Her laughter came soft, breathy — the kind that almost disappears before you can decide if it’s real.
But it came right after she touched him. Just a light brush of her fingers against his arm, and then that sound — low, warm, unguarded.
He smiled automatically, thinking it was amusement. A small, harmless gesture.
But she didn’t look away.
Her eyes were still fixed on where her fingers had been. And that laughter, though short, had left something behind — a spark of tension that didn’t fade.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
She tilted her head. “Because you flinched,” she said. But her tone was slow, teasing, as if the words themselves were part of the game.
He hadn’t realized he did.
But maybe she wasn’t talking about reflex — maybe she meant reaction.
That laugh wasn’t humor. It was a signal — a way to say, I felt that too.
A woman like her didn’t giggle; she measured sound the way others measured breath. Every note carried meaning.
When she touched him again, she didn’t laugh this time. She just watched, as though waiting to see what else she could make him do without saying a word.
“Does that make you nervous?” she asked.
“No,” he lied.
She smiled — slow, knowing. “Then why are you holding your breath?”
He hadn’t noticed.
Her laughter had turned into silence again, and now the absence of it felt heavier than before.
The room seemed to hum, filled not with noise, but with awareness.
He realized that she used laughter not to break tension, but to create it.
Each quiet chuckle, each small sound, drew him deeper into the rhythm she controlled — playful, deliberate, dangerous.
And the more she smiled, the more he understood:
She wasn’t amused.
She was testing how much his composure could hold before it cracked.
By the time she whispered, “Relax,” her tone had nothing of humor left.
Just that faint echo of laughter that now sounded like a secret — one that only she understood.