Natasha laughed anyway, though, and if it wasn't a particularly long laugh or a particularly hearty one, it was at least a real one. "You're gross," she informed him, but there was affection in her voice as she said it. Terrible joke, but it didn't feel out of place coming from someone she'd now poured over countless pages of alien erotica with. She met Steve's eyes over his shoulder, for just a moment, then looked away, back at James. It seemed to have worked, at least, to have grounded him a little anyway, his hand gliding along her throat and the way she hadn't flinched, she'd stayed relaxed and let him explore. Let his hands go wandering where they might until he'd assured himself that no damage had been done to her.
She wasn't going to waste time dwelling on the way he'd touched her hair. They weren't teenagers anymore; whatever that gesture called to mind, it was something she'd put behind her years ago. The way she did everything that had briefly been a happy possibility. Happy possibilities were never things that actually turned into happy realities.
The car glided to a stop outside of her penthouse, and she glanced out the window. No photographers, though that didn't mean none would amass by morning, and they all still had to believably get inside. She reached for her purse, felt around past all the various accouterments she carried around with her on the nights she went out, makeup, a hairbrush, pins, currency, phone, until her fingers closed around her keys. She handed them over to Steve, whose side was closest to the curb.
"You know which one is mine," she said, and her voice was a little tart. "Get out first and I'll crawl over his lap so the three of us can go up together, you can unlock it and pull us both in. And try to make it look like the car ride was enjoyable, not a cause for constipation." She eyeballed the both of them critically for a moment, reached out to carefully mess up James's hair, then took a lipstick from her purse, uncapped it, and swiped a streak of it along Steve's jaw before he could protest. She reached up to rub it out with her thumb; much more realistic that way, then popped a few buttons open at the top of James's shirt with her now-reddened fingertips so there'd be traces there, too. "It'll do, I suppose. Come on, everybody inside."