No, they never had. Yes, they must have been that cold, or cruel, or absent. Maybe he’d even raised himself, mostly. She couldn’t remember him ever having any family, or even seeming like a young person, despite the fact that she’d seen him around town since what had to have been his early twenties.
And all that helped her prioritize his wounded vulnerability over her own fear. “You’re not going to do anything hideous, Jack. In fact you already almost did this. You picked me up, remember? And you didn’t do anything wrong or bad. So just do that, except without the lifting me and carrying me part,” she said while staying exactly where she was.
Even though every point of contact was now near unbearable. Her leg was starting to ache from holding it so carefully right where it was, rather than accidentally touch any more of his inner thigh than she already had. And god, the heat against the side of her face. It was like being pressed against an engine just as it revved past the point it could handle.
She even thought she could hear his heart hammering hard inside, until she realized just how loud that sound was. It seemed far too large and far too strange to be anything like that. It was probably something else—like a generator out back, or thunder in the distance, or maybe him clearing his throat before he answered.
“But picking you up was easy. Knowing I had to do it took my mind off making contact,” he said, his voice now so tense and desperate it only made her want to work harder at getting him through this.
And she knew how, too.
“Imagine the same thing again, then. I need your help. And the only way you can give it to me is by lowering your arms and curling them around my shoulders, and then just holding me likethat for a little while,” she said, and heard him let out an amazed breath somewhere above her head.
“Darn it, that’s so good, that’s so tricksy.”
“Got you, did it?”
“I’m already halfway there, despite my terror of hugging wrong.”
She let herself look at his right arm, and sure enough, it was now significantly closer to her body. Not quite there, and trembling with tension, but almost, almost. In fact, it was so almost that she found herself trembling a little, too. But she carried on. “Honestly, I don’t even know how wrong a hug could ever really be,” she said, and he answered way too fast.
Like his many mistakes were always loaded in the barrel of an emotional gun, inside him. “My hands go in the wrong place, accidentally. Only you think it’s not an accident. You think I did it on purpose, like that time I tried to get a bee out of Humphrey Holliwell’s hair and misjudged the size of my hand and the shape of his head and the distance between us and somehow stuck my finger in his ear. He thought it was a deviant thing, and reported me to the Committee for a Clean Town,” he said all in a big, jumbled rush.
Much to her horror.
“Oh mygod,Jack.”
“Exactly. So now do you get it?”
“Of course not, that is ridiculous and Humphrey is awful.”
She pictured him when she said it. That perpetually red face, those dead little eyes, the way he constantly barged everywhere like everything should make way for him. He’d once almost broken her door coming into the bookstore. Twice he’d come in to complain about books in her window, and ended up knocking something over.
It made her think of Jack, twice his size, carefully negotiatingevery turn, every corner, every delicate little trinket-filled revolving display stand. And of course that only made her madder on his behalf. Doubly so when he didn’t let it go.
“But it could still happen regardless. I could end up in one of your armpits.”
“Even if you do, I don’t care. You have my permission to plunge under there.”
“Yeah, and what if I crush you when I do? I just don’t know how much pressure to apply,” he protested. “I could shatter your ribs with my giant hands. Or pulverize your spine just by flexing my massive biceps.”
“Now it just sounds like you’re bragging.”
“Kid, I once ripped a toilet off a wall while trying to flush it. When I first got to how I am now, I regularly snapped handles off when I went to open things and yanked drapes down that I only wanted to close and smashed screens that I was sure I had just delicately tapped.”
“Yeah, and it’s been years since your first growth spurt. Not to mention only a few days since you held my ankle like a ball of spun sugar. You did it so lightly I can’t even remember what that pressure felt like, so stop worrying. And if you can’t stop worrying, then let me just—”
She didn’t pause to think. She just reached to her sides and got hold of his hands as best she could. Then when he didn’t immediately yank away, she slowly, slowly lowered them down. Inch by inch, in a way that felt like the right move in the moment. But less and less like the right move as time went on.
She could feel that heat, slowly warming the air between them. Building and building, until her sides felt as if they were about to burst into flames. Suddenly she found herself wishing she’d worn something thicker, because the thin cardigan andleaf-covered cotton dress she’d chosen were going to dissolve any second now.
Then his red-hot hands would be on her bare skin.
And not just any bare skin, either. The soft, sensitive strips of it just to either side of her breasts. Barely a thumb stroke away from touching those heavy curves—and especially for him, with those enormous hands. If he did anything but keep all his fingers pressed together, he’d end up touching her there.
It was the reason she eased them down, and more toward her back.
But that didn’t help. Now that prickling, overheated air was on the curve of her body just before her ass. The tips of his fingers were definitely going to reach the dimple she had at the base of her spine. Maybe even the first swell of her there, where the elastic of her panties would probably be obvious through her dress.
