I give a tense shrug and tilt my head to one side, feeling tears of disappointment pool in my eyes. ‘I was just trying to help. Please don’t be angry with me. They’re so beautiful, Sandro. They deserve to be seen.’
He stares at me for a moment longer, then lets out a rough groan deep in his throat. ‘You make it really fucking hard for me to be angry with you when you look at me like that.’
‘So you’ll call him?’ I ask in a shaky voice.
‘I told you – I’m not ready to show them yet,’ he says tersely, taking the card from my outstretched hand and crumpling it into a ball before pocketing it.
I open my mouth to protest, but then close it again. He has to want to do this himself. As frustrated as this makes me feel, I know it’ll probably be counter-productive to push him any harder on it. The will to make it work has to come from him.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Sandro mutters. ‘We can’t stay now.’
I allow him to lead me out, feeling tension in the bunched muscles of his arm that he’s slung around me, which he drops as soon as we’re out of sight of the gallery. We walk back to the apartment in uneasy silence, my blood pulsing hard through my body. Perhaps I shouldn’t have interfered. But I had to. It was a great opportunity, and I would have regretted not trying to help him later. I know I would.
He lets us in through the door and shucks off his jacket, still not saying a word to me.
‘Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have done that without asking you.’ I can hear the anxiety and a hint of resentment in my voice as I shut the door behind us. ‘But you’re so talented, Sandro, and sometimes we all need a bit of a push from the outside.’
He stares back at me, his dark brows drawn into a frown. Angry tension buzzes between us.
I want to cry.
‘Please don’t be angry,’ I whisper, barely able to get the words past my painfully constricted throat. ‘There’s so much more depth to you than you believe. Your father and that awful teacher did you such a disservice, letting you think you’re not good enough. That you’re not smart and sensitive and talented. Because you are. You are!’
I can see a muscle working in his jaw and watch as he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. I want to lean forward and kiss him there, nuzzle his soft warm skin, make everything okay between us again. But I don’t. Instead, I wait, my heart fluttering like a caged bird.
Then without a word he reaches out and pulls me firmly against him, lifting his hand to cup my face. His dazzling eyes stare intently into mine, flashing with frustration, hurt, then finally acceptance, and my stomach does a slow somersault.
I sense that we’re tipping over some sort of edge. Something’s changing between us. There’s a fizzing sensation in the pit of my stomach and my heartbeat thumps hard in my throat as the tension builds.
And then, suddenly, he brings his mouth crashing down onto mine and kisses me hard, his lips firm and assured. I shudder with pleasure as I feel the hot slide of his tongue penetrate my mouth.
It’s the most wonderfully intimate sensation in the world, and the most terrifying. I sense myself falling down some sort of rabbit hole from which I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to climb back out. All I can think about are his lips owning mine, his tongue searching out the most intimate spaces within me. He moves against me and I lose my balance and take a stumbling step backward, feeling my back hit the wall behind me. He pins me there, his hard body pressed firmly against mine, his arousal digging into my stomach sending great waves of need between my thighs, but there’s also something else. Some strange buzzing sensation against my leg.
What the hell is that?
Finally we break apart, gasping for breath, our bodies pressed wantonly together.
‘Is that you vibrating or me?’ Sandro asks in a voice heavy with lust.
And I realise that it’s my phone in my bag that’s been caught between our legs.
‘I think it’s me,’ I say, automatically reaching for my phone in my flustered daze to check the screen, grateful for a moment to recover from the intensity of our kiss. A kiss that meant a lot more than it should have done.
‘Oh!’ I say, looking down at my screen, confused by what I’m seeing.
‘Who was it?’ Sandro asks in a concerned voice, glancing down at the screen too.
The nameAdam Cormackis written there.
‘Why’s he calling me on a Saturday night?’ I ask dumbly into the silence.
Sandro pushes himself away from me and folds his arms in front of him. ‘It’s probably a booty call,’ he jokes, though his voice has a sharp edge to it.
‘What’s a booty call?’ I ask.
‘It means he wants you to go over to his place for a fuck,’ he says roughly, not looking at me now. His body language is stiff, as if he’s retreating from me – from the situation – as though he’s worried he’s interrupting a private moment between Adam and me. Which is ridiculous. It’s Sandro and I who were interrupted.
‘Well, he needs to do much more than just call me to get me to do that,’ I say lightly, feeling uncomfortable.