It sounded like a line. It had to be a line. In fact, Lynn was pretty sure that when she’d been younger, she’d heard this exact line before. And she hadn’t fallen for it, not for a second.
So why was she so sure that Ken was sincere?
“I’ve always prided myself on my cool,” he said, the smile fading to a serious look. “I keep my head. I’m always thinking. I like to be funny, so I work on making people laugh. Making women laugh.”
“I noticed.” She was still having a hard time getting enough air to talk, for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that she was lying on her back. She pushed herself up to a sitting position—Ken held out his hand as she moved, and she grabbed it to pull herself up.
When their fingers touched, it felt like an electric jolt through her body. She let go quickly, because all she wanted was to hold on.
“I was so drawn to you,” he said, leaning forward but not touching. Was he worried about keeping his head, too? “I’d never been that attracted to a woman, that quickly. But I kept to my usual tactics, because that’s what I’m used to. I wanted to make you laugh.”
Lynn tried to remember if she’d laughed at any of his little comments, right at the beginning. She didn’t think so. She’d been too suspicious of his motives.
“It didn’t work,” he confirmed. “And the opposite started happening. You started making me be serious.”
Lynn opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “That…wasn’t on purpose.”
“That’s why it worked,” he said ruefully. “You were so—genuine. Everything you said was honest and sincere, and I couldn’t help responding in the same way. I don’t talk about my family, not even with people I know well.”
“Why not?” she asked softly.
“I—I suppose it seems like it would bring people down,” he said.
Or, Lynn thought, he was too scared to open up. She usually felt the same, and in retrospect, it was surprising she’d told Ken as much as she had.
He probably wasn’t going to admit to that, though. Men.
“Anyway, I told myself that it was my goal to make you laugh,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could do it—and I wanted to see what you looked like when you were laughing.”
Lynn blushed. It was such a girlish thing to do, blushing at a man’s attention, but she couldn’t help it. The idea that he’d been wondering to himself what she looked like when she laughed…!
“And then we were just…playing together, like kids, and when we shifted back you were laughing, and I—well, I couldn’t help myself.” He smiled again. “I knew you’d be beautiful when you laughed, but I didn’t realize how beautiful. I had to kiss you when I saw.”
Lynn felt dizzy. “I didn’t realize,” she said. “But—” Was it strange to say this to a man? Probably, but when had she ever let being strange stop her? “You’re beautiful when you laugh, too.”
He stared at her for a long minute—and then laughed. It was true, Lynn thought: his eyes lit up, and crinkled, and his smile-lines deepened so that it looked like his whole face was overcome with joy.
“I don’t think any woman’s ever said that to me before,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s true.” Lynn felt an odd sort of satisfaction at being the only one, though.
“I believe you. I don’t think you’ve told a lie in your life.” Then his eyes seemed to warm, looking at her. “Lynn,” he murmured, and leaned in to kiss her again.
And again, Lynn couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do more than surrender to the kiss.
There were several long, pleasurable moments. Now that Lynn was sitting up, she was able to participate a bit more, leaning into him, taking control for a m
inute before he retaliated and tilted her head back.
She was happy to let him guide the kiss, because anything this heated and pleasurable was worth it, but she did think that if they were going to be doing this a lot, they’d be jockeying back and forth for control quite a bit.
And that seemed like it could be a lot of fun, too.
Then Ken’s hand, which had been resting on her waist, slid up underneath her shirt, his rough palm caressing the soft skin of her back. Lynn shivered at the feeling, just enjoying it for a long minute—
—before pulling back abruptly, as the implications hit her. “Where is this going?” she asked. It came out sounding abrupt, but she didn’t want to soften it or take it back.
Was she nervous? Excited? Suspicious? She couldn’t separate the roil of emotions from the pleasure building in the pit of her stomach.