When We Left Cuba(36)

The elevator starts up again, coming back down. Anyone could see us like this. At any moment, the elevator door could open and someone could step out.

“I should go to my room.”

“You should go to your room,” he agrees, lowering his head as he moves closer to me, as he tucks me into the curve of his body.

I take a deep breath, and then another, steadying myself.

With my free hand, I trail my finger along the cuff of his elegant Burberry trench coat, curling under, brushing the suit fabric beneath, grazing the soft skin at the inside of his wrist.

He shudders against me.

My fingers tremble as I press my hotel room key into his palm.

I walk toward my hotel room door alone, leaving Nick standing in the hallway behind me.

My gaze rests on the wood door, my legs quaking beneath my dress, the sound of his footsteps filling my ears, the elevator whooshing between floors.

I close my eyes as his hand settles on my waist, at the scent of orange and sandalwood, his breath against my neck. I open my eyes to the sight of his tanned, naked fingers placing the key into the keyhole on my hotel room door.





chapter twelve


The hotel room door closes behind us.

I face him.

“We should talk about this.” Nick sets the key down on the nightstand.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“What do you want then?” he asks.

“You.”

“I’m a politician. There’s scrutiny—”

“I’m used to the scrutiny. I don’t care.”

“It’s different,” he warns. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I don’t want to hear all the reasons this is a terrible idea. I know it is probably a terrible idea, that my actions this evening have been brazen to the extreme, that I am about to cross an invisible line for which there shall be no return. I don’t want reality to intrude on this moment.

I sigh. “You think I’m too young for you.”

Nick steps forward, and his lips brush the top of my head, his fingers clasping my waist, clutching the fabric of my coat, somewhere between pulling me closer and pushing me away.

“You’re too everything for me. Young is probably the least of my worries.”

My hand finds his, and he releases the fabric, threading his fingers with mine once more.

“This is a bad idea,” I whisper, as I step into the curve of his body.

“The worst,” Nick agrees, his hands moving to my nape, his fingers on the clasp of my necklace. His fingertips ghost across my skin as he removes the jewelry from my neck. He sets it on the nightstand before mimicking the motion with my earrings, his knuckles skimming my earlobes.

He leans down. His lips graze my ear.

I shudder, goose bumps rising over my skin.

I tip my head up, no longer content to wait for him to kiss me first. In truth, I’ve built up this kiss in my mind since the first moment I met him.

It doesn’t disappoint.

There are kisses, and then there are kisses, and this one rests firmly in the latter category.

“I thought you didn’t believe in rebellions,” I whisper, tearing my mouth away from his, my fingers making quick work of his tie as he shrugs off his coat.

Now that I have the taste of him in my mouth, the feel of his body against me, I am greedy for more.

Nick groans, pulling me closer. “Maybe I just hadn’t found the right one.”

He strokes my nape, his fingers shifting to the buttons at the back of my dress, his knuckles soaring across the exposed bare skin.

I fumble with the buttons down the front of his white dress shirt, removing his tie from his collar, my heart pounding madly, madly, madly with each shudder, each caress.

When you’re a young girl, from the right family, who sits in the wooden pew at Mass each Sunday alongside your parents, inhabiting a society that looks for reasons to cast a proverbial scarlet letter upon you, you’re told to guard your virtue against such wantonness. No one tells you with the right man it can feel like heaven; in the right moment, it can make you feel more powerful than you ever imagined.

No one tells you how truly lovely it can be.

I thought I knew what it was to want, but now, his body above mine, well, now I know what all those men before him only hinted at, the stolen kisses by eager boys paling in comparison to the passion I find in his arms.

Is this love?

Who has time to worry about such things?

At the moment, it is everything, and that’s all that matters.



* * *



? ? ?

“You’re quiet,” Nick says.

He dabs his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, his other arm wrapped around my shoulders. My head rests against his bare chest.

When I remember this moment later, it will be the scent of his cigarettes, his skin warm against mine, the sheets scratchy against my skin, the bright light from the lamp we never got around to turning off that I conjure up. Those will be the colors, sounds, and smells that shape the memory, but what fills it, what fills me now, is how happy I feel, even as I know there will be heartbreak down the road, that I am the villain in this piece for going to bed with an engaged man, that as I once warned Eduardo, the bill always comes due at the end.

And still—I don’t regret a moment we’ve shared.