There are times when they're sitting together on his bed and she swears he's watching her.
She never catches him at it.
There are times when he tickles her so hard she can't breathe for laughing but she can't care because it's the closest she's ever come to touching him.
There are times like tonight, when they're sitting and talking soft and low, voices serious and rough from use. They'll get into a mock argument and tussle on the bed, throwing pillows at each other, fingers dancing along skin bared from a shirt twisting up a bit too high. And she will focus suddenly on the line of his arm, the sweet, beautiful curve of it as it reaches around her waist, fingers just brushing her hipbone like a feathery kiss, and she will feel a heat flushing through her skin like a wave. The strength in his arm, the tight wiry muscles, holding her as if she would break and she feels like she will if his fingers stop caressing her hip.
Please don't stop, she silently urges, willing his fingers to go elsewhere, to make the warmth in her skin spread until she's dying of the heat, but he never does.
Tonight, though, she feels the lightest touch on her own arm, and twists to see him just touching his mouth to the curve of her elbow, and his eyes meet hers and he smiles and she feels something inside of her just fall away as her breath catches. He may be teasing her, but the space inside her that was empty is now full of a white, scorching heat and all she wants to do is lean down to kiss his smiling mouth.
Instead he presses a kiss to her arm and looks at her as though to say, Not yet.
She knows it is only a matter of time.