With Every Heartbeat

Blondie laughed and glanced away, blinking rapidly. “God, no.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve never been able to play very long in a staring game before.”



“It makes your eyes water too much?” Hamilton guessed.



She shook her head. “No. It’s just...too intimate, I guess.”



I lifted an eyebrow. Wow. If staring was too intimidating for her, I’d hate to see what she’d do if I made her watch some porn.



Thank God, Hamilton seemed similarly bewildered. He barked out a surprised laugh. “Staring? Intimate?”



“Hey, don’t make fun of me.” She pushed lightly on his arm. “Staring is like step two in the Twelves Stages of Intimacy.”



“Wait.” I held up a hand and leaned in, feeling the need to interrupt. “The twelve stages of what?”



Blondie glanced at me, before turning back to Quinn. “Intimacy,” she repeated before gazing between the two of us. “Haven’t you guys ever heard of Desmond Morris’s twelve steps of intimacy before?”



Ham and I both shook our heads. “Who? What? No, never heard of him.”



She laughed. “Desmond Morris. He’s this famous behavioral scientist, or something. I don’t know. He wrote a bunch of books about studying the mating patterns of human couples.”



Ham’s eyebrows arched with interest. “And you’ve actually read one of his books?”



“No.” She blushed. “But I read a small five hundred-word article about his famous twelve steps.”



I let out a surprised snort of laughter. “What a nerd.” She was totally meant for my biology-loving roommate.



“Hey,” she muttered, insulted. But Quinn waved her quiet.



“No, I want to know about this. Are there really steps for intimacy?”



“Well, obviously.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You don’t see people just jumping into bed with each other without any buildup, now do you?”



“Actually—” I started, but Blondie held up a finger in my direction, shushing me.



“Trust me. When it matters, you don’t. You lead up to it. Familiarize yourself...one step at a time.



“So what’re the steps?” Hamilton asked, genuinely interested.



I rolled my eyes, already bored out of my mind, but Blondie decided to humor him.



“You’re in luck. I think I’m actually drunk enough to remember. Step one, you make eye-to-body contact.” To demonstrate, she dropped her gaze down to his chest. Wiggling her eyebrows, she murmured, “Oh, yeah. Looking good.”



Yep, she was drunk.



Ham cracked up, and okay, so did I. But then Blondie slid her gaze from his body up to his eyes, and suddenly it wasn’t so funny anymore. Hamilton’s laugh died as he stared back. The tension between them made me pull back in my seat, feeling like a freaking voyeur all of the sudden.



“If you find the figure pleasing,” Blondie said into Hamilton’s eyes, “you move your attention up to make eye-to-eye contact.”



“Someone actually wrote a book about this?” I asked, snorting.



Blondie shrugged but kept her gaze on my boy, who seemed trapped in her hold. “Someone has written a book about everything.”



“But—”



Ignoring me, she kept talking to Ham. “So Morris says a man and woman make eyes at each other, throw out a couple sparks and if things feel good from there, the ‘hi, how ya doing?’ comes into play.” She held out her hand to shake with Ham. “Which brings us to step four.”



“Wait. What was step three?” I asked as my entranced roommate reached out and took her hand.



Okay, fuck. Fine. I was starting to get interested in all this twelve-step bullshit, because damn, Hammy seemed to fall for it, hard.



“Voice to voice.” She sent me a quick, irritated frown. “Keep up.”



I gulped as I watched them intertwine fingers. Then I glanced around to make sure no one else was looking.



Yeah, yeah, I know I wanted to shove these two together and make them kiss, like two seconds ago. But honestly, Hamilton needed to dump his current woman before moving on to the one he was actually meant for, otherwise he’d never forgive himself. And...well, shit. I didn’t care if they were only holding hands, that fucking article Blondie had read must’ve known what the hell it was talking about. I couldn’t recall ever being as intimate with any chick as those two seemed to be now.



“What’s next?” Hamilton murmured, unable to take his eyes off my date.



“After ste—uh, step four, which is hand to hand, things move away from visual and auditory and toward the…the physical.”