log: marta & travis ; its a date pt 2 Who: Travis and Marta. What: A date. Some football. Some make outs. Where: Around town, the highschool, the woods, etc. When: Don't even ask. It transcends time. We can say 'awhile ago'. Warnings: Make-outs and possible, but out-of-frame, mention of drugs.
The point of being out with Travis - the date - was to be able to step away from those skeletons. At least in Marta's mind. They couldn't ignore the place and the way they'd initially met, but in her opinion, they were both on steadier footing than they had been during the trials that had led to their meeting attendance. It was an assumption she probably shouldn't have made, but it seemed like they were both doing okay… right?
At least enough for him to ask her out, and for her to agree. She didn't know about him selling, and didn't notice the buzz of his silenced phone, even before it was drowned out by the cheering crowd. She stood as well, arms in the air and laughing to herself even as she shouted in support of 'their' team.
And when they sat down again, she inched herself just as close as before, pressing herself against Travis' side and, after a moment, tipping her head just a bit to rest it on his shoulder. She had a nervous sort of warmth under her ribcage as she angled her face up just enough to glance at Travis, mostly seeing the angle of his jaw and the side of his neck.
"Hey…"
It was so fucking nice to feel halfway normal again. Whatever normal was, Travis surely wasn't it, at least in not of the any ways that he would have actually wanted. Maybe normal wasn't even the right word for it, because the night felt perfect, and perfect wasn't normal. Despite Travis' newly budded reading efforts, he wasn't exactly the most prolific guy around, not by any stretch of the word. So maybe it wasn't normal, and it probably wasn't perfect either, but night just felt good for once. Good like nothing bad was waiting around the corner. Good like he didn't necessarily have to think about all of the bad that waited for him around the bend. Tonight it was just a clear sky, a good game, and a girl he really liked. Travis didn't think that he was asking for much, although it was still leaps and bounds over what he might have actually deserved.
When Marta spoke, he turned his head just a little to look at her. She was really close, so it was like looking down the crooked line of his nose. "Hey..."
She knew she was close, but that was the point, wasn't it? Being close and sort of saying screw you to everyone else around. Not in a bad way - just that they didn't particularly matter at the moment. And though she knew that Travis liked football - that much was obvious, especially with the letter jacket and the certain small things she did know about him - the game wasn't particularly the most important thing on her mind at the moment.
So who cared if it was normal or perfect, or if it wasn't. It was a little moment where the other shit that always happened (the other shit that had happened) didn't matter. She was warm and surrounded by people that didn't particularly care who she was or what her history was, and she liked this guy sitting next to her, and if she was being stupid, she could probably say that it made her stomach feel a little fizzy. But that was stupid, so she didn't say it at all.
"Hey," she said again, this time with a little more of a smile, and she shifted back just enough that she could sit up a little straighter. This wasn't her normal sort of thing, but it was good. So she caught the corner of her smile between her teeth in a way that could've been coy, but actually was a little nervous. But she felt like she had to try, so she let her lip go, took a breath, and leaned in a little farther so she could be quiet but enough that he'd be able to hear her over the sound of the game.
"I'd… like to kiss you. If you still want."
Being a football fan like he was, Travis was enjoying the game because it was the best source of good memories for him. It was like pure, distilled nostalgia, but there were better things to dwell on than the past. These days, he was actively trying to shake loose from everything that came before, to wholly devote himself to the now. The future was all worry, the past was all heartache, but the present was solid for the time being. So while Travis liked the game, coming to it was really only an excuse to see Marta.
When she whispered her intentions in his ear, he leaned back a couple of degrees so that he could look at her. She was serious, although he had no reason besides his own mounting insecurities to think otherwise. She actually looked a little nervous over what they were whispering about, and that was like a raw shot of confidence to his bloodstream. Travis thought that they both couldn't be anxious about it, there just wasn't room. "Yeah?" His grin in that moment was boyish, utterly pleased.
"I would. I do want, yeah." There was something delicate about Marta that he felt the need to tiptoe around. She'd been through a whole lot in the last few months, and he was trying desperately not to scare her off these days. The people around them in the stands jumped up with an explosion of cheers once again, but Travis stayed where he was, seated. People shot off some confetti guns, making it rain papered streamers in the school colors. He took Marta's hand, lacing her fingers with some of his. It seemed like as good a time as any for a first kiss. He leaned in to meet her halfway.
Marta knew she was messed up in a lot of ways, but the number one at the moment was how she'd probably feel more confident going down on him in front of all these people than she did in just saying she wanted to kiss him. It was backwards in the stupidest way. But the whole night was a little backwards like that, and she was just trying to go along with it. So… kissing.
It helped that Travis' reaction was to grin in a way that almost looked a little pleased with himself. Or at least with everything that was going on. It made it easy for Marta to smile in return and to actually laugh a little. "Yeah…" And he wasn't shoving her away or telling her no or looking at her in disgust or anger or anything like that. He was smiling and agreeing and taking her hand and leaning in… And there was fucking confetti, which was totally ridiculous, and meant she was still almost laughing when she leaned in her half of the way to press her lips to his.
His arm crossed the front of Marta, sliding to curve and secure a grip at her waist. The touch was soft, fingers pressing rather than digging into the fabric there. It was tempting to hold on tightly, but his fingers flexed, and the flat of his palm molded into the dip at her waist when she kissed him. Her lips were curved in that almost-laughing way, and Travis was inclined to grin a little, matching it. He pulled her in a little bit, slanting his mouth over hers while somebody's team scored again. Travis wasn't inclined to break away or check the field. The school's band played a loud song, and it felt like the victory could have been for Travis too. It felt like he'd been waiting forever for her to let him do this. He found that her lips tasted a little like the soda, a little like the candy from the car. Sweet.
This was… nice. Being held and ignoring the crowd around them. Feeling like she was wanted, and like it almost made sense that someone wanted her. She couldn't quite remember the last time she'd kissed someone just to kiss them - and be kissed. It felt almost a little strange, and a little innocent, even when Travis' mouth angled over hers and she opened a bit to let it sink into something deeper.
She liked the way he was warm, the way he smiled against her mouth, and it was easy to slip her hands under the warm layer of his jacket, flat against his stomach with one inching around to his side. It felt like she could've stayed that way for a long time, but someone just behind them finally gave a disgusted ugh and kicked the bleacher's seat. "Get a room, jesus."
It was almost too easy to get absorbed into the moment of the kiss, to let everything else(the game, the raucous shouting in the stands, and the chill in the air all around them) fade away until only Marta and himself remained, lip-locked. Travis had his eyes closed, guided by the taste of her when her lips gave way to subtle parting, veering the kiss into something deeper. Something hungrier on Travis' end.
He really wasn't concerned at all about the people around them, Travis figured that they should have been invested in the game rather than whatever he was doing. Which is why he wasn't at all shamed, but just a little annoyed when the querulous guy behind them caviled and kicked at the bleacher seat, making it shake with a resounding kind of metallic clang. The momentum was enough to break the kiss, as they didn't want their teeth to rattle around in their heads.
Travis drew back, licking the ghost of her from the outside of his lip. There was a line of concrete tension in his jaw that said Travis was tempted to snap on the guy behind them, but he swallowed it down and steadied his gaze on Marta instead. "It'll be half-time soon, want to go for a walk?" There was a concession stand, a concrete spread under the bleachers, a gate, and a gravel lot… which didn't make for a whole lot of exciting places to walk, but it might be nice.
Having to pull out of the kiss - the one that was getting hungrier on Travis' side in a way that made a warmer interest start inching along Marta's skin - made her catch at an annoyed sound in the back of her throat. She was distracted for the first seconds, watching Travis' tongue sneak out across his lip, like he was chasing the feel or the taste of her. Her eyes were dark in the falling evening, even with the glow of lights illuminating the field, and the sounds and scents of the night, combined with the asshole behind them in the stands, chased out an attitude that was so very familiar to her in those game nights during school.
It meant that she could finally pull her gaze away from Travis to raise an eyebrow and look at the guy behind them. Obviously a current student, wearing the hormones of puberty awkwardly in bad skin, patchy stubble, and a gawky awkwardness that she hadn't found appealing even then. She slipped her hands out from the warmth of Travis' jacket and caught at his hand instead, standing to her barely-five-foot height and looking down at the guy. The kid. She remembered what it was like, to put on this Marta, even if there was far less black eyeliner in her life these days.
She laughed. A single breath of sound accompanied by a shake of her head. She leaned in, a whisper of her hair slipping forward over her shoulder, and for the most fleeting moment she was very aware of using wide eyes and soft lips and a glance that could cut. "You're not even worth getting annoyed by," she finally said, before straightening up again and squeezing carefully at Travis' hand, looking back at him. "A walk sounds really nice."
Getting disrupted by the petulant teenager at their backs proved to be practically worth it when Marta leaned in close to the guy, presumably to threaten his life. Travis waited and watched, ready to step up and defend her honor, like the most wiry, bad news looking knight in all of ever's knighthood, should the guy say anything out of line. But this all proved unnecessary, as the kid paled before burning red with embarrassment due to whatever Marta said, and Travis chuckled, chewing on the stagnant cola straw before he tossed the cup and its watery remains into a nearby trash can. Plenty impressed, when Marta offered her hand, Travis took it.
"Retract your claws, Killer. I think the guy just pissed himself back there." With the dream girl in tow, he bounced down the heavy metal of the bleacher stairs. The metal clanged, reverberated, echoed a metallic sound that vanished seamlessly under the notes of the marching band's next big song. Travis kept a tight hold on Marta, not at all eager to lose her, and his hand was all boywarmth against her colder fingers. It wasn't just the current lack of drugs in his system(although there was that too), but rather Travis had always run hot. There was some science to it, something about quarterback metabolism, or some biological necessity of growing up without proper heat during harsh winters, not that anybody was really asking for answers in the moment. It was nice just to be with her, away from the chaos of everybody else.
It was almost strange to Marta to have someone linger close like Travis was, like he'd be there to protect her if the guy jumped to his feet and started swinging. It was an unusual break from an otherwise mostly familiar night - no one having done the same for her in highschool when she began bitching at her classmates. It was unnecessary, and she was glad she'd read the situation right before her snide little remark. Even more glad when Travis took her hand and didn't pull away like he was disgusted by her or her attitude.
Instead, it was footfalls against metal and a comment that made a flush rise to her cheeks in a way that was more than a little pleased. "He did not," she argued with a little laugh, looking down to watch where her feet fell on the bleacher steps. And once they were on even ground again, she kept her hand tucked within Travis' much warmer, much larger one, and stepped closer as they walked. She was glad for his warmth, always having run colder in a way that had her stealing warmth or clothing from those around her.
They walked a bit away, not enough for the band or the voices of the crowd to fade away completely, though they were dampened just a fraction so that the two of them didn't have to shout or even raise their voices to be heard by each other. "Sorry he interrupted us," she smiled up at Travis, not caring where they were walking to. Trusting him enough to follow along as he led them around areas she assumed he was familiar with.
Travis liked the way she blushed, he liked the way she laughed. "He looked it! That guy was deeply terrified, and I think a little turned on." He squeezed her hand, braiding her fingers with his and curling them toward the life line of his palm. "But who wouldn't be?" It gave him something to chuckle over as Travis navigated them to nowhere in particular. It felt like ages since he'd been here, but the setting was mostly the same despite the years. Unchanged by the betterment of tax dollars, instead slowly decaying with the neglect of time. His steps synced with the memories.
Beyond the bleachers, there was a fence of tall chainlink. He traced its metal with his free hand, thumbing at the twists in the steel wire. They followed it away from the game, the celebratory noise eventually being replaced by the stridulating of crickets. Travis went quiet, reflecting on how he used to get high out here with his friends, way out where the fence eventually touched on the farthest corner of the parking lot, perilously close to presumably haunted woods. He knew better than to reminiscence aloud, with Marta coming so far with sobriety, like she had. He shamed himself momentarily, wondering how dishonest he was being with her.
But then he perked up, grinning dimpled mischief when Marta said that she was sorry they'd been interrupted by the punk in the stands. "Yeah, me too." He pulled on her hand, luring Marta in front of him if she was comfortable walking backward. He figured she would be, their pace was slow, even if the light from the field was getting further and further away. "We'll have to try again some time."
It wasn't an expression she usually made, but Marta wrinkled her nose with a smile at the thought of the kid back on the bleachers being turned on by her sniping at him. Travis' next comment made her smile even more, veering towards him and knocking her slight weight against him as they walked, a gentle hip-check. "Shut up," she murmured, looking down but still with a pleased little curve to her lips.
And they did, both of them, go quiet for a bit as they walked. The other noise faded away as the trees closed in tighter around them, and Marta gave a second's worth of thoughts to how wandering into the woods with a guy was rarely a good idea. But it was Travis, and she'd never gotten the impression that he meant any harm to her. Yeah, he'd gotten angry at her at least a few times, but never to the point that she was actually afraid of him. So wandering toward the shadow shrouded with him trees didn't make her uneasy.
The tug on her hand and the guiding angle of it made her laugh softly again and hurry her steps in a way that had her in front of him and turning, still holding onto his hand and trusting him to keep her from tripping over anything that she couldn't see behind her. It was a little disorienting to walk backwards, but somewhere in her bones and muscles she still had a little bit of remembered grace from dancing on a dirty stage and in gym-hosted classes in the Capital. The muscle memory was enough to keep her from completely falling over her feet, and she kept her grip on Travis' hand fairly tight, in case she did falter and needed to catch herself. For the moment though, she was steady with her backwards paces.
It was dark enough now with the distance from the field and the encroaching of the trees that it was harder to see each other's expressions even as their eyes adjusted. But Marta still kept her eyes angled up towards Travis' face, and smirked a little at what seemed to be a relatively innocent comment. "Some time." She laughed again, still quiet and warm, and gave his hand a little squeeze with her still-cool fingers. "I dunno, my calendar's kinda full. I mean, I can pencil you in maybe…" If he could still see her, her eyes were bright with amusement and a little mischief, and it also leaked into her voice. "We might just have to play it by ear. Y'know… whenever we get a moment."
He wanted to ask her something. The words felt large and phantasmal, unspoken clouds on the tongue. Their weight wasn't heavy enough to stagger him, but he could feel the subtleness, the urgent cotton-weight of the words.
Away from the sounds of the game, the lights of the stands, and now the gravel of the parking lot, they were on their own here. At the treeline of true darkness, flirting with danger. When she squeezed his hands, it felt like the encouragement of an unspoken conversation of touch. Travis squeezed back. He pulled her a little closer. He didn't ask her anything just yet, but put a hand to her hip. His other hand kept one of hers, fingers laced, their shared grip barely swaying between their bodies. Dancing in the air in between, because he didn't crowd her. He hadn't yet even asked her...
Her words teased about pencilling him in to some top secret and highly crowded calendar, and Travis knew that she was teasing. Her eyes gleamed coquette mischief, and he could see it clearly. She was pallor in the sinking dark, them straying far away from the stadium lights, and her hair seemed like ink-spilled shadows. It affected him, the familiar beauty of her. She looked so much like… every good memory he'd ever had.
And, he wanted to ask her something. His shoes stopped their wandering, keeping her on the fringe of darkness and light, the balance beam of woodland shadows and stadium glare. The light was enough that he could make out her mischief smile, but he'd lost the color of her eyes. Which was fine, he remembered.
There was no music here, only the subtle echoes from further away. All he could hear really was his own heart as it found a rhythm, beating. "I really want to kiss you again." Which didn't sound like asking at all, but he crowded a little closer, doubling down. "Can I?"
For a moment as they were walking, Travis seemed to fall into his own thoughts, and even in the dim and fading light, he seemed to go more serious for a moment. It worried her a little, especially after she'd just been teasing a bit. Worried that she'd misread the situation or that what he was feeling was somehow far away from her own contentment of the moment. But he didn't pull away, even squeezed her hand and put his other on her hip, and it felt a little like the type of dancing she'd never done - with a partner and far more respectable. She liked the weight of his hand there and waited for him to pull her closer, expecting it even without being asked. She expected, from old memories of her own, that she'd be pulled in and yanked close or pushed down or…
But they stopped with shadows along one side and the distant light along the other, and she waited, not quite knowing what the next moment was going to bring. And when the next moment did come, and brought with it a statement and a question, she smiled and let out a breath that held half smile and half relief. It was what she'd meant by playing it by ear in the moment, and she found herself nodding and taking half a step back in the direction they'd come - half a step back closer to him. "I was kinda hoping you would."
He didn't mean to. Honestly, he would have been surprised that she noticed the stretches of his quiet at all. It didn't feel like quiet to him, it felt like a jumble that he was desperate to conceal behind the cool, James Dean aesthetic he'd been consciously shaping around himself like a protective halo for his entire life. Too often Travis worried about the future, but that wasn't where his mind was right now. He was lost in nostalgia, and it wasn't entirely comforting, it was mostly strange. Maybe it had a lot to do with being back at this school lot, at the field he'd played so many games, walking along the so-called 'stoner-fence' he'd walked so many times before, all of it with a dark-haired girl…
It wasn't overwhelming, and it wasn't even disorienting. It was just a strange kind of deja-vu that he wanted gone. He didn't know how to make it go away, but his mind raced forward to the wants of now, and right now what he wanted was so obvious that it hurt a little, tight in his stomach with the possibility of her denial.
But Marta didn't deny him, and Travis slid his hand from her hip to the small of her back. He pulled her into him, not roughly, just a slow drag that didn't need words when his mouth found hers again.
The quiet probably wasn't something she would've noticed even a few months ago, but she was clearer now than she'd been then, and so much of what she'd been trying to make better was not only herself but the way she treated other people. So she'd been trying to pay more attention to the people around her - and Travis was a person she wanted to do better by, so she was paying attention. At least as much as she could, without knowing as much about him as she maybe should have.
She knew he'd been a jock, and she knew he had his own problems with addiction (those that she thought were in his past and not his present). And if she really gave time to thinking about it, she could probably work around to the night being as strangely familiar to him as it was to her. She wasn't trying to be that introspective at the moment though. In fact, she was with him in the focus on the moment and the very present immediacy of everything. Not thinking behind and not thinking ahead - just thinking about the right-now. It made it very easy to smile at the warm weight of his hand on her back and to step closer. She had to go onto her toes a bit, now that they were standing, and she moved one of her hands to press a gentle palm against the front of Travis' shoulder, mainly there so that she could keep her balance and not go falling over while on tip-toes. After just a second or two, she gave in to the gravity and let herself lean a little more into the wall of Travis' chest.
And she sighed a little as her eyes closed and she pressed her mouth to his. Her free hand found his other shoulder and carefully slipped its way up to curl fingers around the back of his jacket's collar. His mouth was warm against hers and she spared a second of thought to being glad that the earlier interruption hadn't ruined this part of their evening.
This time, Travis kissed her without qualm, without doubt, without hesitancy. Being finally, completely alone, just the two of them as they were by chainlink and darkened woods, it managed to countermand his second guessing. Bold, he kissed Marta with the luxury of familiarity, all hotblooded familiarity with none of timidness that might have typically been prescribed to kisses on first dates. It lacked curiosity, Travis kissed her like he knew her, like they'd been at this for years now.
When she let loose a sigh, Travis held her cherish-close, clutching the slightness of her body in his hands. He tongued at her lower lip while his heart rattled, unaccustomed to urgency unless it came in the form of a pill. It was a good kind of disorienting, the kind that knotted your stomach at great heights. Travis kept her close, lassoed in the svelte of his arm, but one hand wandered. His fingers curled in, a fist of knuckles grazing lazily up the path of her spine. Then, fingers unfurled from his palm, flexed with need, and slid into her hair.
Distantly, if they were listening to anything other than the sounds of one another's breathing, the sighs and appreciative, wordless murmurs, the school marching band's victory music was melodic in the breeze.
She'd thought a little bit, before, about what it would be like to kiss Travis - how could she not think about it when they'd actually talked about it happening? When he'd said he'd wanted to, and he'd asked her? And if she were thinking about it at all now, she'd realize that how she was being kissed wasn't quite how she'd expected to be kissed. The way they'd been practically tiptoeing and circling around each other, she'd expected things to stay that way for a bit longer.
Not that she minded the difference at all. It felt good to have his arm around her and to be kissed like there was no hesitation between them at all. There was no harshness to the hand that slid into her hair, and she let her head lean back, heavy, into his grip. She couldn't stay on her toes forever, but when she let her heels lower back to the ground, the hand she had at the back of his neck gave enough pressure to pull him along. She urged him to tilt down towards her so that they didn't have to break apart, and let her mouth open enough to taste the soda that lingered from the earlier shared cup. His tongue was there along her lip, and she allowed herself to smile a little before hers slid along his and deepened the kiss.
Now that she didn't have to worry about her balance, her own hands wandered as well - grasping the front of his jacket and then slipping inside where it was warm and she could feel every time he took another breath. Her fingers were still a bit chilled, but it didn't stop her from hitching at his shirt bit by bit, inching it up under his jacket until she could press them against warm, bare skin. Then she breathed out softly and moved just enough so that she could whisper into his kiss: "'s too bad you were a jock." Her eyes were dark in the shadow of the nearing night, but the curve of her smile was still visible to accompany the teasing in her voice. "You didn't get to sneak off during games like this."
When she said that, he couldn't help but to grin into the kiss. Tongue-damp lips split, ripe and kiss blushed, over his teeth. His breath, still cola sweet, came out in a slight laugh against her mouth, so close. "Yeah, well..." Her hair felt incredibly soft against the nail-bitten ends of his fingers, he wondered over it in a gentle, almost idle fashion. His finger twisted a fine strand, curled it around his knuckle, and he thumbed at the velveteen fringe of the end. "If I'd known it was all like this, I'd have snuck off anyway."
He was pliant, eagerly so, when she stitched her fingers into the back of his collar and pulled, compelling him to bend down, along for the ride. When she fussed with the hem of his shirt, rucking it up just enough to slide her fingertips, so cool, against the furnace of his stomach, Travis sucked in a sharp breath. His inhale was a gasping reflex, like it hurt. But it didn't hurt, not at all.
He swallowed roughly, easing the lump in his throat, before kissing her again. This time, the kiss was more urgent, something that needed to be done quickly to appease the growing, clenching need in the pit of his stomach. He was still varsity lean, and although his muscles had all but left him during that stay in the coma, some still bunched in his stomach when she touched him, nervously so. "Fuck," the curse was resolved, as if the coming confession surprised him a little to admit. "I want you."
Marta laughed a little against Travis' grin. "Don't think your coach would've liked that very much." She shivered a little as his fingers moved her hair just enough to raise a prickly sensation at the base of her skull, and the shiver spread a tingly awareness along the rest of her body. It made her skin want to be touched, even as it was hidden beneath layers of coat and fleece and other warm clothing. It was too chilly to strip away any of those layers, but with Travis' sharp inhale at the touch of her hands against his skin, she half-wondered what it would feel like to have cold fingertips mapping a path along hers.
She didn't take the time to tell him any of that, simply sunk into the urgency of their kiss, vulnerable to the way it made her want to open and give. Her hands pressed flat to Travis' sides, fingers curling around the slim width of his waist, just tight enough to encourage him getting closer, but not tight enough to be a demand. Only a suggestion, and a reassurance that she wasn't planning to stop him.
She wasn't expecting him to say anything at that moment, and it took an extra breath of time for his words to sink in and for her to understand what he'd said. Finally pulling back enough so that she could look at him, eyes wide and even darker than usual, her face clearly expressed her disbelief even before she said anything. When she did, her tone matched those wide eyes. "Really?"
That deer in the headlights look, the stunned and verecund dilation of her gaze, made him crack a grin that was still shiny wet from the kiss. He laughed a little, but not like it was at her expense. Travis had been chasing after her for a while now, but he'd always been a hell of a lot better equipped at making do than actually going after what he wanted. If she was surprised that he'd said it, so was he. But she'd kissed him back, and that'd given him the gut-punch to run with it. "Yeah. Really."
He kissed the edge of her mouth again, quick as to not linger and get distracted with want for more. On to her cheek, and then he nosed at the dark line of her hair so that he could speak softly to the lobe of her ear. "You want to go back to the car?" He squeezed her hip, and it was a little suggestive because cars, especially big old cars like his, had backseats.
The suggestion wasn't just about relocating their make out. Travis was also aware of the fact that it was getting dark, and there were nearby woods, and this was Repose. Like anybody who'd grown up here, he knew not to push his luck after dark unless he had to.
Travis' laugh made a smile crack across Marta's face, and a hint of a flush rise to her cheeks, still a little disbelieving that he would say something like that, and actually feel that way, but pleased in a way that warmed her. The quick kiss and the soft nudge against her cheek made her tilt her head in a way that exposed her ear to his quiet question. Combined with the squeeze of a long-fingered hand around her hip made her shiver at the tingle along her spine, and she was nodding without even thinking about it.
"Yeah…" she sighed into the evening dim. "Yeah, I do." She opened her eyes once realizing they'd slid shut, and turned her face to smile at him, just a hint of mischief and heat at the corners of her lips. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together, and walked backwards for a few steps so that she could look at him, before turning to head back the way they came. Heading for the car with the suggestive backseat.