The Chemistry of Love(86)

We ate together, watched movies. We spent three days in a row watching all three Lord of the Rings movies. And during The Return of the King and Gandalf’s speech to Pippin, I realized that Marco was mouthing the dialogue, probably unaware that he was doing it.

“You know all the words,” I said, delighted.

“What? No.”

“You do, you do!” I clapped my hands together. “You might love these movies more than I do.”

“Not possible. I don’t want to marry Legolas, so you win.”

We spent a lot of time working on a business plan. He gave me a list of potential suppliers and manufacturers along with all sorts of projection numbers that I probably never would have been able to come up with on my own. He seemed just as excited about the prospect of pitching to his dad as I was.

“Do you have a name?” he asked the night before we were scheduled to fly to Vermont.

“I was thinking Aviary Cosmetics.”

“That’s pretty,” he said as he reached for the first-quarter projections. A term I now understood, thank you very much. “Do you have a tagline for the company?”

“Beauty takes flight.”

“Like you’re trying to leave beauty? Fly away from it? That might come across negatively.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. Fair note. “What about where beauty soars?”

“Sounds like sores. As in wounds. It’s okay. We’ll have a marketing department for that.” He heard the mistake and corrected himself. “I mean you. You’ll hire marketing. I can help advise you or . . . you could just do it yourself. I don’t want to overstep.”

It would be hard for him to overstep when he was taking care of so many important details for me. “You’re not. Hiring a marketing adviser would be smart. More brain, less storm that way. I was also thinking it would be fun to have palettes that are named after birds. Like we’d have Peacock Blue. Canary Yellow. Oriole Orange. Cardinal Red.”

That got his attention. “Cardinal? Like sin?”

My blood turned thick and heavy. “What? No. Like the bird.”

“Too bad.” He put the projections down, focusing all his attention on me. “Cardinal sins can be fun. I’m a fan of lust.”

That made heat prickle up the back of my neck. “I’m more partial to sloth and gluttony myself.”

He ignored my weak attempt at humor. “What color would that be? Cardinal red? Would it be a deep, dark red?”

We hadn’t kissed all week. I had been longing for him so badly that I was literally dreaming about him. It was kind of torturous to spend so much time with him, be so close, but not be able to touch him.

Especially now that I knew how good he was at it.

But his question now—that felt like an opening to something that I was eager to seize. Because despite Catalina’s sage advice, I had not taken a single bit of it. I should have. I should have made some kind of move before this.

“It would. A deep, dark red.” I nodded, pushing the slideshow presentation to the side.

“I thought of a test we haven’t run yet. Water.”

“Water?” I repeated because suddenly this was not going where I thought it was.

“Is the lipstick waterproof?”

“Yes.”

“This is something I have to see for myself.” He took me by the hand and led me from his kitchen table and into his bedroom. I had one heart-stopping moment of unadulterated glee at our setting, but he took me into his bathroom.

He opened the glass door to his shower and turned on the water. He stepped under the stream, fully dressed, and turned to grin at me. “Let’s see it.”

I went with him into the water, and droplets landed on my glasses. I made sure to get a good look at him, though. He pushed his dark hair up out of his face, and it was like it was happening in slow motion.

If damp Marco had been dangerous, soaking wet Marco was downright lethal.

He reached over and took my glasses off, setting them on a shelf nearby. I started to shiver, and he incorrectly assumed it was because of the water. “Is it not warm enough?” he asked as he took me in his arms, holding me close.

I didn’t know. I’d been so focused on him that I really wasn’t registering anything else.

The water continued to fall on us, and I watched the way it lovingly traveled down his face, caressing as it went.

“You’re my existential crisis, Anna. Do I kiss you or not kiss you?”

My pulse went triple time. “If I get a vote, I go with kiss me.”

Only I didn’t get to say the last word because he devoured it with his kiss. Our clothes were so wet, it was like I could feel every outline of his chest as he held me, each plane and sharp ridge that I wanted to touch and explore. To kiss and feel his skin beneath my palms.

I should have been freezing, but I couldn’t feel anything besides heat. I half expected steam to start rising from the friction of our bodies as they intertwined. Water filled in whatever gap it could find, but there weren’t many gaps. The sensations were overwhelming—that fiery heat from him and his kiss and the cold water surrounding us, covering us.

Still, he held back. I didn’t understand why. I made it pretty obvious that I was enjoying myself and wanted more, please. But there was restraint. I could feel the tension in his shoulders, along his neck.