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Soon, it’s not just my lower back that’s sweating but my forehead and neck. Every inch of me is hot and electric. I hope Bailey can’t feel the heat when my fingers brush over her skin, dragging over her lower back as I move down, down, down below the bottom hem of her undergarment. Bailey’s skin is warm and smooth, and seeing this little bit of it makes me want more.
I bite back a groan.
Two more buttons, and I find something that stops me. I trace around the raised, red mark.
“What?” she asks.
“Leelee, have you been playing with cats again?”
She groans, angling her body as she tries to look. She’d have to be a contortionist to see it. I gently turn her back around.
“I don’t think he was playing,” Bailey says. “More like trying to use my back as a springboard. Think it will leave a scar?”
“I don’t think so. But you should let me put something on it when we go back home. Mom has some antibiotic cream.”
“I didn’t even know it was there. I guess this is what we do now, huh? Watch each other’s backs?”
I grin. “That and argue about pizza toppings. A wise woman told me that’s what marriage is about.”
As I go back to the buttons, I see Bailey spinning the wedding band I slid on her finger earlier. She requested something simple, so it’s a plain platinum band. Except for one thing.
“Did you happen to check the inscription?” I ask.
“You added an inscription?” Bailey slips the ring off and turns the ring until she can read it, laughing when she does. “Awkward together,” she reads. “From our first date. Eli—I love it.”
“Feel like maybe it will be something of a theme. Says the guy wearing a muumuu while unbuttoning your dress.”
I expect another laugh, but maybe it’s the mention of undoing Bailey’s dress that has us both falling silent again. A thick tension hangs in the air like a curtain, only growing more obvious in the quiet. The only sounds are our breaths—both of us a little unsteady—and the sound of my fingers fumbling with the buttons.
I slow as I move closer to her waist, closer to the end. Both relieved I’m almost done and wishing Zella had put buttons down the whole back, down to the floor. When I undo a button just above Bailey’s hips, my heart thrumming in my chest, the whole dress starts to slip down, sliding right off her shoulders.
“Oh,” Bailey says on a breathy exhale, clutching the top. She barely keeps it from falling into a pool of soft white fabric around her feet. “I guess that’s all the help I need. Thanks, Eli.”
“No problem.” I swallow with difficulty and take a step back, wiping my palms on the muumuu.
Bailey turns to face me, her fingers tight on the top of the dress. For a long moment, we stand perfectly still, as though each of us is waiting for the other to make a move or speak. The air shimmers with a pulse of electricity, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see light dancing in the air.
I want to kiss her. I want tomorethan kiss her.
And with the way Bailey’s toffee eyes have darkened to liquid chocolate and her teeth are worrying her lip, I think she wants that too.
I hear a faint whisper in my mind, Parker’s voice sayingpatience…you don’t want to overwhelm her …
Most guys wouldn’t think about patience. They wouldn’t overthink this. Or think at all. They wouldn’t care about talking first, about being sure we’re on the same page.
They’d be inside the bathroom, shucking off Bailey’s dress and this stupid muumuu, words lost in favor of a tangle of lips and tongues and maybe even teeth. Imagining it has blood rushing through my body, like a clanging alarm bell.
But there’s more riding on this. And what I want is more. Something long and lasting. Not a quick decision made in the heat of a moment. The risk is higher now, the cost potentially greater. If I want this to bereal, I need to work for it. To exercise the utmost restraint until it’s safe to unleash it. Until I’m sureshe’ssure.
Otherwise … I’d be sharing a house with my own personal heartbreak right down the hall.
As much as I want to toss thought and consequence andfuture Eli’spotential heartbreak to the side, I decide to choose the patient path. The safe one. The one most likely to transform the label of wife, which Bailey now wears, into more than a title. More than words on a paper. I am after something lasting, not fleeting.
Which means I need to step back. For now.
But, just as she did at the rink during my mess of a proposal, Bailey is the one to take charge. Stepping forward and still holding her dress up with one hand, she hooks the other behind my head and pulls my mouth to hers.
I slide my hands around her waist, tugging her closer.Needingher closer.
