on her hips, right at her waistband, and skated lightly up and down, petting her waist. One corner of his mouth twitched up in a pitiful smile. “Like what you see?” His tone was off; more mocking than cocky, almost bitter.
“Yeah,” she said, right away, and his quick nod was wrong, too.
How could anyone who looked like him be self-conscious? Unless…
She swallowed, and took a leap of faith, hoping, thinking, she was reading him right. “Yeah,” she repeated. “You’re okay. If you’re into muscles and stuff.” She made a face. “But mostly I just like that you’re sweet, but that you came in here ready to throw down, because I don’t know about you, but I’m keyed the hell up after today. Let’s bone, and then make nachos, huh?”
His brows shot up. His gaze cycled through surprise, alarm…and then melted into something amused. And fond. And soft.
He breathed a quiet laugh through his nose, and when he smiled, she felt the tension in his jaw ease a fraction beneath her palm. She stroked the sharp edge of it; smoothed a thumb across one pretty cheek.
“You’re weird,” he said, affectionately, and he put his arms around her and pulled her in close. Pressed a shockingly chaste kiss to her forehead.
It was amazing how quickly the mood had shifted, but she couldn’t regret it, not standing pressed skin to flushed skin, his strong arms tight around her, his chin propped on top of her head. Couldn’t regret the way this brought them closer than kissing could. Both were wonderful in their own way. And it was reassuring to see that he had doubts, too; she wasn’t alone in this, they were together.
“There’s a lot of girls who look at your body, aren’t there?” she asked. “And don’t look any further.”
She felt his chin move as he swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Same here. Just…for different reasons.”
His hands circled on her bare back, calluses catching at the satin band of her bra. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. It sucks being this beautiful sometimes,” she joked, and he snorted hard enough to ruffle her hair.
She did understand, though. How many times had she been judged on sight? For being Asian. For being small. For having pink hair. For being, as one of her Chicago coworkers had been overheard to say at the water cooler, “too fucking perky.” People had assumed she was good at math – she was, but she didn’t appreciate the stereotype, thank you very much. Men had called her an anime character, and men had called her ugly, and there probably weren’t many people alive who hadn’t had to push past erroneous first impressions, and prove themselves as multidimensional.
It would have been easy to see someone as beautiful as Carter as lucky…but it had been all too easy for some, she guessed, to only see Carter as beautiful. As a sex object, or a dumb blond.
He played with the length of her hair; traced idle fingertips along the bumps of her spine. “This is a really weird time for us to be doing – this.”
“To be fair, is there ever a time around here when it’s not weird?”
“No.” He sighed. “Not really.”
“It’ll pass,” she said. “It always does.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced.
The seconds ticked by as they stood there, fingers exploring one another’s skin, swaying, a little, she began to realize. Side-to-side, at first – but then she felt a tell-tale twitch in his hips. Felt his muscles clench and release beneath his skin.
She smoothed her hands down to the small of his back; found the twin dimples just above the low rise of his jeans, and pressed her fingers into them until she felt him shiver all over – and press a little closer, hips twitching again.
One of his hands slid up beneath her hair, skimming back and forth across her upper back. The other moved to the band of her bra, with purpose this time; he slipped his thumb beneath it, and tested the give of the fabric; followed it all the way across, under the clasp, over her ribs, and then back.
Her face was in his throat, and with every breath she was inhaling his cologne, and the scent of heated skin. She could feel it when he swallowed; feel it when his pulse picked up again, a steady hard throb this time, and not the flutter of nervousness.
Her own pulse was starting to pound, all throughout her body, a drumbeat echo – one that was more and more concentrating between her legs.