“Then tell me what you would expect. Tell me what you’d like to see.”
“I don’t know. Something like this, I guess.”
No, don’t, abort, abort, she told herself. But the trouble was, it just felt too easy to do. She already had hold of his hand. She just had to lift it, and lay it down on one of her shoulders. Then when he seemed fine with that, she eased it a little farther. She slid it around her back, nice and slow and chaste. Nothing at all, really.
But she heard him swallow thickly as she did. She saw his eyes widen the moment his thumb accidentally brushed the nape of her neck, and it made her tremble just a little. And she knew whathe was thinking, as that big hand swallowed up the path over her back.
That she looked so small beneath his touch.
That he could have swallowed her whole with it, no problems at all.
But of course that only meant he took more care. He didn’t do a single thing she didn’t urge him to. He just kept following her lead until his arm was fully around her, then let her sit back into that warm, protective circle, one of her hands still holding his as she gently rested it just over her collarbone.
Barely anything at all, really.
Butgod, it felt like everything.
It felt like too much and not enough, all at the same time. And especially when he moved just a little, and his fingertips skimmed underneath the neckline of her blouse. Accidentally, she knew, and barely making contact. But when he brushed the bare skin there, just above her breast…
She couldn’t help reacting. She let out a little sound—most likely shocked seeming to him. And sure enough, he immediately tried to pull away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” he said. But god, it was hard to let that stand.Impossibleto let it stand. She held on to that hand without even intending to.
“It’s okay, Jack. It’s just my shoulder.”
“But it feels so bare, though. So silky soft.”
“Not as soft as I am lower down,” she said, and knew she’d made it sound too suggestive. She knew she had. She’d leaned too much towardhe actually wants to have sexinstead of whatever practice he’d imagined, and now he was going to pull away. She even braced herself for it.
Then heard him whisper, “Show me where.”
So she did it before her mind could tell her otherwise.
She ease his hand down, lower, lower, to where those buttons began.
Andlord, his expression when she did. It was even better than the one he’d given her at the hand over his. The gaze he flicked down and then up to her was almost heavy, and a little dark. Sultry now, like he was sinking into this, even as he tried to resist. And whatever resistance was there, it didn’t last long.
Because he muttered, “This can’t be the right order to do things in.”
But he touched that first button. He stroked it with just the tip of his finger, in a way that drove her even wilder than she already was. That summer heat was now apoplectic, it was making her squirm. “So what do you think the right order is, then?” she asked, head full of all the things he could possibly mean. Kissing, she thought, he wanted to kiss her first. And it was true—his face was very close to hers now. His breath caressed her lips every time he spoke. It filled her with the scent of bonfires, smoke, those cigarettes that couldn’t have been cigarettes at all.
They smelled too good.
They tempted her to taste him, even as he murmured more hesitant things. “I don’t know. Something more chaste. Something more affectionate somehow. Something I don’t know how to do. I have no idea how to do this, I don’t know what I’m doing. This was just supposed to be coffee,” he said, so breathlessly she arched toward him, even as she laughed.
“Yeah, but you know what coffee means, Jack.”
“I don’t, I’ve no idea, tell me, tell me, say it with words.”
And not just with my body, my lips almost on yours, she filled in for him.
So she did. She spelled it out. The thing that hung unspoken in the air.
“Sex,” she whispered, only when she did he didn’t give in theway she had imagined. He pulled back. He looked at her, wonderingly. His gaze ate up every flicker of expression on her face, every thrum of the skin over her heart, every quickened breath. Like he was seeing it all for the first time, even though they’d been sitting here for what felt like hours.
“What are you talking about, kid? It can’t possibly.”
“Of course it can, of course it does, how could you think anything else?”
She laughed again. Shook her head, even as she realized.
