“Arden, I—”
“No, it’s fine. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I guess I just thought it would be hot.”
“Did you now?”
The words, and his tone, were super-quelling. I commenced quietly dying inside, waiting for him to go, so I could curl into a shameball.
But instead he rolled on top of me, bracing himself on his forearms and settling his body over mine. The shock of closeness and the shock of, well, shock drew a little gasp from me. He’d touched me plenty when we’d been doing it, but not like this. Not in a way that let me participate. I raised a knee in welcome and he sank into the warm, cuddly space between my thighs.
“Since you’re interested in fantasies,” he murmured, “why don’t you tell me one of yours?”
“Uhhh…” It was only when he’d turned it round on me that I understood how intimate a question it was. How exposing. Dear God, what had I started? My mouth had gone completely dry. My brain completely blank. His eyes holding me in a cold, blue prison.
“Well?” The cruelty in his voice was both sweet and terrifying and shot straight to my cock. I squirmed and tried to turn my head away, as if this could somehow conceal that I was bright red up top and totally hard down below. His hand slid into my hair, pulling me back. “What do you think about? In the dark. On your own. When there’s nobody to know what you imagine?”
I was blushing even more. I was blushing everywhere. Heat rushing through my body like a river undammed. This was so embarrassing. Except it was an oddly sexy embarrassing—a kissing cousin of desire—because I liked…I liked that he was insisting. It meant I was right. That he did want something more from me. And that maybe he’d let me give it.
“Come on, Arden.” He leaned down and kissed me lightly. A tease, perhaps, or invitation. Reassurance, too, of a kind. “You’re going to tell me.”
Of course I was. “Give me a minute,” I grumbled. “My fantasy life happens to be rich and complex.”
His mouth curled into a rare, soft-edged smile. “I would expect no less.”
There was a silence.
Oh shit. It was supposed to be my line.
“I, uh—” My throat had clogged up. I tried to swallow in a sneaky and subtle fashion and ended up making a Gollumish gulping noise.
Maybe I couldn’t do this after all…
I gazed up at Caspian. It was a little bit magical to have him so close to me. I could see the silver fractals in his eyes. Feel the lightest ripple of the breath from his mouth. And I realized how much I cared about pleasing him. Far more than I cared about being embarrassed.
“I think about being…um…menaced.” There. I’d said it. And it didn’t feel bad at all. In fact, it suddenly seemed a bit ridiculous to have been worried. These were just my fantasies. Nothing to be ashamed of. And there was nothing humiliating about sharing them. Just revealing.
And I didn’t mind revealing myself to Caspian Hart.
Because, in a way, he had revealed himself too. In wanting to know things about me at least as much as I’d wanted to know them about him.
“Menaced how?” he asked after a moment.
“I…Well. Like James Bond.”
“Spies again?” There was laughter lurking in his voice.
And I remembered sharing Oxford’s golden shadows with him, the brush of his fingers. He’d been an impossible stranger then. Now he was a possible one.
I fake-pouted. “I’m not repetitive. I’m thematic.”
“Is he really all that menaced?”
“Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t move very much, so I attempted to challenge his skepticism by wrapping my legs around him and squeezing. “Fleming was a massive pervert. Bond is the most menaced man in popular culture.”
He moved a little restlessly, his arms tightening until the sinews stood out like carvings. “If you insist. I can’t remember the last time I thought about Bond.”
“You haven’t seen the Daniel Craig films?”
He shook his head. Which sent my imagination springing back to Movie Night With Caspian Hart. Him and me and a bowl of homemade popcorn. And Daniel Craig emerging from the sea in his very tight trunks. Glory be to God for dappled things.
