Fic: The Sweet Science, Part I
Title: The Sweet Science
Author: blacktop
Characters: John Reese, Joss Carter
Rating: Strong R
Warning: Fisticuffs, sexual congress
Word count: 6,500
Summary: In the arena of intimacy, a prize fight gives Reese and Carter the occasion for a softer kind of combat
Author’s note: In the aftermath of the disturbing case of the Nix sisters, described in the story Blue Alibi, Lionel Fusco tried to make amends to John Reese for perceived errors and missteps. Among the gifts Fusco gave were tickets to a boxing match. This is the story of that match.
Blue Alibi is linked here:
http://blacktop50.livejournal.com/2013/07/09/
Round One
Fidgeting in front of Carter’s door, Reese calculated how late he was.
He had said he would pick her up at six, which was an hour and forty-five minutes ago. He knew the Saturday night title bout didn’t actually start until nine; they still had plenty of time to get to the auditorium before the main event began.
To stop jangling nerves from overwhelming him, he ran a hand over the back of his head; the swelling at the nape meant a bruise was rising there. No headache, but a tenderness that was going to nag for the rest of the weekend, he figured.
He had shaded the truth about the fight’s opening bell.
Carefully building into his proposed schedule a suitable amount of time for Joss to get ready was a strategy Reese frequently employed. He figured for this big night out she needed extra time for dressing, fixing her hair, putting on make-up, fixing her hair again, changing jewelry three times, fixing her hair yet again.
Even so, with the Joss factor included, he was seriously running late. And she wouldn’t let him forget it, that was certain.
When Joss flung open the door to her apartment, the sloppy greeting he got from the old black-and-white dog seemed distinctly more enthusiastic than hers. He was happy that Shep seemed to be settling in well to life in the big city, his country ways dropped like a soiled toy as he adjusted to the predictability and comfort of the Carter household. Reese felt proud that he had found this foster home for the dog he had rescued from his last case.
Joss’s place was quiet now, the living room darkened. No smells of cooking from the kitchen, no sounds of video games or television from the hall. Which Reese interpreted as meaning Taylor was gone for the weekend.
He was glad that the boy had friends and an independent life that was blossoming under Joss’s watchful care; she held the reins tightly, for sure, but was slowly learning to relax her grip in the daily tussle of parenting. Though Reese occasionally gave her a friendly hint with a male approach to a particular issue, he deeply admired how she handled her son. She didn’t need his help with Taylor; she didn’t ask for it and he didn’t offer.
Now as Reese bent to fondle the dog’s plumed ears he looked up to see just where he stood with Joss.
She startled him by being all ready to go. Dark pants, nice silky red blouse, her hair up in a neat bun on the top of her head, little diamonds in her ears. She looked like she always did - put together and perfect.
Of course her sardonic greeting let him know he wasn’t quite up to snuff.
“You’re going like that?”
He hunched a little as her critical eyes travelled down his body: spittle mixed with dust on his jacket lapel, bloody streaks on the shirt front, a rip the size of a silver dollar at the right knee of his trousers.
His knuckles were scraped and he thought he could feel his lower lip swelling as she inspected his face. He figured he looked exactly like he had just emerged victorious from a fist fight. Which he had.
“Don’t worry. I brought a change of clothes.”
He wanted to reassure her, so he hitched up his index finger to show the zippered suit bag hooked over his left shoulder.
“Just give me fifteen minutes to shower and I’ll be ready to go.”
Joss looked skeptical at the claim. But the wry curve to her lips puckered into a full-blown kiss when she raised her face to meet his mouth. She drew her hand along his neck and over his jaw, guiding him to a deeper embrace than he had expected.
His lip throbbed, but the pain was well worth it.
“And you need to shave too.”
She wasn’t letting him off the ropes tonight at all.
XXXXXXXXX
Reese showered quickly in the little bath off their bedroom while Joss waited in the living room.
As he lathered up with the Palmolive she kept for him, he returned to the puzzle of exactly why Fusco had given him these ringside tickets.
Fusco hadn’t said a word, but Reese knew that his friend had received these front row passes as an off-the-books payment after a dicey encounter with some of his HR pals.
He knew also that Fusco really wanted to see the fight. The reigning welterweight champion Ferris Markum was pitted against the exciting challenger, Hector “Kid” Carrano. The cop had been talking for weeks about this matchup between the Monster from Muncie and the smooth-faced Dominican youngster.
So why would Fusco give up this chance to witness the top battle of the current New York season?
Reese hadn’t come to any definite conclusions. But he guessed his friend’s motive must be anchored in the unsettling case they had worked together in Upstate New York the previous month. He sensed Fusco believed he owed Reese some kind of debt for the way the deadly Nix case turned out.
Reese didn’t agree. But if Fusco wanted to salve some scratchy guilt by giving away coveted tickets, then he wasn’t about to turn down a chance like this to take Joss out for a special night on the town.
When he had first invited her, Joss said she knew nothing about boxing, except for occasionally watching the Gillette Friday Night Fights on television with her father when she was a small girl.
So in preparation for tonight’s match, he had given her several books on the sport.
To find them, he had spent a free afternoon pawing through bins of remaindered volumes in a shop near Headquarters. In a matter of hours he had been able to rebuild the collection of favorites he had abandoned when he joined the Agency.
He found beat up editions of Schulberg, Leibling, Hemingway, Mailer, Oates. Writers from boxing’s muscular past when no one feared mixing poetry with violence or pity or heartbreak.
Over the years, he had memorized a lot from all of them, with special attention to some blunt and lyrical essays in McIlvanney on Boxing.
He couldn’t carry the books with him, of course. Overseas assignments meant travelling light in both duffle and mental baggage.
So when he could escape Kara Stanton for a while, get away from their hellish missions and ghoulish affair, he would spend nights lying on lumpy hotel beds staring at the ceiling, recalling passages from Ernest Hemingway or Hugh McIlvanney.
Now he wanted to share some of that with Joss. But only the boxing parts, not the rest, not yet.
So one evening, when Taylor had gone to sleep and they were finishing the last glass from a bottle of blood red claret, he slipped into the recital of a paragraph from McIlvanney’s report of the final fight of bantam weight Welsh boxer Johnny Owen.
Reese couldn’t look Joss in the face while he spoke; this stuff was too close to the core for him. So he stared out the living room window into the soothing night sky as he talked.
McIlvanney’s story of poignant waste and sudden death meant something to him, touched something broken inside where he rarely lingered. He was so afraid he would falter as he said the words to her.
But to his surprise he was able to get through the passage without stuttering or shutting down after the first sentence:
“…it was boxing that gave Johnny Owen his one positive means of self-expression. Outside the ring, he was an inaudible and almost invisible personality. Inside, he became astonishingly positive and self-assured. He seemed to be more at home there than anywhere else. It is his tragedy that he found himself articulate in such a dangerous language.”
He had never repeated these words out loud before. Articulate in such a dangerous language.
They sounded so clean and sad when he shared them now. So much like the story of his own life that he shuddered a bit in the silence that enfolded them.
He was moved to see that these thoughts about a boxer dying young seemed to strike something in Joss too. He watched her eyes well up; when he finished she took a long gulp from the glass and ducked her head to wipe away a tear.
But he hadn’t wanted her to see boxing -- or his own life -- as just violence and brute defeat.
So to lighten the mood, he tipped up the wine bottle to drain it into his mouth. Then he threw out a gem from Leibling’s book, The Sweet Science:
“Boxing is an art of the people, like making love.”
He leaned into her to plant a flurry of kisses over her chin and throat and ear.
“So does that mean anybody can do it?”
Joss was sassy again, the melancholy gone as she smiled up at him.
“Sure, but it takes patience and practice and real skill to do it right.”
He rained down kisses until she laughed and begged for mercy and threw in the towel.
That he could joust with her like this, relaxed and unafraid of her judgment, was a miracle he wanted to enjoy without examination.
So they had retired to bed that night without saying anything further, taking their time to pleasure each other for a while.
XXXXXXXXX
The shower over, dressing took only a few more moments in the bathroom, just about as long as it took to shave, fasten the cufflinks, knot the tie, and run a comb through his hair. Fifteen minutes on the nose, just like he had promised.
When he walked into the living room he was unprepared for her reaction to his changed appearance.
He knew the tuxedo fit well, Finch had made sure of that. It was just a variation on his every day uniform, black and white as always, but the jacket was precision cut across the shoulders and narrow through the waist. The satin stripe down the trouser leg felt smooth, almost liquid under his palms, like slipping his fingers over the soft skin below Joss’s ear.
After some extraordinary efforts, Finch and the tailor had even managed to get the shirt collar to lie close to his neck without the gaping he usually experienced. But Reese still felt awkward, like he was wearing borrowed clothes to perform in somebody’s circus. The monkey suit was just way too fancy.
But Joss seemed to approve.
He liked the hushed intake of breath as she glimpsed him in the hallway. She watched him with a frank unwavering gaze as he walked towards her. And the slight pop of her eyes and smack of her lips when he paused in front of her was satisfying and sexy as hell.
Of course she recovered before she let any real expression of admiration leak out.
“You didn’t tell me this was a fancy dress ball, John!”
The bright tone conveying her accusing words wasn’t harsh and it sent little sparks skittering through him from head to groin.
She whirled her index finger around in the air between them and he turned a complete circle at her command.
“Well, since it’s for the title, people do get more dressed up than usual for a regular boxing match.” He felt a little sheepish being examined this way, so he kept the smart-ass out of his voice to avoid provoking her further.
But she sounded ticked off anyway.
“So now I look like a played out punk. I can see I’m going to have to step up my game here. I can’t go out with you looking this way.”
He thought she was beautiful and he said so.
“Yeah, well you would say that, wouldn’t you?”
“But, we need to get going.” He was alarmed that the time was slipping away as he watched new ideas flit across her face.
“Oh, no! You got your fifteen minutes. I get mine.”
Before he could object again, she was off the couch, scampering into the bedroom, slamming the door with enough force to make the floor boards jump all down the hall.
When Joss returned to the living room exactly fifteen minutes later, she was wearing a white satin robe and carrying blue spike heels. Her hair, which had been piled on her head, was now loose in soft waves over her shoulders.
“You’re going to the coliseum in a bath robe?”
He knew she wasn’t, but he couldn’t pass up the chance for a quick jab.
Without a word, she dropped the robe to a puddle around her bare feet and let him take a close look at the transformation she had wrought.
In place of the standard issue pants and blouse outfit, she wore a tightly molded dress in a stretchy royal blue fabric that clung to every curve.
The dress seemed to be made of long straps of cloth wound around her body, wrapped tightly like an Egyptian mummy. He could see the shape of her breasts and even the pulse of her heart beating between them. He could tell exactly where her belly button dipped in and where her thighs met her torso.
Her throat and shoulders were bare and gleaming. She laid a hand on his forearm, bending low to put on her shoes.
The skirt wasn’t short, thank goodness. But it tapered down over her hips and thighs following exactly the line of her figure until it ended in a narrow opening at her knees. The dress was so constricting that once she was in the high heels, her walk became a terrifying balancing act that defied gravity at every step.
And made her ass bunch and wiggle in a way that stirred him to distraction.
Once she was steady on her feet, Reese twirled his index finger in the air between them, just as she had done. Joss turned around slowly; with her back to him, she missed the big gulp of air he took.
“So what do you call this dress? What kind is it, I mean?” He was stammering just a bit, but he thought he disguised the falter well.
“It’s a bandage dress.”
She said it simply, while she smoothed her hands over her hips, as if it was an obvious fact and he was an expert in female fashion trends.
“You mean because it puts a hurt on a man?”
“Yeah, something like that, funny guy.”
She was laughing with him so he curved his arm around her waist and expanded on the idea.
“You’re so pretty you make medicine hurt!”
Her eyes started a little at that quip and at the distinctive Louisiana drawl he delivered it with.
“Where’d you get that kind of talk from?”
“On Poydras Street in New Orleans.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“I was tailing a man there a few years ago… Well, I won’t go into all that. But as I made my way down the street I passed a ragged little guy, thirties, maybe forty. He’d seen better days and he was probably drunk right then.”
Reese bent over slightly to illustrate the posture of the other man.
“But as we were just about side by side, this beautiful girl crosses in front of us. I mean, a real stunner. And this ragged Little Guy says to her, ‘You so pretty, you make medicine hurt!’ Girl smiles, Little Guy stumbles on his way.”
He shook his head and grinned in remembrance.
“Even hitting bottom like that, the Little Guy had swagger to burn. I never forgot it.”
She nodded and laughed and pressed her body against him. He let his hand drift down from the small of her back to her lush ass, noting how firmly the dress strapped her in.
He would have a hell of a time getting her out of it later.
Author: blacktop
Characters: John Reese, Joss Carter
Rating: Strong R
Warning: Fisticuffs, sexual congress
Word count: 6,500
Summary: In the arena of intimacy, a prize fight gives Reese and Carter the occasion for a softer kind of combat
Author’s note: In the aftermath of the disturbing case of the Nix sisters, described in the story Blue Alibi, Lionel Fusco tried to make amends to John Reese for perceived errors and missteps. Among the gifts Fusco gave were tickets to a boxing match. This is the story of that match.
Blue Alibi is linked here:
http://blacktop50.livejournal.com/2013/07/09/
Round One
Fidgeting in front of Carter’s door, Reese calculated how late he was.
He had said he would pick her up at six, which was an hour and forty-five minutes ago. He knew the Saturday night title bout didn’t actually start until nine; they still had plenty of time to get to the auditorium before the main event began.
To stop jangling nerves from overwhelming him, he ran a hand over the back of his head; the swelling at the nape meant a bruise was rising there. No headache, but a tenderness that was going to nag for the rest of the weekend, he figured.
He had shaded the truth about the fight’s opening bell.
Carefully building into his proposed schedule a suitable amount of time for Joss to get ready was a strategy Reese frequently employed. He figured for this big night out she needed extra time for dressing, fixing her hair, putting on make-up, fixing her hair again, changing jewelry three times, fixing her hair yet again.
Even so, with the Joss factor included, he was seriously running late. And she wouldn’t let him forget it, that was certain.
When Joss flung open the door to her apartment, the sloppy greeting he got from the old black-and-white dog seemed distinctly more enthusiastic than hers. He was happy that Shep seemed to be settling in well to life in the big city, his country ways dropped like a soiled toy as he adjusted to the predictability and comfort of the Carter household. Reese felt proud that he had found this foster home for the dog he had rescued from his last case.
Joss’s place was quiet now, the living room darkened. No smells of cooking from the kitchen, no sounds of video games or television from the hall. Which Reese interpreted as meaning Taylor was gone for the weekend.
He was glad that the boy had friends and an independent life that was blossoming under Joss’s watchful care; she held the reins tightly, for sure, but was slowly learning to relax her grip in the daily tussle of parenting. Though Reese occasionally gave her a friendly hint with a male approach to a particular issue, he deeply admired how she handled her son. She didn’t need his help with Taylor; she didn’t ask for it and he didn’t offer.
Now as Reese bent to fondle the dog’s plumed ears he looked up to see just where he stood with Joss.
She startled him by being all ready to go. Dark pants, nice silky red blouse, her hair up in a neat bun on the top of her head, little diamonds in her ears. She looked like she always did - put together and perfect.
Of course her sardonic greeting let him know he wasn’t quite up to snuff.
“You’re going like that?”
He hunched a little as her critical eyes travelled down his body: spittle mixed with dust on his jacket lapel, bloody streaks on the shirt front, a rip the size of a silver dollar at the right knee of his trousers.
His knuckles were scraped and he thought he could feel his lower lip swelling as she inspected his face. He figured he looked exactly like he had just emerged victorious from a fist fight. Which he had.
“Don’t worry. I brought a change of clothes.”
He wanted to reassure her, so he hitched up his index finger to show the zippered suit bag hooked over his left shoulder.
“Just give me fifteen minutes to shower and I’ll be ready to go.”
Joss looked skeptical at the claim. But the wry curve to her lips puckered into a full-blown kiss when she raised her face to meet his mouth. She drew her hand along his neck and over his jaw, guiding him to a deeper embrace than he had expected.
His lip throbbed, but the pain was well worth it.
“And you need to shave too.”
She wasn’t letting him off the ropes tonight at all.
XXXXXXXXX
Reese showered quickly in the little bath off their bedroom while Joss waited in the living room.
As he lathered up with the Palmolive she kept for him, he returned to the puzzle of exactly why Fusco had given him these ringside tickets.
Fusco hadn’t said a word, but Reese knew that his friend had received these front row passes as an off-the-books payment after a dicey encounter with some of his HR pals.
He knew also that Fusco really wanted to see the fight. The reigning welterweight champion Ferris Markum was pitted against the exciting challenger, Hector “Kid” Carrano. The cop had been talking for weeks about this matchup between the Monster from Muncie and the smooth-faced Dominican youngster.
So why would Fusco give up this chance to witness the top battle of the current New York season?
Reese hadn’t come to any definite conclusions. But he guessed his friend’s motive must be anchored in the unsettling case they had worked together in Upstate New York the previous month. He sensed Fusco believed he owed Reese some kind of debt for the way the deadly Nix case turned out.
Reese didn’t agree. But if Fusco wanted to salve some scratchy guilt by giving away coveted tickets, then he wasn’t about to turn down a chance like this to take Joss out for a special night on the town.
When he had first invited her, Joss said she knew nothing about boxing, except for occasionally watching the Gillette Friday Night Fights on television with her father when she was a small girl.
So in preparation for tonight’s match, he had given her several books on the sport.
To find them, he had spent a free afternoon pawing through bins of remaindered volumes in a shop near Headquarters. In a matter of hours he had been able to rebuild the collection of favorites he had abandoned when he joined the Agency.
He found beat up editions of Schulberg, Leibling, Hemingway, Mailer, Oates. Writers from boxing’s muscular past when no one feared mixing poetry with violence or pity or heartbreak.
Over the years, he had memorized a lot from all of them, with special attention to some blunt and lyrical essays in McIlvanney on Boxing.
He couldn’t carry the books with him, of course. Overseas assignments meant travelling light in both duffle and mental baggage.
So when he could escape Kara Stanton for a while, get away from their hellish missions and ghoulish affair, he would spend nights lying on lumpy hotel beds staring at the ceiling, recalling passages from Ernest Hemingway or Hugh McIlvanney.
Now he wanted to share some of that with Joss. But only the boxing parts, not the rest, not yet.
So one evening, when Taylor had gone to sleep and they were finishing the last glass from a bottle of blood red claret, he slipped into the recital of a paragraph from McIlvanney’s report of the final fight of bantam weight Welsh boxer Johnny Owen.
Reese couldn’t look Joss in the face while he spoke; this stuff was too close to the core for him. So he stared out the living room window into the soothing night sky as he talked.
McIlvanney’s story of poignant waste and sudden death meant something to him, touched something broken inside where he rarely lingered. He was so afraid he would falter as he said the words to her.
But to his surprise he was able to get through the passage without stuttering or shutting down after the first sentence:
“…it was boxing that gave Johnny Owen his one positive means of self-expression. Outside the ring, he was an inaudible and almost invisible personality. Inside, he became astonishingly positive and self-assured. He seemed to be more at home there than anywhere else. It is his tragedy that he found himself articulate in such a dangerous language.”
He had never repeated these words out loud before. Articulate in such a dangerous language.
They sounded so clean and sad when he shared them now. So much like the story of his own life that he shuddered a bit in the silence that enfolded them.
He was moved to see that these thoughts about a boxer dying young seemed to strike something in Joss too. He watched her eyes well up; when he finished she took a long gulp from the glass and ducked her head to wipe away a tear.
But he hadn’t wanted her to see boxing -- or his own life -- as just violence and brute defeat.
So to lighten the mood, he tipped up the wine bottle to drain it into his mouth. Then he threw out a gem from Leibling’s book, The Sweet Science:
“Boxing is an art of the people, like making love.”
He leaned into her to plant a flurry of kisses over her chin and throat and ear.
“So does that mean anybody can do it?”
Joss was sassy again, the melancholy gone as she smiled up at him.
“Sure, but it takes patience and practice and real skill to do it right.”
He rained down kisses until she laughed and begged for mercy and threw in the towel.
That he could joust with her like this, relaxed and unafraid of her judgment, was a miracle he wanted to enjoy without examination.
So they had retired to bed that night without saying anything further, taking their time to pleasure each other for a while.
XXXXXXXXX
The shower over, dressing took only a few more moments in the bathroom, just about as long as it took to shave, fasten the cufflinks, knot the tie, and run a comb through his hair. Fifteen minutes on the nose, just like he had promised.
When he walked into the living room he was unprepared for her reaction to his changed appearance.
He knew the tuxedo fit well, Finch had made sure of that. It was just a variation on his every day uniform, black and white as always, but the jacket was precision cut across the shoulders and narrow through the waist. The satin stripe down the trouser leg felt smooth, almost liquid under his palms, like slipping his fingers over the soft skin below Joss’s ear.
After some extraordinary efforts, Finch and the tailor had even managed to get the shirt collar to lie close to his neck without the gaping he usually experienced. But Reese still felt awkward, like he was wearing borrowed clothes to perform in somebody’s circus. The monkey suit was just way too fancy.
But Joss seemed to approve.
He liked the hushed intake of breath as she glimpsed him in the hallway. She watched him with a frank unwavering gaze as he walked towards her. And the slight pop of her eyes and smack of her lips when he paused in front of her was satisfying and sexy as hell.
Of course she recovered before she let any real expression of admiration leak out.
“You didn’t tell me this was a fancy dress ball, John!”
The bright tone conveying her accusing words wasn’t harsh and it sent little sparks skittering through him from head to groin.
She whirled her index finger around in the air between them and he turned a complete circle at her command.
“Well, since it’s for the title, people do get more dressed up than usual for a regular boxing match.” He felt a little sheepish being examined this way, so he kept the smart-ass out of his voice to avoid provoking her further.
But she sounded ticked off anyway.
“So now I look like a played out punk. I can see I’m going to have to step up my game here. I can’t go out with you looking this way.”
He thought she was beautiful and he said so.
“Yeah, well you would say that, wouldn’t you?”
“But, we need to get going.” He was alarmed that the time was slipping away as he watched new ideas flit across her face.
“Oh, no! You got your fifteen minutes. I get mine.”
Before he could object again, she was off the couch, scampering into the bedroom, slamming the door with enough force to make the floor boards jump all down the hall.
When Joss returned to the living room exactly fifteen minutes later, she was wearing a white satin robe and carrying blue spike heels. Her hair, which had been piled on her head, was now loose in soft waves over her shoulders.
“You’re going to the coliseum in a bath robe?”
He knew she wasn’t, but he couldn’t pass up the chance for a quick jab.
Without a word, she dropped the robe to a puddle around her bare feet and let him take a close look at the transformation she had wrought.
In place of the standard issue pants and blouse outfit, she wore a tightly molded dress in a stretchy royal blue fabric that clung to every curve.
The dress seemed to be made of long straps of cloth wound around her body, wrapped tightly like an Egyptian mummy. He could see the shape of her breasts and even the pulse of her heart beating between them. He could tell exactly where her belly button dipped in and where her thighs met her torso.
Her throat and shoulders were bare and gleaming. She laid a hand on his forearm, bending low to put on her shoes.
The skirt wasn’t short, thank goodness. But it tapered down over her hips and thighs following exactly the line of her figure until it ended in a narrow opening at her knees. The dress was so constricting that once she was in the high heels, her walk became a terrifying balancing act that defied gravity at every step.
And made her ass bunch and wiggle in a way that stirred him to distraction.
Once she was steady on her feet, Reese twirled his index finger in the air between them, just as she had done. Joss turned around slowly; with her back to him, she missed the big gulp of air he took.
“So what do you call this dress? What kind is it, I mean?” He was stammering just a bit, but he thought he disguised the falter well.
“It’s a bandage dress.”
She said it simply, while she smoothed her hands over her hips, as if it was an obvious fact and he was an expert in female fashion trends.
“You mean because it puts a hurt on a man?”
“Yeah, something like that, funny guy.”
She was laughing with him so he curved his arm around her waist and expanded on the idea.
“You’re so pretty you make medicine hurt!”
Her eyes started a little at that quip and at the distinctive Louisiana drawl he delivered it with.
“Where’d you get that kind of talk from?”
“On Poydras Street in New Orleans.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“I was tailing a man there a few years ago… Well, I won’t go into all that. But as I made my way down the street I passed a ragged little guy, thirties, maybe forty. He’d seen better days and he was probably drunk right then.”
Reese bent over slightly to illustrate the posture of the other man.
“But as we were just about side by side, this beautiful girl crosses in front of us. I mean, a real stunner. And this ragged Little Guy says to her, ‘You so pretty, you make medicine hurt!’ Girl smiles, Little Guy stumbles on his way.”
He shook his head and grinned in remembrance.
“Even hitting bottom like that, the Little Guy had swagger to burn. I never forgot it.”
She nodded and laughed and pressed her body against him. He let his hand drift down from the small of her back to her lush ass, noting how firmly the dress strapped her in.
He would have a hell of a time getting her out of it later.