Page 109 of Distortion
I push his hand away, less violently than I feel like, but I don’t want to draw attention.
He stops immediately and I fight a tiny internal war with myself. I want his hand back. I want him to finish what he was doing. But I can’t risk it. I don’t know what comes next even if my body yearns for whatever it is.
‘Hey, what happened?’ he whispers as he feels me stiffen and wriggle away from his hand.
He lets me move and when I stop shuffling around, his hand comes to rest on my bare abdomen. He doesn’t caress, doesn’t move it at all. He just leaves it where it is, like he’strying to calm me down with its firm, warm presence on my skin.
It works. The heat from his hand, the fact that he’s not moving makes my brain stop working so quickly, jumping from thought to thought. I take a deep breath.
‘Too much?’ he asks. ‘I’m sorry.’
I’m thrown when the lights go on and I’m suddenly terrified all over again that this is part of some cruel plan, but the movie is paused, too, and I realize the pledges have come back with the burgers.
I blink in the harsh light and glance at Mav whose eyes are still facing front. I notice he has a pillow on his lap that wasn’t there before. I wouldn’t have even noticed it, but I see Blake’s eyes on it and he arches a brow, which Mav ignores.
‘Dinner’s here,’ he says.
I’m given a bag with a box in it and some fries and I eat it on my lap, wishing my jeans weren’t still unbuttoned.
The lights are turned off again and the movie restarted.
I try to focus on the burger. It’s good. I can’t remember the last time I even had one of these. Another first-in-a-decade type of thing, probably.
The moment I’m finished, the rubbish ...trashis taken from me and Mav hands me my drink again.
‘Don’t worry. No one messed with it.’
I give him a smile and take a sip. It really is delicious.
I try to focus back on the film. Blake is still next to me, but his hands aren’t on me anymore. I try not to feel bereft. My brain and my body are at odds and it’s confusing me.
And then Mav reaches under the blanket and my eyes fly to his. Is he going to touch me like Blake did now? Do I stop him? Can I?
But all he does is take my right foot in his hands and begins to knead. My eyes flutter closed and I relax against Blake again with a shuddering sigh. I don’t want to stop himdoing this. It doesn’t feel quite as good as what Blake was doing, but it’s a very close second.
I stretch into him and feel him somehow easing the tension in my whole body just by touching the soles of my feet. It’s like magic.
After a few minutes of bliss he ends the massage and I open my eyes, giving him my left foot in silent request ... no, demand. He’s doing the other one whether he wants to, or not.
He gives me a wink I don’t understand the point of, and gamely takes my other foot. He begins the same sequence of movements, and I fall back into Blake again. The massage feels even better on this foot.
‘You’re locked up so tight,’ he murmurs. ‘Hard as a rock.’
His fingers move up my calf and he finds a spot on my leg that makes me jerk in pain.
Where the stinger used to sit.
‘Sorry. Just a knot.’
He begins to knead it with his thumbs and I let out a loud groan just as the movie quiets. I slap my hand over my mouth in mortification as some of the guys closest snigger.
‘What’s going on over there?’ someone asks in a dramatic voice.
‘Usher! Someone’s fucking in the theatre!’
The room erupts into laughter and I feel my cheeks heat.
‘Grow the fuck up,’ I hear Shade growl from close by.
