“Challenge accepted. I’ll find something better, sweetheart. For now, you just lead the way.”
* * *
Dom slowly maneuveredhis way around my apartment, which I walked through without a thought. Pillows on the floor, he carefully stepped over. Artwork and tapestries on the wall, he gazed at them for a moment before moving on until he got closer to the short bookshelf against the wall. He reached out toward the old record player before he paused.
“Can I?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just turn the knob and set the needle unless you want to change the—”
Before I could offer Dom a change of music, he followed my directions, and a moody melody flooded from the record and into the room. It was a record that I’d played when I was low, trying to set some sort of mood for myself the other evening.
Tonight, it sounded different. It sounded slow and warm and pulsed like a wave between us. Dom made his way toward me, reaching for my hand. It met his warm palm, and he let our clasped hands flow back and forth before I took a step into him. His one leg slipped between my two, and we moved.
We were dancing in my kitchen, and I wanted to laugh at the hilarity of it. The dreamlike nature made me almost question if it was really happening.
But of course, it was.
I led the way farther into the tiny space of floor I had left between my makeshift coffee table and bed. The melody changed into lyrics. Our dance changed as well. We held each other tight, our hands grasping, greedy, yet afraid to ask for more.
His lips grazed against mine as we sang the words. We melted into each other with each beat of the song and each playful not-kiss. The edges of our lips brushed, and I breathed him in.
We toed the line, knowing we wanted to cross it—that we would.
I was dying to cross it with his hands running up and down my back. His fingers tangled in my hair as our hips swayed.
A brush became a nibble.
A nibble turned into a bite as I scraped my teeth over his bottom lip.
We snapped like puzzle pieces together, finding the perfect angle as our mouths collapsed from the effort of not finding one another.
He didn’t ask me to be quiet when I groaned into his mouth. He only gripped me harder. I melted into his hands until there was nothing left separating us. I wanted to feel them on me. I wanted to feel every fingerprint and every palm line until one of them lined up and connected perfectly with mine, knowing that we would meet at this moment. It had to have known.
His mouth felt goddess blessed.
From here, his lips kissed mine. His tongue found the line down my throat to my navel as he shoved my shirt up and over my head. His followed.
With every kiss and touch and breath we breathed into each other’s lungs, I led the way, and he held on tightly, unlike anyone had ever hung on to me.
I started us under our magical spell. The sparkling red thread of it wound tighter and tighter around us until there was no coming back from it.
No matter how much we tried to wish it away.
No matter how much we wanted to just forget.
There was no spell for forgetting.
8
Clenching my jaw shut, I wasn’t sure I could breathe. I’d really been slacking on my meditation and breathing exercises or the entire hoopla of it all because, apparently, the past few months of me dedicating myself to it every morning—before stupid, painful Dominic Rovnik showed up, hating me just about as much as I hated myself at this point—was all for nothing.
I couldn’t breathe.
I knew I couldn’t breathe, so I held my breath. Tiny gasps escaped me the rest of the way home. They were little reminders of the fact that I was slowly suffocating myself.
I put a hand to my chest, trying to will the air inside of lungs, but there was still nothing there. I wasn’t breathing, and I wasn’t able to. Maybe this would just be how I was for the rest of my life. More and more things just being taken away from me. Like love I’d never truly experienced, apparently.
Like my work since I couldn’t do anything but be a complete screwup.
