He figured a room that required only railings as safety measures should be just fine.
As a recording briefly explained the circumstances surrounding each earthquake, he and April leaned against their patch of railing, hip to hip. Then the re-creation of the Loma Prieta quake began, the lights flickered out, and the room rattled and shook beneath their feet.
He put his arm around her shoulders, hitching her closer as the chandelier swayed and the books hopped out of place, millimeter by millimeter.
“As a precautionary measure,” he said when her gaze shot to his.
She snorted. “Right.”
All in all, it felt not entirely dissimilar to his memory of the actual quake, except happier. And sexier. Much, much happier and sexier. One of her breasts nudged his chest as she shifted under his arm, and he had to swallow back an embarrassing noise.
When the simulator’s version of the 1906 quake began, the difference between the two temblors was immediately apparent. This quake involved not just rattling but sharp jolts and an ominous rolling sensation too, and the whole experience lasted much longer. Long enough to recall, unwillingly, that a similar catastrophe could happen again, right where they were standing, at any time.
Yet the grin on April’s round, lovely face widened, moment by moment. In a burst of movement, she got up on her toes and nestled closer.
Her breast wasn’t merely nudging his chest anymore. The contact had become a blindingly pleasurable press of softness, a taunt rubbing against him with each jolt of the floor beneath them.
“This is fucking awesome,” she whispered in his ear as they bumped into the rail and clutched one another. “I wonder how accurate they were allowed to make it.”
As she spoke, her lips brushed his earlobe, and her hot, moist breath caressed his bare neck. He inhaled sharply. Relaxed his fingers on her shoulder one by one, before their bite into her cotton-covered flesh became too possessive or painful. Slid that hand between her shoulder blades and down to the small of her back.
The two of them had an audience as they rode out their simulated earthquake, and he didn’t give a fuck anymore. He gripped the rail beside him more firmly, feet spread apart for balance. Enough balance for two, as necessary.
With a single, deliberate shift of his sheltering arm, he fitted her against him front to front, heat to heat. Her lips parted in a silent gasp, and their thighs tangled. As the world shuddered around them, she braced one hand against his chest for balance, the other still reaching for the rail by his ass.
The shrieks of the children in the room disappeared, muffled by the buzz in his ears and the rocketing thump of his heart.
She didn’t shift away. Instead, her warm palm skated slowly, slowly, down his chest, rubbing back and forth a bit with each jolt, stopping just above his jeans, fingers spread wide, and she wasn’t watching the room anymore. Neither was he.
He bent low. Ran his nose along the pretty, pale curve of her ear, and that shiver shifting her body against his wasn’t from the damn simulator.
“May I?” he breathed into her ear.
She nodded. Turned her head and looked up at him, eyes heavy-lidded, then fisted her fingers in his henley and—
The lights came on. The room stopped moving, even as his personal ground continued to shake.
They didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t look away.
The recording cheerfully informed them that the real quake would have lasted three times as long, and goddamn the museum for not properly valuing historical and scientific accuracy, because he wanted that extra minute of stomach-pitching chaos. Wanted to taste that plump, rosy mouth and trace the bow of her upper lip. Wanted to use his teeth and tongue until she gasped and trembled again and used her hold on his shirt to bring his body closer, closer.
But some people were shuffling out of the room, chattering noisily, while others were still documenting every second of this private moment occurring in a much-too-public place.
They both deserved better than this.
He drew back, removing his left hand from—well, it had evidently moved at some point, settling just microns above the tempting swell of her ass in those tight, tight jeans. Then he let go of the rail too and offered her his right hand, which wasn’t entirely steady.
She took it. “The planetarium next?”
He nodded, too overwhelmed for words. Fingers interlaced once more, they left the exhibit and walked toward the planetarium.
Would kissing her there work better than in the earthquake simulator? They’d have dim lighting, and maybe an isolated cluster of seats, and stars wheeling overhead, and if he slid his hand under her tunic, maybe—
Okay, the thought of what they could do in a dark theater wasn’t helping his current situation.
“Tell me more about the Loma Prieta quake on the way there.” His voice had turned raspy, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “If that’s okay. I lived through it, and I should understand how and why it happened.”
“Really?” She raised a skeptical brow. “Because you don’t need to humor me. I’m not offended if you don’t want to hear more about geology right now.”
“Really.” Casting aside his public persona, at least for the moment, he dug deep and let the right words—the true words—emerge. “I, uh—I’m interested in lots of things, actually. I listen to nonfiction audiobooks all the time, especially when I travel.”
Stupidly, his cheeks had gone hot.
He had never, never known what to say. Who to be. How to act.
How not to disappoint.
But he had to give her something, something real and true, since appearances alone didn’t interest her. Even their undeniable sexual chemistry wouldn’t be enough to keep her, not if she didn’t see anything in him worth keeping. And maybe their years of online friendship weren’t enough to entrust her with a career-destroying secret, but they were enough to entrust her with this little hidden corner of his heart.
So he forced himself to continue. “One of my favorite things about what I do”—his tongue was so damnably thick all of a sudden—“about—about acting, is how it pushes you to learn new skills. Like, this one terrible pilot taught me the basics of sailing.”
In his peripheral vision, he could see her face turned toward him. Her absolute attention focused on him and him alone.
“The series was supposed to be called Crime Wave. Because I was a crime-solving dude on a boat? It wasn’t the world’s best concept.” No network had wanted to touch that pilot. It had rightfully sunk beneath the surface of television history without a trace—except when it came to his sailing skills. “A complete flop of a rom-com helped me learn how to handle a chef’s knife and chop like someone who knew his way around a professional kitchen.”
“I saw that!” she exclaimed. “Julienned by Love, right? And your love interest was actually named—”
“Yes. Julienne. Julie. My plucky sous chef, who thought she was dying but wasn’t, and who eventually became famous for her jambalaya-cheesecake fusion dish.” He winced. “I apologize. I’m more than happy to refund your money personally.”
Her laugh echoed in the expansive space. “Oh, I didn’t pay for it. I streamed it during a free trial, just out of morbid curiosity.”
That sounded about right.
“For Gates, I studied ancient shipbuilding and military tactics. Swordplay too, like you said the other night.” He fixed his eyes on the signage ahead, awkwardly scratching the nonexistent stubble on his jaw with his free hand. “If you, um, ever wanted to hear about that. Maybe it could help with some of your fanfiction?”
When he fell silent, she slowed until he turned back toward her.
Then she eyed him up and down in frank assessment and appreciation, her teeth sinking into her lower lip, and Jesus. Flicking his hair and flexing hadn’t bought him that kind of interest, that heat in her gaze. Not once.
“I do want to hear about your swordplay. Trust me.” Her fingers tightened on his. “In the meantime, though, if you want to know more about the Loma Prieta earthquake, ask and ye shall receive.”
So she told him as they walked, and she was so fucking smart, and made things so damn clear and interesting, without an ounce of condescension.
Shit, it was sexy. Which wasn’t actually what he’d wanted from a discussion about a deadly earthquake, but there it was. There he was, tugging down the hem of his henley to ensure it disguised his reaction to her.
“So it was an oblique-slip rupture,” she explained, reclaiming her hand so she could gesture gracefully with her arms in illustration, and he both grasped—at long last—what that actually meant and wanted to grasp one of those blunt fingers and slip it into his mouth. Sink his teeth into the pad of her thumb and watch those alert brown eyes turn hazy.
When her tongue wrapped around a technical term, he wanted that tongue wrapped around him too. Anywhere. Everywhere.
His desire to have his mouth on her, hers on him, wasn’t oblique. It was direct. And yes, he was certain that didn’t make a lick of sense in seismological terms, but he didn’t care, because he wanted to lick her.
In the end, the planetarium was packed for their particular showing, so he behaved himself, despite the way she rested her hand proprietarily on his thigh. His upper thigh.
In person, everything he’d come to adore about Ulsie online seemed impossibly more intense. Her plainspoken pragmatism and calm, her kindness, her intelligence, her easy humor, her self-confidence—they all radiated from each gesture, each word, and the glow was as blinding as the lights in the planetarium when they came back up after the show.
The only time she seemed hesitant, unsure of herself, was after lunch, when they exited the museum and lingered outside the entrance in the spring breeze.
“Was this . . . okay?” A strand of her coppery hair had worked free of her ponytail, and it fluttered against her cheek. “I know it wasn’t exactly a water park, but . . .”
Carefully, he took hold of that silky lock, moving it away from her face.