Connected (Connections, #1)(57)
River parks the car in a gas station parking lot and takes off his sunglasses. Setting them on the dash he silently unbuckles his seatbelt, twists his body to face me, and reaches over to unbuckle mine. Placing his hands on my shoulders, he turns my body to face him.
He removes my sunglasses, and with the pads of his thumbs he caresses my cheeks. He looks at me intently before speaking and I swallow back emotion from the intensity of his stare; a stare so full of concern I feel like my tears may come back any minute. “What happened to him was wrong, but for it to happen in front of you . . . that is something you should never have had to see, to experience, to go through.” Placing his fingers under my chin, he tilts my head up. His eyes are gleaming and so full of power, but his voice is soft, almost broken as he continues, “I mean it, what you went through would break anyone, but here you are . . . so vibrant, so full of life, and still in one piece. Whenever you’re ready to talk I’m here, ready to listen.”
He pauses a second to rub his thumbs across my cheeks again then down my neck. His serene expression remains as he says, “You’re so absolutely beautiful.” He stops speaking and places a soft kiss on my lips.
Looking at him as he watches me with such care and concern, I quietly respond, “River, my life the last two years has been . . . nothing really.” I stop to cup his gorgeous face in my hand and then continue. “I’ll tell you about it, about me during that time. Just, not now. You have to understand, it was such a sad time for me, and I don’t want to relive it right now, but I want you to know this—being with you these last few days has been the most fun I’ve experienced in such a long time.” I stop my words and kiss him, but my kiss is not soft like his. It’s intense and full of passion. He makes me want him every time he touches me and his touch pushes away any sorrowful thoughts that seem to always be lingering in my mind.
He immediately wraps his arms around me, holding me tight. It’s an odd, yet familiar feeling. We’re two people who just connected, or actually re-connected, and it feels like we’ve known each other for far longer than three days. So as we sit here together in his car, about to cross the path to the unknown, we’re in no hurry, we have nowhere to be, and it feels heavenly.
Before breaking our embrace, he slides his nose up my neck until his lips reach my ear. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look today?” he whispers. Goosebumps ravage my body, and he’s grinning as he draws his finger down my bare shoulder over the now eminent bumps. He knows that drives me wild. He’s doing it on purpose and I can’t help but smile at that thought.
His words are said with such emotion. They are so raw and honest; I know he can only be speaking the truth. My heart rate is slightly elevated. Need is pooling everywhere throughout my body, and I’m smiling so widely, not only on the outside but on the inside as well. It’s in this moment that I realize the sweet-nothings he whispers are a part of his gorgeous soul, the soul I feel so connected to in this very short amount of time we’ve spent together. I know I definitely made the right choice in coming with him to LA.
Grinning back at me, he pulls my seatbelt across my body. I see the corners of his lips lift when he runs his fingertips across my hipbone before buckling it and then down my leg, slinking his fingers slightly under my skirt before twisting and leaning back in his own seat. Fastening his own seatbelt, he glances at me. “You mentioned playing a game. What do you have in mind?”
Turning the volume up on the radio, I tap the library button on my iPhone and select one of my favorite songs. I allow the song to play for five seconds before hitting the pause button. “Name it?”
He looks over at me with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Really? Come on now. All you had to give me was the first three beats of that Roland drum machine used in the intro and I’d know the haunting beat of Phil Collins any day of the week.”
Starting to thump out the intro on the steering wheel, he adds rhythm to his own beat. Using the dash as his pedal bass and his own voice to synthesize the droning, he begins to sing the first few lyrics of In the Air Tonight.
Thinking to myself, Wow he’s good; I shake my head mouthing, “Show off.”
“I saw that,” he instantly vocalizes. With his eyes darting at me, he adds, “Come on, what else you got baby?”
Studying my library for songs he may not recognize in three seconds or less, I decide to try Poison’s Talk Dirty To Me. Before I even hit the pause button he yells out, “Look what the … Then he stops and grins, not bothering to finish the lyrics.” Reaching over and running his fingers down my leg, he nonchalantly mentions, “Talk Dirty To Me was named one of the forty greatest hard rock songs of all time,” and as he drags his fingers under my skirt, sending shivers down my spine, he finishes with, “But, you must know that, so why are you being easy on me?” Pulling his hand back, he reaches for his sunglasses and puts them back on. “Next.”
After nine songs I say, “Okay musical genius, last one. All or nothing.” Then flickering my eyes at him, I hike my skirt up just enough for him to catch a glimpse of what lies beneath and ask, “You in?” He has managed to guess every single song within three seconds, so why not distract him a little, knock him off his game.
I hear a sharp intake of breath as his head slightly turns in my direction. “I’m always in,” he mutters with a huge smirk on his face.