“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that and know you weren’t being serious. Kind of like hearing it come out half full of laughter.”
“It’s going back to all full of fury in a second.”
“No it’s not; come on. Just go for it.”
“What exactly am I going for here? I mean, once I’m behind you, what then?”
“Then you get me in a headlock.”
“Oh my god this is…this is the most ludicrous self-defense class I’ve ever been a part of.”
“How many have you been to prior to right now?”
“Like twenty. In my head. While watching Kill Bill.”
“And you think this is ridiculous? In that movie she escapes a coffin by punching it. This is completely reasonable by comparison—I mean all you have to do is grab ahold of my shoulder and haul yourself around me. Just think of it like mountain climbing. My body is a rocky outcrop you need to get past,” he said, which in some ways made it easier. She managed to get her hands on him, at the very least.
It was just keeping her hands on him, once they were there. He was almost impossibly muscular and solid seeming, in a way she wasn’t really ready for. It was like grabbing the haunches of some enormous and powerful animal, right before it pounced.
And then there was the heat.
Was it normal for a human being to be this hot? Suddenly she was sweltering—though after a second she realized it wasn’t just the contact. It was all the places where no contact was happening at all. His hand was almost but not quite touching her ankle, as though waiting to support her if she lost her balance. But it didn’t feel like the safeguard he obviously intended. It felt like it was supercharging the air between them. She could almost make out the imaginary blister it was raising on her skin—but what could she say? Touching me is bad but not touching me is worse? That sounded insane. She would never be able to fully explain it.
So she simply went for it instead. She got hold of his shoulder and hauled herself around just like he had suggested, the move surprisingly easy now that she was motivated. It barely even occurred to her that her breasts brushed his arm and her butt was supremely visible to him for a good few seconds. There was no self-consciousness at all, despite the proximity of her gross body to his fantastic one.
Or at least there wasn’t until she had to put her arm around his neck.
Then things got kind of…awkward and sweaty and weird. She had to almost force her arm into position, but even then she couldn’t get it to go right against his throat. There was something too unsettling about it—too violent, she thought, as she leaned in, even though there wasn’t anything violent about it at all. If anything, it seemed more like a bizarre kind of embrace. Any closer and you could probably call it a cuddle.
And that was when it clicked.
“You know I think maybe that’s enough.”
“You do? But you’re not even in the right spot.”
The right spot is too much like intimacy, she thought.
But of course she couldn’t say it aloud. She just had to try, pushing her arm uncomfortably deep into the space between his enormous jaw and his throat. Breasts squashing against his broad back, legs too spread around his side, every inch of her bristling and bristling. The urge to back off was a living thing, writhing underneath her skin. It drove her steadily to the point where she had to pull away again.
And she would have, if it wasn’t for his laugh.
God she’d never been so grateful to hear him laugh.
“Letty, honestly, is that what you think a headlock is?”
“Well, your head is locked by my arm.”
“My head is not locked by your arm. I could blink and get out of this.”
“Because you’re a goddamn wrestler at the top of his game. You get out of headlocks for a living.”
“Okay, fair enough, fair enough, just…here, lemme show you how to—”
She didn’t mean to jerk away when his hands closed over her forearm. It just happened, like feeling pain when someone stabbed you in the gut. She tried to grit her teeth against it, but still it came.
“Easy, easy.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“It’s okay. It’s cool. You want me to just tell you how?”
“No. You can…you can put your hands on me.”
“All I’m going to do is just…”
He reached up again, and this time it was better.
Partly because he went real slow.
Mostly because he was weirdly excellent at saying soothing things. That laid-back drawl she used to loathe so much swung effortlessly into a low sweetness. And each time she tensed, he gave her a little more of it. He doled it out like good medicine, until she was barely thinking about the closeness of their bodies at all. Instead, she focused on squeezing right where he told her to squeeze. At first gently, but then as hard as he prompted her to go. Go on, he urged, so she did. She tensed the muscles in her arm and tightened one hand around the other, until her heart was pounding and her breath was coming fast.
With the effort, she told herself.