed the man he was aiming for and gutted me instead.”

  “Oh, my God. Fiona.” His other arm came around her, hugging her to him.

  Her walls trembled, and fell. “I had nearly bled to death by the time I got to the hospital. Had to stay there for almost a month.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “Lots of surgeries, lots of time spent repairing internal damage.” Though, thankfully, the makeshift weapon hadn’t perforated her stomach or intestines, so it was merely a matter of…tucking everything back in.

  Nausea roiled at the memory, before she tamped it down.

  “I’d gone off my parents’ insurance and didn’t have any of my own. No emergency contact info or next of kin or whatever.” It had been days before she could think clearly enough through the drugs to realize her phone hadn’t made it to the hospital with her and then have a nurse dial her parents when her hazy memory coughed up their phone number. “Mom and Dad didn’t get there until a week later, because they didn’t know what had happened.”

  She may have been estranged from her parents at the time, basically having gone off the proverbial reservation when she ran away from school and became little more than a stripper, but she’d never doubted they would come for her, if she were in trouble.

  Trouble she had been in, there at the hospital. The long hours between that phone call and their arrival had been the loneliest of her life. It had made her decision to leave Vegas behind and go home to L.A. with them beyond easy. “When I was well enough to travel, I came home for good.”

  “And left dancing behind.”

  She tried to shrug, couldn’t beneath the weight of his arms. “For a while, dancing was tied to Vegas and pain in my mind, so I went in a totally different direction by choosing makeup artistry. But I’ve come to terms with all of it.” Most days, at least.

  The bedroom was quiet as she listened to the steady rhythm of his heart. Her eyes slid shut, and the last of the tension left her. She’d told him, Declan, which made it less of a dirty secret. Didn’t mean she was eager to shout this story—or the story about Alexei—from the rooftops, because she was still ashamed of herself, for so many reasons: her immature response to a setback in college, the unspoken decision to cut her parents out of her life when they were worried sick, the vices in which she’d indulged in an effort to avoid any sort of accountability for the choices she was making in her day-to-day life.

  His hold on her loosened a fraction. “I hope you didn’t think I would want you less, if I saw your scars.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” She had a hard enough time looking at her body herself some days. “We work in an industry dependent on physical perfection. Scars are about as far from perfect as you can get.”

  “You remember when I said you wouldn’t be you to me without your glasses? Same goes for your scars, darlin’.” His hand curved over the crown of her head, a tender touch that placed her ear over his heartbeat, her cheek nestled against the soft hairs curling across his chest. “You know I like how you look.”

  “I like how you look.” She stroked a hand down his torso, the tips of her fingers finding the muscled grooves bisecting his chest, tracing over the lean, hard ridges on his stomach. “You make me want to take a bite.” Too honest, the words were too honest, but they felt right on her tongue.

  Just like he did when she dipped her head to sink her teeth into one bunched oblique, followed with a sweep of her tongue. He twitched beneath her hand. “Yup. Totally biteable.”

  He chuckled, the fingers tangled in her hair clenching, gentle pressure that urged her to move lower. “You can bite somethin’ else if you like. I don’t mind.”

  “So generous,” she teased. The head of his cock nudged at her cheek, trapped under the sheet as she nuzzled his navel, planting soft kisses along the goody trail of black hair disappearing behind Egyptian cotton. He flinched, then jerked again when her hair brushed over his belly. “Are you ticklish, Declan Murphy?”

  He pushed her away with a grunt when she attempted to use her fiendishly wiggling fingers on him, narrowing his gaze on her in accusation. “Absolutely not. Man of steel here. No ticklish spots anywhere on my person.” When she dissolved into silent giggles at his stern glare, he dropped his voice into a lower register and adopted an American accent, declaring, “I am a fortress, woman.”

  “A fortress, huh? Yet you’re not all crazy ripped.” She liked that about him, loved the lines of him, shoulders hard and broad, body firm and lean. And biteable.

  “Speakin’ of physical perfection…” He smiled when she snorted. “It’s a bit of struggle for me at times. If my management didn’t have me on a strict workout regimen and high-protein diet, I’d look like a heroin addict from some eighties punk band.” He sat up, the sheet falling to his waist as he scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, expression wry. “The way I was made, I guess. I’m just a skinny loser of a kid from Dublin who wasn’t especially good at anything in life—studies, sport, music, nothin’—until I played Bottom in a school production of Midsummer.”

  She rolled onto her stomach, leaning on her elbows as she looked up at him, amusement tickling the back of her throat. “Bottom, wit
h the donkey ears?” She knew her Shakespeare. Well, the Kevin Kline movie version, anyway. “Is this the line you feed the gossip sites? God, I bet they just gobble that crap down.”

  There was a moment of silence, stilted unlike any moment between them before. Her breath stuttered to a halt as she watched his expression, once so open and affectionate, cloud over. “Actually, that was my attempt at sharin’ something of myself with you, like you just did with me. The line I always gave the press back home is that I’ve always known I wanted to be an actor, and that no, I don’t have to work hard at all to keep this meat on my bones.”

  She swallowed, suddenly floundering. “Declan…”

  “One conversation, Fi.” He pushed himself off the bed with a sigh, gloriously, unashamedly naked. The look he gave her carried an edge of sadness to it that tore at something within her heart. “Someday, I want to have one conversation with you that doesn’t end in a quippy retort.”

  “I—”

  “And for the record, I was a helluva Bottom.” The smile he flashed her seemed forced, but he slapped his ass with saucy irreverence. Actors Being Actors, she thought sadly as he strode toward the bathroom.

  The sound of water hitting the plastic walls of her shower stall, and the swish and cling of the curtain moving on its metal hooks, hit her ears moments later. She buried her face in the rumpled sheets, the scent of him clinging to each fiber. Breathing him in, she felt a blush start at the top of her head and spread like wildfire down to her curling toes, every inch of her warm and relaxed. Pinpointing the feeling, Fiona realized she was relieved—relieved that her scars hadn’t scared Declan off, that she’d shared with him the story of what had happened.

  He could touch her, see her, and she didn’t have to worry about how he would react. He wasn’t judging her. He didn’t find her lacking.

  At least, not physically. His parting remark aside, she could tell she’d disappointed him just now, with her immediate default into sarcasm. He understood her, she felt certain, but some people—Declan included—were simply more genuine than others. He said what he meant, what he felt, and he expected the same sort of honesty from her. Not some twist of words that deflected her insecurities back on him.

  Declan deserved better from her.

  Her phone chimed with a calendar alert on the bedside table. She reached out a languid hand to snag it, checking the screen, then heaved herself off the bed. One hour, and she had an apology to make first.

  Ten seconds later she was whipping aside the shower curtain to join Declan in the narrow stall. Without preamble, she looped her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe to draw his startled face to hers for a long hello of a kiss. It didn’t matter that they’d already conversed, didn’t matter that she’d already tasted his lips this morning. This was a different hello, awake and aware, staking her claim without artifice or prevarication.

  Hello, please be mine. That’s what she wanted this kiss to say.

  When they broke for air, his arms had wrapped around her, the spray of steaming water cascading over his shoulders to cover her torso in streaming droplets. He dropped his forehead to hers. “Hi,” he murmured. One hand skimmed up her spine to palm her nape.

  Her smile threatened to split her face. “Hi,” she whispered back.

  He dropped a tiny kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Missed you.”

  “Loser.” This time, it wasn’t deflection, but a gentle tease. Then she grew serious, even as water began to bead at the tip of her nose. “You’re too patient with me, you know that, right?”

  “Oh.” He leaned back suddenly, letting the shower spray hit her full in the face. She sputtered, gasping as she automatically threw up her hands to shield her face. After a good handful of seconds, he blocked the spray again. “I forgot I was supposed to be a complete arse when seducing the woman I want more than anything in the world. My mistake.”

  With a mock glare, she wiped water from bleary eyes. “I take it back.”

  Arms lifting, he tilted his head back under the stream, rinsing away the stray suds she hadn’t noticed while ogling his biceps. Then he switched their positions, maneuvering her under the spray and grabbing her shampoo bottle. The familiar scent of jasmine hit her nostrils as he began to work the liquid soap into her scalp. She moaned as his fingers massaged her.

  Just as she’d braced her hands on the wall in front of her, the impact of his words finally hit her. “What do you mean, more than anything in the world?”

  “I mean what I said, Fiona.” His fingertips reached around to find her chin, tipping it up until the hot water sluiced through her soapy hair. “At this moment in my life, there’s nothing and no one I want more than you.” He turned her around to face him, as serious as she. “Don’t know if that’ll change or not. Don’t know if I want it to change. But I do know you make me smile, really smile. That’s worth a little patience on my part.”

  “Well.” She swallowed around the surprising ball of tears knotting her throat. “Thank you. And I’m sorry if I, uh, make it difficult. To be patient, I mean.” Dropping her gaze, she reached for the loofa, drizzling body wash over it and scrubbing vigorously over every exposed inch of her body.

  Just as she finished rinsing away the lather, her face was caught between two large palms. “You warned me fair and square, darlin’,” he said softly, staring at her mouth briefly before lifting his eyes to hers. “I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was you. So no apologies, ’kay?”

  She nodded within his hands. “Okay.”

  His kiss might have been patient, but it certainly wasn’t sweet. He coaxed open her lips with nibbling bites, his tongue sliding against hers in a smooth caress that spoke of hunger. Hunger for her. She stepped into him, away from the shower spray starting to cool, and wrapped her arms around his lean waist. She allowed him to steer the kiss, and her with it, into new territory that was both easy and exciting.

  He reached behind her to shut off the water without breaking the kiss. She was aware of him shoving aside the curtain, pulling her onto the bath mat, slick bodies rubbing together as cool air blasted them. She shivered and hugged him closer, one hand slipping down to grope his ass suggestively, all too aware of the hard thrust of his arousal pressed into her abdomen.

  A wiggle of her hips had him groaning. “That’s just mean,” he breathed against her lips as he groped for one of the bath towels neatly folded on the shelf above the toilet. Then she was wrapped in warm cotton terry, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the feel of his mouth on her neck, his tongue sweeping over her wet skin. She sighed when he straightened to use his own towel with brisk efficiency on his hair before tucking it securely around his hips.

  She stood naked in front of him, without embarrassment or worry over the sight of her scars, and dried her hair before moving her towel over her limbs, finally securing it around her torso, the knotted corner between her breasts.

  He watched her. Even in the dissipating steam and sans glasses, she could see that he watched her, intent yet casual, as though in no rush to carry her back into the bedroom but with full knowledge that they would end up there again soon.

  This time, her shiver wasn’t due to the chill.

  Moving to the sink, she wiped the condensation from the mirror with one sweep of her hand and picked up a comb from the countertop, jumping only slightly when his arm suddenly appeared over her shoulder to swipe across the mirror, roughly six inches higher than she had. Their eyes met, and he grinned as she began to work through the snarls. “Not used to guests?”

  “Not ones who are taller than me.” Not any, really. No girlfriends, no boyfriends, no visiting extended family needing a place to crash. She’d socialized so much and so hard in Vegas that it had been something of a relief to go from the Henderson apartment she shared with three other dancers to this tiny place that was hers and hers alone. She liked being alone, but, thankfully, her work—and Wes, and her dad—never allowed her to truly be lonely. Even though she couldn’t wait to scrap apartmen
t living and move onto better, bigger things, these rooms had been her oasis long enough for a bit of sentimentality to kick in when she thought of leaving it behind.

  In this apartment, she was safe, and safe was very, very important to Fiona O’Brien.

  Declan stood behind her as she started brushing her teeth, his smile so unashamedly content that it set butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “Don’t suppose you have a spare toothbrush somewhere?”

  More fluttering. “Man, you didn’t come prepared for this one-night stand at all, did you?” she mumbled around her own toothbrush, bending down to dig in one of the drawers of the cabinet until she produced a still-wrapped-from-her-last-dentist-visit brush and tossed it at him. “Suppose I should be grateful you remembered condoms.”

  The sound of plastic crinkling, cardboard tearing. “O’ course I remembered condoms. And if you believe this between us is a one-night stand, you’ve got another think comin’, love.”

  She spit in the sink before catching his gaze in the foggy-edged mirror. “Noted.”

  When he’d finished brushing, casually dropping his new toothbrush into the Rosie the Riveter coffee mug that held hers, he followed her into the bedroom. “So. Breakfast?”

  She made the decision just as she dropped her towel. “Dry off and get dressed. I want to show you something.”

  “Something that involves leaving the flat?” He sounded disappointed.

  She drew a pair of black-lace panties over her hips, not a match for the red-and-white-striped cotton bra she donned a moment later, but she didn’t care. “Yes, we have to leave.”

  “Leaving your place was not on the agenda for Things I Wanted To Do With Fiona On My Day Off.”

  Laughing, she snagged an old pair of jeans from the dresser—not jeggings, but soft, faded denim that clung comfortably to her legs. “It’ll be fun.” Maybe. “And it won’t take all day.” The idea of lazing away the afternoon in bed with Declan was suddenly the only activity she wanted to do…as soon as she showed him this piece of her, this piece that wasn’t exactly a secret but was still tender and new.