Like most residents of the city, I’ve driven past the fountains countless times on South Las Vegas Boulevard, and had even briefly stopped to look a few times on my way to one of the clubs inside.
Hey, we’re desert dwellers. Of course we’re fascinated by all that water.
But I had never intentionally stood and just watched them.
All through dinner, Jen kept stealing glances out the nearby window at the illuminated spray as it jumped and swirled.
While we finished the last of our second bottle of wine, I asked if she wanted to get a closer look. The expression on her face, all three-year-old-in-Santa’s-workshop-with-a-couple-of-Disney-princesses-as-tourguides, was the only answer I needed.
So we strolled, her hand tucked into the crook of my arm, until we found an empty spot on the balustrade. I’d draped one arm across her shoulders, since the heat of the day had bled off into cool desert night, and she hadn’t thought to bring a wrap.
A mellow breeze lifted the hair from Jen’s neck and I felt her fight a tremor and lose. Stepping behind her to block the draft, I caged her in my arms against the railing and leaned close; the scent of something amber mixed with a sweetness I couldn’t identify flooded my head, and my vision fritzed out at the edges.
Add to that the view of all that exposed skin on her back, golden and shadowy in the fountain’s light and mere inches in front of me—well, I’ll just let you guess where every spare drop of blood in my body was surging off to.
Her shoulders were still trembling and she’d let go of the railing to wrap her arms around herself.
Deciding that keeping her warm was not technically a violation of my no-touching oath, I enveloped her in my arms. Cursing softly at the gooseflesh under my hands, I tucked her into my chest and lowered my chin to rest on her hair.
Just to block the breeze.
Inhaling her warm scent had nothing to do with it. Seriously. I already had an erection the size of Kansas that I was trying to simultaneously ignore and keep from grinding into her body where she leaned against me.
Even after the music ended, we stayed that way, waiting to see what was next. I hoped it wasn’t a song from ‘The Music Man’ or something. I can handle just so many showtunes.
We got blue balls with a capital B and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool… as in ‘Pool that blue dress around your ankles and climb my naked body like a tree.’
God help me.
I’ll never see ‘The Music Man’ the same way again. Not that I’m likely to ever watch it. Voluntarily, anyway.
I stifled my snicker in a chuff of air, but apparently not quietly enough, because Jen leaned her head back and asked, “What’s funny?”
“Just humming a showtune in my head.” What? It was true.
She moved away enough to turn her head and look me square in the eyes. “You sing showtunes in your head? I’m worried about you.”
“You started it—you’re the one who wanted to see the musical fountain.”
“Nuh-uh, mister. I recall you actually bringing it up first,” she smirked.
Yeah, I wasn’t touching that one. Not even in my head.
She turned back and settled into me again with a sigh. The friction against my zipper from just those tiny movements was killing me.
“Despite the crappy choice of songs, Mr. Judgmental, I think it’s really cool. Like fireworks made out of water.”
A low fog had begun to creep across the surface of Bellagio’s small lake, and the Paula Abdul song that had been annoying me through the myriad speakers wound down mid-Do-ya-love-me until I couldn’t hear it anymore. The walkway lights dimmed and, with no further preamble, a row of round fountains illuminated to the opening strains of a violin, rising higher like ballerinas.
Jensen gasped, her fingers digging into my forearms as she leaned further into my body.
The spray rose and swirled, and a woman’s beautiful voice began to sing in Italian.
Shit.
Of all the songs they could play… Bocelli’s duet of ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ was definitely not what I would have picked. It was soaring and beautiful and the universe could not possibly be trying to tell me something here.
I rejected it as just a coincidence—these things were scheduled. They would have played this song at this time, whether or not we were here to hear it.
Jensen was swaying against my entire front. No fucking way could she keep that up and still leave me able to walk away with any dignity.
Pushing gently at her shoulder, I eased her around to face me, still caged in my arms, and sent up a silent prayer that I still remembered my mother’s waltz lessons from eons ago.
Jen’s eyes were bright with questions as she met my gaze, her lips parted and quirking up in her perennial semi-smile. As I slid one palm down her arm to cup her hand and brought the other to her waist—I guess the muscle memory was still there after all—she cocked her head and it was all I could do not to kiss her.