Thin Love (59 page)

Behind her, the opulent party continues. Ransom seems happy, drunk on the attention, on the praise Kona has given him all night, the introduction to players he’s long admired. She is happy for her boy, overwhelmed that he is now sixteen. But the night, the crowd, her laughing, dancing son are momentarily forgotten as that endless song persists, taunts her. She moves away from the glass doors, to an empty table hidden next to an alcove, hoping she’ll go unnoticed. 

She doesn’t know why she is still here. New Orleans isn’t home anymore. Her stepfather’s estate could be settled over the phone, through emails and faxes. If she went back to Tennessee, there would be no complications. No former college sweethearts who wrecked her life. No hints of him wanting back in to see how much more damage he could do to her.

He hasn’t forgotten. There have been too many lingering stares shot in her direction, too many times he saw fit to touch her arm, direct her into a room with his hand on the small of her back.

She knows what he wants, but the idea of reliving the past is too much, too confining.

Hands shaking, Keira pulls a half smoked joint from her clutch, hurrying to catch a small hit that will numb her to Kona’s stare and those hopeful little hints he’s been giving her for the past three weeks.

One hit, then another, and Keira can feel the tension leave her, if only for a few minutes.

“That’s bad for you.”

She closes her eyes, cursing herself, cursing that song and the memory she knows pulled him out here.

Keira hesitates, tries not to notice yet again how much larger he is; how that massive twenty-year-old she loved so helplessly had somehow managed to grow bigger, more imposing.

She manages a look, brief and flippant, over her shoulders and blots out his large shoulders, his defined chest, how delicious his cologne smells on the night breeze.

“I have a habit of picking up things that are bad for me.” She doesn’t like how easily he chuckles, or how close he stands to her. “Besides, this is only an occasional indulgence.” Kona’s attention moves behind him, to the glass doors before he reaches for the joint. “Hypocrite,” she says when he takes a long drag.

“Occasional, Wildcat, like you.”

Keira doesn’t watch him too closely, doesn’t want to be consumed by his lips pinching on the joint or the wide veins on the top of his hand as he holds it. Instead, she looks at the waiter who steps outside to collect a few empty glasses. From the open door that never-ending song blasts out like a feather touch; teasing, reminding.

Their eyes meet.

“I never hate hearing this song,” he says, moving closer to pass back the joint.

She thinks, at first, she’ll play dumb, but he knows her tells, was a master at recognizing when she was lying. It’s pointless to act like she doesn’t remember. How could she not? He’d taken her on her pink sheets. The collection of stuffed animals she’d long ignored, fell from her plush covers with every moment of their bodies as this song played on repeat.

“You haven’t forgotten, have you, Wildcat?” Kona watches her lips circle the blunt as she inhales, her tongue flicking out to wet her dry mouth.

“No, I haven’t.” She looks at him, hopes he doesn’t notice the heat she feels warming her neck, across her face as he stares at her. “How could I forget?”

He takes the joint when she offers it and their fingers touch, then join when he throws it on the ground so he can lean over her, back her in between his massive arms resting on either side of her head.

“You wore a Black Crowes t-shirt and nothing else.” He shifts his fingers through her hair, pushes a few strands off her forehead. “I remember your hair was wet.” Kona twists a curl between his fingers.

Then Keira is shaking, swallowing hard when he abandons her hair completely and runs his fingers over the thin strap of her dress. “You weren’t supposed to be there,” she says, hypnotized by how good his fingertips feel against her shoulder, across her chest. “I had a shower because the heater broke. It was so hot in that room.”

“It got hotter.” There is a quiver moving his lips and she can’t tell if he’s fighting a smile or frown. “Sweet like candy…” he says, moving too close for breath, for control. Every detail is seared into her mind and the heavy timbre of his voice, the gentle fingering of her skin with his calloused hand only heightens the memory. 

He smells the same, feels the same.

She feels the embers threatening to blaze.

“You felt so good, so tight around me, Wildcat.”

Oh God.

She can’t look at him, can’t let the memory take over. But his fingers lower, move down her arms, his enormous chest comes forward and she releases a soft mew of surprise when his thick thighs rub against her legs. He’s so close that she can do nothing but raise her eyes.

“Dirty little rascal… remember that, beautiful?”

“I… I do.”

She doesn’t stop him when he kisses her. She lets herself take in the heat of his massive body, lets it work over her skin. She inhales him—his scent, the hot rub of his tongue against hers, along her bottom lip. At first, she thinks she won’t react; that she’ll push back the sensation, ignore how sweet he tastes, how hard he feels against her. But then he holds her arms, leans into her until her back rests against the brick wall behind her and Keira is lost. 

Kona still makes low groans in his throat when he kisses her; still has the softest lips, the most demanding, wide tongue. She can’t help herself. He’s an addiction, her favorite drug. She wants a hit. She wants a million hits of him.

Her hands work up his arms, his immense shoulders and his groaning deepens, becomes a growl of pleasure when she returns his attentions. Their mouths aren’t frantic, but they do match each other. He pushes, she pulls, like always, like habit, and it is a delicious drugging dance; one she didn’t know she’d missed so much. 

She feels the swift lick of disappointment when Kona pulls back, but it disappears with his fingers holding her face and the tips smoothing just over her cheekbones.

“
My
dirty little rascal,” he says, but he doesn’t return her smile, seems struck by how close they are standing, how easy this has been, to fall back into old habits. It was returning… their reactions to one another were primal, instinctual.

Un-fucking-avoidable. 

The song ends, but Kona hasn’t stopped examining her face. His breath is still hot and panting over her cheeks. It would be easy, so fucking easy, to let him consume her.

Kona leans in again, somehow moving closer, another hit that will edge her toward overdose and she stops him. The rational part of Keira’s mind pushes back the sensation of his touch and the embers are extinguished.

“Wait.”

He pauses, but doesn’t move away from her, doesn’t move his fingers from her skin. “Wildcat, come on.”

“What are we doing?” Keira knows that expression. It hasn’t changed in sixteen years. Kona’s face is calm, but he frowns, forehead wrinkling in his agitation and Keira stops another attempt of his lips against her mouth. She pushes him back, palm flat against that tempting chest. “How’d this happen?”

Kona’s shoulders sag and finally, her skin is free of his touch.

“Memory lane,” he says.

“That’s a dangerous place.”

“If you say so.”

“I can’t do this with you.” She takes a breath. “I can’t ever do this with you again.”

“Why the hell not?” His anger isn’t quick, not the instant snap of frustration she’d always known from him, but there is no humor on his face and despite her small rejection, he hasn’t moved his arms from the brick behind her.

“I’ve been telling you for two months. We were not good together. I can’t…” Another slow breath and Keira tries to calm, to ignore the heavy scent of his skin filling her senses. “I won’t be that girl again.”

Too eas
y, she thinks, reminding herself how effortlessly Kona consumes her. Moth to flame, eager to die in the fire. She hated who she was with him, most days. She hated that she forgot good sense, any smidgeon of reason when he was around her. She didn’t like who she’d been at eighteen and it was that girl, that unbalanced, obsessed girl, that Keira had been running from all these years. She wouldn’t let that girl return, not now, not even for Kona.

When she slips out of the cage of his impossibly large arms, Kona reacts, old habits surfacing. He grabs her and for a quick second, Keira feels her teenage self return. His fingers are hot on her bicep, licking heat, anger, passion, through her limbs and Keira fears the sensation, hates that she loves it so much, that she’s missed it more than she wants to admit. 

Just like that, she’s ready to react, to fight and it takes all the strength she has to repress that inclination. “Don’t…”And at her small warning, Kona jerks back, hands up as though she burned him. “You see what I mean? Three weeks and we’re flirting with past behavior.”

“I’m sorry.”

Keira thinks that he might be telling the truth. He fans his fingers through his hair, eyes rounded as though he can’t believe how he’d reacted. “Please,” Kona says, taking a tentative step forward, voice easy, calm. “Don’t leave.”

She doesn’t want to see that expression on his face; the one that tells her he’s different, that his overwhelming presence is no longer dangerous. He fooled her once. He won’t get a second chance. A quick shake of her head and Keira turns away from him, tries to focuses on a plane above shooting away from the city, wishing she was on it.

Kona’s breath warms her neck and Keira cringes at how much she’s missed this—him, her, the heat, the passion, and it is like refusing the best high she’s ever had. “If I don’t walk away right now, I’m going to kiss you again,” she whispers.

“I want your kisses. All of them.” Kona’s low voice is heady, firm and Keira has to tighten her eyes closed when his fingertip slides down her spine, between her thick curls.

“I can’t. We… no, we can’t.”

“You’re scared,” he says, mouth hot against her neck.

“I’m petrified.” Despite herself, Keira leans back, lets Kona wrap his hands around her waist. “I buried this shit. I left and didn’t want to look back. Your… memory, your touch… your… tattoo, I got rid of it all.”

Kona sighs, his grip on her waist tightens, but when he speaks, his voice is low, even. “I would never hurt you. You know I’d never touch you, not like that.”

No, he never had. Not once. She’d slapped him and punched him because she was angry, because they were twisted, because they both got off on it. But Kona had never returned the favor. His wounds ran deeper, cut wider.

“You’re no good for me. You were never good for me.” Keira turns, takes a step back so she can look at his face, so she can see how determined he is to change her mind. “I was a crazy person with you. Obsessed. I can’t relive the past.”

“I’m not the same person.” Kona pulls her forward, gripping her waist in his too large hands until their bodies are flush, until Keira can feel the hard, delicious planes of his chest and the corded muscles underneath his pants. She knows he won’t hurt her. She also knows he won’t let her go.

Kona takes her face again, moving her chin so she’s forced to look at him. “You’re not the same, Wildcat and that was a long time ago.”

And then Keira lets that girl sneak to the surface. She lets her take Kona’s mouth, pull his shirt so that her tongue licks against a wide expanse of tempting, copper skin. She lets that girl enjoy Kona’s mouth, his hands, the way he feels hard, demanding against her, until the night darkens, deepens and her rejection, though halfhearted, comes again.

Kona stops pushing, stops demanding and before he leaves Keira out on that balcony, he reminds her why she’d loved him in the first place. He reminds her why she should love him again.

“I only know one thing—no one sets my skin on fire like you do. No one. Not one person has ever made me feel like I’m alive like you. That hasn’t changed, not in sixteen years. Don’t try to pretend it isn’t the same for you.”

He is nervous about Keira seeing his home. It is a large, white Greek Revival, gated with a tall, ornate wrought iron fence and a row of massive oak trees that hide the front of the house from the street. The place is too big for him. Kona only bought it to avoid the memories of his brother, his grandfather, that came to him every time he stepped foot in his mother’s home when he visited.

Keira walks around his living room, eyes wide, taking in the lavish décor that Kona had paid a decorator he’d never met to set up. There are no pictures of his family or friends in the home, but his mother had placed several green plants and bouquets of fresh flowers there when he first returned to the city.

Ransom follows Kona into the large kitchen, his arms full of their Italian take out and the boy places the dishes on the dine-in table set in the breakfast nook that led into a screened-in porch. His son is already at home here, already familiar with the layout, where Kona stores his plates and glasses, and the thought makes him smile, makes him happy. The mess his son has left in his kitchen the past two days, though, does not.

“Mom, do you want to eat now?” he calls to his mother and Keira nods, joins them at the kitchen island, taking in the tall white cabinets and stainless steel appliances.