“Are you kidding? I feel great. I feel like I could go for a run.”
He’d warned her, but she still wasn’t quite prepared for his sudden dash around the living room. She had to do an embarrassing gasp and hang on tighter, and even more so when he went for the stairs. It was like being suddenly six foot five, while standing on the bow of a rocking ship. She dared to look and saw the steps over his shoulder, practically rolling like waves as he ran her up them.
She almost screamed. She almost demanded he stop.
But when she went to do both, something else came out instead. It just swelled up through her body, bright and brilliant and so unfamiliar it took her a second to recognize what was happening. For a moment she was sure she was going to be sick, and then it became clear—this wasgiddiness.
She was actually giggling with giddiness, like some ridiculous kid.
Shefeltlike a ridiculous kid—and especially so when he suddenly dumped her on her bed. The last time anyone had done that she’d been four years old, and in major trouble from the tickle monster. In fact, the memory was so strong she almost expected him to do it. He’d lean down and dig his knuckles into her ribs, just like someone else used to do. And though the thought of someone else dimmed this fun somewhat, it didn’t darken everything completely.
She was still laughing when she realized where they were.
In her bedroom.
On her bed.
With him almost straddling her legs, and his knees digging into her mattress, and both of them breathing hard in a way that had seemed innocent a moment ago...but now kind of didn’t. Even she could see he was staring at her too intently, for fun playground antics. His blue eyes had gone dark, despite the sun starting to strain through her thin curtains. And there were a million little things about him that she wouldn’t really have recognized, if she hadn’t seen them so many times in his movies.
His lips were parted, the way they did before he was about to really kiss some starlet, and those heavily lashed eyelids of his had dipped real low. However, nothing beat the way his big chest had started going up and down and up and down.
Like heaving bosoms, her mind offered randomly.
Before she stomped on it and shoved it in a cupboard somewhere. Even if this was some kind of semi-sexual thing, he probably wouldn’t want to be compared to a woman from an old-school romance. He probably wouldn’t want anything she could do, in fact, because the last time she’d had something like intimate contact with someone she’d accidentally punched the guy in the face.
Good God, she couldn’t possibly let him see her fumbling, punching attempts at something she knew nothing about. She couldn’t, she couldn’t.
“I still really need the bathroom!” she said, then wished she hadn’t gone with that exclamation point on the end. The words themselves sounded bad enough, but with the panic placed on top...it was no wonder he somehow ended up halfway across the room. He probably thought she was going to pee on him.
Though that wasn’t really what his expression seemed to say. It was less disgusted and more sort of hurt—as if she’d cringed away from a slap he was never going to give or maybe balked over his disgusting advances. Of course, both those things were completely ridiculous. She was certain that no one like him could ever think like that.
But either way she felt the need to draw a line through them.
“Actually, you know...I’m all right. Maybe you should come back.”
“I should come back?”
“Yeah, come over,” she said, and was proud of herself for doing it. It put her out on a limb and it kind of made her throat catch, but she felt she covered her fear admirably.
Though like always, she was proven wrong shortly afterward.
“Even if you kind of sound like you’d rather I stayed over here?”
“Just ignore my voice. There’s a frightened nun living in my throat.”
He went to answer and had to stop to make room for the most awesome laugh. It was all surprised and full of joy, and it followed through into his words.
“Who are you? I must be dreaming you. Did I die, and this is my reward?”
“If your idea of being rewarded after death is a five-foot-five-inch hermit who makes you run right off a bed, you probably need to rethink your priorities.”
“You’re five foot five? Seriously? I thought you were smaller.”
It’s just because I hunch, and now have one leg shorter than the other.
“It’s just because you’re enormous. You’d probably think King Kong was kind of petite if you ever got the chance to meet him.”
“How would I ever get the chance to meet King Kong?”
