This time, she couldn’t fight the tears.
One just streaked down her left cheek before she could stop it. And when she went to swipe it away, he got there before she could. He swiped it for her, with his thumb. Held her gaze, as if he never wanted to let it go. And in that moment, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to.
This was as good as life got, and she knew it.
“That was even cooler than the whole humiliate-me speech.”
“I could write this down for you, too, if you want.”
“No, no that’s okay. I now have it burned into my brain forever.”
He grinned then.
He grinned so wide it warmed her insides.
“Well, that sounds like a start to me.”
“As starts go it was pretty fucking good.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Instead of answering right away, she took his hands in hers. Maneuvered them slowly away from her head and her hair, until they were spread beneath hers over her open books.
That way, she didn’t have to do this while he was holding her face.
It was hard enough as it was, without him drowning her good sense in affection.
“The rest of me to catch up.”
“Tell me which part is lagging behind.”
“The part that says you want me.”
“I thought we covered that.”
“No, we covered emotional damage. Now we have to get into the enormous fucking disparity between the way you look”—she waved a hand in front his face, then her own—“and the way I look. Because even if we pretend for a second that you are Bob and I am Betty and neither of us have any connection to each other at all, you still have to admit that Bob is way, way, way hotter than Betty.”
He snorted and shook his head.
“I don’t have to admit that at all.”
“So you’re going to claim, objectively speaking, that you are not hotter than me.”
“Actually, I’m going to claim objectively speaking that the other night I shot my load all over your back after about thirty seconds of fondling your right breast. Your move, Counselor.”
“I don’t have a move, damn it, you just fucked my move.”
“Yeah, and I came really, really embarrassingly fast when I did it.”
“It wasn’t embarrassing okay, it was—” she started, but then couldn’t finish.
He had been talking in the abstract. She was referring to the real thing.
And the real thing was complicated and weird and scary.
“It was what, Letty?”
“You know what.”
“So lemme get this straight: you get that I came so fast because of your hot tits, and the fact that I did come fast turns you on, and you are fully aware that this means I must want you—”
Now it was her turn to cut him off.
Mostly because he’d just said hot tits, and she needed a second to gather herself.
“I’m not fully aware of that at all. I need way more evidence to prove this hypothesis.”
“How about…when I turned tickling into a dry hump?”
“I don’t remember things happening exactly like that.”
“And when I almost kissed you, in the aftermath.”
“Okay, see I didn’t know that you almost kissed me. I thought—”
“Oh, and then there’s the fact that I got hard when you rubbed all over my body in the pool.”
She covered her face with her hands at that. She didn’t have a choice. It was like a reflex, like he’d hit her elbows with a tiny hammer and they’d jolted up—though she was glad of them once they were there. Her face was burning. Her eyes would not stop staring wildly in his direction, even though she could only see the insides of her fingers now. And it muffled the shock in her voice a little.
Though obviously, it couldn’t do anything about the words.
“Oh my god, I thought you thought I was a pervert. I thought that’s why you freaked out.”
“Well, now you know otherwise. I was actually the pervert who had to spend five minutes breathing hard in a dark locker room just to get back some of his control. And by breathing hard I mean jerking off.”
“You jerked off in the locker room while I was in the pool panicking?”
“I might have. It depends how actually outraged you are.”
“I am very outraged. Extremely outraged.”
“God, I know I—”
“Tell me more about it and I might forgive you.”
Now it was his turn to be shocked—though obviously he was much better at it than her. He didn’t hide his face. He let her see it all in dazzling detail.
“Oh you asshole, I thought you were actually mad at me for a second.”
“I am mad at you. And the penalty is you confessing everything.”
He raised an eyebrow, half panicked and half incredulous.
“What, like every filthy thought I ever had about you? You realize I only have around sixty years left of my life, right? I was hoping to visit the Grand Canyon before I die.”
“The Grand Canyon can wait. I need details, if you want to convince me.”
“Christ, okay. Um…all right…”