Chapter NineKami
There we were—truly alone for the first time since Thiago came back to Carsville. Not in a car, not at school. No distractions. No excuses. Just us.
How can I explain how I felt sharing this moment with Thiago Di Bianco? Can you even imagine it? Just watching him cook made my thighs clench and my heart race like it was about to give out.
He was so sexy, so big and manly moving around in that tiny, cozy space. Everything he did fascinated me. My eyes followed his enormous hands as they held on to the colander or opened a beer. Everything he did turned me on, waking me from a sexual lethargy I hadn’t realized I’d been in until this last half hour alone together, culminating with him telling me I was the love of his life.
He wasn’t lying to me, was he?
No, he wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. But it was so crazy, so unreal, the thought that he had felt so strongly about me ever since we were kids. Why should it surprise me, though? I’d felt the same way about him. It was as if there were a cord pulling me toward him.
Have you heard of the red thread of fate? That tale about how we’re destined to meet someone who will be the love of our lives? It might sound ridiculous, but I knew my feelings for Thiago surpassed anything I could have felt for Taylor or Danny or any other guy. With Thiago, things were just different.
I’m not saying the red thread legend is real, but maybe, just maybe, we were meant to be together.
“It’s funny because none of this seems real,” I said as he kissed my knuckles.
“We don’t choose who we love,” he said, looking at me the way every woman should be gazed upon at least once in her life.
“Do we choose who we fall in love with, though?” I asked.
He smiled, and the world spun around me faster and faster as he responded with a question: “Does that mean you’re in love with me?” He was trying to be clever.
“All I know is I know nothing,” I replied.
“Are you quoting Socrates to me?” he asked.
“Would you prefer someone else?”
“How about instead of talking, you put those lips to better use?”
We looked at each other, and the world seemed to stop. It wasn’t a passionate kiss. It wasn’t showy. It began with a simple caress on the cheek before he wove his fingers into my hair, pulling me close and pressing his lips to mine.
For a moment, things felt strange, as if we’d been blind and could now see for the first time, or as if our hands had been covered by gloves that had just been removed, and we could finally feel each other’s skin without anything coming between us.
I felt guilty, because I knew those blinders and gloves were more than metaphorical. They had a single, very concrete name: Taylor.
He had kept us apart. Well, not him, but me, because I was the one responsible, I was the one who had liked him, sought him outand agreed to be in a relationship with him. But the whole time, just as in the legend, I had felt the pull of the red thread that tied me to my soulmate, tugging persistently.
“Come here,” he whispered, wrapping me in his huge arms and positioning me on top of him. There was hardly space, but that didn’t stop him, and soon he kicked the table back so he could kiss me the way he wanted.
His tongue in my mouth again after so long was a revelation. His scent filled the room, permeating everything. His massive hands moved up my back as I stroked his face. I couldn’t get enough of his stubbly skin, and I kept blinking to convince myself this was real.
We stopped kissing for a moment, but only to meet each other’s eyes, communicating things that were impossible to say with words—things we didn’t fully understand, and yet were so meaningful now, after all this time. Without a word, he picked me up and carried me to his bed. I let him. I knew he wanted me, and I wanted him.
We deserved that moment, just the two of us. We deserved that intimacy to step into a timeless space where no one and nothing could interrupt us.
Feeling his weight against me, the only thing I thought was,I’m home.
I belonged to that moment, to that place… To hell with the consequences, to hell with remorse, to hell with whatever I’d have to deal with later!
Something inside me needed to hold him tightly and never let him go, urging me to take advantage of every instant we could devote to our pleasure, letting our bodies speak to each other in ways that words failed to do.
He slipped his hand under my T-shirt, tracing intricate patterns on my skin, tickling me. “What are you doing?” I asked, giggling.
Thiago smiled, and I thought I would faint.
What was it about this boy that drove me so insane?
