Hand teased in her hair, her cheeks flushed, biting her bottom lip…
Fuck.
Sleep wasn’t coming for him tonight. Bad enough they’d been so close earlier, but that goofy grin, a lightness that hadn’t been there before, and she’d always been so damn adorable when she let loose.
Trace took a few steps toward her bedroom, then turned sharply to cross the room.
As he’d done since the day they met, he squashed the wistful, dreamy look on his face and folded his good arm behind his head, sporting a snarky grin. “Tipsy?” he asked.
Trace stopped fast, released a giggle. “Not as bad as it looks,” she said, shaking her head.
“No? Because you look trashed. Didn’t want to make a night of it?” Keeping it light, he hoped to hell she didn’t see the yearning hiding behind the tease.
Trace snorted a goofy laugh. “I am not trashed,” she said, shifting directions and she dropped to sit on the opposite end of the couch next to his feet.
Gaze wandering down, a glassy-eyed smile countering her claim, she patted his good foot, tracing his ankle as if she’d found a fun toy.
Cole swallowed hard, undecided if he should let her keep doing that, or sneak his foot away. Definitely not a good time to flirt back. “Liar,” he said, hoping his voice was steady.
“Maybe a little bit,” she said, her goofy smile rich with amused curiosity as she traced her fingertips in a circle around his ankle bone. “It was nice to let loose with Haley and sort of, hash it out. A very long, overdue hashing of outs. Or outing of hashes.”
He paused, waiting for her to say what had needed hashing out.
Instead, she pushed her thumb on the middle of his ankle bone, tilted her head, then traced down the top of his bare foot.
“Trace?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s my foot,” he finally said, wondering when she’d realize what she was doing to him.
“I know. It’s a nice foot.” She snorted another giggle, almost a hiccup in there. “Finn’s going to call you tomorrow to hang out.”
“K,” he said, biting down on the edge of his tongue, watching her expressions change as she traced the contours of his ankle again. Fire followed the wake of her path. The best and worst sort of torture he couldn’t seem to break away from. “It will be nice to catch up with him.”
Her brow lowered, her smile faded. “Have you ever done it against the door?”
Voice catching in his throat, he swallowed the frog that threatened to choke him for real this time. “Um, what? Like, sex?”
“Of course sex,” she said, her hand flattening so she grasped his calf. “What else would one do against a door?”
“I have no idea,” he murmured, staring at her hand and terrified this either was, or was not, going the way he wished it would, because of so many reasons.
“How do you not know if you’ve done it against a door?”
Before he could answer, she kept talking.
“Because, I mean, that’s sort of one of those need-you-now, can’t-resist, so aroused you’ll think you’ll explode without the other person moments. I’ve never had one of those.”
“No?” he managed to ask, his voice filled with gravel. For all the make-outs he’d walked in on in high school, he couldn’t picture Trace’s high school self hadn’t experimented with about everything. He certainly had experimented with pretty much everything, and hadn’t been with the same person enough times to really get creative.
“Blowjobs. I think I should do more of those.” Trace’s hand slid up his leg.
Risking severe reinjury, Cole sat up fast and slid his feet away. “Whuh… what?” He shook his head and pushed his hair back, gripping his hand in the overly long mess of it. “Wait, no, I don’t want to know.”
Trace’s shoulders slumped, and she sat up straighter. “Sorry. I think I’m tipsier than I realized.”
“No worries,” he said, words flooding the tangled mass of his brain and not forming a single coherent thought.
