Beneath The Skin(140)

“Bertha’s legs?”

“My extension is 330,” he whispers, then hops off the stage and departs the auditorium.

The silent vacuum of the enormous room crushes in on me. Then, through that silence, I hear Clayton breathing. I turn my face. He seems to be scowling at the floor like it did something wrong to him. So, what’s the plan now? Are we just going to sit here?

Tentatively, I give a small wave of my hand. Either it does not get his attention, or he’s ignoring me. “Hey,” I say, then feel dumb the moment the word comes out. Would it be rude to get his attention by slapping the stage? Screw it. I tap the flat of my palm against the stage three times, inspiring three small vibrations, and accompany the gesture with another thoughtless, “Hey, Clayton?” Nothing.

I clench shut my eyes. I shouldn’t have signed to him. I ruined everything. What a dumb idea. Even now, I’m reliving that moment in the UC food court with a tinge of humiliation, reimagining the annoyed look on his face. He was annoyed, right? Or am I projecting my own doubts onto a perfectly innocent memory?

I’m here for three damn hours. I’m not going to spend them sitting on the edge of the stage playing ignore-me games with Clayton hot-as-fuck Watts.

Fighting a blush that’s quickly spreading over my face like a firestorm, I climb to my feet and search around for something to do. A pile of cables, already neatly coiled up. I check to ensure that they’re sorted by length and color. They are. Lovely. I approach the lighting rack where all the lights dangle by C-clamps. They’re organized by type. One of the Fresnel lanterns is crooked, so I do the important and necessary work of pushing a finger into its side, righting it.

All in a hard day’s work.

Footsteps approach from behind. When I turn, Clayton stands there, dark and foreboding. His shirt is especially clingy today, giving me an impressive display of his gorgeous pecs. His thick, unforgiving shoulders torment each sleeve of his poor black shirt, which stretches to embrace the mass of his arms.

I sigh just at the sight of him.

“Up here,” he murmurs, nearly inaudible.

I blink, then meet his eyes. Did he just …? Did I just hear him …? Or did I imagine that?

“You can talk?” I ask inanely.

“My eyes … are up here,” he repeats just as quietly.

I thought I was blushing before. Nope. My face is burning like a fraternity beach bonfire now.

And his voice … The sound of his voice is electric to me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but his every word is like silk against my skin. Isn’t that exactly how it sounded in my fantasies of him? I wonder if he realizes how softly he speaks, how sensitive he is to the vibrations of his own voice. Regardless, I could listen to that man all day long. The gentle cadence of his speech is sex to my ears.

I clear my throat, then enunciate each of my words with great care. “I take it … you can understand me?”

His heavy-lidded eyes regard me with a mountain of patience as he looks down on me. With the tiniest of smirks playing on his sexy lips, he nods once.

“Okay.” I offer him a tiny, smug smile of my own. “So,” I say, punching each word, “do you … want to introduce me … to Bertha?”

“Talk normal.”

I study his eyes defensively. “I am,” I argue back.

The tiny smirk becomes an amused one. “Don’t have to shout,” he says. “Doesn’t help me hear your pretty voice any better.”

With that, he turns away, heading for backstage. I watch his muscular back as he goes, gawping after him. I was shouting?? How the hell can he tell, anyway? My eyes drop down to his perfect ass. He’s wearing a loose pair of tattered jeans that hang low on his hips, yet somehow are capable of hugging his hot, sculpted buns in a way that is annoyingly distracting. My urge to tackle him and hear the meaty sound of his body crashing into the wall as I have my way with him has not diminished at all over the past week.

Stop staring at his ass, I chide myself, then follow.

His biceps flex gloriously as he grips and pulls the handle of an enormous blue lift machine that has the name “BERTHA” written across the base of the cage in thick black marker. The monster rolls slowly on four squeaky wheels, Clayton grunting slightly as he tugs it to the center of the stage. I wonder if he knows he’s grunting. Miss Bertha has got to weigh a ton.

Once it’s placed, he pulls out four long metal legs from some compartment in the base, then sticks each one into their matching slots, locking them in place with a twisting, rotary handle-thing. The legs stretch out about five feet or so in each direction, giving the machine balance. He runs its cord along the stage to an outlet. A moment later, he’s in front of Bertha and pulling open the little door of the two-person metal basket thing that we’ll be going up in.