His chest shook under my hips and thighs.
Was he laughing?
The nerve of him.
The situation called for extreme measures. So, with all the skill I could gather, I stretched down until my hand reached his backside and pinched his butt.
Yep. I, Lina Martín, had just pinched Aaron Blackford’s butt.
And I regretted it immediately.
One, because it was Aaron’s butt cheek I had pinched. And how could I ever come back from doing something like that when I had to see his face at work—every working day of every week—and he’d soon become my boss?
And two, because it had been so smooth and firm that I wanted to do it a second time, just to be sure that an ass that hard was real. I wanted to double-check if a butt could really have that many muscles.
And that, together with reason one, made me question my sanity.
As that spun in my head, I realized that Aaron had noticed my unfriendly pinch. I knew because he had instantly frozen. My fake boyfriend’s body—which was still underneath my hips, stomach, and legs—had gone very, very still from the moment my fingers came into contact with his ass.
Tempted to pinch him again to check if he was breathing or if I had shocked him as much as I had myself, I waited.
With astonishing care, his hands moved to my waist. Aaron lifted me from his shoulder, positioning my front against his chest, still holding me so my feet wouldn’t touch the grass. Our heads were at the same level, our gazes irremediably meeting.
His face was this unreadable blank mask again, as if I had pinched all emotion out of it.
I realized I preferred playful Aaron to the one who hid whatever he was feeling. But that moved into the background as I recounted the nonexistent space between our bodies from our chests down.
I was feeling a little light-headed, so my arms braced themselves on Aaron’s shoulders. Our eyes never breaking contact. I didn’t think either of us blinked either.
Aaron rearranged my body in his arms, and with the change of position, I could feel the swaying of his chest against mine. I could feel the sweat on his skin under my hands and arms too. But above all, I was enraptured by those blue eyes that gleamed like diamonds under the punishing sunlight. My breath got stuck in my throat, not going anywhere. Just like I was.
Never in a hundred years would I have imagined myself in this position. Being held by a shirtless Aaron and not wanting to run as far and fast away as I could. But shockingly, I wanted to do the exact opposite; I wanted to take my time inspecting every inch of sticky and bare skin I could see. I wanted to stay right where I was, perhaps maybe even let him carry me everywhere for the rest of the day.
And that admission scared me.
No, it terrified me.
Or it should have because in that precise moment, I couldn’t find it in me to care for anything besides the wild beating of my heart, thumping directly against Aaron’s skin.
When Aaron finally spoke, his voice had a breathless texture, “You pinched my ass, Catalina.”
I had. And I was sorry. Sort of.
Which didn’t excuse the shameless, outright joyful grin that broke out on my face. I barely recognized myself in that moment, barely understood the need to smile that big and make him pay me back with one of his own. Perhaps a laugh too.
“I plead the Fifth,” I managed to say through my ridiculously silly smile. Still held in his arms. “Plus, if by any chance, someone might have pinched your butt, you might have totally deserved it.”
“Oh yeah?” The corner of his lips twitched.
Almost there. “Yep. One hundred percent well deserved.”
“Even if I’d saved that hypothetical person from a boisterous fall?” Aaron’s eyes wrinkled with the smile I was looking for, his lips remaining mostly flat. Still.
“Boisterous? I was merely going to brush the floor. Very delicately, mind you.”
“You are a ridiculous, impossible woman, you know that?”
I knew, and I was ready to admit that, but then Aaron went ahead and gave me that grin I had been craving. His lips split, and his mouth gave way to a handsome smile that changed his face completely. One that I had seen only once before and that made my heart go all crazy in my chest. My eyes probably twinkled too.