Chapter 4 Naomi
The voice reaches me from afar. I’m in a haze that’s making everything sound distant and out of reach, and instead of cottony and cozy, I feel like I am caught in the middle of a roiling thunderstorm and about to be a target for a lightning strike. Where and when the bolts will strike is anyone’s guess, so this has you more on edge, if that’s even possible.
It’s been a long time since anxiety got this debilitating for me. I usually had my Xanax which would knock me out for a couple hours—I should’ve taken two today. When I made this trip to Salt Lake four months ago, two pills made the trip a blissful nothingness. I awoke to a strong hand shaking me and the reek of ammonia in my nostrils. The stewardess used smelling salts to get me to wake up.
Humiliating, I know. But it got the job done.
How did I misplace my toiletries pouch with the pill bottle into my suitcase rather than my carry-on? Idiot me has no clue. You’d think I’d be on this, but no. And now, here I am paying the price.
My hands clench. But instead of wrapping around something cold and hard, my fingers tighten around something hard but warm, somewhat pliable, too.
I frown.
Someone is holding my hand? I always zone out when panic grabs me, the world around me fading away into a void waiting to engulf me whole.
Curiosity has always been one of my flaws, and I can’t resist. I squint my left eye open to catch a peep.
A blurry figure, like the silhouette of a bust. A man with dark, tousled hair. He looks familiar.
Where did I just see him?
With a jolt, it hits. Valentino. And inside my cocoon, a lightning bolt hits me as I lose my bearings in these treacherous interior surroundings. Why did I look?
Because it’s Valentino Andretti, and there’s never a situation when I will not look at him if I can.
“That’s it. Eyes on me, Naomi.”
Slowly, I bring my attention back to where I am. My sight adjusts as I relax my eyes, bringing his features into sharper focus with every second that passes.
Those blue eyes throw a sucker punch my way, and oof! I could drown in them.
Actually, yes—maybe it’s a good idea to look into his eyes, to lose myself there. Then I won’t remember I’m in a plane, thousands of feet in the air, suspended in a metal tube hurtling at great speed in the nothingness of the sky.
Nausea bubbles up my throat, and I swallow the excess saliva welling up.
“Come on, stay with me.”
The warmth on my left-hand disappears as he removes his large warm palm from on top to settle it firmly on my right shoulder. I can feel the solid press there, the certainty he is trying to infuse in me.
I blink and try to focus on his beautiful blue eyes.
“That’s it. I’m here.”
And what the hell is that supposed to mean? If there’s one person who has never been there for me, it’s him. He trampled over my heart and then threw it away with his callous words.
The memory makes me flinch. I try to pull my hand back, but he won’t let me, his grip too strong.
“Trust me,” he adds.
Pain slashes through my chest. Oh, how I wish I could believe him. But you killed my heart, Valentino.
Val…
That’s what I called him that night. It’s what people close to him use to address him.
How I’d wanted for us to be close.
That first summer when he moved back home next door to me, he caught me by glorious surprise. I was fifteen at the time. All my friends could talk of nothing else but boys and having sex.
I didn’t get it. Sex seemed messy and slobbery, not at all a badge of honor in my book. It was a guy sticking his penis into a girl’s mouth, vagina, or ass. Crass and demeaning, mechanical. But there’s a difference between looking at porn and seeing sex happening for real, though. Like what I saw when Valentino Andretti brought a girl home after coming back to live in his family’s house.
That first night, I heard giggles, which made me creep up to my bedroom window. There, two people rushing up the newly added stairs leading to his bedroom from the side of the yard. A thump against the door—had one of them gotten hurt?
Then the lights came on in his room, and a couple was tumbling in, wrapped in an embrace.
She was tall, thin, and dressed in a skintight dress. She tipped her head and kissed him. And man, were they kissing. Open-mouthed, like they were devouring each other, his lips slanted over hers as he drank from her mouth.
She pushed him away—was she insane? No, it was so she could rip his shirt open and tug it off him. How right she was. I could only see his broad back, but even that looked like a work of art, the strong muscles rippling with multiple tattoos highlighting each move.
In turn, he made quick work of her top as he dove in for another kiss. What she did next startled me. She grabbed a fistful of his glorious dark hair and tugged his head away from her. Craning her neck, she redirected his mouth onto the column of her throat. He didn’t seem to mind, instead taking her cue and delving in, his lips hot on her skin, his tongue running the length of her neck.
This was real sex and not just porn, nothing simulated or fake. He opened my eyes in that moment. And when he trailed his tongue lower, his hands coming up to push her breasts together, his thumb pulling back a lacy bra cup before his mouth closed on the exposed nipple, I cried out with my first orgasm.
At the time, I didn’t know what had happened to me.
Then Valentino stilled, turned around, and came to the window. I was mortified to think he might have heard me even though that seemed unlikely since his window was closed. Our eyes met. I was still stunned by the eruption that had taken over my lower region, my panties soaking with my juices. My lower belly was still contracting.
I swear he smiled in satisfaction before closing the curtains. Did he know what happened to me? The lights went off a second later.
Did that woman call him Val when she came? I know she must’ve come. Multiple times. I came just by watching him. She was having him doing delectable and forbidden things to her.
I wanted to rip her hair out.
Every time he kept this little play up, I knew it was a wink to me. When he started closing the curtains completely, it dawned. This was no longer a game. He wasn’t playing anymore.
All I ever wanted was the right to call him Val, to be close to him. To belong to him. So, I waited patiently until I next saw him. Cue the night of the Christmas party, when the stars aligned for me. Watching him go around the room was the highlight of my night as I nursed a glass of spiked punch.
Then there he was under the mistletoe. I took it as a sign that this was my chance. He accepted a kiss from the big boss herself—it must mean he was open to kissing as he still stood under the mistletoe. From I don’t know where at the time, courage liquefied in my veins and lit up a fire in me.
I would kiss Valentino Andretti and tell him I love him. Of course, we wouldn’t get married right away and live happily ever after, but it would be a start. He would know how I feel about him.
Except…it didn’t turn out like a Taylor Swift music video. Valentino turned on me that day. Telling me I was playing with fire—I could show him I wasn’t afraid to get burned.
But calling me ‘ Little Naomi Smith ’ like I was still a child… It broke me. He would never see me as a woman, so why bother? And instead of that question being answered with a dump load of the blues and depression, I turned it into the drive to get me where I am today, gravitating the steps of the policy-making world and trying to make a name for myself.
In hindsight, I can see I had a huge crush on him that was entirely one-sided. I acted like a silly little girl. At the time, I was a silly little girl who didn’t know how to handle her grown- up feelings. He was a mature man and I didn’t blame him for turning down the advances of my teenage self. But did he have to be so rude to me, so callous?
And now, how dare he insinuate I am nothing but a puppet for my father? Who does he think he—
The plane jolts, and I stiffen in fear. The cocoon turns to swirling grey clouds that close around me, threatening to choke me. We’re going to die. We’re going to die.
I sputter and start coughing.
“Keep your eyes on me, Naomi. Come on, gattina. You can do it.” He runs his hand down my arm to once again cradle my hand in his.
His voice has grown stronger, sterner, and it brooked no argument. I have no idea how a part of me that hasn’t shut down answers his call and I find myself looking at his gorgeous face while I’m hyperventilating.
“That’s it. Focus.”
Another jolt shakes the plane. A whimper escapes my lips.
“Focus. Slow down your breathing,” he commands gently.
I follow his instruction like someone who is being rescued from an endless labyrinth. He will lead me out of this tortuous prison. With everything in my being, I close my eyes and slow down the rate of my breaths and try to deepen my inhale and draw out my exhale.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
I don’t know how long this goes on but I can feel the anxious poison leaving my body one breath at a time.
As I start to reach a state of being where only my breaths exist, I start to notice something else in the periphery of my senses.
It slowly dawns on me what is happening.
A soft yet insistent circular pressure on the palm of my hand. Languorous, lazy, like it’s got all the time in the world.
I drag my eyelids halfway open and look down to see evidence of what is going on.
My left hand is in both of Valentino’s hands, and he has one thumb running concentric circles on my palm.
I can’t stop looking at his long, tanned, muscled thumb with its neatly trimmed nail massaging a steady sweeping downbeat onto my smaller pale palm.
My throat instantly goes dry at the visual.
Any attempt at gathering my thoughts is futile. All I can do is feel the slightly calloused, rough tip of his thumb rubbing in a rhythmic pulsing tempo on my skin.
It’s hypnotic, lulling. I don’t know for how long I stay lost in this rhythm…until other images take over, and a part of me knows his beautiful thumb (can thumbs be beautiful?) can play this game in other places. For example, around my navel. On the sensitive underside of my breasts. Circling a nipple. Stroking my mound. Toying with my clit.
A soft panting breath escapes my lips as my chest grows heavy, the flesh of my breasts aching and tender, peaked nipples brushing against the soft lace of my bra cup, those nipples anything but soft at this moment.
I can feel my face and neck starting to get warm and flushed.
It also takes all of me not to clench my thighs as a pulsing need starts to form in my softening core.
Does he know what he is doing to me?
Can he sense what’s happening to my body?
I risk a peek from the corner of my eyes. He’s staring down at my palm. But he must feel me looking, because he glances up and our eyes lock. A slow knowing smile touches his lips. Damn, I must totally look like I’m in the throes of lust.
Better lust than anxiety , a little voice states in my head.
And I’ll take that.
Valentino knows what’s going on inside me. He’s an asshole but he isn’t clueless. His thumb picks up the rhythm, increasing the tempo, running his calloused fingertip all the way to my wrist, then halfway up along my fingers.
In all this time, he watches me. His blue eyes intense, focused, laser sharp. Promising me something that will take me to a better place. My mind starts drifting. My eyes grow heavy as I succumb to a haze of pleasure. All I imagined him doing to that woman in his bedroom all those years ago, I imagine him doing to me.
Caressing me.
Kissing me.
Grabbing me.
Licking me.
Fucking me.
Pleasure is soaking through me, literally and figuratively.
I’m panting uncontrollably now.
My panties are drenched and are already sticking into my folds. I close my eyes when it gets too intense, but then I remember his admonition.
Eyes on me.
So I force my eyes open and I keep on looking at him, trying hard not to give away that I’m having a fucking orgasm just imagining him doing wicked things to me.
I tremble and clench the muscles between my legs as a wave of pleasure overtakes me.
Please don’t let me cry out. Please don’t let me cry out.
I bite my lip to keep myself from moaning out loud. I’m panting from the ecstasy that overtakes my body and the muscles of my pelvis continue to shudder in lesser echoes as I ride out the orgasm that grips my core. Slowly, my breathing eases as I float down from this glorious high. My back relaxes, my breathing slows, and I let myself melt into the seat.
It feels like a loss when Valentino releases my hand and eases back into his seat. He winces as he turns away from me. Goodness, how long did he stay in this twisted up position, all to help me? He didn’t have to, but he did.
I should say thank you. But how do you say thank you to someone that just simulated the hottest version of sex on your palm and made you—
“I bet you’re a Wickham girl,” he muses.