"The Couch Is Taken, By the Way"

The apartment smelled like fresh linen and vanilla candle wax. Nate dropped his keys on the counter and kicked off his shoes, already halfway through a yawn when he rounded the corner into the living room and stopped.

Bessie was on the couch.

Not sitting. Sprawled. Laid out across the full length of it on her side like she'd been poured there, one arm tucked lazily behind her head, the other resting on the deep valley between her hip and her obliques. She was wearing something he'd never seen before, a blue lace set, sheer and floral, the kind of thing that looked like it belonged on someone who didn't have the musculature of a Greek statue. Delicate straps crisscrossed her midsection, a small white fabric bow knotted between her chest and her stomach like a gift wrap accent on a body that could deadlift a refrigerator. A thin blue choker circled her throat.

She glanced over at him with those wide blue eyes, freckled cheeks going slightly pink and offered a half-smile that was almost apologetic.

"Hey," she said, like she hadn't just detonated his entire evening.

"Hey yourself," Nate managed. He didn't move from the doorway.

The thing about Bessie was the contradiction. It was always the contradiction. That soft blonde hair falling in loose waves past her shoulders, the scatter of freckles across her nose, the way she'd look up at him with an expression halfway between curious and uncertain, and then the rest of her. Every single inch of the rest of her.

Her arm behind her head put her bicep on full, unapologetic display. A thick, rounded peak that bunched against her forearm, the split between the two heads clearly visible even in this relaxed position. Her tricep hung heavy beneath, a dense horseshoe of muscle that pressed into the cushion. Her forearm was corded, veins tracing faint roads beneath the skin from her wrist to the crook of her elbow.

"I bought this today," she said quietly, plucking at one of the blue straps with her fingertip. "The lady at the store helped me pick it out. She was... really enthusiastic."

"I bet she was."

Bessie shifted slightly, and the motion sent a ripple across her midsection that made the lace tremble. Her abs were stacked in a deep, blocky six-pack, each segment thick and separated by shadows you could lose a coin in. The ridges didn't flatten when she lay on her side, they carved inward, the rectus muscles holding their shape with a solidity that suggested they'd look exactly the same standing, sitting, or upside down. Her obliques fanned out from them in hard, angled slabs, swooping toward her hips where the straps of the lingerie bit gently into dense muscle. The skin over all of it had a faint sheen, like she'd just showered.

"Come sit," she said, then looked at the couch she was entirely occupying and let out a small laugh. "Somewhere."

He walked over and sat on the edge of the coffee table across from her instead. This put him at eye level with the landscape of her torso, the impossible architecture of it. The white fabric tied between her bra and the waistband of the strappy bottoms bunched against her abs, the knot sitting right in the groove between her upper and lower rows. The lace was so fine and delicate against her that it almost looked absurd, like wrapping ribbon around a cannonball.

"You're staring," Bessie said. Not accusing. Almost hopeful.

"You're on my couch in lingerie. I think staring is the baseline response."

She tucked her chin slightly, the blush deepening across her freckles, and that small movement made her traps rise, thick slabs of muscle that climbed from her shoulders toward her neck, giving her upper body a tapered, powerful silhouette even lying down. Her shoulders were rounded and capped with dense delts, the striations visible at the front where the strap of the bra crossed over.

"I wasn't sure about the blue," she said. "The lady said it matched my eyes but I thought it might look... I don't know. Weird. With all-" She gestured vaguely at herself. At the quad that was currently straining the lower straps, a sweep of muscle that started at her hip and swelled outward in a teardrop of impossible proportion before tapering toward her knee. The inner head of it pressed against the outer head with a visible separation line. Her hamstrings, from what he could see, were thick braids of muscle that curved behind her thigh.

"It doesn't look weird," Nate said.

"You paused."

"I was loading the word that comes after 'doesn't look weird.' Give me a second. There's a lot to process."

She laughed then a real one, bright and unguarded, and the motion made her whole body tighten for a moment. Her abs crunched inward, her intercostals flared along her ribs like fingers, and her pecs flexed beneath the sheer blue lace, the upper fibers pressing against the fabric with a fullness that threatened the structural integrity of the floral embroidery.

She propped herself up on her elbow, and the shift in position changed everything. Her lat spread outward beneath her arm like a wing unfolding, the thick fan of muscle visible from her armpit down to her waist, giving her torso a dramatic V-taper that the delicate lace could do nothing to conceal. Her serratus muscles jutted out along her ribs in a row of hard, finger-like ridges. The arm supporting her weight was locked and solid, her forearm a map of tendons, her bicep swelling against the pressure.

"I almost didn't wear it," she admitted, looking down at herself. "I tried it on in the fitting room and I felt kind of silly. Like I was playing dress-up."

"Bessie."

"What?"

"You look—" He stopped. Recalibrated. Tried to find a word that could hold all of it, the lace, the muscle, the freckles, the way she was looking at him like she was the one who was nervous. "You look like you were invented to ruin people."

Her lips parted. Her blue eyes went wide for a half-second, and then she looked away, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear with fingers that could probably crush a walnut.

"That's... a lot," she murmured.

"The couch is taken, by the way," he said.

She blinked. "What?"

"You're on the whole couch. There's nowhere to sit."

Bessie looked down at the space she was occupying all of it, her body a topography of muscle and lace stretching from one armrest nearly to the other, and then looked back at him with a tiny, mischievous grin that broke through the shyness.

"I could make room," she said. She didn't move.

"You could."

"Or you could come here." She patted the narrow sliver of cushion in front of her stomach, in front of that wall of abdominal muscle, that impossible midsection that looked carved from warm marble and wrapped in blue ribbon. Her obliques flexed as she shifted her hips back an inch to make space that didn't really exist.

Nate looked at the sliver. Looked at her. Looked at the way the late afternoon light from the window caught the faint sheen on her skin and the translucent blue of the lace and the soft, almost vulnerable expression on her freckled face.

"The things I do for you," he said, and moved to the couch.

She made a small, satisfied sound and curled toward him immediately, one massive arm draping over his side, her abs pressing warm and ridged against his back. He could feel every individual block of muscle through his shirt. Her quad settled heavy against his leg, a solid weight like a sandbag wrapped in silk.

"Comfortable?" she whispered against the back of his neck.

"I'm being held hostage by a woman in lingerie. Comfortable isn't the word."

"What's the word?"

He laced his fingers through hers, her hand thick and strong, grip effortlessly firm even when she was being gentle, and pulled her arm tighter around himself.

"Lucky," he said.

Bessie pressed her face into his shoulder and didn't say anything for a long time. He could feel her smiling.