“Is this what you hear me say with my eyes? Is this what you don’t believe?”
“I want to believe it.” She couldn’t stop kissing him. His mouth had been her undoing. His jaw. Everything intoxicating as she touched it with her mouth, stroked it with her tongue. “I want you to make me feel beautiful.” Her lips were on his throat now, tracing the line where smooth skin turned to soft beard. Then up again to his mouth. “Please.”
His answering kiss matched her fever. Then suddenly his forehead was pressed against hers, his chest pumping with breath, his hand stroking her hair. Tendrils had come loose from her bun to dance around her face, and he couldn’t stop stroking whatever free locks he could touch. She was a skittish filly to be calmed.
“Ash, tell me what’s going on? What’s the matter?”
She pushed away from him, their bodies disengaging for the first time since they had touched. Turning away from him, she started for the door. “Great. So you don’t want me either.”
He was on her in a second, his hand on hers as she grabbed the doorknob. His body curved around hers, his breath in her hair. “Slow down. Please, meu amor, slow down.”
“I don’t want to slow down. I don’t want excuses. I don’t want to feel like this, Rico!” She didn’t care that her shoulders were shaking, she didn’t care.
“Okay. Okay. Will you let me do something? Promise not to stop me?”
She turned around, not in the mood to make any promises to anyone. There was only one thing she wanted right now.
“I’m going to pick you up and take you inside. My knee is fine. Will you let me do that without worrying about my knee? I really need to hold you.”
“I can’t. I can’t let you carry me when your knee is hurting.”
He threw his head back and groaned in frustration, and despite herself she smiled.
Taking her hand as though it was unspeakably precious, he tugged it. “But you will come inside with me? We can talk inside? Yes?”
“I don’t want to talk.” But she followed him into the enormous living room with a giant marble bar overlooking a clear view of the Bay Bridge, lit up. For the first time in her life she didn’t care about the beauty of it, about the view, about anything but being in his arms again, being wanted. He slipped behind the bar and turned on the sculptural faucet that was almost as tall as he was. Almost as extravagantly beautiful.
“Water?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Really? He wanted to play hostess right now?
He walked around the bar and handed her a glass.
Good, because if had been a plastic bottle she would have thrown it clean across the room.
She placed the glass down on the bar, refusing to be gentle, refusing to be managed. Glass clattered against stone.
She took his hand, gazes locked, grip firm. “Does this place have a bedroom?”
If anyone could fill a nod with erotic heat, this man could. She pulled him toward what had to be the bedroom (please let it be). He followed, eyes intense, hungry for her.
The sight of the bed was such a relief she almost cried. Turning around, she pushed him onto it, then climbed into his lap and straddled him. With a mighty moan that was pure need, he pulled her close. Body to body. Her legs tightened around his hips, all of her wrapped around him. He reached back and unclasped her bun as though he’d waited a million years to do it. Her hair cascaded around them as she shook it free, shook herself free. Then her tongue was in his mouth, and his hands were tugging at her clothes.
Their bodies recognized each other, coming together like elemental atoms, their only purpose to fuse and re-form. Everything old turning into something new in an explosion of desire and trembling connection and unvarnished hope.
In the aftermath they lay panting, the screamed calls of each other’s names echoing in the cavernous room, sweat and slick wetness still joining them where their skin touched, no words left on their lips, no breath in their lungs. Not for a long, long time.
There was just the tight grasp of their bodies. Hands clinging, inner muscles clutching, hair tangled, breaths mingling. She soaked up the oneness of them, too afraid to move, because how could this perfection last?
“If you tell me you don’t feel beautiful after that—” Rico whispered, voice hoarse as she kissed his mouth, stealing the rest of his words.
Rolling onto their sides, they kissed lazily, their heartbeats surging up and down. They played each other like beloved instruments they’d lost to time and given up on. Taking notes with their touches. Relearning. Reclaiming.
Ashna had no idea when she drifted off, but when she woke up, the room was pitch dark. Inside her was a new brightness. Without even a moment of disorientation, she knew exactly where she was. Lying sprawled on top of Rico, skin on skin.
She knew from his breathing that he was awake.
“Morning,” he said.
“What time is it? Can we have some light?”
“It’s noon.”
She sprang up and found him laughing. And gorgeous.
“It’s barely seven.” He hit a button on a remote and a complicated orchestra of blinds opened just enough to let in a gentle glow of morning light. The man was going to kill her.
Pulling her back to him, he kissed her soundly. A phrase that had to have been coined for this very moment.
Yes, she felt soundly kissed and it made her smile against his mouth. “You’re a very loud man. That’s certainly new,” she said.
He talked during sex, a lot. The chant of her name with every term of endearment in the world, all of them. A lot of Portuguese. Every word lightning, striking straight at her womb.
It was probably the first time she’d seen him blush. “It’s easier when you’re not hiding.”
She stiffened, but she knew he only meant how quiet they’d had to be in his aunt’s house, even though his aunt had never been there when they were together.
He stroked her back, thumb tracing the keys of her spine. Soothing her again. “Growing up has to have some advantages.”
It should, shouldn’t it?
He sensed the shifting of her mood. “You want to talk about what happened?”
She pushed herself off him and lay down on her back. The restlessness inside her was nothing if not stubborn. “What I’ve always known about myself, turns out it’s true.”
He went up on an elbow and started stroking her hair again. Her restlessness quelled a bit, which in turn made her angry, because becoming dependent on him to keep her from feeling like this, like a stringless kite, had destroyed her once.
Breathe, his hand in her hair said to her.
Breathe, his kaleidoscopic eyes said to himself.
“Listen, Ash, we didn’t get a chance to finish our conversation earlier. I . . . what you said . . . that your mother had never done anything to disprove your opinion of her, I couldn’t stop thinking about that. She is doing something now, isn’t she? She’s here . . . just like—”
“Please don’t.” She couldn’t talk about this right now, and still, somehow, she wanted to tell him everything she had overheard Shobi and Mina Kaki say. Everything about herself she now knew. Everything she had always known that she now had proof of. She wanted to burrow into him, scream it all into the solidity of his chest.