“Do what?”
I study them for a moment. I study their color, the dark flecks, his ever-expanding pupils, the thick, forest-like eyelashes surrounding them.
“Become dark like that. Navy blue. I-I always thought your eyes looked like the summer skies. Like lazy Sunday afternoons and bike rides and…” I trail off when his hold on my body flexes. And I realize something else.
That he’s touching me.
I mean, that’s obvious; he just stopped my fall, but I hadn’t realized that his hands are splayed wide on my torso. And that his fingers are so big and large and so dominating in their presence that when he dips the pads of those fingers into my flesh, I feel it all over.
I feel it so much that I suck in a breath on parted lips.
“You like my eyes, huh?” he murmurs, watching my mouth for a second.
And I can’t help but nod. “Yeah.”
“Summer skies. Sunday afternoons and…” He pauses, a slight frown appearing between his brows. “And what was the last one?”
“Uh, bike rides,” I say automatically.
Something about my answer makes him move his thumb on my belly, and if I wasn’t already holding in my breath, I would swallow it down now.
I would swallow it and destroy it and never breathe again because he’s moving his thumb, circling it. I know it’s only through layers of cloth but I never thought the slight scrape of his digit against my body would be so hypnotizing.
“Bike rides, yeah,” he rasps, nodding. “That’s quite the list.”
“I –”
Those eyes of his become heavy then, hooded, as he replies over me, “I mean, I’m used to my groupies screaming my name and all the things they want me to do to them but you’re the first groupie to wax poetic about my eyes.”
My spine straightens up at that.
Great.
He’s mocking me again.
“I’m not your groupie.”
“It’s okay. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just that charming. Girls can’t stop thinking about me.”
“Charming. Yeah, I don’t think you need to worry about that with me. I can definitely resist your supposed charms.”
He ignores me, his lips stretching into a smirk, his thumb drawing circles around my belly button. “What else do you like about me? My cheekbones, perhaps? That seems to have a devastating effect on the female population.”
I tighten my fists around the rung of the ladder. “You know, you’re such a jerk.”
He leans closer, the heels of his palms pressing even further into my body. “Did you also have my wallpaper on your computer? Your phone maybe? Isn’t that what schoolgirls do?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?”
“I’m asking you. You’re a schoolgirl too, aren’t you?”
I glare at him and he chuckles.
“It’s okay, you can tell me. And maybe I’ll do that thing for you that every groupie wants me to do.”
“What thing?”
His thumb tucks into my belly button. “Sign my name on your chest.” He lowers his voice a little. “Right where your heart is.”
My heart – my witchy, witchy heart – races and my chest tingles and I get up in his face before I do something like whip off my shirt and ask him to write on my body.
“You know what? Just let me go.”
I don’t know how it’s possible but his beautiful, wretched eyes smirk at me as well. Before he lowers them. “You do know that you’re wearing soccer cleats.” He looks up. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And are you aware that you’re not supposed to?”
I exhale sharply and I bet he can feel that. I bet he can feel every little twitch of my body because he hasn’t let me go yet.
His hands are still holding me, causing my skin to heat up, causing my anger to spike up too. “Why, is that another one of your rules?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No. It’s common sense. You don’t wear them off the field. Because they make you fall.”
I know, okay? I know. I know you’re not supposed to wear them off the field. I don’t need him to tell me that.
I don’t need him to keep holding me like that either.
So I throw him a sweet mock-smile that again makes his lips tug up on one side. “Thank you for the impromptu lesson, Coach. Now, are you going to let me go or not?”
He nods his head in acknowledgment. “You’re very welcome. And I will. Once you get down on the ground. Safe.”
So I do.
I climb down the ladder and get down on the ground. So I can get away from his hand, and him and all these rioting feelings inside of me.
Rioting and provoking and restless.
As soon as my feet are on the floor, his hands leave me, sending a rush of cold to the spots where he was touching me. But I don’t pay attention to that. To how stupidly bereft I feel now that he’s not holding me and saving me.