Page 33 of Bloom

He flashes that smile again. “Ah, you’ve caught me. It’s really my father’s. But he returns to Italy next year and then it’s mine.” He looks over at James. “He’s your boyfriend?” he asks in Italian. When we switch languages James comes to my side, his hand resting lightly at the small of my back.

“Yes,” I lie.

“He’s very possessive,” he smirks. “Perhaps he senses you’re ready to move on to a real man?”

I smile. “I don’t think that’s it.”

We head back down the stairs, but James stops me at the bottom as the others walk on ahead. He turns me toward him, and to my surprise, he’s angry.

“Are you going to keep flirting with him all night?” he hisses.

“I’m not flirting,” I retort.

“I know flirting when I see it, whether it’s in English or Italian.” All his earlier softness is gone, and his eyes are dangerous in the moonlight. It excites me and angers me in the same moment. “He’s way too old for you.”

I roll my eyes. “He’s only 30,” I say, turning to go. “And why would it possibly matter to you?”

His hand circles my forearm, pulling me back to him. Our eyes meet and I see that everything that was in his face just moments before has shifted, is replaced by something that isn’t angry or distant at all. Like a blurry photo made clear, the things I’ve seen in his face so often have sharpened.

And — oh my God — I think I was misreading him before.

There’s no time to process this. There is only the thrill of his hand threading through my hair, tilting my chin upward. The bright need in his eyes, the whisper of his exhale over my skin before his mouth brushes mine, setting nerve endings sparking like tiny shivers over my surface, while his lips, warm and soft and searching, open to me. His tongue teases, commanding me to take him in, and when I respond, brushing his tongue with the lightest flick of my own, his body coils tight. I feel the sound that he makes, low in his throat, a hum that makes my whole body feel overheated and ripe. He grabs my hips and pulls me against him and suddenly I am part of his moving pieces — the quick rise and fall of his chest, his arms caging me in.

“Elle,” he murmurs, the sound of it almost pained, with his breath against my ear, his lips pressing to the corner of my jaw, to the soft skin beneath, pulling a shaky inhale from me, a low whimper as his hands slide over my bare back and below my waist. His mouth finds mine again, the kiss harder this time, urgent, backing me to the wall. The old brick grates against my skin, pain that seems to heighten the pleasure of everything else I feel, his impatient mouth and the heat of his chest and his hands cupping my ass. I arch forward, pressing myself to the part of him that is hard and ready, and his answer is a groan that seems to vibrate through his chest.

A voice shatters the bubble we are in like an explosion. Ginny is approaching, calling our names, and we jump away from each other and stand there, gasping and shocked.

James looks at me in horror. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Fuck. That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have … ”

“Where’d you guys go?” asks Ginny. “We thought we’d lost you.”

James is staring at me as if I’ve used magic to swap myself in for the girl he thought he was with. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. And then he walks away without another word.

“Why is he being weird?” asks Ginny. “Were you guys arguing?”

“No,” I reply. I shake my head. “A little, I guess.”

My legs are unsteady as I follow Ginny back to the lobby of the restaurant, where everyone waits. Everyone, that is, except James. He’s already gone.

Chapter 20

Did that really happen?

It’s the first thing I think when I wake. With as much as I had to drink I remember all of it, the moment where he pulled me against him. His fingers running through my hair. The whisper of his breath and his soft mouth and the way he said my name, as if it had sat on his lips for a long time waiting to be set free. I remember it all in its exquisite, excruciating detail. Including the part where he looked at me in horror and apologized.

That’s the part that makes me feel like I’ve been stabbed.

I go downstairs with my stomach turning — how much of that is my hangover and how much is flat-out dread I’m not sure. Max, James and Dan are sitting at the kitchen table.

“Hurting a little bit this morning, Grayson?” Max laughs. James pulls the paper toward him and stares at it fixedly as I walk by.

I sigh. “Maybe a little.”

“Want me to get you a shot of something?”

My stomach bubbles unpleasantly at the mere suggestion. “I don’t ever want to see another glass of wine for the rest of my life,” I murmur, heading toward the coffee.

“I’d better get going,” says Dan, hastening from the room. Scurry, Daniel! Scurry! I’m not sure if it makes me want to laugh or cry that he’s so scared of me.