Descent - Tara Fuller Page 0,49
tight leather pants up my legs, I stumbled and fell against the bed, using it as leverage to force them over my hips. Easton watched me, amused, as if he was holding back a laugh.
“I’m no expert in how all of this works, but isn’t it rude to watch a girl change clothing?” I huffed, placing my hands on my hips.
He raised a brow. “Is that what you were doing? I thought you were having a seizure.”
I threw one of my boots at him but he caught it easily against his chest, smiling. And Easton’s smile, it was devastating. A smile that dismantled me and put me back together all wrong on unsteady legs. I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked away, not knowing what to do with the way my heart was pounding away inside. He didn’t want me. Continuing to show him how badly I wanted him was only going to make this harder. What was I doing? Why couldn’t I be like Sky? Like every other angel flitting around the heavens? Focused on the job. Incapable of wanting…of falling.
I turned around, giving him my back, and stripped his shirt over my head, working quickly to replace it with my own. When I turned around, Easton was frozen in place, eyes fixed on me, dark and intense. He abruptly dropped his gaze to my boot in his hand and cleared his throat.
“Do you even know how to get these back on?” he asked.
“Not really,” I admitted. “But I’m sure I can figure it out.”
He rounded the bed and stood in front of me, distracting me with his pants, slung low around his hips, and bare chest. I held out his shirt to him.
“Want to trade?”
He smirked. “What’s the matter, Red? Too much for your innocent eyes to handle?”
He was joking, but he had no idea how much truth hid behind his words. He may have seen himself as an unworthy mess, but to me, he was perfect in every way that counted. In every way that made my heart pound and blood rush too fast through my body. I looked at him the way Tyler looked at April. And for the first time, I finally understood his fear, the reason he hesitated when all I’d wanted was for him to take the leap. He’d been afraid of this awful gnawing hurt inside. When I didn’t respond, he shifted on his feet, looking unsure of himself.
“Sit down. I’ll give you a hand with these.”
I sank down on the bed and placed my hands in my lap, not knowing what to do with them. Easton knelt before me and wrapped his fingers around my calf, lifting my foot onto his knee.
“You have a nice smile,” I said. “Underused, perhaps, but…nice.”
“Underused, huh?”
“A little,” I teased.
“Well, there hasn’t been a lot to smile about down here the last five hundred years,” he said, sliding the boot onto my foot, lacing, buckling, strapping my leg in.
“And what is there to smile about now?”
I wanted him to say me more than I wanted anything. I didn’t expect it, but just like the humans I helped, it didn’t stop me from wanting it.
He slid my left boot on. “You mean other than pretty angels who tell bad jokes and are too brave for their own good? Not much.”
“You think I’m brave?”
“I think you’re stubborn,” he said, a half smile playing at the corner of his lips. “And yeah…I think you’re brave.”
“My jokes aren’t that bad.”
He snorted. “That’s debatable.”
“They made you laugh.”
He fastened the last buckle and looked up at me. Our gazes met and held, fire igniting, ice thawing in the silent space between us. His hand lingered on my leg. I was painfully aware of the heat of his skin burning through my leather pants, leaving an imprint I’d never be able to forget.
“What makes you happy?” he asked.
What made me happy? No one had ever asked me that before. My world wasn’t about taking happiness for myself. It was about giving it. I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking about snow and stories and fireworks.
“I like to watch people read,” I admitted. “On Saturday mornings at this one library, they have people who come in and read to the children. I like the funny stories the best. When the room is filled up with children’s laughter, it’s so easy to get lost in it all. To pretend for a moment I’m not invisible or different. I like the travel books, too.