He's surprised at how supple her thigh is. From
far away, it looked like such a skinny, sticklike thing, attached to this small-framed woman who cut more of a delicate bird-like figure than anything else. Yet as his fingers slide up tentatively along her smooth skin, he feels slender muscles taut and tightening beneath rising gooseflesh.
He supposed it's all those years of bending and squatting and moving around automobiles that made her like this. Strong without being conspicuous about it. Delicate with the potential for viciousness at the same time.
Like when they'd fought the other night. Practically destroyed the suite, the sounds issuing from deep within their chests, as if they truly meant it. The sounds giving way to heavy sighs as he somehow found her legs wrapped around his waist, on his back with his hands wrapped around those porcelain wrists.
Something he'd rather not dwell upon.
He hears her breathing change as he gently moves his fingers upward. The way it hitches as his fingers travel from outer to inner thigh. The way it stops altogether as his hands find something beneath that skirt that is decidedly not a tracking device tucked into a garter belt.
Then releases in a ragged way that ripples through him like an electric current.
When she speaks, her voice is breathy. Surprised. Almost exasperated.
"What are you doing down there?"
His hands quickly scurry away from what feels remarkably like satin–of all things–and brush against the tracking device. The hard little plastic seemingly saving him from something he'd rather not consider further.
"Trying to not get lost," he manages to respond, something like a low, wry chuckle in his voice as he adjusts the bug.
He meets her eyes with something like an apology and is startled to feel something else screeching through her skin. That same thigh, so innocent and so downright strange to touch this way, beginning to unmistakably shake.
"You're trembling…" he begins, his voice gone softer with concern. Threaded with a gossamer undercurrent of something he'd not thought himself capable of in a long while.
She cuts him off briskly, her voice catching on itself and emerging almost like a slap. "That's because I'm scared!"
The bird turned scared cat lashing out, claws extended and snarling.
It is with more hope than certainty that he replies, hands holding her thigh more firmly to steady her. To give her something. Anything. To make this seem less impossible than it is.
The sound rumbles out of him, low and soothing like a lullaby. A promise.
"It's going to be okay."