So much delicious skin.
Her tawny hair was softly swept back from her face and her wide mouth glistened with gloss and she’d put little shiny black stones in her ear and she’d done this for him and he just wanted to...just wanted to... He was seconds from falling to his knees.
Her voice, when she whispered in Spanish, sent shivers over his skin. “Do you want to go at it right here in the hall or would you like to come in?”
He kept his shit together. “I think I’ll come in. It’s drafty out here.”
He watched her pause, press her delicious lips together. Then she stepped back.
“Let’s stick to English,” he said, a touch of gruff in his voice, as he walked past her. She smelled so sugar sweet.
“Yes, let’s.”
He could glory later in what the tapes and tutors and true fascination with the language had earned him—her surprise, hopefully her admiration, and maybe her insight into how much she’d meant to him. Perhaps she even realized that he’d hoped—planned—to share his new linguistic skills with her one day. But right now he couldn’t speak Spanish with her, not with the way it made her look at him. Right now, he couldn’t give her the green light to speak it, not with the way her voice sparked over his body.
He was an amateur at this long game, so he needed to keep his act together before he began blubbering everything he needed and wanted into her rose-covered lap.
If through her body was the way back to her heart, then he had to be deliberate in his journey.
When he turned to look at her, her hand was already on the light switch.
“What are you doing?”
“Making it dark.”
“Wait, wait, wait.”
He walked quick steps back to her, pulled her hand from the wall and against his chest, tried to think fast when his brain felt stuck in a molasses of want and hope. The twilight glow coming through the sheers of her closed balcony doors gave him something. “It’s not dark enough yet. And...um...” The palm pressed against his chest, the fingertips that had ended up just inside his collar and touching his skin, weren’t helping him think.
Why wasn’t he pushing her up against the wall and lifting that dress?
“And, yeah.” He kept a hold on her wrist as he tugged her into the room. Away from the wall. “I had a rule and...”
The smile growing on her face, amused and sexy, stopped him short.
He cupped her hand and kissed her cinnamon-scented palm. “This is more than a one-time booty call, Sofia.”
“Vale. Okay,” she said, still sweet, still amused, before she slipped her hand from his hold and moved to a heavy black sideboard where decanters of wine and water and a tray of fruit, of crostini, queso and cured meats waited.
It settled him, centered him, that she’d anticipated at least a break in their lovemaking—a quiet moment to eat and drink—instead of expecting him to fuck her then get out.
When she pointed at the decanters with a questioning look, he asked, “Is the wine yours?”
She nodded.
“Then pour me a glass.” She turned away from him quick enough, but he still saw the pleased quirk of her lips.
When she walked back carrying two glasses, he took in the soft swish of her dress and the smoky look in her eyes. She handed him a glass and then took a seat on a black-leather-topped wooden bench near the balcony doors. Here they could both watch the light. Sofia urging it to fade to black and Aish using every bright second.
He unbuttoned his jacket and sat next to her, swirled the wine in his glass and took a sniff before drinking. He felt her eyes on him as he did it.
He nodded down at her arm, inches from him. “Your tattoo hasn’t faded.” The neat script, the blood-red words The Queen is Dead on the inside of her forearm were as sharp as ever.
She ran a thumb over it. “I keep it vibrant with vitriol and malice.”
Because he couldn’t help himself, he ran two fingers over it, too. The skin was seductively silky. “Thank you for letting me see it again.” She let him stroke her, feather back and forth over those angry words, and the comfort and ease of it was jarring. Mind-blowing.
She’d granted him this little bit of a second chance. He was so fucking lucky to be here.
She moved her arm away. “You’d never mentioned wanting your own tattoo,” she said.
And he hadn’t. At twenty-one, Aish could no more have imagined covering what he’d thought was a pretty ideal body with ink than wearing a blue wig over his hair. But after his first sex with someone other than Sofia, he’d staggered still stinking from the show into a tattoo parlor in Dallas and gotten a compass on his forearm in the same spot as Sofia’s tattoo.
He’d been such an idiot to think it would lead him back to her.
But that story would have her shutting down and kicking him out. So instead, he just said, “I liked yours. I got one. Then I didn’t stop.”
Her hmm of a response had Aish wondering for the first time why she’d insisted he cover his tattoos. He’d assumed it was another degrading restriction in a list of them, the clear line to announce what she thought of him and how little she trusted him. But maybe she liked the idea of ink tracing over his body too much.
It wasn’t time to heat up. He took a sip of wine to cool down and savored the taste.
“Do you like the wine?” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he said. The sky outside had become plum.
“What...um...what do you like about it?”
He turned to look at her. Then he stood up, straddled the bench in his tux pants, and sat down facing her.
“Sofia,”
