Cora Carmack - All Lined Up

He smiles and makes that universal sound that means Too bad . “Just treating you like any other friend, Cole.”

I scoff and jam my elbow under my head in an attempt to get comfortable, refusing to let myself glance at Carson even though I swear I feel him watching me. I’m also seriously undone by the feel of his muscled legs beneath my shins. Just when I’ve got myself propped up the way I like it, my phone buzzes on the coffee table.

I reach forward to grab it.

It’s from Carson.

You’ve got some janked-up feet, Cole.

Her reaction is about what I expected, though a little more violent. But at least it gets her to loosen up.

“You are such a jerk!”

One long foot nails me right in the stomach, and I catch her by the ankles before she hits me in a more unforgiving, more sensitive place.

“Hey! I’m just speaking the truth. That’s one of our deals, right?”

“I don’t want to hear those kind of truths! If you have a problem with my feet, then you should find a friend who isn’t a dancer.”

She tries to tug her ankles out of my grasp, but I jerk them back, sliding her a few inches closer to me on the couch.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like them, Cole. They have character .”

She turns her face down into the couch cushion and lets out a groan. I know it’s a groan of agitation, but that doesn’t stop my body from reacting to the sound.

She lays her cheek against the cushion and says, “ Character is just a nice way of saying they’re ugly.”

Her attempts to kick herself free have left the blanket up around her knees, so I slide my hands down from her ankle and grasp the foot closest to me.

“What are you—”

The breathy moan she releases when I push my thumb along the sole of her foot just about undoes me.

“Oh God, Carson.”

Think nice, clean, friendly thoughts, Carson.

Yeah. That’s about as effective as ordering myself to know Spanish. In other words . . . impossible.

“You sit there and watch Disney while I prove I have no problem with your feet.”

They do look kind of tortured, like my hands when I go too long without lifting weights and then pick it up again. She has numerous calluses and a blister on the side of her big toe. And the joint below that toe looks like it wears a permanent red mark. I avoid it as I rub her feet, worried it’s a bruise and will be painful. I alternate between digging at the muscles with my thumb and running my palms over them softly.

Dallas is uncharacteristically still and silent. I could almost believe she’s asleep, except for the way her fingers are curled around the edge of the couch cushion in a death grip.

I switch to the other foot for a little while, relaxing back into the couch and watching the movie with lazy interest.

I don’t let go of her feet, but as my hands grow tired, I switch from a focused massage to unhurried caresses. When we get to the balcony scene, I tickle the foot I’m holding, and she digs her other foot into my thigh in warning.

Chuckling, I move my attention off her feet to her calves, and she flinches and breaks her silence with a gasp.

“That hurt?” I ask, circling my hands around her shins, and gentling the push of my thumbs.

It’s several long moments before she answers, but when she does, I know it’s my honesty rule that made her hesitate.

“No. It doesn’t hurt.”

She doesn’t tell me to stop, so I take that as permission to keep going. Her calves are lean and strong, and her skin is so silky smooth that I don’t want to ever stop touching it.

She turns her head away from the television, pressing her forehead down into the couch cushion, and I know she’s just as affected as I am.

Even though I don’t want to, I take pity on her and stop my ministrations. I rub my thumb over her skin one last time, not kneading, but just a light goodbye touch. Then I leave her legs in my lap and prop my arms up along the back of the sofa, and try to return my attention to the movie.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the rise and fall of her back as she breathes. As the minutes tick past, the movement becomes less pronounced and her breathing calms. When she’s completely in control, she sits up. Since I dragged her closer earlier, she’s now sitting on the middle cushion directly beside me. I could drop my left arm forward off the back of the couch, and it would land around her shoulders.

While I’m debating whether or not it will be worth the elbow to the ribs it will surely earn me, she stands and looks down at me. “Right or left?”

I don’t know what she means, and the first conclusion my mind jumps to is that she’s asking which side of the bed I prefer.

She’s not. I know she’s not, but my brain seems to be at least a little divided on that conclusion. My voice thick with all the things I won’t let myself say, I ask, “What do you mean?”

“Your throwing arm? Right or left?”

Oh. I clear my throat and answer, “Right.”

“Scoot.” She pushes at my knees, and mechanically I slide over, making room for her on my right side. I’m only halfway on the middle cushion when she slides in beside me, deliciously close.

She’s facing me completely, her back pressed against the armrest. She has one leg pulled up on the cushion, bent at the knee and touching me from my hip to midthigh. Her touch is tentative, and she can’t decide exactly how she wants to go about doing this. Eventually, she pulls her other leg up on the couch, leaving it propped upward. She lifts my arm and lays my elbow on her knee so that my upper arm and shoulder are completely open to her. I let my forearm hang down on the other side of her knee, my fingertips brushing both her calf and her thigh at the same time.

Her touch is light and exploratory at first, tracing the dips and curves of my muscle. I drop my head back against the couch and concentrate on keeping my breathing even. But it’s a battle I’ll never win, not with her touching me. One warm hand curves over my shoulder, slipping underneath the sleeve of my T-shirt. I groan, and I let the fingers brushing against her leg grip just above her ankle.

She freezes, and I wonder if she’ll repeat the question I asked her, if she’ll make me admit the noise had nothing to do with pain.

She doesn’t.

Instead, her touch turns firm and she expertly works my sore muscles. She starts at my shoulder, pressing her thumb hard against the knots she finds there. It hurts in the most perfect way, not dissimilar from the way this night as a whole feels.

“You’ve got a lot of tension,” she murmurs.

You have no idea, Daredevil.

But at the moment, my mind is on a different kind of tension. With my fingers wrapped around her ankle and the way she’s positioned, I know that one well-placed pull would have her across my lap just like the night we met.

But I told her that we could just be friends, so I’ll have to settle for my imagination. In fact, I might have to settle for my imagination several times tonight before I’ll be able to go to sleep.

She pushes my sleeve up, tucking it into the neck of my T-shirt, so that my shoulder is bared to her.

“How many hours a day are you working out?” she asked.

I shrug, and her hands stay with me through the movement.

“Depends on the day.”

“How many hours today?”

“Somewhere between six and seven.”

“Seven hours! Carson, are you crazy? How are you not dead asleep right now?”

I throw her a sly grin. “There are other things that are more appealing than sleep at the moment.”

Her lips fall open just barely, not in shock, but just for a slow inhale.