by Ella James
I know she likes the feel of that because she makes a little sound. And that’s when things go sideways. Having her on my lap becomes a bad thing because now I’m hard. I take a deep breath, swallow. Try to think of something that’ll get this to go down a little. But there’s nothing. My heart starts beating harder—because my body wants to fuck her.
I rub my forehead with my free hand and brush her hair up off her nape. I rub at the base of her skull with two fingers, the same spot where my neck hurts sometimes. I’m rewarded with a little groan, and a sharp throb that sends a wash of good feels from my dick down to my knees.
Shit.
She giggles, and I keep rubbing. “Your hair is soft,” I say in a voice that vibrates.
“Thank you.”
I want to touch my dick so fucking bad. I shift my legs a little, hoping that a reposition might help. No. Fuck. That made it worse.
Elise is smart. She lifts her head up, and her cheeks are flushed. She’s smiling like she’s kind of sleepy, relaxed. But her eyes give her away, flitting down to my pants for a millisecond before latching back onto mine. “Thank you for that. It felt so good.”
I reach out to push some hair out of her face, but once I’ve got my hand on her—even her hair—I can’t seem to move it away.
“No boyfriend,” I say, my voice an octave too low. “I wonder how long that’s going to last.”
Her lips twitch. “What?” She looks puzzled—and self-conscious.
“Just every guy you meet with a functioning brain must want you.” The words come out so rough they’re almost hoarse—and her eyes widen. Then a blush sweeps her cheeks.
“That’s not true.”
“Oh yes, it is true…la mia rosa.”
She looks down again, and I know she can see where my boner strains at my pants. I shift so it’s not so fucking obvious and run my hands through my hair. “Sorry.” I’m almost scared to look at her, but when I do, she’s got this tiny smirk on her face.
“Sorry,” she whispers. Her smile widens—along with her eyes.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “I think you might be.”
She turns redder. “I would never.”
“I’m just kidding.” I stand up and turn away from her, toward the water. I feel her hovering behind me, probably afraid to get close.
Jesus Christ, Galante.
I grit my teeth and inspect the railing. There’s ivy curved around the iron; I trace a leaf with my finger, surprised to find it’s kinda shaking from…I don’t know what this feeling is.
“Sorry,” I say quickly.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not upset.”
My finger rubs something between the iron and ivy. I reach down and brush my fingertips against it. Rope. I pull on it.
“A rope ladder,” I murmur.
I feel her stand up beside me. “Is it?”
I nod, drawing more of it out.
“I guess it’s some fire code thing,” she murmurs.
I drag it all the way out. The thing is long. “It’ll probably reach to the ground.” I stare at it while I work up the nerve to flash her a quick, palate-cleansing grin. “You think I can climb down?”
“Ummm…yes? But should you?”
“Might be fun.” My heart is still beating too hard. My hands feel weird and hot as I toss the rope over the balcony’s ledge.
“Are you really going to do that?”
I laugh, giving her a glance to be sure she doesn’t seem too freaked out.
“You are,” she laughs. “It’s one of those guy things, isn’t it? But let me tell you something, Galante. If you go, I go. You can go down first, but I’ll be coming down right after.” She smiles, as if I didn’t make the last five minutes awkward as fuck.
“I don’t know if that’s good.”
She puts a hand on her hip. “Are you saying you’re more capable than I am?”
“I’m saying I care more about you falling.”
“And I care more about you falling. So I guess that makes us even.”
I look down again, at the wet grass below the last wrung of the ladder. There are people milling in the yard, but not too many, and they’re not near us. I look at Elise again.
“If you get scared and decide you don’t want to come down, I could climb back up to you,” I offer.
She laughs, and it’s a funny little laugh—sort of a giggle.
“Oh no, I’m going to do it. I’m athletic. I’m a runner. And—” she squares her shoulders— “I play tennis. I’m also lighter than you and probably more limber.”
We share a smile, and I feel almost dizzy with it. “It sounds like the deal is sealed then, O’Hara.”
She widens her eyes at me, incredulous.
“What?” I laugh.
“Are you really going to go over the side of the balcony on a rope ladder you just found tucked in some ivy?”
I do—moving slowly and carefully, clutching the top rungs of the ladder with both fists so I don’t fall and scar Elise for life. Then I decide I want to scare her a little bit and flap one hand dramatically. “AHHHH—”
“Luca! You—” I laugh, and she scrunches her face angrily. “You jerk! I knew it was fake.”
“Sure you did,” I tease.
“I did!”
I start down the ladder, and once I’m seven or eight rungs down, I call up, “This is pretty easy. But you still shouldn’t do it.”
“Why not?” She sounds offended.
“I don’t know. It’s kind of wobbly.”
“I can handle wobbly.”
I laugh, and then I’m moving down more quickly, glancing at the dark expanse of grass below my shoes. Someone shouts, and I’m aware that people on a balcony above ours are peeking down at me.
I hear some dude shout, “Don’t flick your cherry, man!”
“Yeah, please don’t,” I mutter.
Finally, I reach the ground. The grass squishes around my sneakers. I look up to find Elise already over the ledge.
“Sweet.” I cup my hands around my mouth. “Keep coming. You got it…” She’s moving pretty fast. Damn. I guess she knows her skillset. “Almost halfway now…”
The people on the balcony above ours start to chant. I hear Elise laugh. Her feet are just over my head now.
“There ya go,” I murmur.
When she’s close enough, I wrap my hands around her waist and pull her down into my arms. Everyone cheers. We both laugh like idiots. Elise beams up at me, and her eyes have this look. I smile back and then take off toward the long dock maybe fifty yards away.
She squeals like a little kid, and I jog till we’re out of the lamplight and into shadows draped across the wet grass.
“Oh my God, your shoes!”
“A little wet.” I laugh again, and then we’re on the dock, a single arm with two slots filled by a giant sailboat and what you might call a small yacht. I walk toward them, through circles of amber light from three black lamp posts. Then I hang a left, so we’re at a narrow strip of dock between the two vessels. I lower Elise onto the slats and wink at her before I sink down cross-legged by her. She moves so she’s facing me.
“Hi.” She laughs.
“Hello yourself.”
Her face is happy, and her eyes are on mine, making me feel so warm. That thing happens again, like it did up on the balcony. My heart starts beating harder, and my ears feel really, really hot.
Chapter Six
Elise
I lean in first, and then he does—so we’re close enough to kiss. But I can’t kiss him, and he doesn’t kiss me. He just looks at me…right in the eye, as if he’s looking past the outside of me deep into the inside.
Softly, he says, “You know…you’re beautiful.”
My pulse roars in my ears, even as I try to roll my eyes. “Don’t say that.”
Luca’s lips curve slightly. “Why not?”
“Bec
ause it scares me.” I laugh.
“Why?” He tilts his head a little, his face gentle.
“I don’t know.” Emotion rises in my chest, a gentle swell of something I don’t know the name of.
He leans in and kisses my cheek, so when one hot tear falls—a mortifying shock to me—his mouth is there, lovely and soft. And then it’s natural to kiss him. We’re kissing, and it’s strange and wonderful, scary and soothing. Him and me. Me and him. We’re like a puzzle snapping into place. My hands are on his hard shoulders. His fingers sift through my hair, careful. Then I’m moaning into his mouth. One of his hands cups my nape and he pulls me closer.
We kiss until we can’t breathe. He wraps an arm around me, and the world constricts to just this moment, and it’s vast and slow and quick and frantic and so tender I feel like my heart is being tugged outward. I’m the first to pull away, but we’re both panting. His hands on my shoulders secure me up against him. His arm wraps around me like he never wants to let go.
For the longest time, we sit there with him holding me like I am so important to him. Like I matter. Really matter. He holds me like I’m cherished. Like I’m his.
Another tear drips down my cheek, and I think he can tell, but he doesn’t ask. He just holds me as the water laps and the air hangs around us like a curtain. As our classmates’ gleeful, laughing screams echo around the sailboat’s mast and, sometime later, people stumble onto the dock.
We slip back into the house through a back door and make our way upstairs to that same bedroom with the balcony from before. No words are exchanged. We are simply drawn there, moved by our own gravity.
Inside the room, he drops my hand and sprawls out on his back on the bed. “Sorry.” He shuts his eyes. “I’m so tired. You trust me?”
He peeks at me through his eyelashes, holds out his hand, and I climb onto the bed so I can take it.
“I don’t think I could ever be scared of you.”
I stroke his dark hair, loving the warmth of his forehead and the way his lips part slightly.
“That feels good,” he says—and it’s a soft, hoarse, sleepy voice.
I have the thought that my frantic pulse may never slow again. Not while I’m near him. Then the ether hears me, and the wheels of fate conspire to make that true. From outside the door, someone shouts, “Cops!”
It’s shouted a few times before the word permeates my love-drunk brain. I jerk my hand from Luca’s forehead.
“Oh shit, I think the cops are here!”
We scramble over the balcony’s side just as the bedroom door bursts open. Somehow, we both make it down the rope ladder and through the yard—where everyone is running, screaming—and then to the sailboat. There’s a hatch that’s unlocked, so we drop into the inside of it.
I hear shrieking, and the smacking sound of shoe soles on grass quickens. Someone blows a shrill whistle.
“They have whistles?” I hiss.
Luca laughs quietly.
When we dropped in through the hatch, we landed in the front, on a hard, triangular bed. Or at least I think that it’s a bed. Luca locks the hatch and then he wraps an arm around me. We hear a helicopter taking off from the pad near the boat.
“If cops get on here,” Luca whispers near my ear, “I’ll go out by myself, and you can hide.”
He presses his cheek against the top of my hair, and I can feel his chest expand as he drags in a big breath. For a moment, we’re just quiet. I can feel the boat rock slightly. He hugs me a little tighter, and I curl against him.
“I hope Ree and Dani are okay,” I whisper.
“Pray to Saint Jude.”
I lean back a little, giving me a view of his face, swathed in shadows. “Why St. Jude?”
“You’re not Catholic.” His lips twitch.
“No, I am. Kind of. We go to a Catholic church on holidays. My mom’s from Bangladesh, but she’s an atheist.”
I can tell from his face that he’s not sure what to say to that.
“I’m not an atheist,” I clarify. “I’m down with praying. What will St. Jude do for me?” I ask him in a teasing tone.
“Patron saint of lost causes.” Luca’s eyes dance as he flashes me a crooked smile.
“Hmm. You smell good,” I whisper near his chin.
He kisses my temple. “You do.” He gives me a little sniff. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” I laugh at how insane this all is.
“I could always smell it when I walked behind you.”
“What?” That makes us both laugh.
“Seriously. It’s the best smell ever.”
“I wear perfume,” I whisper, “but I’m not telling you what kind it is.”
He shakes his head. “That’s evil, O’Hara.”
His cheek presses against mine. We’re partway lying down, looking into each other’s eyes. He shifts a little, and I reach for the waistband of his pants.
“You are, with these blue jeans.”
I trace a finger over his denim-clad thigh.
“Don’t say that.” His voice is husky.
I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t want a repeat of what happened on the balcony. Even as I’m thinking that, I can feel him breathing heavier.
“Why are you so nice to me, Luca Galante?”
When I look into his eyes, I notice they look almost shut. Like he’s relaxed or falling asleep.
“I don’t know, Elise O’Hara. I like you.”
“You do?” I whisper.
His lips curve into a lazy-looking smile. “I’ve always liked you.”
“Always. That sounds like a long time.”
“Since my first day of school at MM,” he says softly. He glances up at the hatch in the roof before he goes on. “I was walking to the office. You went in before me, and I heard you talking about your schedule. You were doing something, working with the special ed department. Sounded like maybe helping one of the other students. So I noticed that. Also, you were hot.”
I nod, ducking my head so he doesn’t see how giddy I am. “I’m a buddy for a younger girl. It’s one of my classes.”
We’re facing one another, inhaling each other’s breath, and his smells like peppermints. I hope mine smells like spearmint gum. His eyes gleam like gemstones as they hold mine, but they aren’t hard. They’re molten soft.
His lips brush mine, feather gentle. I kiss him back as best I can, which I’m scared isn’t very good—but then I think it must be, because he kisses me back, hard and hungry.
I shiver when his tongue strokes mine, and when we break apart, he’s breathing hard. I’m breathing harder. It’s like a switch flipped, and now I just want more, more, more. His hand is cupping my head, his grip firm and warm. Our lips meet again and my hands start roving up and down him, soft palms on his hard chest, fingertips catching in his blue jean belt loop. I grip the waist of his jeans between two fingers, jolted when I feel the heat of his skin against my knuckles.
His mouth leaves mine as his body shudders and I freeze, worried I did something wrong. But then his lips find mine again, and his hand on my nape slides down to my lower back, and he seals me against him—just our upper bodies, though. And I want more.
Naughty fingers. They stroke his hot skin, the soft skin over his hard abs. Every time a fingertip skates around, he groans and kind of bucks against me. We try to swallow one another while my fingers delve a little deeper, down to where his skin is hotter, softer. I reach the juncture of his thigh, and when I stroke there, finally he snaps and moves his hips in my direction. As soon as he does, his mouth is off mine, and he leans back.
“Elise.”
“What?” I’m grinning, almost laughing. My blood whooshes in my ears as my whole body shimmers with lust.
He laughs, the sound strangled. He looks down, and so do I, and I’m kind of shocked to see how…visible he is. It’s pushing at the denim of his jeans. My cheeks heat up because I made that happen.
He kisses me another time, long and warm an
d deep, before pulling away again.
“Elise…”
“Sorry.” That’s a lie, though. I feel taut and throbby, hungry and impulsive. So shocked and unlike myself, but I don’t care, it doesn’t matter. Nothing does except this very second.
His hand squeezes my arm lightly. “Don’t be sorry.”
“I’m not usually like this,” I say in a voice that shakes.
“Like what?” He smiles, and the look in his eyes makes me dizzy.
When I don’t answer, his hand rubs my arm and his lips brush my cheek. Then he scoots about a foot away from me.
His palm cups the bulge in his jeans, and I realize he’s gritting his teeth.
“Sorry,” I echo.
He laughs. “No.” He gives a shake of his head. “I don’t want to mess this up.”
My gaze sweeps up and down him, lingering for longer than it should on where his hand is.
“See?” His voice is so low it vibrates.
“I like it.”
My mouth falls open after I say that. But it’s the truth. I love the sight of him with his legs spread and that lustful but wary look on his face. I love where his hand is, how he’s holding himself—even as it makes my heart pound.
He mutters something—I think “fuck”—and then the boat shifts as he steps off the mattress and down into a space that I can’t see.
Chapter Seven
Elise
“Luca?” I lean forward through the opening that leads into a lower section of the hull. For a second, it’s so dark, I’m not sure where he is. Then he’s throwing me over his shoulder, hauling me into a larger, stepped-down space where I glimpse a kitchen and a love seat. He lays me on the love seat and steps back. He’s standing in front of a stove, shaking his head as he gives another choked laugh.
“Elise.”
“Luca.” I turn onto my side, propping my cheek in my hand so I can look up at him.
