Ocean (Damage Control 5)

This is… This is funny. Another fit of giggles hits me. I should be pushing off this guy, this is stupid, this is thoughtless, but the strength in his arms feels good, and he smells somehow familiar.

Like crushed peppercorns and warm metal and ink.

Wait a minute…

I fight his hold, and he releases me, then grabs again my elbow when I stumble as I turn to face him.

“Steady,” he says, his voice a low rumble, barely heard over the music.

I know that voice. “Ocean?”

“The very same.” He grins at me, blinks those deep blue eyes at me, and I kinda lose my train of thought. I mean… whoa.

Pretty.

I want to know what he’s hiding behind those blue eyes and that wide grin. Hey, I’d do a full-body search, if he’d let me.

Boy, if I could run my hands over that chest, so muscular under his tight-fitting T-shirt…I’d totally read the lines of his chest instead of his palm. I wonder what story they’d tell me.

“I thought you were gone,” I whisper.

“Not without you.”

Damn, that sounds… sweet. And hot. And like a line from a movie, or somebody else’s life. Because this makes no sense.

Unless… “Jesse mentioned something about—”

“Jesse,” he says, “told me that you—”

We stare at each other. Around us people are dancing, lights strobing, music playing.

“He told you what?” I demand.

His jaw clenches. “Nothing. I have your purse.” He shows it to me. It’s hanging from his shoulder. My coat is bundled under his arm.

“Oh thank God!” I make a grab for it, somehow trip over my feet and end up smashed against his chest.

His hard, muscled chest. Again.

How mortifying. And also how pleasant…

“Here.” He unplasters me from his hot, hard body carefully, which makes me sad, and hands me the coat. “Put this on. We’re going.”

“But you haven’t danced yet!” This strikes me as even more tragic than the loss of contact with his cotton-clad chest. “Can’t leave before dancing.”

“What the…. Kay, no.”

Aw shucks, I love how he says “Kay” in that smooth, deep voice of his. “Say it again.”

“What?” With his sky-blue hair falling into those sky-blue eyes, he’s adorable. And hot. And he’s totally going to dance with me.

“My name.”

“Kay,” he says again, a ghost of a question tagged at the end, and I swoon.

“Your voice rocks,” I inform him, throw my arms around his neck—God, this boy is tall!—and start swaying to the beat, to show him how. “Do you sing in a band?”

He just stares at me.