She only has one rule...
[WATTYS SHORTLIST 2022]
A buttoned up bookworm agrees to a fake relationship with a surprisingly literate male model in order to save his career. She only has one condition: No kissing allowed.
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At age 27, Cora Glass ha...
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Jamie's fingertips hooked hers. He led her blindly, walking backward in the general direction of his bed.
She'd grazed the tender flesh of his belly with her fingertips, but she might as well have shocked him with a live wire. Where had that come from? Jamie prided himself on his ability to read people, but this was not a turn of events he had anticipated. He had assumed Dr. Cora Glass was off limits to him. No doubt her dating pool consisted of NYC's doctors and lawyers and professional elite—not men who merely posed as them for photographs. She'd made that clear from their first conversation over cocktails. "You make your living impersonating men you'll never be..."
A good bit of banter, that. Jamie didn't know why that line had been bothering him, reverberating in his mind ever since.
He'd made his opening gambit in the bathroom out of sheer force of habit, assuming he'd get nowhere. He knew he wouldn't from the first moment they met. He'd reached across the cocktail table and touched her hair, the same way he might have ventured a toe in a pool of water to test its temperature. And she'd withered him on the spot with that knowing schoolteacher stare.
But she wasn't a schoolteacher, Jamie reminded himself. And he was not an insouciant schoolboy, as much as she left him feeling like one at times. The woman with the roving fingers was a scientist if he understood correctly. Perhaps she viewed him as an experiment—or a specimen to be dissected.
He turned his head over his shoulder to see where he was going. The room was black, but a black less deep than the windowless bathroom had been. A hint of light penetrated from outside. It reflected from the opaque shades of the light fixtures that flanked the bed and from the metallic clock that hung above it.
"So," she broke the silence as she shuffled after him. "Which one of us goes first?"
"Do you take turns? I aim for simultaneous enjoyment." He stopped short, letting her stumble into him on purpose. "Careful." He caught her by the elbows, but not to steady her. Testing the waters once again to see if she would pull away.
She stood her ground. "Truth or dare," she said, ignoring his implication. "Who gets the first question?"
Jamie resumed his trek toward the room's only horizontal surface. "Are we still playing that? I thought we were having a book club. Ow!" The bed made its position known. Some sharp corner scraped against the back of his heel. "Damn. Watch out for the bed frame."
She giggled. "Did you hurt yourself?"
"Yes." The mattress groaned under his weight. Jamie kneeled at the edge of it, facing the direction where he'd left her. He stretched out his hands and her fingers made contact, finding him again. "Careful," he said as he pulled her in. "This way."
"A book club in your bed?"
"The best place for book clubs, in my experience."
He moved backward on his knees, leaving her no other options but to let go or join him. She followed. No hesitation. How far did she intend to go? He lifted the edge of the covers, and she shifted to release them out from under her. He guided the sheets around them both, tucking her into the bed beside him.
