"I'm not coming out in this."
"Oh, come on! It can't be that bad."
"You're not in here."
"And you have no idea how much I want to be."
The way her voice pitched low made Wrex lean out of the doorway to look at her. His bottom half was still hidden behind the doorway. "Yeah?"
"Oh, definitely. I didn't buy that for you so I could look at it in the box. I want to see you in it, now get your scaly ass out here so I can ogle you."
He scowled at her before hanging his head in defeat. "Turn off your omnitool first."
"What? Why?"
"Because I need to know that there won't be any pictures of this."
"Even if I promise to save them for personal use only?"
"Shepard . . ."
"Okay, okay, geez. It's off."
Wrex hesitated for a moment, then walked out of the bathroom. He was nude except for a rust-red loincloth that was belted around his hips with a matching leather strap. It swung a bit when he walked and left little to the imagination. Shepard's jaw dropped and she stared at him with wide eyes that raked up and down his body with such heat he could feel it across the room.
"So, uh . . . what do you think?"
She didn't say anything at first, didn't even move at all, but soon regained her composure enough to croak, "Wow, Wrex. That's . . . wow."
"Good or bad? You're killing me here."
Like a cat, she unfolded herself from the bed and walked slowly over to him, hips swaying. She stopped a hairsbreadth from him and ran her finger from his collarbone down to the belt encircling his waist. "You are the sexiest thing I've ever seen."
Wrex's laugh rumbled through the room like a landslide. "You have a shitty frame of reference, then."
"No, I mean it." She pulled her shirt up over her head and leaned on his offered arm so she could work her pants off her ankles. He watched her strip with a bemused uptilt to his eyebrow ridges.
"Planning something, Shepard?"
"I'm planning on getting you out of that thing so I can screw you through the mattress, but first—"
"What? Oh, hell no."
"Oh, hell yes."
"This is payback for that lapdance I asked you for, isn't it?" He groaned as she stepped back and seated herself on the edge of the bed. Meanwhile, the intro of some upbeat technopop song floated down from the recessed speakers in the ceiling.
"You installed a pole in my cabin, Wrex."
"I took it back out again."
"After I threatened to never sleep with you again."
"I could have called your bluff." He was psyching himself up for what he was about to do. It couldn't be as bad as facing down a thresher maw, or beating the crap out of a geth colossus with his bare hands, right? Oh, who was he kidding.
"Stop stalling and start dancing."
"Sheparrrrrrd—"
"I'll take off my bra if you do it."
"I've seen your tits before, darling."
"Oh, I get 'darling-ed' now? Fine." She let her hand wander across her breasts as she said, "I'll do that thing you like."
"We did that yesterday."
"No, babe, I mean the other thing you really like."
Oh, that thing. Wrex's guts felt like they'd been dipped in lava and he started getting hard just thinking about it. "One dance."
"Yep, just one is fine."
He sighed and stared up at the ceiling as if praying for mercy, then started shifting his weight awkwardly back and forth to the beat. Shepard smiled and leaned back on her elbows to watch. The song carried on and he grew bolder as each silly move got a laugh out of her until he was gyrating around her room, loincloth flapping, like an asari stripper on Hallex. Finally, the song was over and he shoved Shepard back onto the bed and climbed over her, ravishing her neck until she was breathless with laughing.
"That was awesome, dear," she said, cupping his face in her small hands. His mouth twisted up in a grimace that could have been a smile, if krogans did that sort of thing. Wrex tried to tell himself that he wasn't the smiling type, but she tended to bring that out in him no matter his thoughts on the subject.
"Glad you liked it. Now, about my payment—"
Shepard rolled her eyes, then kissed him. "Once a mercenary, always a mercenary."
