Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
JC
Gia wanders down from the second floor of our suite with careful steps on the polished travertine stairs. The shock on her face hasn’t worn off.
“The closet up there is bigger than my parents' living room. How much did this place cost?”
I shrug and smile. “A mere pittance.”
“You’re such a liar. Look at this foyer!” She throws her arms out, gesturing at the vaulted ceiling where a crystal chandelier the size of a Honda Civic hangs. “And I peeked at the room service menu. Who pays a hundred francs for a sandwich?”
If Gia knew what I shelled out for this hotel, she’d spin us out of here and demand a refund from the front desk lady who was as gray and friendly as a photocopier.
“Do you like it?”
She makes a funny sound, spinning the thin silver band on her thumb repeatedly. “I’ve never been in a place this fancy.”
“It looks good on you. C’mere.” I open my arms and bundle her in a hug. A muffled “thank you” thrums against my chest, and when she lifts her head, I see the chaos engine that will drive us into the night and all its possibilities.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“Come here often?”
A laugh bubbles in my throat. “Only with you.”
Her palm slides under my shirt around my lower back, and when I run a slow hand up her rib cage under her top, she shivers. More nervous than me? Possibly.
“Is this okay?” I ask.
“Mmm, yeah. You smell good. And your eyes are crazy. I can never tell what color they are.”
“Pantone’s color of the year: Infatuated blue-gray.”
Her voice dips low and flirty. “I like the sound of that.”
She’s so warm, rubbing the whole front of her body against mine. My body feels electric. I can barely breathe.
I feather the next words. “I have a surprise for you.”
“You need to kiss me first,” she says, smiling and rolling her hips against me.
My grip tightens on her waist. Gia's kisses are like physical chemistry distilled to warm lips and reckless tongues. I want her like I crave minor key songs. How my entire body lights up with both is just fucking delicious.
I part her lips, and her tongue plunges against mine.
She feels so good, but good isn't the right word—it's too weak, too average. Her mouth on mine is a sweet, slow assault, and every single thing that mattered in my life slips away as our kiss deepens. We moan in unison and Gia trembles in my arms. It feels like I’m holding on to a shooting star desperate to blaze.
When we finally come up for air, she breathes, “Wow. You really know how to kiss.”
“Are we done?” I tease. “Time to watch TV?"
“The only thing you're watching tonight is me.”
She grins as her hand slips between us to stroke my erection. Every nerve in my body erupts in a cloud of flames. Through gritted teeth, I mutter, “Careful. And yes, to you being the main attraction. But first, surprise time.”
I tug Gia and her protest of No more surprises into the living room, spreading my arms ta-da style at a silver trolley delivered earlier. Stocked with enough highball glasses to last us a week, frosty cans of Coke, and enough rum to black out on.
“Wow. Spiced. Kraken. Good old Bacardi.” Gia’s finger drifts across the top of every bottle. “You’re spoiling me.”
“Actually, I’m just trying to get you drunk.”
Gia laughs, then cracks the Captain Morgan, swigging straight from the bottle before she offers it to me. I take a decent pull. It’s the good kind of burn.
“No need,” she says. “I’m guaranteed putting out.”
“Because of the hotel?”
She weaves her hands into my hair, pulling me closer. “Because of you.”
I set the rum down and melt into her kiss, our tongues slippery and rum-soaked, Gia demanding more, like she wants me to brand her where no one can see.
Crazy feelings flood my entire body.
The night started in a bit of a funk—Gia’s mood was pitch-black. Judging from how scarce Brady made himself pre-show, something went down.
But a ripper performance does wonders for morale.
Without Amber forcing me into the shadows, I played freely. Roused the crowd at the front of the stage, side by side with Gia, guitar behind my head, peeling off notes to match her iconic howl. We veered off the stage arm in arm, easing backstage on cloud nine.
I’d missed that sense of floating away from myself, everything so easy.
Never thought I’d experience it again.
I press Gia against the wall and kiss her deeply, palming her nipple at the same time, coaxing it into a tight bud with slow, devastating circles.
She grips my ass, and I can feel it bubbling to the surface, the need to shred her jeans, press her thighs wide, and lick and suck and torment her until the tang of her center on my lips is all I can taste.
Watch her thrash and cry out, experiencing it all: the seizing muscles and curled toes, the full body shudder.
“Gia,” I scratch out. “Put your arms around me.”
Her slender wrists circle my neck, and she’s practically weightless when I scoop her up. She burrows her head into my chest with a fluttery sigh.
“This is so romantic.”
Keeping track of all the things I want to do with her has been a highly unnecessary drain on my time and energy. Putting one foot in front of the other to climb the stairs is all I can focus on.
I feel her pulse in so many places.
In the bedroom, I lower Gia gently onto the sateen sheets, her dark halo of hair fanning across the pillow. Lace sheers suspended from a circular track on the ceiling whisper to me to ditch the velvet tiebacks and close us in.
Which I do.
When we’re cocooned, I kiss her softly. “I want you to remember this night forever.”
She blinks up at me. “I will.”
I trace a finger across the swell of her lips, down her throat to the V of her T-shirt.
A warmth spreads through my chest all the way to my toes.
I’m so ready for her, but I wish this bed had a built-in camera so I could snap a memento of her framed in the picture window.
The lights of Zurich glitter like fireflies across the still, calm darkness of the lake, and I’ve never seen anything more perfect.
“Can I undress you?”
She laughs into her palms, failing to hide the nervous grin spreading across her face. “Yes, please.”
Both hands work their way under her Joan Jett t-shirt, my fingertips splaying the width of her rib cage, taking the fabric up and peeling it over her hair. I fumble with the clasp of her bra, and the reveal of her breasts sends a tidal wave of sensation over me.
Gia is beautiful; I knew that from day one at The Troubadour. But to take in the specifics of her pink peaks and creamy skin surrounding them is to believe in a black kind of magic.
“That’s all you get,” she murmurs. “Sorry.”
I kiss the crown of her head with a sound of disagreement. “You’re all I need. And don’t apologize for being you.”
For a dreamy stretch of time, I love her breasts with my mouth. Suckle until she moans. I feel a different kind of hunger, a new kind of need. The idea of us, here and now, all the magic dust she’s sprinkled on me, and not the six million other guys who would take out my eyes for this chance.
In my peripheral vision, I see the red digital glow of an alarm clock.
So much time and hardly enough.
I press a gentle kiss on the rise of her stomach, and Gia rocks her hips higher with a deliciously dirty moan.
When I rest my palm against her low-slung jeans, there’s a microsecond of stillness—a last moment of looking at each other.
I’m trying not to let my face show what I feel, the enormity of it.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
“What does that mean?” Her question comes out a little rough around the edges.
“We go at your pace is what I mean.”
She nods, exhaling a long breath. “Just go slow, okay?”
I unbutton her jeans, tugging the zipper lower. She wriggles free of them with my help, and my mouth goes dry at the sight of her pale, slender body and scrap of scarlet thong. One final layer until she’s fully exposed.
“You need to take your clothes off.”
I laugh, the directive so genuine, so Gia. “I’m glad someone here is thinking straight.”
I peel off my t-shirt and chuck it across the room. Her eyes burn over my torso as they did in my studio.
“You have so many muscles,” she says, her voice throatier. “But not the big, stupid kind.”
“I have other, bigger stupid things if you’re interested.”
I wink, and she makes a strange, tight sound, like she wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t funny.
“Sure.”
I slide my finger past the satin fabric onto her warm, wet center. Gia shudders, and the air shifts, alive with something unexplainable. When I look at her, there’s tension in the corners of her mouth.
“Can I touch you there?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, tight and determined. “Just … keep going.”
I sit back, bearing my weight on both heels. Her breathing is shallow, tiny fists bunched in the duvet.
Bracing herself.
I’m trying to figure out what all this means, because it means something. All the dangerous things she did to my body the other night do not add up to this.
“We don’t have to do this tonight if it's too soon.”
“Of course we do,” she insists. “You spent all this money.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“It’s fine; I’m fine.” She tries to shake it off, but her voice is unsteady. It’s like someone telling you it's fine with a tear-streaked face.
A thought crashes in, piercing the dark corners of my mind, and I almost dismiss the impossibility of it.
Until I don’t.
“Jesus fuck, Gia.” My swallow snags in my throat. “Please tell me you’ve done this before.”
Her vulnerability becomes tangible, something I can feel in the space between us. I search her face, all the uncertainty on it. The longest five seconds of my life pass before she finally imperceptibly shakes her head.
My throat closes off, my chest tightening as I slowly twist myself to sit on the edge of the bed. A thousand different emotions crash through me. I push the heels of my hands into both eye sockets to center myself.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I choke out.
She scrambles up to sit beside me and peels my hands away so she can look me in the eyes. “Because it had to happen one day. And I want it to be with you.”
It suddenly feels hot in here, way too fucking hot. Sweat beads in the hollow of my throat. The universe keeps spinning, me unable to stop it.
“Brady and Tai kept telling me you had all these boyfriends.”
“I lied,” she says, her voice small. “I got close once, but I couldn't do it. Not with him.”
I search her face to make sure she understands what I’m about to say. “This is once in a lifetime, Gia. It needs to be special.”
“Was your first time special?”
“Not particularly,” I admit. “And I kind of regret it.”
Losing my virginity had nothing to do with bragging rights. All I cared about was getting my rocks off. Because what fifteen-year-old guy wishes for a real moment instead of a dirty in-and-out in the basement of a girl I didn’t really care for. Whoever said youth was wasted on the young nailed it.
Gia kisses my cheek, which must be as white as the sheets. “I won’t regret this. I’m ready. I’ve waited so long. I care about you. More than I fucking should.”
Something twists deep in my chest. Her sitting there, lit by the moon, sends a crushing tenderness through me. Full one eighty on all my debauched plans. That ship has sailed. Now we’re alone in the harbor, and I’m actually kind of freaked out.
Edgeless and floating.
I swallow hard, trying to keep the waver out of my voice. “I’ve never taken a woman’s virginity.”
“Then it’ll be a first time for both of us.”
She tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, and the fragile clench of my heart feels a little like an exposed nerve. I stare straight ahead, eyes swimming in the dark. All the mindless sex, and not once was I faced with this. I’d like to believe my reaction would’ve been the same.
“If we do this,” I say, “there’s no taking it back.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
Climbing onto my lap like I’m her personal beanbag, she scoops my hands in hers, placing both sets onto the warm rise of her breasts.
Her dusky eyes lift to mine. “If we keep talking about it, it will only get weirder. I want this,” she says, her voice firm, mind made up.
“I want you. We’re both adults. You have my consent, a thousand percent. Isn’t that enough?”
An overflowing amount of enough is what she is.
And she’s waited, now offering herself to me, the broken-down guitarist she’s breathed new life into.
I want to feel the heat of her skin, the fire that courses beneath, the salt of sweat and tears.
I want to dip myself into her core and come fucking undone.
She has no idea the power she has over me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I whisper.
Suspended in a delicate and meaningful silence, her eyes skim mine. Cradling my face in the heat of her palms, she kills me softly with seven words.
“It’ll only hurt if it isn’t you.”