Max smiled a wicked smile she knew he couldn't see as a dangerous idea popped into her mind. "Tell me what you hear," she said. She took a swig from the bottle.
"I hear you drinking more Scotch," he said, his brows moving while, despite the fact his eyes were closed, he seemed to be trying to adjust his vision. "Obviously."
"What else?" She stood perfectly still, watching the shadow rain fall down his face.
Alec tilted his head slightly toward her. "The rain, falling like fingertips on skin."
Max stepped closer to him, the liquid in the bottle sloshing with her movement. She watched his hands rub against each other, seeing his fingers playing against themselves as if they were some imaginary piano. She gulped, wishing she could feel their warm music.
"You okay?" he asked, wondering what had caused her sudden swallow.
She figured he had heard her. She watched him, sitting as if frozen, statuesque, his angles and lines somehow making the room warmer, making her skin buzz. She followed the ripple in his long-sleeved t-shirt from the crew neck toward his bicep. The suggestion of his flexed muscle made her panic mentally. There were so many things his muscles could do to her. It made no sense logically, but she desperately wanted to trace all of his lines with her tongue.
The intent she focused on him sent a flurry of reciprocity through her mind. He could taste all of her curves, too. He could run his fingertips along her collarbone and down her shoulder and give her a gentle push on the skin between her breasts.
She removed her shirt, leaving her torso clad in just her bra. She lowered the top to the floor and let it crumple between them. She leveled a prowling set of brown, peppery eyes on him.
His brow quirked up on one side. "Is that a blanket?"
Max said nothing as she tiptoed around the couch, trying to be secretive.
But he heard that, too, she realized, because he turned his head toward her.
Setting the bottle on the floor gently, Max untied her shoes and removed them and her socks. Better to be barefoot if she wanted to be stealth, she recognized.
"Getting comfortable?"
Max watched his face to make sure his eyes were still shut before picking up the bottle. She tiptoed, this time barefoot, to the other side of him, leaned in a little, and asked, "What do you smell?"
Alec shut his mouth and breathed in a couple of little, shallow breaths. She wondered what those breaths might feel like on her skin. Would they be warm like puffs of steam, or cool like a thick fog rolling over the earth?
"The rain," his deep voice answered. "A little musky." He seemed to be intentionally drawing out his answer. She wondered what for, but stifled the question when his lips parted again. "I smell that vanilla stuff you use in your hair."
He knew it came from her shampoo, she realized, smiling.
"Cherry chapstick," he continued, imagining her applying the waxen material, imagining getting some of it applied to his own lips in transfer. His nose twitched a little and his mouth opened, causing his hands to come apart.
"What?"
He wasn't going to tell her he could smell her arousal. He hoped she couldn't see him very well in the dark, because he was pretty sure he was expressing a hungry look. "I can smell the Scotch," he tried to cover. "Can I have some?"
He looked like he was about to open his eyes, and Max wasn't ready for that just yet. "Okay, but keep your eyes closed. And no hands!" she batted his hands down. He settled them on his thighs.
From the side, she raised the bottle to his lips and he tilted his head back, gaining a significant mouthful. She pulled the bottle back and moved to stand in front of him. Clearly, he heard her move and focused his words in the direction of her face.
"Are you satisfied yet?" he asked.
"Nope," Max said, pushing him backwards by the chest with her free hand.
Alec's heart rate climbed. She was voluntarily touching him. On purpose. He wanted to open his eyes so badly. His back hit the couch pillow, which left him at an angle not entirely uncomfortable, but an angle at which he imagined Max's smiling face looming above him.
Except, the very second she straddled him, pouring herself into his lap and sinking down, his eyes rolled back beneath their closed lids. He raised his hands up about a foot, unaware of where to put them.
"Now, what do you feel?" she asked, squirming as her knees dug into the couch cushions.
"Max, I-" he tried, his hands waving slightly.
"Uh uh," she warned. "Remember? You have to keep your eyes shut." She scooted a little more forward, her thighs widening the further up him she climbed.
A pained look crossed his face. He wanted to open his eyes to help him interpret the situation, to see what her eyes were saying.
She took another breath. "What do you feel?"
Alec tried to calm himself. Very soon, the way she kept closing distance between them, she would know exactly what he felt. If this wasn't some kind of joke, though, then he wouldn't need his eyes to help him determine her intent. He let his hands fall to the couch, and with a purposefully diabolical smirk sneaking onto his features, he said, "it's not called the sense of feel, Maxie."
Max smiled. Of course he was trying to get more out of the situation. Finally, he was catching on. "Okay. What do you-" she paused, grinding into his lap, "touch?"
His hands found her knees, a move which surprised her in its suddenness and caused her to sharply take in some air, and slid up her thighs, clamping her down to his thighs. His champion smirk adorned itself to his face. He was undoubtedly imagining her face at this very moment.
"I touch," he started lazily, rubbing her jean-clad legs. "Strength."
Max inadvertently squeezed him with this 'strength' and he started to lose focus. The pressure of the act hardened him. He couldn't see it, but her pupils were dilating.
His hands crept up to her hips. "Curves," he continued, sweeping over her hips, his fingertips pulling her forward so he could squeeze her ass. He let his palms smooth over her hips again, drifting upward to the small of her back. His erection pulsed and he snapped his eyes open. "You're not wearing a shirt," he spat out before she raised her hand to his eyes.
"Eyes closed," she reminded, smiling.
But he had just seen an eyeful of Max. Her denim hugged the curve of her hip, and her hair fell partially over her breasts, which were covered only by her probably satin bra, he guessed, and she was straddling him pretty hard on the couch in her apartment – in which they were alone and in the dark on an increasingly sexy, rainy night.
She chose that very moment to grind into him again, rocking her hips forward, then back. Alec's hands swept back down to her hips, helping her rub against him, before drifting back up to the center of her back. Even if he had wanted to keep his eyes open, he involuntarily squeezed them shut from sheer pleasure, the act an instinct for which he was thankful, given that sensory overload might cause him to implode.
Alec mumbled incoherently as his hands stilled.
"Hmm?" she breathed in response.
He cleared his throat. "Skin," he said a bit more firmly. "How is your skin this soft?" he asked, letting his fingertips draw up her back, under the clasp of her bra.
Max let her head fall back as she pushed further into his lap, feeling, even through two pairs of jeans, how solid he had become underneath her. Her hair slipped over her shoulders, brushing against the backs of his busy fingers. Within the moment, she felt the bust of her bra loosen and his warm palms push up against her shoulder blades, pulling her back toward him.
With a tilted, flirty stare, which was wasted on him because of his closed lids, Max rolled one shoulder forward, the bra strap giving way to gravity. She pulled her elbow through it and let the whole thing dangle from her left shoulder for a moment before holding her arm out at a downward angle. The bra slid over the Scotch and fell quietly to the floor.
"Max," Alec grunted, licking his lips, but continuing to keep his eyes closed.
From his tone of voice, she thought he might be about to stop the progression of this challenge, and she really didn't want that. She really didn't want his hands to ever leave her body. Not before he brought them between them, against her. Not before he explored the kind of affect he was having on the hard bundle of nerves topping her breasts.
But he said nothing else, only breathed deeply, bringing his hands up between her shoulder blades and scooped his fingers around toward her collarbone, again, pulling her closer to him.
Max closed her eyes and let out a small murmur of lust. If he pulled her any closer, her nipples would dot against him, and if he pulled her any closer, she would lost complete control of her gross motor functions and pull his mouth to her by the scruff of his neck.
Tickling along her triceps, Alec's fingers followed the lean lines of her arms, out to her wrists, which for her left arm, meant his digits caressed closer to the bottle of Scotch. She pulled his left arm back down to her hip, where it (thankfully, for the time being) stayed. He turned his right palm to the front of her arm and let it wander back up toward her collar bone.
"Smooth," he said huskily, lavishing attention to the base of her neck. He pawed gently at the crook of her neck and shoulders, dove delicately into the hollow part of her collarbone, then slowly, torturously dragged his fingers between her breasts and over her abdomen, coming to rest at her hips.
