He, also, seemed to be greedy for details.
I tucked my hair behind my ears and rubbed my neck. Everywhere his eyes moved itched and tingled.
I cleared my throat, “You too.”
He met my gaze, studied me, his smile still slight; “It’s different with you; it’s not just the way you look.”
In a surprising turn of events, the comment on my inner beauty made me squirm to a much greater degree than the compliment aimed at my physical features. I wasn’t so sure that inner,Janie was at all a beautiful person. Jem’s words from last night; the apparent callous disinterestedness with which I regarded the end of my relationship with Jon, my unwillingness to help my sister in her time of need, had me doubting whether I was anything other than a selfish and vapid replica of my mother.
“Are you admitting your beauty is only skin deep?” I titled my head to the side, wanting to tease him rather than dwell on how high, scale from one to ten, I would rank on the vapid-meter.
He breathed in through his nose, his eyebrows lifted, his attention shifted to his hands; Quinn loosened his grip on the napkin, began twisting it between his thumb and forefinger.
He didn’t respond. I took his silence as confirmation.
“I think you’re wrong.”
He continued to twist the napkin wordlessly until it began to resemble a short length of rope or a thick length of parn (paper + yarn = parn).
I considered him at length. There was still a lot I didn’t know about Quinn and, therefore, I deliberated the possibility that he was right. He could be a virtually empty shell of a person with a stunning façade, impressive intellect, and a foil wit.
Then, I frowned because the prospect felt dissonant with reality.
“No… you are a good guy.” I tilted my head to the side, allowed my gaze to move over his lips, hair, neck, then lower to where his heart beat. “We see the strengths and faults in others that we do not or cannot recognize in ourselves.”
“Janie...” His small smile, more of a grimace, struck me as brittle when our eyes finally met.
“Are you trying to scare me off?”
He nodded his head but, on a sigh, replied, “No.”
“Do you have any current nefarious plans? Are you plying me with Italian beef as part of an evil plot? Is this,” I motioned between us, “an elaborate lie? Are you planning to lure me into a false sense of security, have your way with me, light me up, then toss me aside like a match or a Christmas tree?”
His face was serious, “No.”
“Then why do you believe that you lack internal beauty?”
“Because I only do things for selfish reasons.”
“Like dating me?”
“Dating you is completely selfish.”
The comment struck me momentarily mute but I quickly recovered, “If- if- if you were being selfish then you’d still be a Wendell and I’d be a slamp.”
He shook his head; “If you were a slamp then we wouldn’t be exclusive and you could be with other people.”
“And that makes you selfish…?”
“That makes me selfish.” his eyes pierced me, and his voice was low and sandpapery.
I took the opportunity to munch on a french-fry, now cold, and deliberate his words.
“I will say this,” Quinn held me with his eyes, his expression increasing in severity as though hovering on the precipice of a meaningful confession, “You make me want to be less of an ass**le.”
My lashes flapped at him, “Really? … wow.” I gulped.
It was… a confession of sorts; but it was the type of confession which encouraged my sarcasm rather than my appreciation. The statement struck me as the epitome of non-committal, pseudo-subtle, self-deprecation; I was amazed by its definitive tepidness.
“That’s so poetic. You should write greeting cards: ‘Dear Dad, thank you for helping me become not as big of a jerk as you are. I’m still a jerk, just not a really big jerk like you.’”
Quinn laughed again but this time with complete abandon; it was a deep, rumbly belly laugh which- since I was within earshot of the blast radius- was extremely infectious and I felt it acutely like a touch rather than a sound. He held his hand over his chest and my attention loitered on the spot. Even as I laughed I felt a twist of discomfort emanating from a mirrored location in my own chest.
I ached. I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to know everything about him.
The suddenness of the pain caught me by surprise and I closed my eyes against it, breathing out slowly, collecting myself so I wouldn’t give into my desire to climb over the desk and tackle him where he sat, Italian beef sandwich on his lap, napkin in his hand.
“Janie.”
My eyes remained closed but I gave him a slight, evasive, closed mouth smile.
“What are you thinking?”
I swallowed but didn’t answer. My heart started to race. I wanted to tell him I was thinking about the fiber content in stain resistant carpet but that would have been a lie. Even if I wanted to, and I did want to, I couldn’t seem to distract myself from the reality of being with him and all the irrepressible terror and hunger that accompanied it.
“Why are you so afraid?”
“Because I’m not thinking about the fiber content in stain resistant carpet.” My eyes remained stubbornly shut.
“What does that mean?”
“It means…” I lifted my lids and found him surveying me with simple curiosity. I swallowed a new thickness in my throat, knowing that I needed to tell him the truth. “It means my brain finds you more interesting than all the really interesting trivial facts I could be contemplating or researching at present.”
His answering smile was leisurely, measured; “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
I returned his smile although I felt suddenly sober, my eyes inexplicably watery, “Quinn…” I took a deep, steadying breath, “Quinn, you need to be a good guy. I need you to be a good guy.”
He nodded, his expression reacting to and echoing my sudden seriousness, “I know. I want to.” Quinn licked his lips as his eyes moved to my mouth. “I will.”
CHAPTER 26
We left work shortly after 4pm. Together.
Quinn reached for and grabbed my hand; he flashed me a smile and gently held it as we walked down the hallway, past a gaping Keira, onto the elevator, within plain view of the security desk, and its inhabitants, to the lobby. As we walked, fingers threaded together, Quinn caressed the wrinkles of my knuckles with the pad of his thumb and spoke of the current corporate client Las Vegas dilemma.
At first I was fairly preoccupied by our public display of physical contact and managed only single syllable responses. However, once we were settled in a large black limo, I tried to focus on his words rather than the predictably astonished glances from my co-workers.
But then, we sat close together on the bench seat; he lifted my legs so that they were positioned across his, and he fiddled distractedly with my collar, his eyes on the buttons of my business shirt.
I was watching his lips as he spoke. I tried to find my place in the conversation but the way he looked at me, the closeness of him, the feel of his hands- one on my thigh, one brushing against my neck- made me feel fuzzy-headed and unfocused.
“Janie?”
I blinked, saw his mouth form my name before I heard the word. My eyes widened then met his.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you… Did you hear what I said?”
“No.” I answered truthfully, my attention moving to his mouth again; at the moment, his mouth was a Janie-attention-hogging-lodestone.
Quinn squeezed my leg, “Am I boring you?”
“No.” I sighed, allowing my head to rest against his arm behind me, still focused on the bottom half of his face. “I was just thinking about your mouth.”
He licked his lips and, to my surprise, his neck and cheeks tinted slightly hot. “What were you thinking about my mouth?”
“I like it.”
“What do you like about it?”
Without hesitating I responded, “Everything, the shape of it, how big your lips are, your tubercle, the curve of your philtrum. Did you know that in traditional Chinese medicine, the shape and color of the philtrum, also called the medial cleft, is supposed to be connected to- or, rather- have direct correlation to the health of a person’s reproductive system?”
I noticed his eyes flicker to the space between my nose and mouth, seemingly without his expressed consent, then quickly back to my eyes, “How about that.”
I nodded, “There are a lot of fascinating and unusual studies out there that link the shape of a person’s mouth- so, report a correlational relationship- to other parts of the human anatomy and its abilities… proclivities.”
I noticed his breathing had changed. He swallowed, “Like what?”
I traced my finger over the top of his lip, enjoying the fact that I was actually using my knowledge of random facts as some sort of brainy, academic foreplay and that Quinn seemed to like it, respond to it.
“Like the Cupid’s bow, the double curve of the upper lip. A study out of Scotland reported that women with a prominent cupid’s bow are more likely to experience orgasm during sex.”
Quinn’s attention once again affixed to my lips then he promptly groaned. “You shouldn’t say things like that when I can’t do anything about it.”