When I finally turn my head to Silas, he’s staring at me. He looks as dazed as I feel, and I put that look on his face. Me, Kat Nakamura, anxious mess and dedicated wallflower.
Neither of us says anything for a while, and I stare at him, close enough that I can mostly make out the details of his face: the flush underneath his barely-there freckles, the way his eyes have spokes of sky blue and navy blue running through them at the same time, the stubble on his chin glowing deep gold in the light through the curtains. The soft pink of his lips against his sharp jaw, strangely delicate.
Finally he reaches out with a look of total concentration on his face and runs one finger along the side of my face, pulling back a strand of hair stuck to me with sweat, then settles his hand there with his thumb on my cheekbone.
It’s soft and silent, and I try to suspend myself in the moment. I flatten my hands on Silas’s sheets and think about his almost-freckles and enjoy the small weight of his thumb on my cheek like this, but the truth is I’m going to panic. I can practically see it on the horizon, gathering like storm clouds, thundering in the distance.
Not now. Not for a bit, probably, but I’m not so optimistic that I think an orgasm will make me feel all the way better, even if it did basically reboot my brain. Because I think I know what we’re doing, but I’ve been wrong before. I think I know what the way he’s touching me, the way he’s staring at me right now means, but I’ve fucked that up before, too.
Finally, Silas says, “I think that’s all the rules.”
“Is this romantic-style face touching?” I ask, and he grins.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think it is.”
The way my heart stutters, just then.
“No weird PDA,” I point out.
“You fed me a cherry.”
“That’s very normal.”
He taps his thumb gently against my cheek, and I roll onto my side to face him.
“You bit a cherry out of my hand,” he says. “I’ve probably still got the marks on my fingers.”
I take his hand off my face, hold it in front of my eyes. I can’t see any teeth marks, but then again, my glasses are… somewhere, so instead I kiss his fingertips one by one.
“Kat,” he says, low and scratchy, and curls his hand around mine.
“That better?”
He says, “Breaking all the rules renders our agreement null and void, right?”
“You’re the lawyer. Is that how these things usually work?”
“This was the first time I negotiated pretending to date someone to piss off her ex,” he points out, and there are crinkles around his eyes that say he’s enjoying himself.
“That’s what you want then? No more agreement?”
I have to bite the inside of my lip to keep myself from smiling. Not that it works.
“I’d rather date you for fun.”
“Oh, I’m fun now?”
“This was real fun and I think we should do it again,” he says, that relaxed, cheerful grin on his face. “And I suspect you feel the same way, based on my observations.”
And yup, I’m blushing.
“Sure,” I say, after a moment.
It gets a disbelieving look out of Silas.
“Sure?” he says. “Like I just asked you if you want another slice of pie?”
“You have pie?” I ask, trying not to laugh. We both are.