“If you knew me better, you’d know that I would never be capable of pulling off any kind of scheme, elaborate or otherwise.”
Olivia seemed to like that answer because she slid off of the stool and took a moment to straighten the tight black dress that she was wearing. It was simple, but it still had me inhaling sharply at the clear sight of her figure. She was narrow, but had nice hips—curves that I could put my hands on. Briefly, I toyed with the idea of touching a woman this beautiful. It seemed about as realistic and reasonable as me ever getting my bare hands on the Venus de Milo.
Without a word, she reached for my hand and began to lead the way to the staircase on the other side of the dancefloor. By some magical power of her beauty, it was like the seas parted and the gyrating dancers made space for us to pass through until we were eventually ascending the staircase up to the second floor.
A bouncer pulled back the velvet rope for us, and there on the landing I was greeted by the unprecedented spectacle of Gray, Kieran, Walsh, and Peter all staring at me with dumfounded expressions on their faces. I didn’t blame them. Deep down, I was making the same face.
As expected, as soon as we sat down on one of the couches, all four of them immediately dialed their different versions of charm to full-blast. Gray was confident and composed, all urbane seduction as usual. My brother was dickish, ever the handsome asshole. Walsh was charismatic, hanging on her every word like a politician. And Peter…well, Peter was just high, actually.
I sat quietly to Olivia’s side, watching as she responded frankly to their comments. She didn’t return their flirtatious volleys or their obvious attempts to impress her. On the contrary, she periodically turned to face me and asked me questions. How was Rome? Am I traveling anywhere else after Amsterdam? Did I speak any other languages?
Fifteen minutes in, Walsh tapped out. I could see it clearly. He reclined back in his seat, aware that if he wanted to avoid going home alone, he needed to pursue elsewhere. Gray followed shortly thereafter when his attention shifted to a pretty brunette that clearlyreminded him of Corinne Tyler (a woman we had known since grade school who Gray pretended to hate, but would buy Mount Everest and relocate it if she asked). And finally, Kieran gave up about twenty-five minutes in, around the time that Olivia turned and asked me if I had been to the Van Gogh Museum yet. Peter was still high.
That left the two of us sitting close and speaking on one end of the couch, a cocktail in her hand and a beer in mine as we grew progressively tipsier. Tipsy enough that when she scooted closer to me—so close that the entirety of her thigh was pressed against mine—I didn’t feel an innate urge to apologize and move away.
Somehow, my arm found its way around her shoulders. At first, it rested on the back of the sofa, balanced carefully on the upholstered leather. Eventually, it traveled down to lay along her upper back. There it danced the fine line between incidental and intentional touching until my hand landed on her bare shoulder. I kept it there, ignoring the waves of tingling sensation that arose from my pitiful lack of experience with things like this.
The contact was electric—foreign and natural all at once. My heartbeat was sounding in my ears, drowning out the synth bass lines of the music and syncing up with the flashing lights that doused the crowd below. All the while, I waited for the other shoe to drop, for her to burst out laughing again when she finally revealed that this had been a big joke all along.
But it didn’t come.
When she leaned in to make herself heard while she told me about her off-campus job as a barista, I was tipsy enough that I didn’t pull back. I let our faces linger a couple inches apart, so close that I could feel the warmth when she exhaled.
When her hand rested on my thigh again, I was tipsy enough to place my hand on top of hers. Another point of contact. Another point of electricity.
And when she gave me a bullshit story about wanting to get up and stand on the far side of the balcony so that she could watch the bartender make drinks from up above, I was tipsy enough to follow her without realizing that in a matter of five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One…
…she would kiss me.
My back was against a brick wall and Olivia was pressed against me, standing on her toes even in heels to let her lips touch mine. Her kiss wasn’t soft and seeking, but deliberate and certain. She wanted to kiss me—she had wanted to kiss me for a lot longer than I probably realized, but I was too dense to get the picture. It didn’t matter. Now, her tongue parted my lips and drew me into her sweet taste. Mint. Vodka. Lipstick. A flavor unique to Olivia that I couldn’t resist.
I placed both of my hands on her waist and the ends of her long hair tickled the tops of my thumbs. At the same time, she raised her hands to the back of my neck and tugged me lower, eager to deepen our kiss. I let her, losing myself to the scent and the feel and the taste of her. The swell of her body as she pressed against me, front to front. So much contact. So much fucking contact. Kissing had never been quite like this. A little dark. A little needy. Bordering at the precipice of frantic—like both of us wanted to let our inhibitions go, but weren’t sure if the other would be game.
I would be so game. I wished I could tell her that, but instead all I could do was lower my hands to her hips—those hips that I had eyed down on the nightclub’s dancefloor and marveled at like they were priceless works of art. I had her permission, no I had her insistence, that I touch those curves.
My hands curled tighter around her, drawing her closer to me so that her breasts heaved against my body. A moan escaped her, barely audible over the thumping bass reverberating through the club. That moan shot straight from my ears to the far recesses of my limbs, making me want to pull her even closer. Not possible, I knew, but fuck it, I wanted to try. I shifted my grip, moving my hands from her hips to the upper curve of her ass.
And then her hands were roaming as well, tracing flat along my chest over my t-shirt and down to my stomach. She was caressing me more daringly than anyone had ever caressed me before. When her fingertips grazed my sides—sides where she probably expected to find firm, well-tailored muscles—I hesitated. Was she just now realizing that I had never quite hardened like my friends had? That I hadn’t played lacrosse or done crew or any of the other bullshit rich kid sports that they liked?
To my surprise, she didn’t falter. Her grip on my sides tightened, squeezing my flesh proprietarily as she pressed her body even tighter against mine, making at least one part of me harder.
Was this allowed in public?
No clue. I had no idea. I didn’t have much time to think about it either, because she finally shifted her lips away from mine, raised them to my ear and whispered, “Should we get out of here?”
My own lips tingled as I stumbled to find a response. At the same time, I looked past her and saw my brother, Walsh, and the two Davenport brothers gawking at Olivia and me, their expressions varying across the spectrum of ‘completely shocked’ to ‘mildly amused.’ Predictable. I had known Walsh since freshman year of college and the other three guys since infancy. Never once, in the many years we had been around each other, had I ever made out with a woman in public.
“Maybe another time,” I heard myself saying, delivering the words before their meaning hit me. Was I out of my goddamn mind? There might not be another time. Hell, was this me blowing my one shot to finally—
“Sure,” she replied without a hint of indignation. No resentment, no games. She simply accepted my rejection without an iota of disappointment—the exact opposite of what my entitled, douchebag friends had done to her.
“It’s okay? Because I don’t want you to think that I’m not interested. I am. I’m just…”
Anxious. Deeply suspicious that a woman who looks like you would bother talking to me.
A virgin. A twenty-two-year-old virgin.
“I get it,” she reasoned—not realizing that whatever she was assuming was far more palatable than the truth. “You’re in Amsterdam with your friends. You came here to go out and…I don’t know what guys your age with too much money do. Light champagne bottles on fire? Talk about your all-time favorite Ponzi schemes?”
“Something like that.”