“I can promise that,” I murmured as we swayed to the music. His thumb traced small circles on my lower back, sending a shiver straight through me.
“You’re only allowed to melt for one man.” I felt his hand gentlytighten around my waist, pulling me closer as his mouth brushed against my earlobe. “Me.”
“I can live with that.”
His body felt good against mine, hard and warm. And he smelled good, like expensive scotch and his woodsy cologne.
The laughter, the shouting, and the clinking glasses no longer registered. All I could feel was his warm presence, steady and sure.
The song ended too soon, and it reverted back to an Albanian song. His hand in mine, we returned to our table, but an elderly gentleman intercepted us before we could sit down.
He wanted to discuss business with Kian. Deciding I didn’t need to sit in on that conversation, I excused myself to the ladies’ room and went outside in search of some quiet.
Once I stepped into the dark night, the music dulled to a distant pulse. I drew in a lungful of cool air, letting it scrape the smoke and heat from my chest, grateful for the space to breathe.
It didn’t last long, because Amir’s much younger cousins found me perched on the edge of a low stone wall in the courtyard, my heels kicked off and dangling from my fingers.
“Are you here to smoke too?” Luan asked. If I remembered right, he was the youngest one of them all. Only twenty years old.
“No, that shit will kill you,” I retorted.
They muttered something in Albanian and burst into laughter. I didn’t ask for a translation. It was probably a joke involving the mafia and an early grave.
Whatever.
If there was anything worth dying for, it was Kian’s stamina and the way he could bring me to the brink of orgasm with a single look.
Cigarettes and smoke though… A definite loss of luster.
I found myself surrounded by men—none of whom looked older than twenty-three, all of them with cigarettes pinched in their hands.
“So,” Luan said, drawing the word out, his broken English practiced, “is it really like in the movies?”
“Is what like the movies?” I reached down and dropped my shoes onto the grassy patch at my side.
“Do people whistle for cabs?”
“Sometimes. Or sometimes they do this.” I flicked my wrist like I was hailing a cab. “In the busy cities, you can stand on a corner at two in the morning and watch yellow cars line up just because you raised your hand.”
“Are they always yellow?” someone asked.
“Yellow cabs are,” I said, and they laughed again.
“Tell us more,” Luan’s brother, Berkin, demanded.
“Everything is… big?” Arben, another cousin, said, spreading his arms.
“Too big,” I corrected, bumping his elbow with my knee. “You order one thing and it feeds you for a week. You walk ten minutes and you’re still on the same street.”
They made impressed noises.
“Do you miss it?” Luan asked.
I looked down at my bare feet, my toes curling. Did I miss it? In the beginning, I did, but now… not so much. Although, I suspected it had everything to do with the man I came here with tonight.
Before I could answer, a shadow fell over us.
“Keni mbaruar?” Kian’s voice cut cleanly through the music. “Or should I come back later?”
