During the SLOW BURN portion of the book, Olivia is fitting Ty for clothing under the watchful eye of their military guard. Here’s a fun, sexy snippet.
Olivia
“Turn around.” I put all my bossiness into my tone. If we don’t get down to business, I’m going to jump his bones and ruin everything.
With him facing the back corner and me standing behind him, we have a modicum of privacy.
“Can you remove your shirt?” I ask with as much emotion as if I’m asking about the weather, perhaps to obscure the fact that this isn’t standard operating procedure.
I’ve measured hundreds of people for clothes, starting in design school and continuing on through Fashion Frenemies. Never have I asked anyone to remove their clothes. That’s not how it’s done.
I have to give myself a pass, though. None of my previous customers were covered in soft, pelted fur with such beautiful markings.
Reaching around him, I measure his neck, enjoying the velvet feel of his fur against my fingers as I arrange the tape. I allow my palms the quickest slide along his shoulders and down his arm as I turn to make a notation on my pad.
I take a few seconds too long to find the middle of his nape, then measure along the same path my fingers just traveled across broad shoulders. The next measurement is a trip down his furred arm to his wrist.
My breath catches as I become aware of how muscular he is. His pelt couldn’t hide all those delicious muscles. They were obvious, though it’s only now, with my fingers sliding under his fur, that I experience the depth and breadth of how magnificent his body is.
After asking him to lift his arms to his sides, I circle his upper chest, tucking the tape under his armpits. As I note that measurement, I also noticed my body is humming with pleasure, desire arcing from lips to nipples to my core.
Some of the people I worked with on Fashion Frenemies were male models. I thought they were examples of the perfect human form, but that was before anyone knew of the existence of splicers. Ty’s body is beyond perfection.
I step even closer, throwing caution to the wind as I drag my hardened nipples along his shirtless back. His soft gasp tells me my naughty behavior didn’t go unnoticed.
“Is… is this part of the waiting game, Olivia? I would call this anything but fun.”
“We’re supposed to be getting to know each other, Ty. It’s only fair you get a glimpse of how wicked I can be,” I tease.
He shakes his head and chuffs, the noise unlike anything a human can produce.
“Is this standard procedure, Olivia? Will you do this with all the males in the troupe?”
His voice is raw with emotion. Jealousy? Pleasure roars through my body at that thought.
I take the opportunity to move his silken tail out of the way. His reaction is to release a startled gasp.
“I’ll be measuring the others, but not like this. I felt I needed to use a more hands-on approach with you.” To punctuate my remark, I surreptitiously caress my palm down his hip, which causes him to groan and flick his tail.
I spend entirely too much time ensuring the tape measure is tight against his trim waist and isn’t resting over the fabric of his pants. All the while, my breasts are smashed against his back and I’m sliding my fingers back and forth between his pant-waist and his fur.
“This is torture,” he says through gritted teeth, making a show of rearranging his visibly hard cock within the confines of his pants.
There’s something about having that big of an effect on him that makes me feel smugly satisfied.
“Want me to stop?” I offer innocently.
“Never.” His voice is a combination of grit and lust.
Just wait, tigerman. There’s going to be a big finish.
After making more notations, I kneel behind him and prepare to measure his inseam. First, for no good reason, I slide my palm over his pants from his knee up to the bottom of his ass cheek.
“What the fuck, Olivia?” he hisses. “Do you want to land us both in the brig?”
“I’m simply doing my job, Ty. Ensuring you have a perfect fit.”
On those last two words, I snug the tape measure directly under his balls. I hope the soft moan that just escaped me didn’t reach the soldiers’ ears.
“Have other males died from this before, Olivia? You’re killing me.”
If it was anyone else, I’d think he was joking. But I don’t think he is. His head is hanging, chin almost to his chest as he pants like a woman in Lamaze class.
“Just a moment more.” I rearrange the tape, copping a feel of his heavy balls through the thick khaki material.
By his rapid breathing, I wonder if he’s going to pass out. I’m almost swooning as I think about what his furred balls will feel like in the palm of my hand.
The moment I get the last measurement, I snatch my hand away and rise to my feet.
“Sorry,” I mumble, my gaze skittering from his. “I overstepped.”
If a man had the nerve to do something half that intimate to me, I’d consider making a police report.
“I said you were killing me, Olivia. I never asked you to stop.” His voice, a deep, sexy rumble, fades into an affectionate purr.
Between his purrs and my desire, one of us is going to pounce on the other if we don’t break the mood.
“One more question and we’re done. Do you dress to the right or the left?” I ask. It’s tailor-speak for asking whether his balls hang left or right in his pants.
“Good job!” he praises. “Changing the subject with a joke!”
I glance at him and see the Ty who walked into my shop that first day. The handsome male with the wide smile that only seems to leave his face when he’s thinking sexy thoughts about me.
“Joke?”
“Yeah. I know this one, but I’m not sure I remember the punchline. Don’t tell me. It has something to do with ‘I put my clothes on one leg at a time just like you,’ right?”
This male is so adorable, I want to cup his cheeks in my palms and give him a big smack on the lips.
“Yeah, I don’t know that joke.” I step closer, knowing that any second now the soldiers are going to breach the distance from where they’ve been standing on the other side of the room and tell us to step apart.
“Asking if you dress right or left means which side do your… male parts hang.” Why I’m acting coy now after feeling him up a moment ago is anybody’s guess.
Those gorgeous golden eyes round in his face as if my question crossed a final invisible taboo.
“Why…?”
“I leave extra room,” I explain, even as somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I wonder just how much extra room that big boy is going to need.