Caught by Him

We were all strangers and any kind of touch was a familiarity that needed to be acknowledged and accommodated for. Almost every person who caught someone caught them by placing their hands on their back, on their shoulders. A sort of palms up movement where they fall into them and you contract like a spring before bouncing back to put them on their feet.

Even when I caught Eddie, and mind you I was more familiar with Eddie than he was with me at this point but still, I used my palms. I set him to rights and then I moved on.

I didn't let my touch linger.

Because it isn't our place. It isn't right. It isn't comfortable to embrace a stranger when they're putting their trust in you. It isn't the way you're supposed to catch someone.

He had no qualms about it.

I fell backwards and I felt the movement behind me before I felt him on me. He was quick and he was present, stepping in as I fell back and stepping under me, wrapping his arms around me in an embrace.

I'd fallen with my hands loosely at my side, figuring that as I fell I could swing them out to brace myself against the ground and make the impact a little less jarring. As he stepped up his hands slipped under my arms and he wound up with his hands on my stomach, the front of him pressed against the back of me as he held me for one moment.

And it was only one moment, but god it felt like so much more.

I was off balance, stuck on the back of my heels and entirely at his mercy. He seemed almost to pull me into him, to hold me against him as he stepped forward and used the whole of his body to set me upright.

It was a movement, smooth and fluid. I felt it all.

I felt the firmness, the strength of him against me from behind. I felt the height of him and the way he seemed to tower over me. I felt his body pressed against mine and the way his hands held me.

His grip not hard but firm all the same. Pressing into my belly and then pressing up as he set me upright until by the time his hands released me they were over my ribs, barely brushing against my body but still undeniably there.

And his breath was against my neck, curling against the skin at the nape of it. I felt a surge of heat, of embarrassment and of resentment towards boy-Kim who'd asked me to pull down my hood when I was introducing myself earlier because even though my neck was the only part of my skin that was visible still I felt so very exposed.

His breath. There was such an intimacy to it.

I didn't know who this man was, who it was that caught me. I didn't know and yet I knew, you know? I knew it in my bones even before I stepped forward and away and spun, pulling at the blindfold and seeing him revealed to me.

Fucking Blake. Really?

The man was standing there with a slight grin on his face that I'd even venture to describe as a little sheepish, or would have if I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. The big fucking asshole with his country-fried build and his broad shoulders and his goddamn...

Why did it have to be him?

A moment passed. A moment more. He reached out to me, palm up and hand outstretched and I had an instant to wonder what it was that he was doing before finally he gestured at the blindfold in my hands.

"My turn next," he said, a slow drawl in his voice.

I jammed the blindfold into his hands and turned, already feeling the blush in my cheeks and hating myself for it. He'd managed to find the perfect fucking way to humiliate me, because make no mistake I knew what it looked like to others if I was stutteringly humiliated in front of him right after he'd caught me in his arms.

And, as if to confirm it, when I gathered at the group of those who'd done the trust fall before me I heard one of the girls remark under her breath, "Of course. She's the one who gets caught by the cutie."

Fuck. None of this was going according to plan.

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