Chapter 15
fifteen
“SWEET CHILD O’ MINE” — GUNS N’ ROSES
Miller
A thousand images flicker through my head at her declaration. And it is a declaration. It’s practically a war cry.
I only bought this dress so you could take it off.
The first image—naturally—is doing just that. Taking off her dress. Slowly, the same way I’ve been winding up her trailing scarves. With gentle, attentive care.
Or not.
Maybe just ripping it off.
Or maybe fucking her with it on. There’s a counter in the bathroom that’s the perfect height to set her on before diving under those skirts and losing myself in the taste of her.
So yeah, I can take off the dress or leave it on. Either way, the thought of seeing more of her naked makes me even harder than I’ve been for most of the night.
But then that first part of the sentence registers.
Her buying the dress.
That gorgeous fucking dress that hugs all of her curves and floats around her like she’s some kind of damn fairy princess. A very grown-up, very fuckable fairy princess. But still.
It’s the intention behind her buying that dress. For me to take it off. That’s what kills me. What stops me cold.
Because she thought about this. Not just the dress, but the hair clips and the handbag. She picked out this dress with hopes. Plans. Maybe even dreams.
Plans I have every intention of acting on.
But not tonight.
Because I’ve watched her all evening. Studied her. Just like I’ve been watching her and studying her for years. I watched her go from giddy and excited to relaxed and confident. To small and timid. To loud and rebellious.
I love all her emotions. I’ve got space for all of them. But it’s been a lot.
And I’m pretty sure that when she bought this dress, when she imagined me taking it off, she didn’t imagine it like this.
I’m pretty quick on my feet, but not quick enough to think through all that without a pause long enough to shatter a heart.
And I see it in her eyes. I took too long to answer, and she thinks I’m rejecting her.
Her chin bumps up to an angle so defiant she almost tips over backward. And then she gives a huff of indignation.
“Obviously, you had other ideas.” She snatches the scarf from my hands. “That’s fine. Perfect even. Because I’m an adult. I don’t need you to take off my dress.”
She breaks off mid-rant, and tips her head to the side, as though she’s hearing her own words after they come out of her mouth.
“And that’s not even a metaphor.” She seems to have some convoluted debate with herself before continuing. “Or maybe it is. Maybe I can take my dress off myself.”
It takes every ounce of self-control to stifle both a laugh and a groan as the metaphor she’s playing with lands.
“I’d like to see that,” I mutter before I have the good sense to keep my ideas to myself.
She pauses. Hesitates, looking first confused and then tentatively hopeful.
“What do you mean?” She threads the scarf through her fingers while giving me a suspicious side-eye. “Do you mean the metaphor version or the not metaphor version?”
“Either. Both.” Another damn image flickers through my mind, and once again I’m so hard I can barely think straight. I close my eyes for a second as I muster some restraint and blow out a breath. “Yeah. Definitely both. Just not tonight.”
She frowns, looking adorably confused.
I take a step closer and pull the scarf gently from her hands before it can become a tripping hazard.
“Tell me something, Tavey. When you bought this dress, what did you imagine? Really?”
“You, taking it off,” she insists, with a silent obviously.
I step closer, unable to keep myself from reaching for her.
Not to take off the dress — not in any sense — but to ground us both.
To cup her cheek and feel her skin under mine.
To sear the moment into memory. Because this next bit is important.
She might not remember much of tonight. I don’t know yet just how drunk she is and she might not either.
But I want her to remember this.
I lean in and kiss her. Not her lips, but close.
Just to the left of her mouth. Close enough that I feel the heat of her breath on my cheek.
I keep my mouth against her skin as I ask, “How did you imagine me taking it off? Slowly? Quickly? Were you standing in front of me, or were you already lying on the bed?”
I pull away enough to meet her gaze. Those startling blue-gray eyes of hers have gone impossibly wide. Her pupils are blown so wide her eyes look almost navy.
She doesn’t answer my question. Just shakes her head, like she’s trying to formulate a thought and can’t.
“Details matter, love. You know that.” I graze her cheek with another kiss because I’m desperate to taste her and this is the most I can allow myself tonight. “So until you can tell me exactly how you want me to take this dress off you, we’re going to wait. Okay?”
She gives the faintest nod.
“Because I want to get this right,” I finish. “Don’t you?”
She nods again, clears her throat, and this time manages a faint, “Yes.”
“Good girl.”
For a moment neither of us moves.
Then I exhale slowly through my nose and take a deliberate step back. Because if I don’t put some distance between us right now, I’m not going to be able to do what comes next.
What comes next is the right thing.
The right thing, in this moment, is the hardest thing I’ve done since BUD/S.
And I survived BUD/S.
“Okay,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to find your pajamas. You’re going to change in the bathroom. Then you’re going to drink some water and take some Advil. And then you’re going to sleep.”
She blinks at me. Processing.
“Alone,” I add, because I can see her working up to the question.
“Alone,” she repeats flatly.
“For tonight.”
That lands differently. I can see it in the way her expression shifts — the flatness giving way to something more careful.
For tonight.
Not forever. Not a rejection. A timeline.
“Your pajamas,” I say, before she can overthink it. “Where’s your suitcase?”
She points at the rolling bag near the chair without a word, still watching me with those wide eyes that are doing absolutely nothing to help my restraint.
I crouch down and unzip it. Which — yes — is an intimate thing to do. Going through someone’s bag. But she’s not stopping me and the alternative is her tangled in her own luggage for the next twenty minutes.
I dig for a moment, pushing past the hanging bag contents, until my hand closes on something soft.
I pull it out.
A white tank top and sleep shorts with what appears to be a repeating pattern of tiny cartoon clouds.
I hold it up. “This?”
She stares at the pajamas. Then at me. Something flickers across her face that I can’t quite read.
“It doesn’t have a cinnamon roll on it,” I say, because that seemed to be important to her.
That startles a laugh out of her. Short and baffled, and entirely genuine.
“You remembered that?”
“I remember everything you say.”
The words come out more plainly than I intended. No softening. No deflection. Just fact.
Just the quiet acknowledgment that she’s the center of my universe.
She goes very still.
Then she takes the pajamas from my hands, fingers brushing mine, and disappears into the bathroom without another word.
I stand there for a moment in the quiet of the room, listening to the muffled sounds of her moving around on the other side of the door, and think about the fact that I just told her I remember everything she says.
Because I do.
I have filed away years of information about her. Every dry observation. Every tangential thought that arrives mid-sentence and derails the original point. Every piece of dragon lore. Every rambling story about books and family group chats and the structural injustice of office air conditioning.
All of it.
Filed away.
She talks through the door while she’s changing—a stream-of-consciousness explanation about Cinnamoroll who is apparently not a cinnamon roll but a cartoon character.
Then she moves on to a sleepover she’d rather forget and what sounds like a philosophy of personal identity that she’s working out in real time.
I don’t follow all of it.
But I love every word of it.
When she emerges, scrubbed clean of most of her makeup and with her hair down, in the cloud pajamas with the dragon clutch still somehow in her hand—she looks so entirely herself that something in my chest simply aches.
“Water,” I say quietly. “And Advil.”
She accepts both without argument this time, which tells me the long day is finally catching up with her. She sits on the edge of the bed and takes them with the gravity of someone following doctor’s orders, then looks up at me.
“Will you stay?” she asks. “Just until I fall asleep.”
I pull the chair closer to the bed and sit down. “Yeah.”
She lies back against the pillow, pulling the blanket up, and watches me for a moment with those half-closed eyes.
“Miller.”
“Hmm.”
“Why did you really say not tonight?”
I look at her steadily. “Because I want more than one night.”
She’s quiet for a long moment.
“Oh,” she says finally. Soft. Like something settling.
Then her eyes close.
I sit in the chair and watch her breathing even out. Watch the tension leave her face one degree at a time until she looks completely peaceful. Completely unguarded. The lonely dragon clip is on the nightstand. The ridiculous purse is on the floor. One bare foot has escaped from under the blanket.
She looks like herself.
She looks like everything.
I give it another ten minutes to make sure she’s really out. Then I stand, tuck the escaped foot back under the blanket, and set the water bottle where she’ll find it in the morning. Then I scatter a few more around just in case.
At the bathroom door, I pause.
Then I go in and close it quietly behind me.
Because I am only human.
And I have been in leather pants for six hours.
And the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with just told me she bought a dress for me to take off.
I brace one hand on the cool tile wall.
Close my eyes.
And think about exactly how I’m going to do that.
Slowly.
With considerable attention to detail.
Details matter, I told her.
They really, really do.