by Amy Andrews
“Wait.” An even bigger frown cracked Ryder’s face. “How do you know my sister?” Mona stared at him through rheumy eyes and bared her fraggle tooth. Yeah, dude, explain that one.
Deny, deny, deny.
“We met at your engagement party.” Part of the bluff, according to his old man, was to ground it in as much truth as possible.
“Oh. Right…” Ryder, clearly satisfied with that, grabbed for his phone. “She must have come down for some costume expedition or something. She usually lets me know, though.” He scrolled with his thumb for a moment or two. “She hasn’t texted me.”
Bodie couldn’t confirm or deny why Eleanor was in town, except perhaps to fuck with him. They hadn’t got around to chit chat. “Maybe she was surprising you?” She’d sure as shit surprised him.
The urge to explain and apologise for jumping the gun about his sister’s presence in the city rode Bodie hard but he ignored it. The less he said, the less that could be used against him in court.
Yeah… He’d been raised by the antichrist.
“Well anyway.” Linc clapped him on the back. “Problem solved mate, there’s your country girl.”
His deliberate needling of Ryder worked a treat and Linc laughed at Ryder’s death stare. “Even if she wasn’t my sister and completely off limits to you filthy bastards”—he gave Bodie and Dono the evil eye in turn—“she’s one country girl who wouldn’t be giving it up for your pretty three-day growth. Amongst her many…quirky attributes, Nell announced at Christmas dinner at the age of eleven that she, like the Virgin Mary, was saving herself for the one.”
Bodie blinked. What. The. Fuck.
“Yeah but, how old is she now?” Dex asked. “I wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I was eleven.”
“She’s twenty-six. And last time I teased her about it a few months ago, she proudly told me she still had her V card.”
“Sure, man,” Dono quipped, “so’s my mumma.”
Everyone laughed. Everyone except Bodie. Because things were falling into place. Holy fuck. Eleanor was a virgin?
Had been a virgin?
With a sinking feeling worse than losing a grand final, Bodie knew it was true. It made sense now. Her tightness, the heady mix of her eagerness and shyness, that moment she made him wait after he’d pushed inside her.
Christ. He should have guessed. Why hadn’t he guessed?
“So what, she’s saving herself for…God?” Tanner asked.
Ryder shook his head. “Mr Darcy, I think.”
More laughter. Bodie swallowed. Great. She’d been waiting for Mr fucking Darcy and he’d given her some sleazy hotel hook up. She’d been waiting for the gentleman, and he’d given her the cad.
He was going to hell. And that was too good for him.
Chapter Six
Bodie almost knocked Eleanor’s hotel door down an hour later. How he’d sat through the game as long as he had, he didn’t know. His brain had been turning in circles, his actions operating on some kind of autopilot—crap autopilot, considering how much money he’d lost, but somehow he’d managed to give the appearance of playing cards.
The door remained stubbornly closed and he muttered, “Come on, damn it,” under his breath as he belted it again.
He didn’t really see Eleanor standing there through the red mist of his anger. God alone knew what his blood pressure was right at the moment. “You were a virgin?” he demanded. She blinked, then blushed, but he was too pissed at himself and her to care.
She sucked in a breath. “Why don’t you say it a little louder, so the rooms down near the lifts can hear it too?”
She stepped back from the door, and Bodie stalked inside, straight to the large window. “Imagine my surprise,” he said, looking out over the twinkling lights of Darling Harbour as his heart hammered in his chest, “when Ryder tells me all about his sweet virginal sister Nell who’s supposedly saving herself for the one.”
“And my state of virginity was being discussed at your poker game because?”
The mist thickened. “It came up,” he snapped.
Bodie took a few deep breaths designed to settle the hard edge of his anger and dissipate the swirling red mist cloaking him in irrationality.
It didn’t help.
He whipped around to find her standing calmly just behind him. Her hair, swept up into some fancy, decorative creation, left her neck and shoulders bare, which was distracting as hell.
Jesus Christ, he wasn’t here to ogle her.
He folded his arms and glared at her. “I didn’t know.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “How were you supposed to know? We don’t tattoo it to our foreheads, you know. Or do you expect some kind of blood bath on the sheets from your virgins?”
Bodie’s jaw clenched at her flippancy, ignoring her implication that he was some kind of man-whore. Up until a year ago he’d been a one-woman man. “You should have told me.”
Just like she should have told him about being Ryder’s sister. She’d hidden a fuck ton of stuff from him that night.
“You want to give it back?”
A blood vessel throbbed dangerously at Bodie’s temple. “If I fucking could, yes.”
She sighed, her shoulders lifting, her chest expanding, which dragged his gaze lower. To her cleavage, all soft and bouncy and pushed up in gorgeous offering like it had been that night, and he remembered how desperately he’d wanted to dive in.
The same kind of desperation assailed him now as he took in the flouncy, ruffled floor-length dress with the tiny waist that could easily have been at home in the pages of a history book.
“What would you have done differently?” she demanded.
Bodie pulled his gaze up from all her softness with difficulty. Her fiery whiskey eyes were flashing. “I don’t know, Eleanor, but maybe I might have gone slower, taken my time a bit. Asked if you were okay. Or whatever the fuck it is a guy’s supposed to ask a woman during her first time. Maybe I might have even taken all my bloody clothes off.”
She folded her arms, and his gaze was drawn again to the sweet swells of her cleavage. “For the record, I was fine. I have absolutely no complaints.”
The throb of anger was morphing into an entirely different throb now as that night came back to him, and she watched him all soft and sweet and round and tiny-waisted telling him she had absolutely no complaints.
The sweet pulse of desire slithered through his veins. He ignored it. He hadn’t come here for this.
“I…should have known.” He shoved a hand through his hair, denying the gnaw of need whispering through his flesh. “You were so shy, so…tight but I just assumed…”
She raised both eyebrows at him this time. “Assumed?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “That you did…Pilates or Bikram yoga?”
“Bikram yoga?” She laughed, exposing the vulnerable line of her throat and, in his mind’s eye, he could see himself muzzling her there. “In Bungindally?”
He groaned. “Look, I don’t know, I just…”
She stood before him, clearly waiting for him to complete his sentence, but how could he concentrate on his virgin rage when she was all soft and pushed up and bouncy like that and her bed was sitting in his peripheral vision all white and beckoning?
“You what?”
“I…Christ.” He shook his head, his distraction complete. “What are you wearing?”
She blinked, then glanced down her body before returning her gaze to his face. “It’s a Victorian-era dress based on a pattern from the eighteen-fifties. I made it.”
It didn’t really help. Because all he could wonder about was what else she might have made for it? Like, maybe some of that Victorian underwear he’d seen on her site? Corsets and petticoats and pantaloons. Crotchless pantaloons.
What was she wearing under all that fabric?
He swallowed. “You’re very talented.”
“Thank you.” She shook her head dismissively at the compliment.
“I me
an it.” Bodie wanted her to know he was impressed. “I’ve…visited your website. I know how many hours goes into something like that.” He nodded at the dress, his pulse spiking as he wondered just how quickly he could get her out of the damn thing.
“Really?” She seemed taken aback by the admission. “You’ve been to my website?”
“Often.”
Bodie supposed he shouldn’t give so much of himself away. His father wouldn’t approve a bit, but the interest in her gaze, the delight in the way she smiled at him, made him pleased to have opened up. A new throb roared to life in his chest.
“And does the rugby guru have a favourite frock?”
Bodie chuckled. He wasn’t sure how they’d gone from her withholding vital information from him to frocks. Or from rage to desire for that matter, but the atmosphere fairly hummed with it.
“I’m more a fan of the ummm…undergarments.” And now he was flirting.
She smiled. “I bet you are.” She was flirting, too.
His pulse rate picked up again, not racing but thudding harder in anticipation, desire buzzing like electricity through his system with every contraction of his heart.
This was not good. It was crazy. It wasn’t enough that he’d made her come against the door four hours ago, he wanted more. He wanted her again.
He couldn’t seem to get enough of her.
And if the sudden husky burr to her breathing was anything to go by, he wasn’t the only one feeling it.
Crap. He really hadn’t come here for this.
“I should probably go.”
He stepped away from the window, making a beeline for the door, passing between her and the bed, but then she stepped into his path and he halted. He was suddenly grateful for the closeness of the bed as every bone in his body seemed to dissolve.
Except for the one in his pants. It was like granite.
“The problem with these frocks,” she said, taking a step closer to him, “is how difficult they are to get in and out of without help.”
Bodie swallowed as his gaze dropped to the soft bounce of her cleavage. “Yes… That would be a problem.” Bodie assumed that her friend had helped her get into the thing.
She shrugged and took another step. “I can do it, of course, but it’s much easier with another person.”
“Right.”
Their gazes locked and held for long moments before she turned her back to him. “Do you think you could help me with these buttons before you go?”
The aroma of orange blossoms filled his nostrils as Bodie’s gaze snagged on her hair. It, too, was done in the kind of style he’d seen in history books. The fine chocolatey strands styled into a mass of soft ringlets. A handful of dainty flowers pinned and tucked amidst the curls seemed decorative but Bodie thought they might actually be keeping the whole thing together. A couple of strands of hair had either fallen down to tease her neck or had been deliberately pulled to do so.
Either way, it made him want to press a kiss to her nape. Maybe even nip it a little.
“Bodie?”
Her uncertain, husky voice broke into his reverie and he glanced at what looked like a hundred buttons starting at the notch of her spine that divided nape from back and ending below the waist. His fingers itched to touch them.
“I don’t suppose I can just undo the top one and rip?”
It was a joke, but his fingers tingled to do just that, and he was very much afraid that he might be tempted to follow through if she didn’t specifically tell him not to.
Rip her dress open like she’d done to his shirt in Bungindally. Follow the dictates of a body demanding he go all Incredible fucking Hulk.
She laughed and it was soft and low and rough, cupping his aching balls in a velvet hand, reminding him that while she’d gotten off a few hours ago, he had not.
“It took me a day to make and sew on all those buttons and their loops.”
So, that was a no then.
Bodie took a steadying breath and slid his fingers to the top button. He fumbled it immediately, his fingers feeling too big and clumsy for the delicate work. Give him a football and his hands were sure and steady, but a row of fabric-covered buttons…?
Fine motor skills had never been his forte.
He took another breath, stooped a little closer, and tried again. This time he successfully freed the slippery button made from the same fabric as the dress from its delicate lacy loop. One down, about a hundred to go.
If the slow reveal didn’t cause him to stroke out…
Within ten buttons he was starting to see skin, and he stopped counting as his body tuned into other things. Like the uneven pitch of her breathing and how his breath disturbed the tendrils of hair that had escaped from her do and the goose bumps feathering her skin.
And her big-ass bed one step to his left.
The silence grew and stretched around them. Who’d have thought the brush of fingertips against fabric could sound so loud? Or air escaping from lungs could tumble out like a hurricane then be cut off like a garrotte at the discovery of a snowy white corset.
More buttons revealed lace and boning and the hourglass curve of waist and hip and it took all Bodie’s willpower to keep to the task and not to stray. There was something to be said for modesty and a slow reveal, and Bodie was never going to underestimate the power of the tease ever again.
It was the most delicious kind of torture, touching her like this—methodically, impersonally. When all he wanted to do was let his hands wander, explore, discover.
He popped the last button. “Finished.” His voice was like gravel, his dick like stone, his balls so damn heavy they were practically dragging on the ground.
“Thank you.”
He barely had time to register the gratifying unsteadiness of her voice before she shrugged her shoulders, pulling each puffed sleeve down her arm and off completely, removing the dress to the waist and revealing the corset almost in its entirety.
Despite the fact he couldn’t see much of it from here, blood rushed to his cock. Where it was going to go he had no idea—there was no room at the inn down there, it was already as tight and full as humanly possible.
“Can you undo the petticoat tie?” Another husky request.
Bodie glanced down to find some kind of plain cream garment cutting off the view of the corset from the waist down, tied at the back with a pink ribbon. He slid his fingers onto the simple bow and rubbed the fabric between his fingers.
“This pink ribbon?”
Bodie needed to be sure. Who knew there so many damn working parts to this kind of get up? Although he was all for undoing all the ribbons and all the buttons and whatever else he could. He eyed the back of the corset—how did that come undone?
“Yes.”
Bodie, his lungs feeling too tight for his chest, pulled one of the tails and the bow slid undone, the fabric of the petticoat loosening immediately from Eleanor’s waist.
“Thank you,” she said again, then, as he watched, she pushed the dress and petticoat down in one movement until it pooled around her on the floor.
She stepped out of the circle of fabric and pushed it out of the way with her foot, turning to face him. She was in nothing but a corset and a pair of pantaloons. Her breasts were pushed up and almost spilled out of the corset completely, her waist nipped in to form a perfect hourglass, the bottom of the corset dipping down to form a peak between her hips. The pantaloons were short, not long, coming to mid thigh and puffy around the hips. With rows of lacy ruffles on the ass.
Goddamn, sexy as fuck, ruffles.
Jesus. How had men of that era ever got anything done knowing their woman was somewhere in that get up?
If she’d leaned in and stabbed him he couldn’t have been any more stunned. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, staring at her, not able to stop.
More blood diverted and Bodie groped for the bed beside him as he became light-headed. A stupid idea, considering his eyes were now level with those sexy pantaloons. He fist
ed his hands in the bedcovers to stop himself from reaching for her.
“So…” He cleared his throat because gawping at her like an idiot was starting to get old. “This is the kind of…underwear they’d have worn back then?”
It was the first thing he could think of instead of something lewd and un-Mr Darcy-like such as let’s fuck but still, he couldn’t believe he was talking about two-hundred-year-old fashion with a raging twenty-first-century boner.
“No.” She shook her head slowly as if she couldn’t believe he was talking about it either. “The corset isn’t a proper one, there are hooks and eyes at the back. But I didn’t have time to get into the proper one with the laces earlier.”
Bodie almost forgot that he was the reason she hadn’t had time as the thought of a lace up corset cavorted in his head like a burlesque dancer.
“And they would have worn a chemise under the corset to keep it off the skin, but we tend to wash more frequently than they did, so I usually give that a miss. They probably wouldn’t have worn these short pantaloons either underneath such a formal dress but nobody at the function knows what’s on under your skirts, and I’ve just made them and wanted to try them out.”
Bodie swallowed, thrilled that he knew what was under her skirts. “I’m pleased you did.” He stared at them, their lack of sheerness exciting as hell. Knowing what was under them but not being able to see, forced to use his memory, his imagination, cranked his anticipation to a loud screech.
“You like?” Her voice was quiet, her cheeks pinking up, her gaze not quite reaching his.
Eleanor Davis was a conundrum. She stood boldly before him in her underwear after requesting he help her unbutton, yet her blushes were never far from the surface and she could barely meet his eyes at the moment.
“Oh…I like. In fact, I think you should wear only them at all times in my company.” He smiled, trying to tease her out of her shyness.
“Oh really?”
“Are they…”
God, it was completely inappropriate to ask what he wanted to ask. This was Ryder’s sister, for fuck’s sake. But considering what he’d already done to her—on two separate occasions—this was tame. And he needed to know.