Page 28 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Courtney

Thea’s dimples were even deeper this close up. “I want to take a clinch photo. We’d each put a hand on the plates.” Thea screwed an extra piece onto the clicker button. Her attention on the camera gave me ample time to map every dip and curve of Thea’s body.

“It’s an old analog timer. It’s a little jerry-rigged, but I think it will work.”

“You want to take a clinch aura photo? Like a clinch cover clinch?” I asked.

“Some of the colors on the covers of the books reminded me a lot of the aura photos. I wanted to test this out as a pose option for couples. It’s not something I’ve done a lot.”

“Oh right. That totally makes sense. I’m a guinea pig?”

“Do you mind?”

“Nope.”

Whatever I had said about it not being too hot in here no longer applied. I rubbed over my neck to see how badly I was sweating. “I have a tank on under this. Can I…?”

“Of course. But if you’re getting uncomfortable up here, we don’t have to—”

“No, I think it would be fun to re-create a cover. It would be nice for the book fair theme.” I pulled off my hoodie and tossed it onto the small chair in the corner.

Yep, now I’m just taking my clothes off.

Very subtle. At least I could try to be subtle about the way I wanted to ogle Thea.

When I got here and she appeared in the doorway wearing that thin tank, I nearly keeled over.

“I think if we pull the plates slightly behind us, we can have the front hands posed like a lot of the covers.” She reached toward me. “May I?”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Um, yes.

Thea pulled me between the hand plates. “I think if you stand there, and I’m here. Maybe my hand on your waist, you arched a little.”

Thankfully Thea wasn’t putting her hand anywhere near my heart, because if she did, she would feel it hammering like it was trying to escape my chest entirely.

“And then maybe you can put your hand here once I get the timer set.” She motioned to the space right beneath her left collarbone. “Your other one will go behind us on the pad. Yeah, that should work.” The last sentence was said a little lower like she was mostly talking to herself.

Thea pulled away to reach for the timer, and I immediately missed her closeness. “One minute.” Thea twisted a knob until it clicked.

Each of us pressed a hand to one of the metal boxes. Thea’s free hand found my waist. My fingers grazed Thea’s arm as her hand covered my collarbone, her thumb nestled against the angle of my neck.

For a second, I thought my pulse was beating so hard that my entire body, my arms, my chest, and my fingers were thrumming.

But as my eyes met Thea’s, I realized it was Thea’s heartbeat I felt.

Thea’s quickening pulse radiating to her palm.

On some instinct, I slid my hand up to the angle of Thea’s jaw, where those strands of hair fell wildly over her skin.

Thea’s hand spread wider, fingertips pressing into my lowest ribs, waist, and the first curve over my hip.

Our bodies had moved closer in those fractions of seconds.

Our faces were so close that every inhale seemed shared.

It was difficult to be aware of anything beyond how close I was to every captivating curve of Thea’s body. Neither of us moved as something nearby clicked.

“The photo took.” Thea’s voice was pitched lower than ever.

The entire room had changed color in the minutes we’d been standing here.

The storm clouds must have cleared just in time for sunset.

Pink and orange glazed our skin as if our auras had become visible to the naked eye.

Was it magic? Or just the movement of the planet and the chemicals in the atmosphere that made it seem like our world was on fire?

Thea’s eyes, usually dark, had turned to molten amber.

I released the sensor and found Thea’s lower back. Thea moved at the same moment. Everything that had been angled now pressed together.

“Can I kiss you, Thea?”

Without hesitation, Thea lowered her lips to mine, sending a current of electricity through my body unrelated to either cords or camera cables.

Nothing existed outside the heat from Thea’s mouth, the gentle graze of her teeth, and the sparking sensation sweeping over each place she touched me. I stroked Thea’s skin between her sternum and navel.

She shuddered. “Fuck, Courtney .” Thea’s full lips flicked over the consonants, making me acutely aware of how they would feel wrapped around other parts of me, sucking and teasing and tasting.

Noise from the stairway drew me back into awareness of where we were. The dreamy decor and the sunset haze had stripped rational thought from my body completely.

I made to step back, nearly forgetting that I was trapped between the two camera cords.

“Wait.” Amusement crinkled Thea’s eyes as she moved the pieces of the camera to free me. She reached into the camera and pulled out the paper like she had before.

I felt a whole lot more naked than I should have since I was still wearing a tank top and jeans. And also a whole lot less naked than the dampness in my underwear seemed to demand.

Denise entered from the stairway and growled. “Christ, it’s boiling up here too. I’m calling the building manager. Did you finally get that camera working, Thea? Sorry I couldn’t come up earlier, that client took forever. Wow. Look at all this…”

Thea mouthed an apology. I shook it off and stifled my laughter, trying to act nonchalant rather than like some horny youth group kid caught necking in the sound booth during church.

“This all really looks great.” Denise swept her attention over the room. “You’re right, this space would be perfect for social media shots. Just let me know when you want me to start booking.”

“Great.”

“I’ll talk to Dr. Powell about it. We might need to get some kind of extra permit, and I don’t want to run into issues down the road.” Denise scanned the room, eyes landing on me. “Oh hi, Courtney. Came up to check out Thea’s new studio too? What do you think?”

“I think it will be great. Thea seems really…” I coughed away the constriction in my throat. I could still taste Thea’s lip balm on my tongue, which made it a struggle to form a coherent sentence. “Really talented.”

Thea winked while Denise’s focus was on her phone.

“Ahh, the building manager is finally calling back.” A muffled voice came through the speaker, and she lifted it to her ear. “This is completely unacceptable…” After a wave at Thea, she headed back out the way she had come.

“So…”

“So… you’re coming to the book club tomorrow?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Good.” Thea peeled the protective paper off the developing photo.

It did look like something out of a romance cover.

Our faces were closer than they’d seemed in the moment.

The tension of Thea’s splayed hand was just visible.

My palm cradled her face. The entire image burst with red, orange, and gold, almost like the room had in those moments of the sunset.

Everything in the room had muted into a dusky blue now.

“I think you’re going to have a problem if you try to do this at the book fair.” My lower lip jutted out appraisingly.

“Really?” Thea lifted the photo as if looking for some technical error.

“Yep.”

Correctly interpreting my expression, her mouth angled in an expression that was a little too wicked for me to feel in complete control of myself. Smugness gilded every plane of her face.

“Well, I think it turned out pretty good.” She handed it to me.

“The photo’s not the problem.”

“Then what exactly is the problem, Courtney Starling?”

“The problem will be…” I shouldered my bag and leaned toward Thea again, letting my lips graze the outermost edge of her ear. “Getting the people in photos to keep their clothes on after you take it.”

Feeling a little daring, I gave Thea’s earlobe the gentlest of tugs with my teeth before letting my tongue explore the line of hoops along its delicate shell. My thumb rubbed against that tarot card on her forearm.

A tremor went through Thea.

I kissed her cheek once more. “Well, it’s getting late, and I have to finish the book before book club tomorrow. And pick up potatoes and cupcakes…”

“Don’t forget Colin Firth.” Thea’s voice was breathless.

“I would never.”

“So, I’ll see you at book club tomorrow?”

“How many times do I need to tell you yes , I’ll be there.”

Thea’s eyes went a little softer and wider in a tacit question—the turn of her head saying just once more, okay?

“I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch. And tomorrow night at the pub. And then you’ll come to my house hungry for potatoes and cupcakes.”

“And Colin Firth.”

I grinned. “He’ll be the first course.”

“Unless you have something more delicious to offer me, of course.” Thea’s tongue swept over her bottom lip one last time.

My stomach pulsed. If I didn’t walk out the door right now, I would rip Thea’s clothes off and make her come until she saw a very different kind of stars than the ones in the photos.

“Guess you’ll find out tomorrow, won’t you? I really need to get home.”

My eyes snagged on the small air purifier in the corner that Thea had used to get rid of the smell of incense just in case it bothered me. She’d gone to all that trouble for me .

Tears pricked my eyes, and I didn’t even know why.

My dad’s voice echoed in my head without warning.

“It’s just a little smoke, Dove. Stop being so dramatic. We need this job. Don’t make this an issue. You’re going to get a reputation for being difficult again.”

“You okay?” Thea hadn’t missed the sudden tears.

“Totally, just got a bit of dust in my eye.”

“Aw. I’m sorry. Do you need to use the sink to—”

“No, I’m good.” I forced a flirty smile that pushed the tone back to where it had been just moments earlier.

Was it silly to cry just because this woman had actually gone out of her way to accommodate my migraines?

That had never happened before from anyone except Sam and Nic.

Not even when my parents were my managers.

After enduring a Thea Quinn hug that threatened to destroy my cool, calm, and collected resolve, I basically fled back down the stairs through the tattoo shop and out onto the sidewalk before I could do something really stupid like break down crying because I was falling for a woman who actually seemed like she gave a shit about me.

As I walked down the sidewalk, Thea’s attention from the window was a firm presence on my back and the night breeze cooled my burning cheeks.

As tempting as it would have been to invite Thea over tonight, I wanted this woman to actually like me, and the messy state of my house wouldn’t help with the whole seeming-more-together-than-I-actually-was thing.

I was still holding the photograph.

Make whatever expression that feels the most you.

Yikes.

Thea probably didn’t understand why this was difficult for me. I had never felt particularly connected to the way my face looked. I learned over time the best way to make it look pretty in photographs, but I’d had to learn facial expressions like I was an alien.

“No one wants to see someone praising Jesus looking like they’re all angry, Dove.”

“If you were really feeling the Spirit, you wouldn’t have to work this hard at it.”

The dumb reason I started playing the cello was because it gave me more excuses to look down and away from the crowds instead of making eye contact with them.

I could barely make eye contact with my parents most days, and I was supposed to just look strangers straight in the eye?

Eye contact felt… felt like an intense, intimate thing.

Given how much Thea seemed to like space and the stars, maybe my penchant toward feeling like an alien would work for her.

I stopped near a streetlight to get a better look at the aura photo again.

Amidst the spectrum of color, my face looked slightly intense and certainly not quite “pretty.” My eyes had always been the feature of my face I liked most. They were in sharper focus than I expected compared to the other photos.

My head was tilted at a slight angle so that the light caught on the new daith hoop.

The almost smile on my slightly parted lips was just a reminder of what Thea had said to put it there.

Maybe sometimes things were just this easy.

By the time I got home with bags of groceries weighing down my arms, my mind had wandered so far from my body I didn’t immediately see the person waiting for me on the porch. It was an unfamiliar man who had a nondescript face.

“Courtney Starling?” he asked.

“Yes.” My heart skittered to a stop.

He held out an envelope. “You’ve been served.”

The door of his sedan had slammed with him behind it before my brain and body rejoined each other. I dropped the bags of groceries and tore open the envelope.

“ Fuck .” As I read the first page, fear and anxiety doused every ember of heat from the kiss into a hissing mess. I grabbed my phone to call Sam. I needed Abbott’s help.