Page 34 of Wounded Dance
My breath catches. This is wonderful! I click back to the picture and scan the comments below it. Lots of happy well-wishes.
I roll back the chair and turn to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Gabriella will have a dad again!
Except…her birth father is looking for her.
I stand up and press my fingers to the glass. Denham has a very strong will. He will keep trying. He never gives up.
There was only one time that he faltered in his resolve. And that was in his determination to stay away from me.
After that first kiss behind my father’s car, Denham did manage to keep himself out of my way for a while. We only saw each other at dinnertime, and he kept his head down.
He took an interest in my little brother Andy, who was three and had a serious case of hero worship. Andy was delighted that Denham had dropped the brooding act and actually started carrying him around and having wrestling matches. They were always together, playing with action figures or having tickle fights.
Dad was pretty strict, wanting his kids to be quiet and obey. Denham took on the roughhousing and piggyback rides that Andy had been missing.
I, however, wanted more kisses. I’d felt the thrill of it, and now there was no stopping me. As I tried to orchestrate moments to get Denham alone, I found he always brought Andy along. My little brother became Denham’s mini-chaperone.
But it couldn’t last forever. Andy’s bedtime was way before ours, and it was only a week after that first kiss, the night before high school began, that Mom and Dad headed to the store for last-minute supplies and left Denham and me home alone.
I was determined to figure out a way to wrangle another kiss. I still had this vision of us walking down the halls at school together. Even though I could agree on a thinking level that it wasn’t right, not with the two of us living together, my body was driving the cause.
As soon as my parents’ car left the driveway, I tried to convince Denham I needed some help organizing my things for the first day of school.
A buzz went through my body just talking to him. I felt driven by the need.
Denham said he wanted to hit the hay early since it was the first day, but his eyes weren’t agreeing with his words. Us being alone was having an effect on him too. I knew it. He knew it.
“It’s only eight o’clock,” I said. “You don’t need that much sleep.”
We stood in the living room, him near the door as if he needed an escape route. I leaned against the back of the sofa, just a few feet away.
It had been unbearably hot that day, and I wore shorts and a spaghetti-strap tank. Denham had shorts on too, and a plain T-shirt. We were both barefoot and the air-conditioning ruffled his hair, since he was standing right in front of the window unit.
“You have the cool spot,” I said, walking up to turn my face to the blast of cold air. “It’s insufferably hot in my bedroom. Is it in yours?”
Now we were almost touching, the air cutting a channel between us, my long black hair blowing. I shifted and the tip of my breast brushed against his arm.
He leaped back as if he’d been burned. “Livia,” he said. “I have to stay away from you.”
I took up his space, turning to fully face the blast of air. I felt like a supermodel on a photo shoot, the wind making my hair fly away from my face, my shirt plastered against my body.
When I looked at Denham again, he was staring at me, his Adam’s apple working up and down. Then his eyes met mine, and that was it, everything changed.
He came at me like a bull charging. His hands cupped my head, pulling me to him. This kiss was like an explosion, his mouth opening mine, deep and passionate. It put every movie kiss I’d seen to shame.
My body pressed against his. His hands roamed down my back and cupped my bottom. He pushed me against him and I felt something shift against my belly. He was growing down there, and I could picture it like the drawing from health class, only getting bigger and harder against me.
He wanted me. This was what happened. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him back with all my might. The world was tilting, like I couldn’t figure out where the ground was anymore.
The air blasted one side of us, and Denham moved us away to escape the cold. We walked across the room until we backed against the sofa.
We had separated a bit, but he kept kissing me, now letting his hands run along my sides and ribs.
He was going to touch my body, I just knew it, and I couldn’t bear the wait. I wanted him to do it now, to feel what it would be like. His mouth was hot on mine and my jaw ached. I was ready to do anything he wanted.
But then he did something unexpected and thrilling, breaking the kiss and trailing his mouth down my neck and along my shoulder. He slipped a finger beneath the strap of my tank and tugged it aside.
He wasn’t really exposing anything new, as thin as that strap was, but it sent a flood of excitement through me. When his lips touched the spot that he’d bared, I thought I’d melt from the heat down below.
