My hips bucked and legs quaked as I gasped. Shooting forward, I gripped the front of his shirt and rested my forehead on his chest. The orgasm hit with several shuddering waves, pulsing through my body and around his hand as he let me ride it out on his fingers. Eventually settling to a subtle spasming as I caught my breath again.
When he gently removed his hand, I kept my head against him, eyes closed as I drifted back down to earth and he rinsed his hand beneath the faucet.
I slowly pulled back just enough to look up at him, finding him smiling a little.
“How was that?” he asked softly, tucking my hair behind my ears so gently — so tenderly. Like he didn't just make me cum in his hand.
I couldn’t think of anything to say — my brain was nothing but mush — so I slipped my arms around his shoulders and kissed him instead.
We sat on the pastel blue couch talking for hours, swapping stories and little facts about each other.
I discovered he liked whiskey and pretzels, disliked the smell of champagne, wasn’t really an animal person, and that his birthday was on Halloween. He learned I failed my driving test three times, I could happily live on a diet of macarons for the rest of my life, and that my birthday was the 24th of February.
I told him about the time I broke my ankle falling off a bike, and had the scar to prove it, and that Kira and I got stranded in the apartment elevator once. In return, he took me on a journey back to Sicily, where he spent days as a boy at the seaside or danced with his mother in the kitchen.
I sat facing him with my legs crossed and a cushion in my lap. Dressed in pajama shorts and a T-shirt with my hair in a loose bun as I listened.
With his arm along the back of the couch, he absentmindedly twirled a loose strand of my hair around his fingertips as he spoke. His voice was like warm honey in the comfortable quiet of the apartment.
He talked briefly about the jobs he did for Antonio too. Some were more dangerous than others, but he didn’t go into heavy detail. And then he trailed off, smoothing the pad of his thumb across the side of my neck.
“Sorry about that,” he smiled softly.
I brought my fingers to the faint mark he had left on my skin there. “Mom is going to have a field day tomorrow when she sees it.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
“Bible study.” I rested the side of my head on the back of the couch, closing my eyes and breathing a sigh through my nose. “She’s forced me to attend each one in an attempt to use religion to keep me from seeing you.”
He huffed a laugh. “So, don’t go.”
“I’d love to, but Susan, our neighbor, has been tasked with taking me each Sunday.”
I could hear the smirk in his voice as he said, “Want me to talk to her?”
My eyes flicked open.
“No, definitely not,” I laughed, sitting up straighter. “I think she’d have a heart attack if she answered her door to you.”
“Am I that scary?” There was a glimmer of sarcasm in his eyes.
I pulled my knee to my chest and locked my fingers around it. “Intimidating, yes. But not scary.”
His head tilted a little as he reached out and trailed a finger along the back of my hand, resting on my knee. “Do I intimidate you?”
“Not anymore.”
He was looking at me with those eyes again, and my heart skipped uncontrollably. I scooted closer, eyes falling on the tattoos visible on his arms.
“I know you’re probably sick of people asking about these...” I began.
He followed my gaze and half smiled.
Any kind of drawing, including tattoos, attracted my attention. I was genuinely curious about each of his, and what they meant to him. “Can you tell me about some of them? If you’re comfortable?”
“Lily,” he said. The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “If you want me to take my shirt off, just say so.”
I blushed and rolled my eyes, but then his smile widened and he rolled the sleeves of his shirt up a little higher, displaying more of his arms before he began the private tour of his body art. He held out his arms for me to look closer while he spoke. Any beneath his shirt, he left covered but still revealed the stories for them.
