Her lips against his bare skin was near the top of the list.
He laughed silently at his ridiculous levels of need when it came to her.
"What's so funny?"
Ruth sounded half-asleep, but it also gave her voice a deeper timbre to it, making it sound husky.
Sexy.
Well, hell, she always sounded sexy, but with the deeper tones and half-lidded eyes that she turned in his direction, he wished that he could wake up to this every morning.
He felt her shift again and before he knew what she was up to, he felt her poke him in the side.
The noise that came out of his mouth was partly a gasp of surprise and the rest of it? A laugh.
He tried to cover it with a cough, but as Ruth sat up, she gave him a look that said she'd heard the laugh.
The look in her eyes was more triumph than curiosity and a moment later, he realized why.
Ruth smiled and leaned closer, finding that exact spot again.
Nick winced and tried to dodge out of the way, but he'd slept in an odd position, so he wasn't as fast as he'd be normally.
She managed to poke him just in the right spot and he laughed, the sound almost a gasp of sound.
"Hey, now." He tried to catch her hands, but she easily dodged his attempt. "That's not nice."
He saw a look on her face that said she was thinking about how to follow up. She ended up sitting back on the couch, her legs folded under her.
She gave him a curious little smile. "I'm not going to press my luck," she explained, "it's nice to know you're ticklish, too."
"It's inconvenient, I guess." She frowned and he realized that he hadn't exactly been clear. "Letting people know your weak spots."
She smiled at that. "It means that they can take advantage of them." Her expression dimmed a little. "Do you like being tickled?"
He shook his head, just a minute movement back and forth. "Not really. Even the threat of it..."
"Your use of the word 'threat' is more telling than anything else." Ruth's smile was more chagrin than anything else. "I won't do it again."
Nick reached out and gathered her close. "There are a number of ways I'd love for you to put your hands on me."
Ruth's smile brightened at that. "And I was just embarrassed that being tickled basically put a stop to... wherever we were going with that last night."
Nick's eyes opened wider at that, and he lifted his hand to his beard. "Maybe I should have trimmed it?"
Ruth leaned in. She put one hand on his shoulder and with the other she reached up to touch his beard.
He'd handled his facial hair thousands of times, cutting and trimming, but it was probably impossible for him to tickle himself.
"What if I did that?" He watched her carefully for any reaction.
She sat there, still. Looking back at him with just a little bit of confusion on her face.
"If I trim, make it a little closer to the skin, it might not trigger that reaction. What do you think?"
Ruth looked like she was holding back, hesitating.
"Or..." He shrugged and then nodded, coming up with an idea. "Maybe I should shave it off?"
