Written a while back as a feel-better ficlet for a friend of a friend after some minor surgery. Don't ask me why I didn't post it until now.
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Hidden
By ZionAngel
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Tony wakes up feeling groggy. He doesn't know what time it is, but it must still be early - he's still far too tired to have gotten the full night's sleep he needs after long missions. He feels cold and realizes that he's managed to move the blanket off of his back in his sleep. He pulls it back and rolls over to curl up with Pepper, only to find her side of the bed empty and cold.
He sits up enough to search the dark room, and finds the door of the walk-in closet open. He sees her moving inside, slipping out of her dressing gown and hanging it up. The soft white light inside gives her naked skin a pale glow, casting shadows that accentuate the lines and curves of her body. He moves across the bed for a better view without thinking, on pure instinct. She turns to face his way, and he admires the length of her body for several long seconds before his eyes return to her face, and he realizes that her hair and makeup are done. It takes a bit of concentration before he remembers that technically, he's supposed to go to a meeting today. But when he came back exhausted late last night, she told him not to worry about it, to sleep in as long as he needed to and let her go in his place.
His attention returns to Pepper as she slips into a pair of lacy pink panties, then a matching bra that hides her breasts from sight. He loves her in lace, but it's not nearly as sexy as the real thing. She slips a crisp white blouse over her shoulders, and her nimble fingers close each button, working from the bottom up, slowly covering her slim waist and leaving a faint shadow of cleavage at the top. She turns around to pick up a navy blue pencil skirt and she steps into it, one long, lean, graceful leg at a time. The skirt covers her thighs, but still leaves her toned calves the shape of her pert little ass visible. Better than nothing, he supposes. The matching blazer comes next, further obscuring the finer details of her body. Finally, she steps into her black stilettos, the ones with the red bottoms; it's the only thing she's wearing that adds to her sexiness instead of hiding it.
It's when she's fluffing up her hair and putting on her earrings and watch that it really sinks in just how incredibly sexy that whole scene was. For all the countless women he's slept with over the years, for all the times he's slept with this woman, he's never watched a single one of them put their clothes on. Maybe it's the gracefulness of the act, maybe it's the thrill of knowing what lies beneath, but there's just something so enticing and arousing about watching seeing that gorgeous, sexy body covered by layers of progressively plain clothing. The thought of so much sexiness buried under such an unassuming and conservative exterior, fooling everyone in the world but him and leaving only the tiniest hint of what's really underneath…
Well, maybe he's not so tired that he can't drag her down to the bed for a quick unveiling before she heads out.