“But the wall-tossing part,” Peter said, reaching down to take the computer off of her lap. “That’s where I’m feeling the pressure to suspend a little too much disbelief.” He closed it and put it onto the concrete floor, on the far side of the boxes. “Sex like that can’t be comfortable for anyone, especially Loretta.”
“It’s not about comfort,” she said. “It’s hot. It’s I need you now, and I can’t wait. Don’t get me wrong. Beds are great. They’re lovely, and yes, you’re right, most people make love in the glorious comfort of a bed, but I write those non-bed scenes to show the height and the power of the characters’ need and emotion.”
He came over to her and held both of his hands out. “Come here.”
She put her hands into his. He had very nice hands—big hands—with long, broad fingers. He had even nicer eyes, and she met his gaze as he pulled her out of the chair so that she was standing in front of him.
He gently tugged her over to the stacked wall of unsorted boxes, and turned her so that her back was to them. But then he backed them both up about four steps as he said, “Okay, so when they’re in the utility closet, Loretta’s here.” He let go of her hand and took another few steps backward, putting a few feet of space between them. “And Jack’s here. And they’re talking, yada yada…”
Shayla laughed. “You’re not seriously going to try to mythbust a scene from a romance novel…?”
“I am, yes, so shh. You’re telling the story at this point through Jack, right?” Peter said.
“It’s called POV—point of view,” she said. “And yes, that scene’s in Jack’s, but seriously, Peter…”
“So we know what Jack’s thinking, and he’s mad at Loretta for taking that risk out on the balcony with the killer, what’s-his-name—”
“Alfred Sinclair,” Shay said. “And he’s the suspected killer. They don’t know for sure yet that he’s—”
“Right. But we know he is. And Jack’s a smart man, and in that moment when he was watching her with Sinclair on that balcony, he was terrified and now his fear has turned to anger, but he’s also relieved as fuck that she’s all right. And that’s brilliant, by the way, because relief can really bring you to your knees after a high-stress situation. Plus since we’re seeing her through his eyes, and she’s wearing that dress, and we know just how much she turns him on, so when she says Shut up and kiss me—or whatever it was she said, I’m paraphrasing—it makes total sense that he’d be, Game over.”
“Thank you.” She was delighted. “That was exactly what I was attempting to communicate with that scene.”
“What was it that she said to him…?” he asked.
“Oh, God, I don’t know,” Shay admitted. “I wrote that book a long time ago. But the subtext was definitely Shut up and kiss me.”
Peter smiled as the words left her lips, and she realized she’d played right into his ridiculous mythbusting hand. He moved toward her—fast—and kissed her, exactly as Jack had kissed Loretta in that fiery scene from Outside of the Lines.
He wrapped his arms around her, which was a good thing, because the way he was all but inhaling her—his mouth hard against hers, his tongue damn near down her throat—made her weak in the knees. He lifted her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, and God, he smelled so good and she’d been sitting there all that time, watching the play of muscles in his back and arms and dying to touch him. So now as she kissed him, she did just that, and she felt him push her back so that she bumped up against that wall and—
Whoa!
The stacked cardboard boxes shifted and moved beneath their combined weight, and Peter quickly regained his balance, stepping away, and setting her back on her feet.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I could prove my point without any risk of hurting you. I thought the boxes would provide a little give—just not that much.”
Shayla was standing there, out of breath, with her heart practically pounding out of her chest. She could still barely stand by herself, and all she could think was that this must be what it felt like to get hit by lightning. How could he kiss her like that, and then…just…talk like normal?
“We need a real wall,” she somehow managed to say. “So I can prove my point.” She made her legs walk and she forced herself not to stagger or weave as she went toward the back of the garage, looking for…“There.” She pointed.
Hidden back behind the towering cube of unsorted boxes was a flat metal door that led to the backyard. Seagull and Timebomb had obviously taken care not to block it, instead creating a corridor with the boxes on one side, a real wall with utility shelving on the other, and the door down at the end. She put herself a few steps in front of it. “Let’s try that again.”
Peter shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not going to slam you against that.”
“You don’t slam. You connect. You use it to brace yourself, and me. Loretta. Jack does, I mean.” Oh God, she was getting a little too into this.
“You used the word slam,” he said.
“But before I did, I switched point of views,” she told him. “Right at Loretta’s line of dialogue. Kiss me—boom. New scene. For the actual sex, we’re now inside Loretta’s head. You were reading the ebook, right? Sometimes scene changes aren’t clearly marked in the e-format. I hate when that happens. Trust me, Jack doesn’t slam her. He kisses the shit out of her, yeah, but he’s always careful—in fact, he’s too careful for Loretta. She feels like he’s always holding something back. Still, when he grabs her and kisses her in this scene, it feels to Loretta like a slam. For her, that’s a really good thing, because not only does she like sex a little rough, she desperately wants this man to lose his mind over her.”
Peter was paying attention—doing that thing where he really listened—and now he moved toward her. But slowly, unlike before. He leaned in, gently touching her chin and lifting her face up toward him, but then just barely brushing his lips against hers as he said, “So he kisses her, and she kisses him back.” He moved her arms up around his neck then put his own arms around her. “And he does this—” he lifted her up, his hands supporting her derrière, same as he did before, only slowly this time as he talked them through it “—so she does this—” her legs went around him “—as meanwhile, he’s doing this.” He carried her forward—his forward—until her back gently bumped up against the metal of the door.
It was surprisingly warm. She’d expected coolness, but then realized that the midmorning sun was beating down on it, on its other side.
And there they stood—not just nose to nose, but body to body. Shay could feel him hard against her and had to work to keep from melting into a little pile of begging protoplasm.