“How do you take a name like that seriously?” he asked, allowing a smile to curl his lips just the tiniest bit. He’d backed up enough that he reached his coffee on the opposite counter. He brought the mug to his lips.
“Um. Well, it was kind of hard to. It’s one of those names that doesn’t exactly inspire you to say it during, you know, amorous situations.”
Marcus felt twin spears of lust and rage at her comment. He really didn’t want to picture her moaning Jet’s name. And at the same time, he couldn’t help but picture her moaning his own name. He shifted his stance and immediately tried to wipe that picture from his mind.
Light. Keep it light, he commanded himself. He’d already been way too intense. “Yeah, like Clarence. Or Dwight. Not exactly sexy.”
Iris laughed. “Not that you’d want your parents to think about how, you know, moan-able your name would be, but still.”
Marcus laughed too, eyeing her over the rim of his coffee cup. A silence fell over them and they both felt off-kilter. It was almost like walking in on one another while they were changing or something. Too much too soon too unexpectedly.
“Well,” Iris cleared her throat. “I’m gonna be in the music room if you need me.”
“Sure,” Marcus cleared his throat and didn’t even try to stop himself from watching her go.
Iris was proud that her feet didn’t stumble on their way out of that heated, tense room. She couldn’t even begin to interpret what the hell had happened in there. He’d been so close to kissing her. She was sure of it.
Well, she considered. She supposed that he’d been trapped here just as long as she had. Maybe he was going just as stir crazy as she was. She doubted very much that it had been as long since he slept with someone. A year and a half for her, since she’d last been with Jet. But he was a man, with different needs, and she knew for a fact that he hadn’t had sex in at least two weeks. He was probably all riled up. Yeah. That was definitely it. He was just strung too tight right now. That explained it.
***
She wasn’t sure if it was what had happened that morning, or if thinking about Jet had gotten her all riled up. But Iris just couldn’t face another quiet night in her room. She was a little burned out on all the songwriting she’d been doing. She needed a break. She’d gone for a swim that afternoon. Marcus hadn’t gone in with her. He’d waited on shore.
But it hadn’t been enough to take the edge off her restlessness. Every spare moment, she’d played and replayed that moment in the kitchen, his hand on her chin, his eyes on her lips. And every time she thought about it, Iris’s skin pulled tight, her heart raced. She had no doubt, none at all, that he’d wanted to kiss her.
He was a man, she was a woman. It made sense. She also knew that he’d probably be sprinting in the other direction if he knew about this monster crush she was currently nursing. That she could barely feel the tips of her fingers whenever he was in the same room. Or that when she heard him scuffling around his room it set butterflies dancing in her stomach. All these dumb little things, like seeing the book he was reading left open on the table, all of it sent her pulse racing. Anything that reminded her of his huge, gravity-sucking presence made her blush like a schoolgirl.
Regardless, she found herself down in the TV room for the first time since they’d arrived at the beach house. She wasn’t a TV watcher by nature. But tonight, she just needed something, anything, to take her racing mind off what had happened with him.
There were shelves full of DVDs to choose from and she was daunted by all the choices. She automatically dismissed all the war movies on the shelves. Not a fan. She found herself skipping easily past the romances and the rom coms. They would not offer her the distraction that she needed. Maybe something scary then?
She’d probably regret it later when she was shivering and wide awake all alone in her room. But right now, it was the only thing that would possibly take her mind off of Marcus.
Iris selected two DVDs and read the back of one and then the other. She froze as she felt Marcus’s gaze on her back. She hadn’t heard him approach, but she knew he was there.
“Gonna watch a movie?” His deep voice rumbled over her like a wave over the shore.
“Yeah, I’m in the mood to veg out tonight.”
To her great surprise, Marcus nodded once and came to sit on the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “What are we watching?”
Oh. He was going to watch a movie with her. Okay. Fine. That was just fine. She’d keep the light on and sit on the other side of the couch. And she’d choose something that would totally distract her from his presence.
“Um,” she held one of the DVDs up. “The Orphanage.” It was a Spanish language horror movie and the cover made it look terrifying.
“Isn’t that a horror movie?” Marcus asked as she turned on the TV and put the DVD into the player.
“Yeah. Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. You just… don’t seem like a horror movie kind of girl.”
Iris turned back toward him and surveyed her seating choices. She could either sit on the other end of the couch from Marcus or in a La-Z-Boy chair across the room from him. She chose the couch. She didn’t want him to think that she was affected by their interaction this morning.
So she slid onto the couch, as far away from his as possible and pulled one of the throw pillows over her lap. “I’m usually not into horror. But, I don’t know, it just sounded good for tonight.”
“Alright,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her as the opening credits started playing.
They weren’t ten minutes into the movie before Iris realized she’d made a huge, huge mistake with her movie choice. She was utterly terrified and nothing scary had even really happened yet. The whole thing was just so spooky.
“Iris,” Marcus said in a low voice as he paused the movie.
She jumped a foot in the air and turned to face him, completely wild eyed. “What?!”
He looked like he was holding back a chuckle. “Let’s choose something else to watch. You’re strung tighter than a violin right now.”
“No, no.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m fine. I swear. I’m totally cool.” She glanced nervously at the screen. “I wanna be able to lose myself in the movie tonight. It’s working.”
“Alright,” he replied skeptically. “If you say so. I’m gonna get something to drink. You want anything?”
“Whatever you’re having,” she responded absently, her eyes still glued to the paused screen. The movie was genuinely terrifying.
Marcus was back a few minutes later and she found a cold beer being pressed into her hand.
“For the nerves,” he said with a small grin that aggravated her nervous system worse than the dang movie did.
Was it her imagination or did he sit much closer to her on the couch than he had before? No. Yeah. There was only about a foot of space between them where there had been three feet before.
Iris both minded and didn’t mind. The part of her that was trying hard not to feed her humongous crush on the good smelling behemoth sitting next to her really wished he’d scoot away from her. Give her heart a chance to beat normally. The other part of her, the part that was shivering and whimpering over this horror movie was very glad he was right next to her.
She took a big sip of her beer and allowed it to soothe her. She hadn’t had a beer in a long time and had forgotten how good they could taste.
Marcus reclined on the couch, his feet, crossed at the ankle, stretched before them on the coffee table. Iris tucked her feet under her and anchored the pillow over her lap again as protection from the movie.
“Ready?” he asked, with a small smile on his face, the remote pointing toward the screen.
“Ready,” she confirmed solemnly.
Another twenty minutes into the movie and Marcus wholeheartedly wished they’d chosen a comedy. Every time she shifted in worry or fear, his body was put on high alert. He couldn’t get comfortabl
e with her just a few inches away, squirming and whimpering. The noises she was making, good God, the noises. He knew they were fearful and they should absolutely not be turning him on, but Jesus. He was mortal. And this woman had a sweet little whimpery moan for every moment of the movie that freaked her out. And, he had to admit, this movie was freaky as hell. There were plenty of moments that would be making him tense even if she weren’t writhing and whimpering next to him.
He glanced over at her and her eyes were glued to the screen. She clutched her empty beer bottle in both hands and her knuckles had gone white.
Again, Marcus paused the movie. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Gripping her bottom lip between her teeth, she nodded her head. “Yeah.”
He leaned forward and tugged the empty bottle out of her hands. He set it on the coffee table next to his and leaned back on the couch. His hand naturally ran along the back cushion, behind Iris’s head, and as she didn’t seem to mind, he left it there.
“I’m just gonna give you the remote,” Marcus said, handing it over. “If you need to pause it or turn it off at any point, no hard feelings, okay?”
Again, she nodded, uber solemn. Her bottom lip poked out a little and Marcus had the strong urge to lean forward and tug it gently between his teeth. He’d been haunted by thoughts of her mouth today. Those plump little lips. He dragged his eyes away and planted them on the screen.
Iris pressed play on the movie and sank back into the couch. The weight of her body had his arm sinking down just a bit toward her, but he held it away from her. Marcus didn’t know if she knew his arm was behind her or not. But a few minutes later, at a particularly scary moment involving an old creepy woman hiding in a shack, Iris jumped six inches in the air and flung her body around, away from the television. Her warm, soft face pressed insistently into his bicep, halfway covered by the sleeve of his t-shirt. The rest of his arm he instinctively wrapped around her, holding her to him for just a moment.
“Oh my god,” she whimpered, her breath hot against the inner skin of his arm.
“You alright?” he chuckled, although the last thing he felt like doing was laughing. All he really wanted to do was gather her close and run his nose along the slender line of her neck.
He realized that he was probably holding her too tight, but he found that his arm just wasn’t letting him ease up. Her slender shoulders fit perfectly in the crook of his arm. He did his best to keep his eyes on the screen and the movie that was continuing to play, but his eyes just naturally slid down to the crooked little part in her hair.
It was a gut punch of epic proportions. That crooked part. Her soft, light hair tumbled all over the place, always looking movie star gorgeous, but when you got close enough, you saw that her part was just a touch messy, out of line. He couldn’t say exactly why that made him want to tilt her head back and bite at her collarbones, he couldn’t have defined the exact correlation, but there it was. And there she was, warm and tight and trembling in his arms. Well, his arm. He kept his other arm firmly at his side. He could comfort her for a second. But he was not going to hold her. He refused to hold her.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she lifted her head and twisted back around to face the movie. But her shoulders stayed wedged under his arm, her arm down to the elbow was pressed against his ribs and her feet were pulled up under her chin. She didn’t shake his arm off, so Marcus didn’t bother moving it.
The movie was good. Terrifying, spooky, and compelling in equal measure. Both of them were sucked into it, but not wholly. A good amount of brain power from both of them was concentrated on his arm over her shoulders, her body pressing into his side. They were watching a scary movie, that was all. People sat close during scary movies. People did that all the time. That’s what they both told themselves as their bodies began to relax into the heat of the other.
By the time the movie was in its last few minutes, Iris had relaxed her head back onto his muscular shoulder, and his warm palm had slid down to cup her at her opposite elbow. He was sure that she could feel his heart pounding in his ribs but he found he didn’t care. He could always blame it on this scary-ass movie if she asked.
“Oh my god,” Iris whispered again as the credits rolled at the end of the movie. “I can’t believe that ending.” Her mouth fell right open as she turned to Marcus, less than six inches from him and he fought the need to lick at that little pink tongue of hers. With what he considered an admirable amount of restraint, Marcus took his free hand and gently closed her jaw.
“It was a good movie,” he conceded. As much as it pained him, he knew he had run out of excuses to have his arm wrapped around her shoulders. So he quickly removed it and stood up to stretch at the same time.
The lack of his warmth around her instantly made Iris self-conscious. She hadn’t realized quite how intimate their position had been until she felt the cold left behind in the absence of it. He obviously hadn’t minded, because he’d sat with her like that for damn near half the movie. But she couldn’t help but feel some embarrassment about how jumpy she’d been during the movie.
She rose as well, putting their beer bottles in the recycling in the kitchen. She scrupulously avoided the darkened windows that bounced her reflection back toward her as she scurried back toward the stairs upstairs. She bounced in front of Marcus, scampering in front of him up the stairs. It was then she realized how screwed she was. After that movie, she was way too scared to be left alone downstairs. And now she was staring down the barrel of an entire night alone? Brilliant idea with the scary movie, Iris.
“A little jumpy?” Marcus asked with a smile in his tone as he ambled up the stairs behind her.
Iris cleared her throat. “A little, I guess.”
“You gonna be alright?”
She nodded, but didn’t speak. He didn’t need to know how much of a loser she was. And that she would be sleeping with the lights on, her headphones in and completely under the covers.
“Look,” he said as he came to the door across from hers. “I’ll keep my door open tonight. If you want to keep yours open too.”
She almost didn’t hear his offer considering how busy she was searching the hall for twitchy, terrifying ghost children with burlap sacks over their heads.
“What? Oh, you don’t have to do that for me.”
“It’s really not a problem, Iris. And you look like you’re about to cry.”
She bit her lip and gave him just a flash of her blue eyes. He wanted more. He wanted to tilt her head back and stare into those ice blue orbs.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be easier to fall asleep if…” she trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence.
He nodded. “Done. Sleep well.”
And he turned to walk into his room without a glance behind him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You any good at haircuts?” Marcus asked her the next day as he set down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a side of potato chips on top of the piano.
She hadn’t really been working for the last twenty minutes or so. She’d just been noodling around on the piano and trying her best not to think about last night. About his arm around her shoulders or about the sound of his breaths from across the hall, even and full. He’d never know how soothing it had been to her to know he was right there if she needed him. Which, of course, she hadn’t.
She picked up the sandwich and took a big bite as she swiveled on the piano bench to look at him. “I used to cut Owen’s hair before he got all famous and started paying hundreds of dollars for pretty much exactly what I did for free.”
Marcus smiled, quick as a flash. “Alright. Can you fix me up? I can do the front, but I don’t trust myself to do the back.”
Iris’s mouth went a little dry around her sandwich as she surveyed the perfectly straight lines of his haircut, the gold of his skin underneath.
“I can try.”
“Good enough for me,” he shrugged. “Besides, if you screw up the ba
ck of my head, you’re the only one who’s gonna look at it.”
For some reason, that made both of them laugh, hard. His hot chocolate chuckle rolled over her and made her loose, made her laugh even harder.
“I think the cabin fever is getting to us,” she said as she tossed her sandwich back on her plate and rose up from the piano bench.
“The movie was a good idea last night,” he said as he led her out of the room toward the bathroom in his bedroom. “It gave us a window into the outside world.”
“We should do it again,” Iris said without thinking. She stepped across the doorway of his bedroom and she was immediately swamped in his scent. Just a hint of cologne and sea air. Oh. She couldn’t fight the tightening of the skin on her arms. She hoped that her baggy men’s button-down shirt would hide it. She wore leggings and a tank top underneath and her hair piled all on top of her head.
He had the razor set out on the sink and he grabbed a stool from his room to sit on in front of the sink. He didn’t hesitate to tug his t-shirt over his head.
Iris tried her best to ignore the furious burning magnets that her eyes had become. She wanted nothing more than to stare with her mouth open at his beautiful back and chest but instead she leaned her butt against the sink and busied herself with learning the settings on the electric razor. Luckily it was the same kind that she used to use with Owen. She was confident that she could give Marcus a decent haircut.
He sat himself on the stool and squinted at her. “What shirt is that?” he asked.
She looked down at the roomy plaid button-down she wore and shrugged. “One of Tia’s. I found it in her drawers.”
Marcus frowned, hard. “I’m pretty sure that’s Eli’s, not Tia’s.”
“Really?” Iris asked, with wonder in her voice. She plucked at one of the sleeves, her eyes as big as saucers. “I’m wearing Elijah Bird’s shirt?”
She missed the dark look that crossed Marcus’s face. “Are you wearing anything underneath?”
She blinked up at him. “A tank top. Why—”
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