Page 67 of Vicious Souls

I press my lips to her neck and brush against her skin softly, then move back and look at her face. She is blushing. I lift a strand of her hair and twist it around my fingers, then let it go. My hand moves down to her thigh and I squeeze lightly, then smooth my hand up and down slowly, sensually. The whole time, I am watching her face, and I don’t miss the way her expression changes from blank to flushed until finally her breath hitches.

She looks at me, her dark eyes big and round and surprised, like a deer caught in headlights. She wants me to touch her again; her eyes are literally begging me to do it.

I move my head back to her neck and kiss her behind her ear. I allow my lips to linger there longer than they should. And that kiss has nothing to do with my desire for her but everything to do with the man sitting across the room eye-fucking Kingsley. And damn if I don’t enjoy it. She turns her head before I am able to draw away, inadvertently touching her lips to the edge of mine. It is an innocent accident that hangs between us as we look at one another. My eyes fall to her lips and her tongue as it shoots out and she licks at her lips, like she is trying to seal my taste inside her. It is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen her do, and before I know it, my mouth is crushed against hers and my hand is moving around her neck, lifting her hair as I press her into me, as close to her as I’ve ever been yet not close enough. I break away when I hear someone clear their throat, and I look up from Kingsley’s breathless face to see Gino beaming at me with a smile. He knows I’m not the type for flashy displays of affection, and he probably thinks he’s doing me a favor reminding me where I am. I won’t admit it, but his interruption is more than welcome. Kingsley is doing things to me I can’t explain. She is messing with my head and my body and although I like what she is doing to me, I can’t afford to fuck up.

Gino sets the dishes down, some of which are still sizzling, and I move my chair back to its rightful place opposite Kingsley and drape my serviette across my lap. I watch as Kingsley lifts her cutlery with shaky hands, keeping her gaze lowered, and I’m not sure if she is embarrassed by what happened, the fact that she enjoyed it and didn’t want to, or that Gino saw us and made a show of it.

She sets her fork down, then picks it up a moment later, her thoughts obviously scattered. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not, but I’m quietly delighted that my kiss has thrown her off balance.

“Kingsley.” She doesn’t look up. I set my cutlery down and lift her chin to meet my eyes. “Do you want to leave?” She shakes her head and I tell her she needs to eat.

She squares her shoulders then lifts her fork and proceeds to eat. We sit this way for a few minutes, consuming our food. I keep my eyes on her, my gaze following every motion of her mouth. Every swallow that slides down her throat. Every drop of the cherry liquid that coats her lips after I’ve convinced her to try the wine.

“Kingsley, give me your eyes.”

The silence growing between us is extending into the night as we continue eating, an intolerable companion at our dinner table. She lifts her eyes and looks at me, stops eating as she waits for me to say something. I don’t know what she’s expecting. All I know is that I don’t want her silence.

“The food’s better than I remember,” she says, saving me from overthinking my next words to her.

“The company’s not bad, either,” I tell her, smiling. When she smiles back at me, I realize her reticence has stemmed from her own self-doubt. She doesn’t know how to be after we share a kiss. She is unsure of herself. That I tell her how happy I am to be sitting with her tells her everything is okay between us.

“It’s really, really good,” and she picks up her knife and fork and continues to eat.

59

KINGSLEY

Dante wants to make the most of the night since we are headed home in two days. That’s how we end up on a pier, eating ice cream as we look out at the Hudson River.

“I think I quite like New York,” I remark, taking in the eclectic vibe of the atmosphere around us. Everything about this trip has been amazing, with Tate relegated to a back corner of my mind, where he is squarely placed away until there will come a time when I will have to deal with him.

“Enough to come back and visit?”

I shake my head. “More like somewhere I’d like to live,” I tell him. I watch him as he swallows his ice cream then turns to look at me. His silence says so much, yet it says nothing. It tells me nothing about what he is thinking. “I’m baring my soul to you here,” I tell him. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

It is Dante’s turn to shrug. He looks down at his feet, avoiding the question, then back up at me only fleetingly before he turns around and faces the water, his hands clenched against the rails. “New York’s a beautiful place to live,” he says. “A long way from home, but beautiful nonetheless.”

There is an untold story between Dante and me. We are doing a silly dance around one another that neither of us understands. I don’t know the name of the dance, but what I do know is that he is my person. He has become the person I can go to with anything.

“Where’s home, Dante?”

“It’s where we come from. For us, that’s Seattle.”

I shake my head and look at him sadly.

“No. Home is where your people are. I don’t have anyone left where my ‘home’ used to be. And there’s nothing more dangerous than a person without a home.”

* * *

The next day,Dante introduces me to friends he wants me to spend the day with as he conducts a few meetings. They’re a bunch of women I don’t know from Jack who are wives and sisters to some of his friends in New York. I trudge along reluctantly, not knowing what to expect. I’m mesmerized by all the things they discuss, the hours upon hours of shopping they can muster up, and how they fawn – yes fawn – over my hair and tan and legs. There’s not a piece of my body they haven’t dissected and remarked on, and I wonder why I ever let Dante talk me into this.

“So, how do you know Dante?” One of the women… Holly or Chloe or Zoe or something asks me as we sit down for lunch in the outdoor dining of an upscale Spanish bistro after the ladies can no longer manage walking the streets of New York in their heels. I look down at my perfectly manicured toenails peeking out from my strappy slides and am never more grateful for my sense of logic, even though I was met with looks of disapproval for my attire when Dante’s driver dropped me off.

“We’re family friends.”

One of the ladies gawks. Another scoffs. A third fixes me with a quizzical look as she continues to massage her sore feet. And Zoe or Chloe or whatever her name is moves into the table, somewhat conspiratorially, and asks me about Dante.

She hums, yes literally hums when I meet her gaze with a confused expression on my face.

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