When she sat down his scent assaulted her from all directions, too sweet and clean for her to fully accept it. He was supposed to smell like feet and farts and locker rooms, and instead everything was as fresh as a walk in the wintry air. His pillows could have been laundered that day. His comforter felt smooth and crisp beneath her fingers, and left the scent of meadows between them.
And then there was his body, his clothes, his hair.
That tart cologne she remembered so well from high school was gone, replaced by something that seemed incredibly familiar. It had a hint of almonds, warm and honeyed and so good she knew she should know it. It even reminded her of nice things, like sitting in the window seat of her bedroom with a book or driving to the movie theater for the first time with her friend Becky Rivero.
But it took her until twenty minutes in to dredge up the memory. Twenty minutes of puzzling and trying not to too obviously sniff him, before realization washed over her in a great facepalm-inducing wave.
It was her own perfume. The one she had worn in high school.
Or at the very least it was damned close. It was perhaps a touch more masculine, and that slightly musky man smell lurked beneath it. Yet once she figured it out, she couldn’t deny the fact. No matter how weird and inexplicable it was, Tate Sullivan had her favorite scent somewhere on him. Like a loaded gun, just waiting to go off and blow out most of her brains.
She already felt unable to think.
Logical reasons for this completely eluded her.
Questions she thought of asking were, at best, embarrassing.
In the end she just had to carry on watching the movie—but doing so hardly helped. Dirty Dancing was at least 30 percent sexier than she remembered it being. Within the first half hour, people were gyrating all over each other. Swayze had his shirt off before the second act, and everyone seemed to be sweating constantly. It made her sweat, just watching them.
Or was it just the temperature of the room? It seemed to have risen at least ten degrees since she’d gotten here—quite possibly because of Tate. It was like sitting next to an enormous engine. Heat rolled off him in waves, thick and stultifying. She could almost feel it through the pillow, burning and burning until she could barely take it anymore. She came close several times to telling him to stop being so hot, and only resisted by patiently explaining to herself how stupid that was.
He would think she meant the other hot.
Even though she didn’t. She totally didn’t.
She hardly knew what she meant.
She only knew that he made her heart bolt its bone cage when he suddenly leaned across the pillow to whisper something. That her mouth went dry and all the hairs on her arms stood up and the heat…
The heat seemed to treble. Quadruple. Millionable.
“Do you think people were that sexually liberated in 1963?”
“I have no clue. We should probably write that question down,” she said.
Of course she knew why she did it—because it gave her an out. She could lean down to get her pad and scribble, instead of enduring more of that scent and the heat.
“Yeah, maybe write it down. And while you’re there write down that she initiates.”
“She initiates what?”
“The sex.”
“They have sex in this?”
She glanced up at the screen, sure that he was wrong.
But no, her top was coming off. There was a visible bra.
Followed by lots of sticky-looking kissing.
“Of course they do. I wouldn’t have suggested we watch it otherwise. I mean, how are we supposed to talk about sex in cinema if we just look at movies that have no sex in them? What are we supposed to say? Their hand holding was particularly fascinating? The scene where you almost see a butt really meant something?”
“That…yeah, okay, you make a good point.”
“Though to be honest, this barely qualifies.”
“You don’t think this is a good sex scene?”
“He kisses her collarbone and then they look at each other while in bed. They could be searching each other’s faces for signs of rigor mortis. Both of them are barely moving.”
“They’re moving a tiny bit. His shoulder just jerked.”
“Oh man, that sounds hot. Shoulder jerking.”
“It looked kind of hot to me.”
“It looked like she was panicking.”
“Ah, so now you’re an expert on women’s facial expressions.”
“You don’t have to be to know she got nothing out of that. I bet he was one and done.”
“What the hell does one and done mean?”
“One thrust and done.”
“You can’t say that about Swayze.”
“I can and will and have.”
“But his hips though. His hip action.”
“All the hip action in the world can’t help you when you think collarbone kissing and some grinding is going to get her motor revving.”
“So what would get her motor revving?”
“Eating pussy would probably be a good start.”
She had been looking at him up until that point. But as soon as she heard the word pussy, she had to glance away. It rang out like an alarm in the tiny room: turn back turn back turn back before it’s too late. The only problem was: she didn’t know how to turn back.
Or know why she wanted to.
“Okay. Okay but you just said yourself that this is a pretty tame movie. I mean it’s not like they can just show him…doing that to her.”
“Why?”