“You don’t need any.” I pause to check the picture. Even in the small window of the LCD display, it’s incredible. “Stay right there.”
Liv pulls her hands through her hair in an attempt to straighten it out. I take a few more pictures, zooming the lens in and then back again. I move to the side and keep photographing her, not wanting to miss any angle of the perfection that is my wife.
Finally, I lower the camera and just look at her.
“What are you going to do with all those pictures?” Liv asks.
“Plaster them on the ceiling like stars so I can look up at them at night.”
“Aw.” She smiles. “Good one.”
I don’t know how it is that this one woman can both bring me to my knees and make me feel like the greatest knight in history.
I click through the photos on the camera, pausing at one where a shadow falls across her neck and into the open V of her shirt.
A thought hits me like lightning. “Take your shirt off.”
“What?”
I lift the camera again. “I want a picture of you with your shirt off.”
“Me topless in an old tower?” Liv asks. “This sounds suspiciously like a rather kinky medieval fantasy, professor.”
“Too bad I don’t have any manacles, huh?”
She smiles again, but shakes her head. “Dean, I can’t undress here.”
“Why not? No one’s around. I bet not many people even know about this place.”
“Florence Wickham does.”
“I guarantee you that Florence Wickham isn’t going to break in through the side door and come up to the tower.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Liv mutters.
To ease Liv’s mind, I shut the door leading to the staircase and turn the rusty lock. “Okay?”
She’s watching me, wariness and… curiosity appearing in her brown eyes.
“Live dangerously,” I suggest.
She lets out her breath and slowly sheds her sweater, tossing it over the back of a chair. My heart kicks into high gear when she reaches for the buttons of her blouse. She unfastens two buttons and glances at me.
“I don’t have sexy lingerie on,” she admits.
“Good.” I don’t want her in sexy lingerie. I want her exactly as she is.
Liv unfastens another button. Even from a short distance, I see her hands trembling. Warmth floods my chest. Finally she gets all the buttons undone and pulls the shirt off her shoulders.
Ah, God. Just the sight of her cleavage cupped by a plain white bra has my blood heating. I focus on adjusting the aperture setting.
“Now I’m kind of nervous,” she tells me.
“Liv.” I lift the camera and focus on her. “You have no reason to be nervous.”
I snap the shutter. She fidgets at first, crossing her arms, winding a strand of hair around her finger, shifting from one foot to the other, but when I start to tell her how beautiful she is, she begins to relax.
A series of photos follows that I swear would win awards in photography competitions, for no other reason than the fact that Liv is a subject like no other—all at once sexy, sweet, assured, shy, and captivating. The light changes as the sun descends, painting her in shadows.
I look at her again.
“Take it off.” My voice is hoarse.
Liv’s gaze shifts away from me. After a heart-stopping second, she reaches back to unfasten her bra. All the breath leaves my lungs at the sight of her naked breasts, her nipples hardening in the cooler air, her long hair falling to curtain them.
So fucking beautiful.
I try to pull my attention from my lust as I adjust the camera again and get back to taking pictures. At my instruction, Liv moves to different areas of the tower—against a boarded-up window, near the door, in the center of the room, beside a rocking chair—and does what I tell her to.
“Put your arms over your head… that’s it…” click click “…now pull your hair back like you’re going to put it in a ponytail…” click click click “…one hand on your hip, the other on the doorjamb… both hands behind you on the windowsill…” click click “perfect… so damn pretty…”
Then I lower the camera.
“Touch them,” I tell her.
Liv’s throat works with a swallow, but she runs her hands over her breasts, cups them in her palms, pinches her nipples. I can see her getting aroused, all those telltale signs I know so well—her breath is getting faster, her cheeks flushed, and her thighs tense as she presses her legs together.
By the time she slides one finger down the valley between her breasts, I’m rock-hard and aching to get my hands on her. I force myself to focus on the camera and keep clicking the shutter.
Then, without my needing to ask, Liv unzips her skirt and steps out of it. Naked except for cotton underwear and her low-heeled shoes, she smiles at me, as if she knows quite well that the balance of power has shifted.
Which it has, since I’m at her mercy.
“You’re killing me, lady,” I mutter, changing the shutter speed.
“This was your idea,” she reminds me. She runs her hand down her torso to her panties. “Do you still want me to touch myself?”
Holy fuck, do I ever.