Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
“I don’t do stuff like this.” Belmira didn’t look at me when she said it. Instead, she eyed the glass clutched in her grasp with a pensive focus, toying with the chips of ice at the bottom with her straw.
“Stuff like what?” I quizzed. Hijack every thought I had? Insert herself into all those empty spaces in my head where she seemed to fit ever so perfectly? Overwrite every previous belief I’d held? Have me planning out a whole life with her?
That kind of stuff?
“Hm.” She hummed, taking a small, regulating breath, accompanied by the careful pursing of her shapely lips—the very ones I’d done nothing but fantasize about for the last twenty-five agonizingly painful minutes; the walk hadn’t helped, by the way—tipping her head to the ceiling, searching for an explanation up there.
After I’d gotten her a second drink, we’d cut through the ballroom, avoiding people, exiting back into the lobby, which, compared to the din of the partying, was a hell of a lot quieter, even with the shrieks of high-pitched laughter from a group of playing kids. We’d taken refuge on an antique-style upholstered loveseat tucked a little further away. I’d held my breath when she’d sat down, hoping she wouldn’t claim sanctuary against the arm of the loveseat. My stomach flipped when she descended next to me, her hipbone registering against my waist. The black velvet hemline of her dress rucked upward, providing me with a greedy flash of smooth thighs I stared at two seconds longer than I should have because, hey, I hadn’t done myself a single favor all night. Why start now?
Every so often, Belmira’s attention floated toward the group of kids playing a loud game of tag in the lobby—Maria and Sean’s youngest sisters included—basking in their unadulterated joy, living vicariously through them.
“It’s nice,” she’d said when Katrina, the youngest of her uncle’s brood, came barreling past us, and the middle sister, Olivia, narrowly avoided a collision with the loveseat, descended upon her kid sister. “That they can just be kids.”
I mean, as opposed to…? Hadn’t she remembered playing in the lobby of this building, too? It was a rite of passage. The ballroom was always too busy, and parents got all prickly, concerned about their kid causing mischief. The lobby, with its varying nooks and crannies and sprawling open space, provided better clearance for them to play without the inhibition of adults impeding their path. Or supervising. Scolding. The periodic pinch under the arm when the scolding hadn’t registered. They hadn’t cared they’d been forced into their Sunday best. They were determined to make the most out of the stuffy clothes—floral print dresses edged with lace and stiff pressed pants be damned—their efforts highlighted by the small, haphazard pile of discarded shoes in a corner, while nylon, stockings, and sock-clad feet garnered better traction against the carpeted floor.
Katrina released a sharp peal of protest as a triumphant and flushed-face Olivia marked her as the next tagger. Belmira cupped her mouth, suppressing the giggle.
God, she really was genuinely enjoying this. Not Katrina’s distress, but… watching kids being kids.
Where most might have frowned, demanded they pipe down and reminded them they were indoors—hell, my dad woulda by now, too, and that man had the patience of a saint—she found a secondhand comfort in their enjoyment.
The unbidden memory took shape slowly in my mind, a present-day Belmira morphing into her younger self while I trained my gaze on her.
She was twelve to my fourteen.
A headband contained her brushed-out wavy hair, though it hadn’t helped the case for her bangs. The frizzing strands grew bigger by the minute, thanks to the humidity of her uncle and aunt’s basement in their new house that late August afternoon. While everyone else donned shorts and t-shirts to contend with the heat, she sported a dated, brown button-up corduroy dress with puff sleeves and a stand-up collar that kind of reminded me of something I’d seen on a Little House on the Prairie rerun Ma had been watching the night prior.
Stiffly glued to the couch, Belmira’s eyes were almost comically big behind the thick lenses of her crooked glasses, too large for her face, nose crinkling to keep them in place. She took stock of her environment with sweeping scrutiny, teeth worrying her bottom lip, fingers digging and straining against the arm of the couch.
Fraught and eager yet held back by an unknown force.
Every so often, she’d arch forward as though she were going to act on her urges, but the invisible threat always won.
A little like how she’d behaved while we were dancing tonight.
Back then, I’d always assumed she was just shy and a bit awkward. Ungainly with her thin limbs. Maybe a little stuck up because not even Maria could convince her—or more like nag her—to come and play, complete with her eye roll, defiant foot stomp, and an irritable, “Ugh! You’re so boring.”
Belmira stayed the course. “I’m having a lot of fun right here,” she maintained brightly, if not a little fake, her hands stacked neatly on her lap, little legs adorned by white, thick stockings, crossed at the ankle. “I’ll watch you instead.”
It was only when her dad, a man a little shorter than John, and evidently, a hell of a lot more passive, came down to check up on his daughter, and he found her exactly where he’d left her, on the couch—did he free her from the social purgatory of her post.
“ Vá brincar , Belmira .” Go play.
Relief and apprehension warred in her big brown eyes. “Mommy said ? —”
Duarte silenced her with his index finger pressed against his mouth, demanding her compliance. “ I’m telling you to go play. I’ll deal with your mother.” He dropped his hand and gestured in the direction of his niece with the jut of his head. “Go. Now.”
I hadn’t given much thought to their interactions or her behavior back then. Figured the goody-goody just erred on the side of prissy and actively avoided us because she didn’t want to risk tearing her stockings or getting caught busting open a bunch of the individual packs of creamer John took with his coffee thermos that we were lining up and drinking like shots. Yeah. My stupid idea.
It never occurred to me her mannerisms were a trained response. A result of conditioning. If I had, I would have recognized exactly what was holding her back. Or maybe not what, but who.
Belmira interrupted my rumination by smoothing a path with her thumb along the joints in my finger. One lean leg crossed over the other, the velvet climbing. She had pretty thighs. Everything about her was painfully pretty.
“Well,” I started, clearing the debris from my throat, echoing my earlier query, “stuff like what?”
Faltering, she recovered by lifting our joined hands tentatively, regarding me with wary eyes.
I grinned. “Hold hands?”
The reaction inspired color to span her cheeks again. “No.” She shifted in her seat, the motion bringing her thighs together, stealing my attention again. They’d look even better circled around me while I?—
Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.
Not going there.
A sharp, indignant scream pelted from the right of the room, jolting me back to my senses. Olivia was “it” again before she was ready.
“Put on a show for the scrutiny of Fall River’s Portuguese community,” Belmira announced.
“It’s only a show if they’re watching.” I shifted back in the loveseat, attempting to adjust my dick without handling myself, widening my seated stance.
“They’re watching,” she assured flatly, brows crawling to her hairline. “They’re always watching.”
I paused. Couldn’t argue with that. I lived the experience firsthand, too. But for the first time, I didn’t hate it. I wanted them to see me with her. For her to be seen with me. For them to acknowledge she was mine and I was proud and?—
Mine? The word ran rogue in my head. Where had that come from? But since we were discussing syntax now, how firm was she on the whole “not looking for anything serious” thing from a scale of “quit while you’re ahead, Felix” to “I do”?
I scraped a hand over my jaw. “Does that worry you?” She glanced my way. “Being seen with me?”
Her tongue tapped against the back of her teeth, pondering the question longer than I would have liked. “I’m private.” It sounded like a complete sentence, but then she added, “I’ve witnessed what happens when you’re not.”
I bristled. Was she inferring she’d heard something about me? No. She hadn’t remembered me, and I didn’t think she’d be caught dead anywhere near me if she had heard gossip. But for the first time, I started to worry about what she’d think when she inevitably did.
“So…?” I treaded carefully, almost afraid to out myself before I was ready. “Was that a yes or a no?”
Her shoulders rounded. “What are you asking?”
“Are you ashamed of me?” A sharp pain registered in my throat. God, it would kill me if she was.
She frowned. “I don’t know you.”
“Neither do any of the people you’re afraid of seeing us.”
Blanching, her expression closed on her, and I couldn’t gauge whether I’d offended her or confused her. “You’ve dated.”
Belmira shot me a “no-shit” stare, stabbing at the ice cube in her glass with the straw with more force than previously. “I’ve dated, yes. But people talk too much. They make up stories.” She paused. “Just like they did with Maria.”
Ah. That was what she’d been referring to. “Are they always stories?”
She searched my face, waiting for me to elaborate.
I took a breath, finding my nerve. There was no other way to ask this, so here went nothing. “Like the one where your asshole boyfriend punched you?”
She froze. Ordinarily, her lips couldn’t close entirely to accommodate her teeth, her pout naturally resting in a finger-width part, but this time, her jaw had unhinged, mouth rounding.
I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. It had come out so much harsher than I’d intended. Like I was judging, but I wasn’t. Or I wasn’t judging her. Him, on the other hand, I mean, the whole thing just pissed me off. Start to finish. No one deserved that shit, especially her, but fuck, he hadn’t deserved her at all.
“Is it true?” Not that I’d ever doubted Maria.
If it weren’t for the fact I couldn’t stop staring at her, I might have missed the weak, brief head nod. “It’s my fault,” she whispered. “Not that he”—she flinched, pained—“not that he hit me,” she clarified before I could charge in with an argument. “But that I?—”
The collision of my beer bottle on the end table seated next to the loveseat caught her attention, the words dying. No. Fuck that. I never wanted to hear the words “my fault” when it related to a guy coming out of her mouth. Hooking my pointer finger under her chin, I fit my thumb beneath her bottom lip, her hard, warm exhale breezing across my fingers.
“Don’t do that,” I urged, my voice growing taut and low.
Her tongue swiped across her lower lip. “Do what?”
Absorb blame for some prick who never deserved you.
Run from me.
Tell me I’m the only one feeling this.
It was hard to follow the ping-ponging of the competing narratives, unsure of which echo was the loudest and which path I should follow.
“Don’t take his shit on,” I settled on instead, because if I communicated anything else while she was this vulnerable, this exposed, I’d risk spooking her, and I couldn’t chance that yet. Not when I was this close to proving I wouldn’t be like every other person who came before me.
I’d take care of her. Protect her. Keep her heart safe. No matter how long it took. She could guarantee that.
“Not ever, okay?” The tension in her body melted. I had the sad sense no one had ever told her she didn’t have to take on responsibility for the world before. “Nothing you did or didn’t do would have made him…” I paused, adding, “or anyone else hurting you acceptable.”
And if I ever caught sight of that fucker, he was going to wish he’d never heard her name.
I glided my palm across her jaw, relishing the smooth feel of her skin, her calm vanishing while my heart rate skittered north as I journeyed, fingers spanning over the long, smooth arc of her jawline, sliding to the full oval of her cheek. Unspoken worry crested her features, but she never freed the protest.
I didn’t think either of us wanted this quiet exploration to stop. I could stare at her for hours and touch her for days. Weeks. Months. Physical contact, even as chaste as this, wasn’t helping my plight, but I’d sooner sit through the worst case of blue balls of my life than stop touching her.
The fanning of her long lashes against her cheeks as her eyes lidded signaled the dwindling fight had fled her body, and she slanted into me, urging me to continue.
“People either give me that ‘poor thing’ look,” she started, offering me a glimpse into her world, “or wonder what I did to make him so mad.” Tightness registered in my rib cage, the nape of my neck growing hot. Belmira leaned in closer, seeking more of my touch. “It feels like when life goes awry, it’s always my fault somehow.” Her eyes opened, finding mine. “Have you ever felt like that?” She tilted her cheek completely into my palm. “Like nothing you do is enough?”
Sure. But it was self-inflicted and not because of someone else’s doing.
Visibly embarrassed, she wrenched her head away. “Jeez, listen to me. I’m so sorry.” She released a nervous laugh, scraping her hair behind her ears and smoothing the locks at the ends. “You don’t want to hear any of that. I’m talking too much and asking you stupid questions, and I?—”
“I want you to keep doing it.” She stilled. The hand that had cradled her cheek inched closer again, nervous. Slow relief flanked me when she didn’t withdraw as I curved the back of her neck. “I want to hear everything.”
“Why?” she whispered.
“I want to know where it hurts.”
“That’s a long list.”
“I’ve got nothing but time.” A haunted look flashed across her face, and I braced for the impact of her reminder about our time limit, but it never arrived. My fingers sank deeper into her hair, her neck bending back, exposing the defined chords in the column of her long neck.
While I’d never made a habit of reading into things with anyone else before, her response, or lack of, felt significant. “You’re safe.”
I’d make it so. I didn’t care what it took.
All the fight in her body rushed out of her in an audible whoosh.
Belmira wasn’t a little girl anymore, but some part of her was still stuck on that couch in the basement, wanting more, yet consumed by the gnawing worry of what the consequences were if she yielded to her own desires. The problem was when you lived your life afraid of the what-ifs, you stopped living altogether.
“Everyone else can go fuck themselves,” I announced.
The smile she unleashed was better than anything I’d seen tonight. It felt good to be the cause.
“Go on,” I suggested, nudging my knee against hers. “Say it.”
Her eyes wrinkled at the corners, a secondary laugh escaping her. “I’m not going to say that,” she protested with a shake of her head. “It’s… it’s mean.”
“So are half the people in your life,” I reminded pointedly. “Say it. It’ll make you feel better.”
I didn’t know if she believed me, but I knew in that moment I wanted to spend the rest of my life proving to her that people’s mistreatment of her had never been her fault.
“Everyone else can go fuck themselves,” she echoed, dazed.
“Good girl.” It came out huskier than I’d intended. Or that was the Bel Effect. The way she smelled. How she held herself. The rasp of her breathy voice. How even though she tried to play it cool, her sweaty palm had given her away the second it clasped with mine.
Belmira’s smile faded under the praise, her gaze exploring my face. Praise… I imagined she hadn’t gotten a lot of that in life, but the way she fucking lit up under two words sent heat spiraling down my spine, straight to my cock.
If this was lust, then consider me infatuated, because I’d upend my life for her in an instant. If she gave me an inch, if she felt a sliver of this energy circulating between us the same way I did…
I thought my parents were a byproduct of a different era and sheer dumb luck, but if this was even an iota of what they’d experienced, I understood the gamble they’d taken by getting married after knowing each other for a paltry two weeks.
I was almost stupid enough to proposition her with the same thing. I didn’t care how hard it would be ’cause we’d do it together.
I hadn’t even kissed her yet, but I’d built a whole life with Belmira in two hours, and she didn’t even know it.
She affected me in a way no one had before—not the ex-girlfriends or the steady rotation of girls I hung out with. The world shrunk around me when she was nearby, and everything felt possible where it concerned her. She was the brightest light in a room, and if I was in over my head, irrational, and on the cusp of embarrassing the hell out of myself, I didn’t care.
Belmira Tavares was the first person I’d ever felt sure about.
The only one I wanted to commit myself to.
I wanted her. Not just under me or on top of me, but all of her. Her desires, her fears, her hurts, and I’d build myself around that. If she dreamed of a big house, I’d erect the structure myself, layer each brick, and install every single window. I’d sell a kidney on the Black Market if she fantasized about driving away from all her problems in a flashy Porsche, but I knew better.
Belmira didn’t value those things.
What she wanted, money couldn’t buy, but I could readily give it to her.
I focused on her lips while she absently caressed the top and bottom together. The loveseat cushion shifted as I inclined myself her way, my thigh pushing against hers, a current shooting up my spine. My heated stare roved over her face, seeking permission to bridge the gap between us. At this rate, I didn’t even care if she met me halfway. I’d close the distance. Her gaze landed on my mouth, and I swore those fleeting stretches of seconds felt like an eternity. Shiny, inky hair slipped over her shoulders when she tipped her head forward with an invitation, not a trace of fear to be found.
I framed her face with both hands, searching her eyes—were we doing this? Every muscle in my body grew taut and heavy, a single-minded awareness encircling me.
I was so fucked. So impossibly fucked.
My knee pressed into her thigh, earning the sharp hitch of her chest, and I crooked my head closer to hers, tracking the sweep of her tongue along the seam of her bottom lip.
“I think you’re trying to torture me,” I observed in a low husk, the sweetness from the orange juice hitting my nose. We were practically chest to chest, her hand with her drink in it held out to the side.
“Torture you?” The genuine innocence of those words whisked across my mouth.
“You and that tongue thing.”
I let go of her face long enough to take the glass from her hands, depositing it on the end table next to my beer bottle. I wanted nothing between us. No interferences. She shored up closer, observing me under the strands of her bangs. “Tongue thing?” she inquired, long, sooty lashes sweeping with each lust-induced blink.
“Mm-hm,” I hummed, the sound guttural.
Her instincts surfaced. Belmira anchored one small hand on my knee, her tight grip flexing, enticing a bubbling groan from the back of my throat. I couldn’t recall a single moment in history where a woman’s hand on my knee inspired the same reaction as a hand rubbing my dick, that was for sure. My blood stirred, and I tried to stave the image of ten digits choking around my girth and palms stroking feverishly while I ate up her lips.
“What tongue thing?” she asked.
The tip of my nose brushed hers, and just as I moved to answer her question by sealing our fate and caressing that muscle in her mouth with mine, Olivia’s ear-piercing screech ejected me back to reality like an icy glass of water.
“Katrina, that’s not fair!”
Horrified, I wrenched back—what the hell was I doing?
Hurt flickered in Belmira’s eyes.
Fuck. I knew what she assumed, and my reaction hadn’t helped.
“Bel—”
“It’s fine,” she rushed out, waving me off. The weak smile fought for dominance with the tremor in her jaw. “Really. It’s-it’s fine.”
Yeah, so fine, she wouldn’t even look at me.
I swept an open palm over my face, rubbing my lidded eyes. I was doing a bang-up job screwing this up. “Hey,” I summoned, dropping my hand.
Her acknowledgment came in the form of an exhaled shaky breath. With slow control, she severed the last link between us, extracting her hand from mine. She shuffled to the arm of the loveseat, settling her laced fingers in her lap, fixing her stare on a stain on the carpet with pinched concentration.
“Belmira.” I’d pulled back for her, not me, because she was right. If someone saw, I’d get a pass because that’s what people expected of me, of all guys. But her? They’d call her easy over a kiss. I hated it.
I bowed the back of my head against the loveseat, my frustration spanning as I reconciled that the wrong head was still attempting to lead this conversation— that’s nice and all, but now she thinks you don’t want her, asshole. Good going —while simultaneously drowning out my rationale’s argument— I did the right thing by stopping, because I’d almost put her in a bad position. I wouldn’t have been able to keep it to a chaste kiss.
It would have been a desperate clash of teeth and tongues thrashing, my hands skimming her sides, pulling her into my lap, the rise of velvet and the wild desire to enjoy her weight sinking against me so I could recall the feel of her body on me later when I finally addressed the throbbing erection I was going to be left with.
But I hated the scarcely concealed crushed look on her face. “Bel.”
“You don’t have to explain,” she insisted, offering me an out.
“I want to.”
Unsettled, she unclasped her frantic hands, running them over the velvet of her dress, and I tracked the frenzied movement of her stare, looking anywhere but at me.
“I should probably get back in there,” she said, tone dripping with artificial sweetness. “It was nice talking to you.” Her brittle, awkward laugh branded itself to my memory. I never wanted to hear that sound again. “Sorry about all this.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure what I was thinking.” Her hand drifted to her temple. “I got carried away, and I?—”
“Sweetheart.” That did it. Her stunned gaze floated my way. “Look…” How did I word this without upsetting her further?
“I understand,” she assured. I frowned. She understood what? “I get it.” Well then, maybe she could fill me in. I waited expectantly, and she leveled me with another compassionate weave of her head. “You’re going to make me say it?”
My brow carted north.
“Fine,” she said, cueing another dry huff disguised as a laugh. “I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
What the fuck? That hadn’t been where I was going. She was so off the mark, she was practically in California.
“You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
Oh, look. Another thing she was wrong about.
“Do I get to tell you what I’m thinking, or are you going to do all of it for me?” I asked, canting my head. “’Cause while life would be more interesting if you did”—I scowled—“I really don’t trust the way you view yourself.”
She raised a hand to knead her chest, remaining quiet.
“I want to kiss you,” I stated emphatically, leaving no dispute on the ‘want’ part. “More than I’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone.” Her suspicion clashed with the lingering sting of her bruised ego, her mouth jerking into a strained line. “But I don’t want to do it out here.”
She uncrossed her legs. Where was she going now? Sliding forward on the loveseat, her hands curved around the cushion. “This was really nice but”—she blew air up into her bangs, complemented by a half-shrug—“it doesn’t go anywhere from here.”
Why? I protested inwardly. Why couldn’t it?
Belmira spotted the oversized clock on the wall. “It’s better we stop while we’re ahead.” My heart sank. There it was. The reminder. “I really should go. My ma is probably looking for me.”
Her ma was proving to be a massive thorn in my side. I launched to my feet the same time Belmira did, stepping into her space. “Don’t go.”
She swayed in her heels as though the proximity was messing with her equilibrium. Slender fingers stretched at her sides, her pointed chin tilting up, gaze riveting on mine.
Her waist was a beacon for my hands, and I acted on it like answering a siren’s call, the sparking nerves flaring with sensory overload as my fingers hugged the lean dip.
“Felix—”
“If you go back in there before I’ve kissed you, I’m never going to know for sure.”
Her resolve wavered, the weariness in her eyes melding with something else— desire . “Know what?”
“If the shit in my head makes any sense.” I freed one hip to brush my knuckles against hers, gratitude draping over me when she didn’t draw her hand back as I teased her fingers to relax, linking ours together the moment she did.
“What shit in your head?” she whispered.
My confidence waned—this could backfire—then she’d have a justified reason to blow me off, and yet… “The shit in my head that tells me this isn’t a one-night thing,” I confessed. She dampened her lips again, and I mirrored the act. “You said you don’t want serious, that you don’t want a boyfriend.” My muscles coiled, and I set the words free before I could change my mind. “But what about a husband?”
Belmira took a small step back, but I caught her by the hip again, wheeling her gently into me, banding one arm around her waist, the other catching her hand in mine. “Quit running.”
A string of indecipherable sounds and half-formed sentences died, failing to clear her mouth. Finally, she declared in a quavering warble, “You’re out of your mind.”
Her stare skirted from my neck to my mouth, her teeth trapping her lower lip. I loved it. How she couldn’t disguise I affected her, even if it scared her.
“I don’t think I am,” I murmured. I’d never felt more certain about anything in my life. “So, humor me for a second.” I shifted her clutched hand to my bicep, the muscle jumping under her touch. “And let me just…” My words lost momentum, my stare bouncing over her face. “Test a theory.”
Belmira was quiet for a beat, the cogs of her mind working to run through her options. Run scared and retreat to her table. Or lean into the unknown with me so we could put a name to whatever was happening between us.
We’d figure out the rest later, and maybe that wasn’t the insurance policy I wanted it to be, but it had to count for something, didn’t it?
“You’re right,” she said after some time, pressing her opposite hand firmly against my chest. “Not here.” Belmira searched the small stretch of the lobby from over her shoulder, an idea sprouting.
Twining her fingers with mine, she tossed a cursory glance behind us, beckoning me to follow. Her heels worked quickly against the carpet as she led me away from the raucous laughter of the kids, ushering us down to the end of the lobby, the sconces with the soft lightbulbs and the red glow of the emergency exit sides illuminating our path.
We turned left down a short corridor—I’d never gone down this deep into the building’s abyss before—the dimmed light reflected against frosted nameplates on doors as we passed. With quick haste, Belmira tested each handle until one gave, triumph hitting her eyes.
Who was the poor sucker?
Jerry Carvalho – Marketing Manager .
Mentally, I offered him a two-finger salute. Thanks, Jer.
On quiet hinges, the door swung open, revealing an organized room with a crowded footprint, filled with furniture too big for the space. Soft lighting from the craned desk lamp compensated for the lack of windows, sparing us from turning on the overhead fixture. Light bounced off the glass of framed motivational posters highlighting ‘risk’ above a club chair opposite of another endorsing ‘commitment’. A lush green vine of a potted pothos weaved between family pictures in dark frames adorning the top of a wraparound sterile-gray desk. Our reflection caught on the bulky CRT monitor as she stepped inside, and I followed her, taking the space in.
Jerry’s office wasn’t our first choice, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
With her palm, Belmira caught the door as I began to shut it, stopping me and mumbling out, “Hang on.”
Clearing her path, she hugged the doorframe and peered out into the hall, surveying both ways.
“What are you looking for?” I had a hunch.
Belmira closed the door, leaning her weight against it. “My ma.”
Sagging with unspoken relief, she stacked her hands at the base of her spine, head falling back against the wood with a muted ‘thump’ at my approach. One of my hands fixed beside her head, the other gravitated to its rightful place at the slight of her waist, enticing her shudder.
Her hair slipped over her shoulder, her lids growing heavy and hooded. Breathtaking. “Are you scared of getting caught in here with me?” I asked, my lungs shrinking.
“Terrified,” she admitted in a whisper. “But even though I know I shouldn’t be here, that I have so much to lose if I stay…” Her stare floated up to meet mine. “I’ll regret it more if I leave.”
I tapped the inside of her right foot, commanding her to make space for me. Her feet parted willingly, accepting my body as I leaned into her. The groan bubbled in the back of my throat as slender, feminine curves aligned with the hard ridges of mine.
It wasn’t close enough.
“I’m going to win her over,” I assured. Then, none of this would matter. The risk would be worth it because the bid on her daughter’s heart was quickly becoming my obsession.
Belmira’s sad smile docked. “ If you meet her.”
Her guard was back up. She didn’t believe me, but at least she wasn’t cautioning a time limit again. Progress.
“ When I meet her,” I corrected, searching her face. Edging closer, the gesture forced her posture to straighten, her tiny tits pressing against the wall of my chest, neck curving back in quiet wait, assessing my next move. “I am going to meet her.” She released a noncommittal sound, but I wasn’t letting this go. “She’s going to love me.”
“Doubtful,” Belmira murmured as I dipped my head her way. “My ma doesn’t love anyone.” She paused, eyes growing a little vacant. “Me included.”
“Now that I doubt.”
“Can I ask you something?” She took in a stiff breath, uneasy. “Unrelated to my ma?”
“Anything.”
My hand compressed against her waist, and she made a soft whimper. I’d been aiming to comfort her with the gesture, but goddamn, that sweet, melodic sound pushed a fresh flood of blood south.
Planting my forehead against hers, my vision blurred a little at the proximity. “Bel?”
The full silence stretched. She nibbled her bottom lip. “You never…” she started, unsure of herself.
I peeled my head back, appraising her. “I never, what?”
“This is kind of embarrassing,” she said to my throat. Belmira steadied herself by finding purchase against my chest with both hands, my heart charging under her roving palms as they slid downward, brushing along the buttons on my shirt.
She was buying herself time or wrestling the question in her head, trying to frame it just right. “You don’t have to run yourself through a filter.”
Evaluating the feedback with quiet contemplation, her explorative right hand slid upward, curving around the corded column of my neck, while the left remained on my top button, circling round and round to calm herself.
It had the opposite effect on me. I was finding it more challenging to concentrate between the pulse in her palm and the teasing of her fingers. My cock jumped every time her digits slipped, grazing the spaces between the buttons, touching skin.
I hadn’t even kissed her yet, and precum had already gathered against my boxer briefs.
“You never slept with Maria, right?”