She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence when Marcus leaned forward, gripped the hem of the button-down and peeled it off over her head. Her mouth dropped open, completely stunned as she stood in front of him in leggings and a tight tank top as he tossed the shirt through the doorway and into the bedroom.
Marcus met her eyes with a challenging stare. “Eli is an almost married man,” he said defiantly.
Iris raised her eyebrows at him but said nothing. She was about 150% certain that Eli’s marital status was not Marcus’s issue with her wearing his shirt, but she didn’t have the courage to bring it up.
He’d almost kissed her in the kitchen yesterday, he’d flung an arm around her shoulders during the movie last night, and he’d ripped a shirt off of her because it was another man’s. Yeah, she was naive, but she wasn’t an idiot.
She took her place behind Marcus, conscious that he could see her face in the mirror, and kept her expression as neutral as possible. But she was moderately certain that the man had the hots for her.
Iris bit her lip as she flicked on the razor and placed one hand gently on his neck to steady herself. His skin was hot and smooth and she could feel all kinds of barely restrained energy coursing under his surface.
“So,” she cleared her throat as she faded the hair at the back of his neck and trimmed around the sides of his ears. “What movie do you wanna watch tonight?”
She glanced up at him in the mirror and saw that he’d closed his eyes against her touch, and the sight of him like that, trusting and soft, did something to her. It pulled something tight inside her that she didn’t dare pay attention to in the moment.
“Nothing as freaky as the one last night.”
“I knew you were freaked out too!” she cried in delight, laughing and catching his eyes as he opened them.
She moved around to one side and fixed it up. He’d said he could do the front, but she was already there, so what was the point in leaving it?
“Yeah,” he smiled a little sheepishly. “I have this thing about little kids in horror movies.”
“Me too,” she shuddered at the memories from the movie. “I should have picked something joyful instead.”
But then there would have been no reason to hold you, Marcus thought to himself. But he said nothing out loud. “I’ll pick tonight.”
“Alright,” she smiled at him as she leaned forward to get a better angle to finish up the front of his hairline.
Without giving it too much thought, Marcus opened his legs to give her space to stand and she stepped right in. They both froze, for just half a second, at the position they found themselves in. One with so much potential. One where all he’d have to do was close his legs an inch. Or all she’d have to do was lower her hands to his shoulders. If either of them moved even so little as that, the nature of the position would change, and all their cards would be on the table.
Marcus ached to ease her down to sitting on his lap. He ached to raise his hands to her trim little waist. More than anything, he ached to tangle his hands in her hair and bring that perfect mouth to his.
But when he looked up at her, she was completely serious. There was no trace of that slightly dreamy look that she occasionally gave him. She stared at his hairline as if she was trying to see right through it, and then she leaned forward to trim him up.
He was sure that she hadn’t meant to give him the perfect view directly down her shirt. But damn, she sure had. Her tank top that she’d worn under Eli’s shirt was tight and scooped low, The very top, lacy edge of her bra peeked over the top and both of her breasts were there, perfect and warm and ten inches from his face.
What fresh hell was this? Marcus slammed his eyes shut as his mouth pooled with saliva. God, he wanted to bury his face there. Smell her in that place between her breasts. He wanted to tug that shirt down, set her free. He wanted to—
She stepped out from between his legs and to his other side to finish the final side of his haircut. Her touch was light and gentle over his ear and Marcus literally had to hold his breath through it. He was losing his fucking mind.
“There you go!” Iris said, just a little too brightly, as she flicked off the razor and set it back on the counter, keeping a wide berth from him. “What do you think?”
Marcus turned his head from side to side and surveyed the damage. “It looks great. Thank you.” Was that his voice? All rough and low? Could it be any more obvious that he’d just been lost in a sex dream world?
“Great,” she said, taking a step back from him like she was a rabbit and he was a wolf. “I’ll leave you to get all cleaned up.”
And then she was gone, out of the bathroom in a flash.
***
So, he had the hots for her. She could handle that. No big deal. That kind of thing happened all the time in the adult world. It didn’t mean that anything had to happen and it certainly didn’t mean that anything would happen.
Iris brushed her hair out as she stood in front of the floor-length mirror in her room. She’d changed her clothes, because the leggings and the tank top was only appropriate when she’d had the big shirt to cover over it. So now she wore an oversized white sweater and short little jean shorts. Her hair tumbled, glossy and brushed over her shoulders.
She wished absently for some mascara, or even some chapstick, but she hadn’t been able to find any makeup in the house.
Which was fine! Because watching a movie with Marcus wasn’t a date! It totally wasn’t. Even if she’d just put the pieces together and realized that he was attracted to her. That still didn’t make it a date. Even if she was attracted to him too. And she had a huge crush on him on top of the attraction. None of that made it a date. So she didn’t need to put makeup on or get nervous or act like a nerd. She could just skip all that and act regular, for god sakes.
She was finally calming down when the memory of the way he’d looked at her during the haircut, of standing between his legs, swamped her and Iris found herself all worked up again. Her blood raced through her veins and there were two spots of high color on her cheeks.
Lord. This was ridiculous to be reacting this way. She was an adult and so was he. But things had been a lot easier when she’d just had a little unrequited crush on a man who’d thought she was a nuisance. Now that she was pretty much certain that there was attraction on both sides, Iris found herself completely off kilter.
After the haircut she’d pretty much hidden in her room all day, needing a reprieve from that tight, undeniable tension that had begun to spool out between them.
But now the sun was close to setting, she’d barely had anything to eat today and to stay up in her room when she’d said she’d watch a movie with him was just plain rude.
So she padded downstairs to the kitchen to find Marcus stirring sauce in one pot and spaghetti in another. He nodded at her as she came in, his eyes flicking briefly to her legs. But beyond a marginally stony silence, she didn’t detect any of the tension from earlier in the day. She felt both relief and disappointment.
She didn’t know that the lack of tension was because he’d completely bullied himself into holding her at arm’s length. Marcus had spent his day down in the workout room and then pouring over files. The entire time he’d berated himself with the truth. It was unprofessional, unethical, and not fair to act this way. He couldn’t ever have her. So he needed to quit being sweet on her already.
It didn’t help that she kept flashing those perfect legs around. Marcus frowned to himself as he served up spaghetti for the two of them. When he turned, she was giving him a shy, tentative smile that seemed oddly…distant.
Wait a second, was she putting distance between them? That was supposed to be his plan, not hers. He frowned even harder as they sat down at the dinner table. She didn’t sit in her usual seat. She sat one further away from his than usual.
What the hell?
She glanced up at him, just the briefest flash of thirst-quenching blues and her peek infuriated him. She was l
ooking at him like he was a wild animal about to pounce on her. He was a civilized human, for god sakes! Maybe he’d taken more than a decent peek in the bathroom when she’d been leaning over him. But he wasn’t about to show up in her bedroom with a rose between his teeth. He had limits! He understood the lines of human decency here.
It irritated him to no end when she sat still as a mouse all through dinner, like she didn’t want to draw too much attention to herself. And it irritated him even more, when after she’d finished up the dishes and come to meet him in the living room, she’d looked relieved to see him already sitting in the La-Z-Boy chair, thereby cutting off the possibility of any couch touching. And it practically lit an inferno of annoyance in his gut when, even with him safely sequestered across the room, she still smashed herself into the seat on the couch farthest from him, her body crammed up against the armrest like he was holding her there against her will.
He thought about ignoring it. “We don’t have to watch a movie if you don’t want to.”
She glanced at him, her eyes skittering across his. “No! No. I want to.” She took a deep breath, as if she was intentionally calming herself and she brought her feet up onto the couch beside her.
He raised his eyebrows at her attempts to play it cool and shrugged.
“What are we watching?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” he replied with a grin that had her blinking hard and blushing.
There. Proof that she wasn’t as immune to him as she was pretending to be. He thought back to the dreamy way she looked at him every now and again. To the way her cheeks had flamed when he’d taken off his shirt today. How her breath had caught when she’d stepped between his legs.
“I’m gonna get something to drink,” he said, rising from his chair. “You want something?”
“I’m alright,” she shook her head quickly.
He needed to be alone with his thoughts for a second. He’d bet money that she was into him. Maybe not head over heels, but enough to make her blush and blink through those long lashes of hers. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and traced his lips with one finger as he gazed back through the house in the direction of the TV room. A thought occurred to him, nice and slow.
He knew he couldn’t sleep with her. He couldn’t date her. He wasn’t going to be making her his woman any time soon. But who was to say that he couldn’t sit close to her on the couch? Smell her hair? Feel the warmth of her body next to his? Who was to say that he couldn’t get a little charge out of making her breath trip or her heart race or her cheeks go pink?
He knew he couldn’t really get involved with her, but did that mean he had to extinguish the shine he had for her? Maybe, just maybe, he could make both of them feel good in the meantime.
It was with that thought brewing in his head and the popped beer in his hand that he reentered the TV room. She’d spread out just a little bit more on the couch, obviously assuming he’d be going back to the chair.
Her eyes popped wide and shocked when he eased down right in the middle of the couch, not more than six inches from where she sat. He threw his arm over the back of the couch, like the night before, and casually boxed her in, spreading his legs before him. He could have sworn she made the tiniest peep. He could feel her ocean bright eyes on the side of his face but he didn’t turn to her. He bit back the smug little smile that threatened to give away the game.
Holding the beer up to her for a second, he set it back on his thigh. “We can share if you want,” he told her and was completely obliged to see her throat bob as she gulped.
Iris hit play on the remote she held and clapped her hands in delight when the Jaws theme song started to play. “I love this movie! And I haven’t seen it in years. Good choice.”
His chest seemed to want to swell with her words but he beat those feelings back. He’d chosen the movie because it was a tiny bit scary, but not in the way of the freaky-ghost-child-burlap movie they’d watched last night.
Iris wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, except to say that her heart was skittering around her chest like a stone over an ice rink. She’d really, really thought, during dinner at least, that they had both tacitly decided to go the same route. Careful avoidance of what had become painfully clear during the haircut. It was clear they were attracted to one another, so they were going to nod their hats respectfully to the feeling and just kind of…ignore it.
This, however, was not ignoring it. Her entire right side felt singed with the heat of him, even through their clothes, even though they weren’t touching. No, he was careful not to touch her, but he was basically surrounding her. If she shifted in the least, even to stand up, she would brush or press against him.
It was because of that she was sitting so still, so completely frozen. And then it hit her. She was sitting there like a dang mouse hiding from a dang fox, which was exactly what she’d sworn she’d stop doing. Before all this attraction mess had started, she’d done a darn good job of talking herself into acting at least semi-normal around him. They’d been able to be in the same room without her awkwardness, or her mondo crush, taking up all the extra space. She’d worked hard for that ease! And now it was completely gone. She was sitting there, rigid as hell, her eyes glued to the screen like she’d go up in smoke if she looked away.
Well, screw that. She was going to chill out. So what if he was attracted to her and she was attracted to him? Just because it was a little bit undeniable right now didn’t mean that it had to run the entire show, did it? Right. She could just take a chill pill and ignore the mousy part of her.
Iris took another deep breath and allowed her back to recline onto the couch behind her. She could just faintly feel the weight of his arm against the cushion at her neck. She propped her feet up onto the coffee table, alongside his. With a hand that only trembled once, Iris pointedly reached across his lap and plucked up the beer that he had pinned against his thigh. She took a quick sip and handed it back.
And the world didn’t end. The fabric of her shorts touched the fabric of his shorts and she wasn’t plummeting through the gates of hell and he wasn’t tearing her shirt off or professing love. This was going to be just fine.
That was when she felt his eyes on the side of her face. Her posture was much more relaxed, sure, but she didn’t dare turn to look at him. She kept her eyes glued to the television, which was a little bit hard considering this was the part in the movie where they revealed the girl’s remains in a box in the morgue.
Her nerves strung tight as a bow, Iris jumped just the tiniest bit when, his eyes still on the side of her face, Marcus’s fingers picked up a lock of her hair.
She could feel it tugging, gently, at the root. And then she felt the slow slide of the hair being lifted off her neck as he played it through his fingers. After a minute, his eyes went back to the screen but his fingers kept playing with that hair. The small, tugging reminder that he was casually touching her was starting to do funny things to her breath.
“I’m gonna get some dessert,” Iris rose up from the couch suddenly, making herself turn to look at him. “You want something?”
He shook his head, silently, his eyes burning up into hers. Iris looked down at the couch and blushed when she saw firsthand how small her space had been. When she saw exactly how much he’d been crowding her.
She scuttled away into the kitchen and immediately opened the freezer, let it cool her overheated skin. She needed to get a hold of herself. What was she freaking out about?
Oh, just that the hottest man she’d ever met was slowly and methodically getting closer and closer to her.
It didn’t mean that anything was going to happen between them. It just meant that he wanted to sit close to her on the couch. Play with her hair. And if she was being honest with herself, it felt nice. Really nice.
Iris knew that her fears were fears of the future, not of the present. That had always been her problem. Right now, was she scared of Marcus flirting with her? Snuggling her? No. Not at all. Actua
lly, she desperately wanted it. So what was she gonna do? Make this a big awkward deal and not get what they both wanted tonight just because she was scared of what might happen in the future?
There was one question she needed to ask herself. Was Marcus going to romance her tonight, make her fall in love tonight, and then cheat on her and break her heart tonight? No. Absolutely not. Then she had nothing to fear tonight.
Iris took a deep breath and unwrapped a grape Popsicle. She marched back to the TV room, where she saw Marcus had paused the movie. He hadn’t moved from his place on the couch and Iris was glad. That meant that she could do what she’d just talked herself into doing. Which was to slide right back into the small space on the couch that he’d made for her.
She could feel his surprise in the way his eyes landed on the side of her face. She was sure that he’d expected her to go to the chair and avoid the tension between them. But tension was heart hammering and delicious and, if she was being honest with herself, she wanted it. So Iris snuggled herself back into the couch, just a hair closer to Marcus than she’d been before. It wasn’t just the fabric of their clothes touching, it was the bodies beneath them. Her knee pressed against the outside of his thigh and her shoulder notched itself just under his armpit, his arm stretched along the back of the couch.
His eyes were hot on her, and Iris forced herself to turn and give him a little smile as she settled in. There was a knowing smile on his face, one that seemed to question and challenge her at the same time. She raised her eyebrows back, gave him an innocent look.
“I’m sorry, did you want some?” she asked, holding out the Popsicle to him.
He shook his head and she shrugged, popping the Popsicle back into her mouth. His eyes followed the movement for a second before skipping back to the movie he’d just un-paused.
Yes! Score one for Iris. She smiled to herself as she watched the shark terrorize the town of Amity. Marcus’s hand immediately resumed stroking over that same piece of hair. It wasn’t until the shark swam into the seaside pond and went after the children on the skiff that Iris jumped. The remains of her Popsicle fell off the stick and plopped directly onto the beautiful white sweater.
Bachelors In Love Page 58