Page 68 of Let It Be Me

“You wouldn’t remember,” he says, his voice deep. “Let me show you.” Deftly, he grabs the beach towel sitting near his chair and rolls it out on the wooden boards before laying me down.

“I think I would have remembered this view,” I tease, gazing up at the solid wall of his body as he kneels over me.

“Well, my memory’s getting fuzzy.” He kisses me again before letting his lips drift down to my neck. “So let’s just go with this.”

I sigh blissfully at the feel of his warm mouth against the thin skin of my throat but seize up again when he decides to repay me for tickling him earlier, his fingernails dragging against the back of my neck, my ticklish spot. I squeeze my shoulder up to my neck to still his fingers. He smiles and returns to the soft kisses of before. But he continues this way, sweet and salty, making me giggle and sigh in turns. When he drags his tongue along my neck just like he did that day with the chocolate syrup, I can’t help but shriek. He laughs into my skin, and the humming heat of it sets me on fire. I lift my chest toward him, begging him to be closer.

He moves down my body, his head dipping to my collarbone. This is where I expect him to stop. Lorenzo, always polite, always respectful, stopping to ask my permission before he touches me in places his eyes have never seen. But he doesn’t stop.

He slows down, his mouth moving centimeter by centimeter lower, his lips inches from the top of my shirt. It turns me on massively, this persistence where I expected deference. It amazes me the things I don’t know about him.

His fingernails graze my shoulders as he pulls down the straps of my tank top. It’s familiar in so many ways—I’ve done this with more people than I wish I had. But it’s new, his touch and his eyes on me and the way my heart thrums with anticipation. He pushes my top down to my hips, then kisses his way up my stomach and between the cups of my bra. I’m on fire everywhere he touches. The brush of his hair on the tops of my breasts sends me reeling, my nipples tightening with want.

His fingers hook around my bra straps, but this is where he lifts his head and meets my gaze. The look in his eye isn’t somuch asking permission as it is asking if we should be doing this at all.

I brush his hair out of his face and whisper, “Keep going.”

Something lights in his eyes. He pulls down one bra strap teasingly slow, like a man who knows seduction is an art. When my breast is bare, he licks his lips, but he doesn’t taste me. He cups my flesh in one hand, makes a sound in the back of his throat, and moves achingly slow to my other shoulder to start the whole process again.

When I’m half naked in front of him, Lorenzo pulls back and gazes down at me. He takes a short breath, half gasp and half sigh, and the sound of it pulls at my heart. This need to steady himself, like he’s not sure what to make of what lies in front of him, is so endearing. I have to remember he’s nervous too. I’m not some hard-won prize—god knows I would have gladly slept with him on any one of a thousand nights. But the way he looks at me makes me feel like he’s been fighting to get here his entire life.

“Ruby.” He smiles and his gaze gets caught on my breasts before he finally brings it to my eyes. “Are we out of our minds?”

“Maybe,” I say softly. “But you can’t stop now.”

He lowers his head, and then his mouth and his perfect hands are all over me. Slow and careful just for a minute, testing what I like, and quickly turning hungry when I pull him closer and ask for more. He squeezes my breasts together, tasting each nipple in turn, dragging his tongue along my cleavage to move from one to the other. Nipple play has never been my favorite, butthis—this hunger in his lips—flows straight from his body into mine. It’s too much, lying here, a passive object. I sit up and wrap my arms around him, kissing him deeply. His big hands slide up my bare back, making this feel like the safest place on earth. My tongue explores his, and I know I’m tasting the salt of my own desire-flushed skin. I want to straddle his lap and rollmy hips against him, but I know that’s dangerous. Not here, not tonight. So I settle for kneeling in front of him and letting his lips find their way back to my chest.

I look down at his dark hair, the wet flash of his tongue and the greedy way he cups my breast. He pauses and pulls back a few inches. His fingers brush the side of my breast, and I realize what he’s staring at. He looks up at me, curiosity in his eyes.

“What’s this?” His fingers are still on my skin.

“A tattoo. Clearly.”

“It’s real?”

I chuckle. “Well, it’s not fake.”

“I thought you only had the one. You never told me.”

“Oops.”

His eyes dart between my face and the tattoo on the side of my breast like he’s just discovered gold. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me.”

“I did it a long time ago.”

“Move into the light.”

I angle my body so he can see the ink clearly. “Three seventeen,” he reads, running his thumb over the tattoo. And even though he’s had his hands and tongue all over my breasts all evening, this touch, him discovering my secret, makes me break out in goose bumps. “What’s it mean?”

“You don’t know?”

“March seventeenth?”

I shake my head. “Here’s your hint: Look around you.”

His brows pull together, then relax. “The house number.” He gestures with his head toward the empty house behind us. “Our spot.”

I nod, pleased and a little embarrassed. His body’s half covered in tattoos, and only one of them has anything to do with me; two if you count the fox, but I think he just liked my artwork.

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