keep eye contact. "I've ignored that look you get sometimes since I turned eighteen. But I'm not ignoring it anymore."
"Look? What look? What the fuck are you talking about?" I snapped back, agitated by his behavior. "And this thing is getting heavy, Billy. I'm going to drop it if you don't..."
"That look you get whenever I walk in the room without a shirt on," he cut in, ignoring my threat to drop the auto part. "That look you get..." he continued, lowering his voice, his tone, while moving even closer to me.”...when I take off my shirt in front of you."
'No! Oh my God, no!' I thought to myself. Yet I knew full well that my own expression was giving me away, and I couldn't do anything about it. He smiled slyly. He knew.
"Yeah, now you know what look I'm talking about, don't you?"
"Oh my God, Billy, it's not like that. I never thought anything like that concerning you! I love your dad. I swear. I've watched you grow up for crying out loud! You’ve got to believe me.” I was rambling. In attempting to defend myself, I couldn’t stop talking but the sly smile on his face never wavered. Something inside me caved.
"So, I appreciate how you filled out! There! I admit it!" I said with conviction. "That doesn't make me some deviant or something lusting after my husband's son!"
He leaned in closer, dipping his head down close to my face.
"Billy!" I squealed in panic. "What the hell do you think you are doing? I'm going to drop this. Why don’t you just back up and knock this shit off, now!"
He stopped getting closer, but he didn't move back either. Then he smiled. Oh my god, that smile. Billy had the perfect smile that turned all the girls' heads. The perfect white teeth, the perfect lips, and that dimple... good God, that dimple. Add in his vivacious green eyes under unruly sandy brown hair and you could see what made teachers do things that they ended up in jail for.
"You're not going to drop it, Tracy," he said in a soft, quiet voice. "You'll stand there and hold that part till your fingers break. That’s what I’m telling you to do and that's just how you are going to take it. In the meantime, I want to clear this up for you." He leaned closer to talk even softer into my ear. "I don't think you're a deviant and I know you love my dad. That's how I noticed your sly little expression in the first place."
My head was swimming. I got caught doing something that I didn't even realize I was doing!
Billy was too close. His scent, his voice, his... energy was too much. I shook my head in denial. He needed to back away. "Billy, please. Let's just fix the tractor and then we can talk if you still want to."
"I have a better idea. 'I' talk, we get this out of our system and then we finish the tractor."
"Get what out of our system? There's nothing to... William!"
He chuckled at my use of his full name, something I didn't use very often. But when his hand had reached around to cup my ass cheek it came out as natural as though I used it every day.
"Do you remember when I hurt my back in wrestling practice?" he whispered in my ear, his hand never leaving its position on my ass. I waggled my head. "Do you remember those massages you gave me to help it heal?"
"I never touched you in a way I shouldn’t have, Billy! Those massages were purely therapeutic and you know it!"
"That’s where you're wrong, Tracy. I remember there being times when I didn’t think they were so 'therapeutic'." He moved around me to stand at my back and wrapped his arms around me from behind. His hands slipped down my arms from my shoulders to my wrists, which were still holding the part in the engine of the tractor.
"I had a feeling you didn't realize what you did to me. I never said anything because I didn’t want to embarrass you. And your massages were, for the most part, simply therapeutic. Let go, Tracy."
I let the hunk of metal and plastic slip from fingers. That’s when I noticed it didn't move when I let go. "You
Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain