Chapter 3 Valentino
It’s torture to sit here beside her and have to stay focused on the seat in front of me. My hand can’t even relax onto the armrest, because she’s clenching it, and with just a graze, I’ll be undone.
Because to touch Naomi Smith will mean to cross a line that will put me firmly in a no-man’s land from which I won’t be able to come back. Touching Naomi Smith will ignite the embers of a passion and fire that burns for her and that I haven’t been able to douse no matter how hard I have tried.
Nothing happened between us. At least, nothing happened from my end. The summer she was seventeen, I kept the curtains closed in my bedroom all the time to not give her a show and much less to witness her prancing in her teeny excuses for clothes. The girl was trying to catch my attention, and I didn’t give her an in.
The summer of the year she turned eighteen, however, we found ourselves in the same office—she as an intern, me as a consultant trying to redress the organization from the inside. I’d actually gone in to subtly work the organigram so my family could take over the company.
Nothing happened again. I’m not a sick fuck into underage girls.
Then came the night of our office Christmas party. Naomi was double-celebrating—she turned eighteen a few weeks earlier and she got a double-down from the staff that evening.
I didn’t know at the time whose brilliant idea it was to give a drink to the birthday girl since she wasn’t even twenty-one yet. There I was in a corner, standing under the mistletoe. My boss, a very married woman, barreled into me with a giggle and planted a solid one on my lips. Before I could push her away, it was over, and she was laughing and pulling her husband to her. “Look what I have to put up with,” he said with a chuckle, and I knew it was all in good spirit.
Yet, still reeling from this unexpected turn of events, I lost my composure, and more importantly, I forgot to move away from the mistletoe.
Which turned into my downfall.
I was still a target, and who other than Naomi Smith decided to take her shot?
In less than two minutes, two women had fallen onto me to claim a kiss.
Naomi all but tumbled into me as she leaned in and pressed her puckered lips to mine.
More than the contact, I could smell the alcohol on her. Some cheap gin that reeked.
She opened her mouth then, touched the tip of her tongue to the closed seam of my lips.
Her body leaned onto mine, and some instinct—call it preservation—kept my arms limp at my sides. With a thrust of my chest, I gently pushed her off me.
“Val,” she moaned.
The sound lodged itself in my head, the yearning and sexual hunger in there doing a quick circuit from my brain to my dick. I didn’t grow hard, though. Eighteen she may be, no longer underage, but it hadn’t been a month at most since her birthday. A month does not make a girl into a woman. She was still in high school, for fuck’s sake.
I did women, not girls.
Her hand came up. I knew it would land on my cheek as she was angling in for another lip press—we won’t even deign call that a kiss. How did she even have the leverage? Heels, of course. A miracle she hadn’t tripped yet in those platform monstrosities; I’d always seen her in sneakers and delicate ballet flats.
“Val, I love you.”
Everything in me froze, except for my left arm which knew it had to come up to stop her from cradling my cheek.
My hand curled around her wrist. Her tiny, fragile wrist. I would never hurt her, but when she lunged in for another kiss, I tightened my grip around her delicate bones and smooth skin.
Naomi blinked then, staring up at me in confusion.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she added with a pout.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s women—or men, or anyone, really—pouting. How childish and immature.
“You don’t,” I said softly. “That’s the alcohol in you talking.”
She blinked again. “No. I do—”
The hint of whining did it for me. I cut in. “Stop playing with fire, little Naomi Smith.”
I don’t know which words killed her Dutch courage, but to her credit, she merely huffed and turned away, didn’t cry or attempt to weaponize her tears.
That’s the last time I saw her. My father sent me to Turin shortly after—where I have been for most of the past few years until his untimely demise forced me back permanently—and I was only briefly at home during the summers and for Christmas. Our paths didn’t cross again.
Until today. Little Naomi Smith . The words slipped off my tongue before I could process them. In my mind, they rang with genuine good cheer today, as opposed to the cold disdain from five years ago.
Guess she didn’t hear that, because she went out of her way, it seems, to throw frost and vitriol at me.
Naomi Smith still likes to play with fire.
And as a grown woman now, she is fair game.
I still remember the feel of her wrist in my fist. Fragile, as if a sharp tug could snap the bone. She was eighteen, and I’m not a pervert—I didn’t think of her that way. Not back then. Thinking of that encounter, it always made me wonder what it would be like to have a soft and delicate body like hers to protect, to cherish.
It never occurred to me to think of pleasure and lust and raging orgasms in the same burst.
But recalling the feel of her today, seeing her all grown up and mature, and dare I say it, ripe for plucking, it hurtles into me like a freight train at full speed.
What will her soft skin feel like under my fingertips as I explore her body? Under my lips as I kiss her all over? Under my tongue as I lave at her nipples and the heart of her pussy? That narrow waist—will my hands be able to close around it? Those thighs encased in her skinny jeans—how tightly will they wrap around my hips as I plunge my cock into her, as I claim her for my own?
What will her spent body feel like in my arms after we have both orgasmed?
The scent of her… Will it carry the aroma of sex and pleasure in the sweat we’ll work up together?
I suddenly have to shift in my seat, my trousers too tight as my cock starts pulsating with a raging hard-on trying to tear through the zipper to heat-seek her core.
I always knew it—Naomi Smith will be the death of me.
Before now, I never let the notion of having her hone in and take hold. She was always off limits, jailbait for a man eleven years her senior, before she left for college. And besides, our families despised each other, to an extent that even Naomi didn’t realize.
I can’t be near her, much less touch her, if I want to keep my sanity intact. I’m not going home for a break this time. I’m heading over to pick up the reins of the organization my father has left to me when he died.
Or rather, when he was killed… But I’m not going to think of that right now. Not with her sitting right next to me.
The plane levels as we clear takeoff. The worst should be over for Naomi.
A quick glance shows she’s still clenching the armrests in a death grip. Her face is frozen with trepidation.
“Naomi,” I prod.
“Hmm?” She whimpers.
Damn it. I have to stop thinking about how this small sound might raise the heat in the privacy of my bedroom.
“We’re in the air now.”
She gasps. That doesn’t sound relieved, or even good. And is that sweat pearling even more on her forehead?
“Naomi?” I ask with more concern this time, even turning around a bit to face her more. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong?”
“In. The. Air.”
The ventriloquist is back. Fuck.
“Naomi? Look at me.”
She shakes her head. “Can’t,” she mumbles.
This was worse than I imagined. I thought she would just be terrified while the plane was taking off. Clearly, she had a debilitating fear of flying from takeoff to landing and everything in between.
“Do you need something? Do you have something you can take?”
Her throat ripples as she swallows. “Yes.”
Okay, so there is a way to make her come down from the ledge on which she’s climbed.
“Where are they?”
“Suitcase.” Her lips press together even tighter.
“In the overhead compartment? Let me get it for you.”
I undo my seat belt as she shakes her head.
“It…went…down. Not up.”
I frown; she isn’t making much sense.
The plane jolts as we hit some turbulence. Naomi goes even paler, if that’s possible. I’m sure a corpse has more color than her.
I try to parse through her words. Not up—so not overhead. Down means— “It’s in the cargo hold?”
She nods, barely, but I see it.
We just cleared takeoff; there’s at least another four hours ahead of us on this trip.
Naomi won’t hold it for that long. No one with such debilitating anxiety in flight will, for that matter.
I have to do something…
I know if I touch her, I won’t be able to stave off my hunger for her. The incident at Christmas, I managed to rationalize it. She was eighteen, and I was a grown man. No man in his right mind would allow himself to touch an eighteen-year-old still in high school and kid himself he was doing something that isn’t dishonorable.
Naomi Smith isn’t eighteen anymore. She turned twenty-three a few weeks ago, in late November. Something can happen between us.
Touching her will mean the death of me…yet what choice do I have? She’s deep in the throes of an anxiety attack. I cannot stand by and let her continue to suffer. As much as I enjoy riling her, I’m not a monster who’ll let her remain petrified like this for four hours.
The thought is a non-starter, even. I reach out and peel her hand from the armrest before wrapping her cold, tense fingers between both my palms.
“Eyes on me, Naomi.”