I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and get hopelessly lost in him. Every time Sal touched me or kissed me, I tasted freedom. Freedom from my life, from my dad’s rules, and freedom from the future looming over my life like a heavy storm cloud ready to burst. The scholarship to the San Luigi music conservatory was akin to a one-way ticket out of this hell. Before I took it, I wanted to explore this mystifying connection with Sal, damn the consequences.
I couldn’t hold back any longer. I needed to touch him again, especially now that I knew I could be gone in a matter of months. I raised my hand, leaving it suspended next to his head for a beat, deliberating, deciding. I pushed the pads of my fingers through his silky brown locks. The light rippled through his hair, bringing out strands of gold, copper, and coffee all plaited together to create the complex brown.
His hand looped over one of my knees, separating them fractionally, and heat flared between my legs. He tipped up his chin, more or less daring me to act on what was written all over my face. Giving into the temptation, I touched the sharp angle of his jawline, his five o’clock shadow abrading my fingers as they made their way to his mouth. I planted my pinkie finger in the center of that dent in his lower lip.
Rather than coming right out and saying what I wanted, I shrugged. Sal had to spell out what he wanted because his mixed signals had me turning in circles. “It’s up to you.”
“Oh, yeah.” His hand closed around my arm, pulling me closer, our noses brushing. “In that case…” His mouth met mine with a staggering amount of passion, and it only took seconds to unravel my inhibitions. We bit, nipped, dueled, dancing around what we wanted to happen. He tasted like the coffee candy he popped in his mouth on the way here.
Tension wove through my body muscle-by-muscle, and the sensation of my limbs folded over him made me a little woozy in the best possible way. I pressed my legs together, his hand still wedged between them, a reminder of where this would go if I had my way. I was ready to break all of the invisible chains my father had wrapped around me since my mom’s death.
My hands hooked around his firm shoulders, savoring the feel of his sturdiness, his competence. Sal reached around my back, unzipping my dress. The soft humming noise echoed in my ears, and my eyes widened, panic bubbling up in my chest. Instinctively, I clutched the front of my dress, and my other hand circled his wrist, gripping the sensitive skin on the underside.
He paused, the pads of his fingers unhurriedly stroking my back. “I only want to see you. Touch you. Make you feel good. I’ll even keep my clothes on so it doesn’t go too far. Are you okay with that?”
I nodded and released my hold on the front of my dress. It fell to my waist and his breath caught.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, so softly I damn near missed it.
His knuckles brushed across the tips of my breasts, pushing the long strands of my hair over my shoulder. Then his palms cupped the mounds, his lips moving across my jaw and down my neck.
I tensed a little, and he murmured soft, soothing noises. Gradually, I bloomed beneath his touches, my confidence growing second by second until I felt safe and free to explore him and allow myself to luxuriate in the sensations rippling through my body without guilt.
One second he was guiding me backward and the next he blanketed me, pressing me into the sagging cushions. One of his hands tangled in my hair, gripping and pulling at it like he wanted to crawl inside of me.
His hand slipped under the hem of my pale pink dress. My nerve endings buzzed with the unknown, and my pulse accelerated. He toyed with the edge of my panties, and my heart bounced around inside of my chest like a bowling ball. All the while, he kept kissing and nibbling. Unhinged ideas whipped through my brain, none of them making much sense except the overarching theme for him to continue with whatever he was doing.
One finger pushed inside my panties, and I nearly came out of my skin. Air exploded out of my lungs in ragged, needy breaths that burned a path up my throat. My fingernails dug into the sleeves of his white dress shirt like I could melt the delicate barrier between us if I pressed hard enough.
His long, calloused fingertip found my center, sliding in circles like he owned me. My uncertainty and reservations evaporated. I gasped, my hips arching off the sofa. All sense of reality slipped away until it was only the two of us and the game-changing sensation building inside of me. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Sure, I’d experimented, touching here or there, but it was like fumbling in the dark compared to this.
My body pulsed, silently begging for a reprieve. His warm breath spilled across my neck as his honeyed voice told me how much he wanted me, how he couldn’t stay away from me, how he couldn’t tear his eyes away from me on the stage, how perfect I felt in his arms, and so many other things. I couldn’t process each of them.