She strokes the tip of her nose against the side of mine before claiming another deep kiss. “You need me to forgive you for all that?”
“Yeah.” I lift her other hand to wrap around my neck, and I encircle my arms tight around her waist. “Forgive me, Ava.”
“Okay.” I feel her smile against my lips. “I forgive you, Lucky. No hard feelings.” She pauses coyly, kissing me again and pressing her hips harder against me. “Other thanthishard feeling.”
I smile back at her, bracing the back of her head as I angle my face farther over hers, forcing her to arch into me as my tongue sweeps the inside of her hot, wet mouth. A warm gust of wind surges through the terrace, and her hair goes flying, whipping around my face and drowning me in her scent. The thunder shakes the atmosphere again, and I feel a distinctive sensation of internally spiraling out of control.
I remember this feeling of chaos.
It’s the distinctive precursor to falling in love—and that’s a real fucking problem.
Fortunately, it’s just a precursor. The love that follows isn’t a given. I just gotta keep my heel on it, and I will.
Just not right now. Right now, I’m feeling it.
This is just an indulgence; not all that different than cannabis, or bourbon, or having two women at once. The only difference is this is an indulgence of my heart, rather than my body.
The rain chooses that moment to violently descend without warning, and we immediately separate. I dart to the chair where she left my jacket, grab it, and throw it over her head, snagging my phone and the joint to stuff them in my pocket, before I usher her to the door and back inside.
“Whoo!” Ava squeals once we’re out of the rain, tugging my jacket tightly around her head and shoulders. She looks like a nun with the jacket snug around her face like that, which is a humorous visual given the naughty streak I know she has. “That’s some serious rain.” Her teeth chatter violently. “Now I’m freezing.”
I smile at her. The feeling of chaos spiraling in my heart hasn’t let up, and I amgoing to put my heel on it—just not yet. I’m not done right now. I reach for the jacket, slipping it down off her head to wrap it around her shoulders, and then I hold it tightly in place, trapping her arms like it’s a straight jacket.
“You’re wet, Ava doll.” I angle my face over hers again, and she tilts her chin up.
“Yeah.” Sexual implication is dripping from her lips along with droplets of rain. “I should probably do something about that.”
I lower my face to hers and drag my tongue up and over her bottom lip, licking away the rain drops. Pushing her against the wall, I wedge my knee between her thighs, pushing them apart while I press another long, slow, deep kiss to her mouth. She quietly whimpers, pushing her breasts against me, and I groan.
“Christ, I want to fuck you.”
That causes her to draw away from me, turning her face and breaking the kiss. “Yeah, I know.” She looks at me again. “But we’re not going to do that are we?”
It was only a brief indulgence, and I step backward. “Nope.”
Ava smirks, eyeing me coyly, and oh, I would though. If only it wasn’t way too much of an indulgence. A lot of shit has tried to kill me and failed, but a hangover from that definitelywould.
Fifteen
Ava
Quarantine Day 42
I’ve spent nearlythe entire second half of the virtual concert with my hand clasped over my mouth in total awe.
The concert is set in the big room, and it underwent a slight makeover, with the addition of heavy, red velvet drapes at the far end of the room, flanking the band and giving the illusion of them being on an actual stage. There are risers with gold skirts affixed at the base of each, and the brass section, drums, and bassist are all staggered at different levels while they peal riffs and slap out a raucous rhythm. Lucky and the shiny, black grand piano are positioned at the left and closer to the front of the stage. The main vocalist for this show is a woman named Harloe, and she’s actually one of the back-up singers, but given the lockdown, Lucky obviously couldn’t book one of the more famous headliners, and this stand-in is amazing. She’s an incarnation of Aretha Franklin, with long, thick braids in black and blonde that cascade down around her full, voluptuous figure, which is clad in a glittering, gold gown. Her voice is rich and full, sending chills scattering across my arms, while she commands the stage like the queen of soul herself.
“Ohhh no, I’m no one’s wife...but ohhh, I love my life!” Harloe belts out from the depths of her belly to the top of her lungs, slowly raising her arms at her sides during the climax of the song, “and all that jazz!”
“Meyer,” I say from behind my hand, blindly swatting at his arm, “Look.”
He tears his attention away from the spectacle to look at the screen of my laptop where I’m monitoring the chat box and the virtual tip jar. His eyes nearly bug out when he sees the dollar amount.
“Holy fuck.” He clasps his hand over his mouth as though trying to keep from screaming in excitement. “This has never happened before.”
I bite my lip to avoid gleefully laughing. “Well, you’ve probably never sold out a stadium before, which is basically how many people are watching.”
Meyer presses his fist to his mouth and then clasps my shoulders, squeezing me before dropping a kiss to the top of my head. “We did it.”
