I responded, my lips parting in anticipation, my eyes hooding, my body ready to melt in his arms as soon as our mouths met.
But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, his mouth slipped past my cheek, dangerously close to grazing my skin. “I intend to,” he whispered.
Before I could protest, we whirled off in unison with the other dancers. He led expertly, never having to glance down at our shifting feet. His hand on the small of my back held me steadily against him, leaving no chance for escape.
We whirled and whirled. I didn’t think we moved fast enough to make me dizzy, but dizzy I became.
More than once, I caught sight of Giuseppe glaring at us from the sidelines. The first time, he spoke to an older man and woman, probably extolling the virtues of the department. But he appeared to pause in the middle of the sentence to shoot a look out at me, weaving his gaze through all the bodies marauding between us.
Then another time I saw him on the opposite side of the floor, speaking to a sharp-nosed woman who appeared annoyed when he turned his attention from her to me.
This wasn’t going to end well, I knew.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Liam whispered. Despite the volume of the music and the conversations all around us, a whisper was all he needed. He held me so closely I could hear him easily, could feel the warm tickle of his breath against my neck and shoulder.
“This isn’t going to end well,” I said, voicing my thoughts.
He considered that for another revolution of our bodies, then he leaned in closely so that his lips grazed my earlobe, sending a spark down my spine. “Who says it has to end?”
I’d been operating this entire time under the assumption that at some point we’d part ways that night. Maybe after another pleasant dance or two or however long Dr. Aretino could spend collecting donations for the school.
Only that at some point in the very near future we would part and this would be nothing but one of my only pleasant memories of my time in Rome.
But maybe this was what I really needed. I knew I needed something, some change, some drastic event. Maybe Liam was that change? That brush that would sweep across the dusty chalkboard that was my life here this past semester and give me the second chance I needed.
So many little warnings and caveats popped into my head, my tendency to over think things over thinking this. But that was my problem, too. Maybe my life was the way it was because I never took chances, never went on impulse. It was time for me to act on impulse.
I can give in. Just for one night, I can give in. Because that was all this could be, just one night. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
Except for one niggling caveat. One whose eyes I could feel drilling through Liam and into me from the other side of the room.
“What about Professor Aretino?” I said. Surely if Liam could read people as well as he seemed to, he must have apprehended how things went between the good professor and me.
“Don’t worry about Aretino. Not tonight,” Liam said, his lips so hot against my ear.
That warmth helped break through the final barricade, to burst the dam and down the shrill warning voices.
“Okay,” I said, my body beginning to shake against his.
“Come with me now,” Liam whispered.
“I will.”
He kissed me, then. Lightly on the neck, just below my earlobe. Soft, pliant, and warm lips pressed against the sensitive skin there, followed immediately by the light and delicious prickle of his stubble.
Liam finished the dance, each shifting step more aching than the last for the both of us. It was the best foreplay I’d ever had, the burning, secretive looks we gave each other. The light touches that could only go so far with all these people around. The feeling of his hot breaths against me and the sensation of his lips on me when he dared place another delicate, trembling kiss on my throat.
By the time the quartet announced a break I could barely stand, Liam holding most of my weight against him by main strength. My legs felt like two worn out rubber bands.
And we haven’t done anything but dance yet! I kept thinking. Who was Liam? He could flirt, he could flatter, and he could dance. He danced better than my instructors had. What else could this body of his do?
He let go of my waist, but kept a strong grip on my hand. This grip he used to lead me through the crowd, the two of us weaving around the other dancers and guests like a warship twining its way through mines bobbing in the ocean.
Dr. Aretino’s eyes tracked us the entire way, but he couldn’t catch us. He’d been speaking with an older man in a military dress uniform when the quartet had stopped playing, and he could do nothing but watch.
This isn’t going to end well, I thought again as we slipped into the foyer where I’d bumped so serendipitously into him. The same doorman saw us and opened the door, letting the warm air of the Roman evening spill into the room. “Your car will be ready, sir,” he said.
Liam didn’t drive a Lambo, as I’d imagined. It was a new BMW M3 coupe, the same ashy grey as a cloudy sky in the evening, and it was a rental.
So I learned more about mysterious Mr. Baby-Blues. He didn’t live here (but then again, neither did I). And he had a suite at a place called the Inn at the Roman Forum. A five star place, of course. We pulled up and I could actually see the lights the government used to illuminate the Coliseum. Which I actually hadn’t been to see yet since arriving at the beginning of the school term.
I hadn’t seen much of the city at all, really.
A valet came out and took the car and I forgot all that, though, suppressing the nagging, concerned voice at the back of my mind yet again.
***
We got into his room, the beep of his cardkey against the electric lock the sweetest sound I’d heard all evening. There was a fireplace. Several tapestries, all copies of various Renaissance artists.
There were large bay windows covered in sheer drapes through which I could see the Forum, but it registered as only an afterthought in my mind. The only piece of art I wanted to see that night was the sculpted body I’d felt beneath that Armani suit of his earlier.
And of course there was the bed, an enormous, decadent thing loaded with pillows and thousand-thread count sheets. He took me over to the bed but didn’t throw me down onto it like I so desperately wanted him to.
But then his hands grabbed me, pulled me close. There were no more judging eyes anymore, just the two of us.
No one to see him take a handful of my hair and make a fist in it, the pressure it made it my scalp delicious. No one to see the way he canted my head back in his grip and kissed me on the mouth.
It was light at first, exploring. His stubble prickled me again, those prickles working their way down the front of my stomach, adding to the heat blossoming between my thighs.
The kiss deepened, our lips writhing together. God, his mouth was so hot on me. I groaned when he slid it down my neck, kissing my bare shoulder as he pulled the strap down my arm.
His fingers brushed back across my clavicle, dipping so achingly close to my chest, evoking an erotic response by avoiding the erotic areas of my body. For a few moments, anyway, while he could control himself.
How long that control of his impulses would last, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want him to control himself. I wanted him to lose himself in me just as badly as I wanted to lose myself in him.
His kisses became more desperate, then, as though he picked up on my desire.