I cringed, feeling my muscles tighten all over. I closed my eyes, as if squeezing them shut could force the images out of my head.
“He didn’t mean to,” I said. “It was an accident.”
“Bullshit,” Nicole mumbled.
“Please…don’t.” I’d beg her if I had to. I couldn’t talk about this.
She lay back down and traced her fingers over my cheek, down to my jaw, and then up into my hair again. She started pushing the stray strands behind my ear, and I felt my body melt into the mattress.
“All right,” she said.
“It will be better by then, anyway.” I shifted a little to get into a more comfortable position, and my hand slid down her side. My fingers grazed over her bare skin where her shirt had ridden up a bit. I probably should have moved my hand on top of the material again, but instead I slowly traced little circular patterns on her skin with the pads of my fingers.
I looked back to her eyes, and even in the dim light, I thought she was about the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She might not have the glamour of some model-types, but she had something more natural—more undeniably feminine about her. She also had strength—not just in her body but in her spirit.
And her skin was really, really soft, and it made me wonder if her lips were as soft as the skin on her side. That’s when I remembered something I had been thinking about earlier in the evening on my way home from dropping off Nicole.
“Hey…um…Nicole?”
“Yes?” she replied. “I am the only one here, you know.”
“Heh…yeah.” I felt one side of my mouth involuntarily turn up a little. I licked my lips and took a breath before continuing. “I was just wondering….um…”
I paused.
“Spill it, Malone,” Nicole said with a grin.
“Um…you know,” I started and then stopped again. “I mean, um…I was thinking…you know people are going to expect us to…well…to act like boyfriend and girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah,” Nicole said with wary eyes. “Quit stalling. What do you mean exactly?”
Turning my head back against the pillow, I stared up at the darkened ceiling for a second before I rolled over and just looked at the pillowcase instead.
“Well, I was thinking at some point…I mean…it would only be natural…” I stammered on, unable to complete an actual sentence.
“Thomas, will you just spit it out?”
Why was this so hard? I usually just fucking grabbed the girl and kissed her when I wanted. What was it about Rumple that made everything so different?
“We ought to kiss…you know…in front of people,” I finally blurted out. I looked back at her, and Nicole’s eyes widened a little. I just hoped and prayed she wouldn’t tell me to get the fuck out.
She just lay there staring at me, so I kept on babbling.
“So…I was kind of wondering if we should…um…practice.”
“Practice?”
“Yeah,” I said. I moved my eyes away from hers again and stared at my hand at her waist then back at the pillow. “Like, we should try kissing…so it doesn’t look awkward if we have to do it in front of other people.”
I kept my eyes trained on the pillowcase, wondering if it was more of a tan or beige and mostly just trying not to meet Nicole’s gaze at all. I was tensing up again, but only a little bit because she still had her hand in my hair. She hadn’t moved away from me yet.
“Okay,” she whispered.
The pillowcase was definitely losing its appeal, so I looked back at her.
“Now?” I asked.
“Um…yeah.”