happy voice.
Indifference wasn’t working.
She pulled her finger out of his hand and wrapped it in a fresh paper towel. Whenever he touched her she felt all zingy, and zingy was not practical.
“Point A—” Santi tried a new tack, his voice the height of military efficiency. “I live in a place that’s easy enough to give up. You have a lease for the next three months, if I’m not mistaken. It makes sense for me to come here and I promise I won’t take up much shelf space in the bathroom, all right?”
Saoirse nodded, rather unsuccessfully fighting the arrival of a sting of tears. She closed her eyes and tipped her chin up. Why was this so hard?
She felt Santi’s crooked index finger swipe at another tear, hardly a challenge now that they were freely tumbling down her cheeks.
“Amor, don’t.” He gently pulled her off her stool and tugged her into his arms. “Don’t cry.”
In his arms, she felt safer than she could have imagined. Free to cry, free to feel the push and shove of conflicting emotions. If this—this connection she felt—was real, she could imagine wanting to marry him in a heartbeat. And that was a problem.
Saoirse trembled when she felt his hands cup her face. Don’t mess this up now... This is your chance to make at least one of your dreams come true.
She forced herself to open her eyes to meet his. The gold flecks amid the chicory darkness of his irises made him appear more leonine than ever before. A proud Latino man, earthily aware of his physical prowess. There was heat in his gaze. A muscle twitched in his jaw. The cut of his cheekbones all but drew pointy arrows to his full, sensual mouth. She flushed when she realized she’d been licking her lips.
She searched for answers to the parade of questions goose-stepping through her mind. Nothing useful presented itself. Just a single sentence repeating itself over and over... I want to kiss you.
“Is it your ex?” Santi asked. Her eyes were still firmly planted on his lips. “Do you want to patch things up with him? Is that it?”
She squinted up at him as if it would change the words that had just come out of his mouth. Talk about a mood killer! Or maybe there had been no mood at all. Just a Saoirse-Santi romance mirage.
Then again...she chanced a glance at his eyes. No. It wasn’t his eyes. The man was a trained Marine. It was his tone that had caught her attention. It sounded almost... Wait a minute. Was he jealous that she might want the lying, faithless no-goodnik back in her life? Or relieved? Either way she knew the answer.
“No,” she answered solidly, not quite ready to step away from the warmth of Santi’s embrace. One of his hands was resting loosely on her waist, the other on her shoulder, occasionally moving up to her cheek to wipe away some tears. Just the size of his hands, the softness of his touch made her feel so feminine. She’d never admit it, but it felt good. Powerful, almost. The closest she’d ever get to feeling like an Amazon queen.
Leaning in to kiss him would be so easy.
Pressing her cheek into his hand to absorb some of the comfort it gave, she became aware her eyes were still unable to resist the magnetic lure of his lips. She bit down on her own lower lip, fighting the desire to go up on tippy-toe, just a little bit, and taste...
“Don’t do that,” Santi said, abruptly pulling back.
“What?”
“That...lip thing you do.”
“What lip thing?”
“There.” He pointed at her mouth. “You’re doing it right now.”
“No, I’m not!” She did a few moves to try and figure out what she’d been doing, highly aware that Santi’s hands were still touching her, almost territorially. Nerves won out over a limitless supply of sultry choices she could have made. “You mean my buck teeth overbite thing?”
“Mija. You do not have buck teeth or an overbite.” Santi’s voice was gravelly, intense. Which made her stare at his lips even more. Sensual, full lips he was dragging a tooth along.
“Well,” she huffed. “You do a lip thing, too!”
“No, I don’t!” Santi looked at her as if she had just gone directly around the bend.
“Yes.” She nodded soberly. “You do. It’s all slow-motion and sexy and, for the record, extremely distracting.”
“Oh, yeah?” Santi’s mood and voice shifted again, slamming straight out of neutral into for-bedroom-only gear. Her tummy went all swoopy, melty, lava lamp on her. Oh, no, no, no... This was the so-bad-it-was-good sort of thing she’d heard about from friends of hers who’d settled down—or just plain old settled in her case.
Her eyes were magnetically drawn to his lips.
Beware! Beware the most perfect lips in the whole of Miami.
Her breath became jagged and uncontrollable. He did the lip thing. Saoirse had no choice.
She went up on tiptoe and kissed him.
From the moment her lips touched his she didn’t have a single lucid thought. Her brain all but exploded in a vain attempt to unravel the quick-fire sensations. Heat, passion, need, longing, sweet and tangy all jumbled together in one beautiful confirmation that his lips were every bit as kissable as she’d thought they might be.
Snippets of what was actually happening were hitting her in blips of delayed replay.
Her fingers tangled in his silky, soft hair. Santi’s wide hands tugged her in tight, right at the small of her back. There was no doubting his body’s response to her now. The heated pleasure she felt when one of his hands slipped under her T-shirt elicited an undiluted moan of pleasure. He matched her move for move as if they had been made for one another. Her body’s reaction to his felt akin to hitting all hundred watts her body was capable of for the very first time.
She wanted more.
No.
She wanted it all. The whole package. The feelings. The pitter-patter of her heart. Knowing it was reciprocated. Being part of a shared love. Not some sham wedding so she wouldn’t have to live in a country where her soul had all but shriveled up and died.
She felt Santi’s kisses deepen and her willpower to shore up some sort of resistance to what was happening plummeted. This felt so real. And a little too close to everything she’d hoped for wrapped up in a too-good-to-be-true package. This sort of thing didn’t happen to her. And it wasn’t. She’d started it, Santi was just responding. She heard herself moan and with its escape her resolve to resist abandoned her completely.
She caved in to her body’s desires. To caress and be caressed. Explore and discover new ways of giving pleasure. Time and space and heat and light all melded into one as she felt her body blossom with sensation after sensation. Each and every one of them pure pleasure.
The sharp jangle of her phone’s text alert shot through her body just as she was weaving one bare leg around Santi’s.
They both froze, eyes wide as if the neighborhood priest had just walked
