“Seriously,” I continued, grilling him for an answer. “I had no idea you spoke a word of Spanish. You never told me you were so good at it.” I watched his eyes sparkle at the compliment. I liked putting that there. Just as much as I liked making him smile. “To think that you might have understood all the names I called you.”
He sighed, his cheeks turning a little pink. “I really didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said everything had to go absolutely perfect.”
I searched his face for the meaning behind that. “So, you just … what? Started a crash course before flying here?”
It had been a joke, but Aaron shrugged his shoulders.
Understanding sank in slowly. “Oh my God, you did,” I said under my breath. For me. He did that for me.
“It’s not like I had never learned Spanish before. I did, in school.” He reached for my hair again, playing absently with a strand, curling it around his index finger. “And now, there’s an app for anything. I learned enough to make a good impression. I still have a long way to go.”
Something must have been plastered all over my face—something I hoped wasn’t the adoration I felt for him in that precise moment—because Aaron’s eyes seemed oddly interested in studying me.
Then, he brought me even closer to his chest, tucked me securely against him, and placed a kiss on my shoulder. I melted into that brush of his lips like butter left under the sun.
“I bet I’m still missing all the interesting vocabulary,” he added, sounding thoughtful. He brushed another kiss on my shoulder. “The best words.”
“Oh.” My lips curled up, interested in the direction the conversation was taking. “You want me to teach you all the dirty words?”
I looked up at him and wiggled my eyebrows. Aaron gave me a lopsided smile that would have made my panties drop to the floor had they been resting on my hips.
“Well, you are in luck; I’m a wonderful teacher.”
“And I’m a highly dedicated student.” He winked. And that goddamn wink disrupted the beating of my heart. “Although I might get a little distracted every now and then.”
“I see.” I placed my index finger against his chest, watching Aaron’s eyes dive down quickly before returning to my face. “Maybe you need the right kind of motivation to keep your attention on the subject.”
I trailed that finger up, traveling across his pec and then up his neck, following the line of his jaw until reaching his lips. They parted with a shallow breath.
“This …” I pushed myself up and kissed his lips gently. “This is a six-letter word in Spanish. Labios. Tus labios. Your lips.”
The only answer he gave me was taking my mouth in his again. As if the only way he’d learn the word was tasting it.
“And this,” I said before parting his lips and making the kiss deeper, our tongues dancing together, “is another six-letter word. Lengua—tongue.”
“I think I really like that one.” Aaron’s head dipped low, his new favorite word reaching my breast. “And this? What do you call this?” he said, grazing his mouth over the peak.
A giggle that soon turned into a moan left my mouth before I was able to answer. “That’s a five-letter word. Pezón. Nipple.”
Aaron hummed while his lips traveled up my chest, placing soft kisses on his way.
“So, we have worked on six- and five-letter words.” He placed more of those pecks on my skin. “Just for the sake of sticking to your method, we should go over four-letter words. Would you teach me one?” Aaron’s wish fell against my skin.
A four-letter word. It shouldn’t have been complicated. There were probably thousands of four-letter words in my mother tongue. But my mind was a treacherous thing, and it betrayed me. Often. And the only word I could think of was a very particular one. One that, despite not being too long, was powerful enough to change things. To change people’s lives. To move mountains and start wars.
It was a big word that I had promised myself I wouldn’t give anybody without being sure I meant it with every single molecule in my body. Without being sure I was safe.
My silence seemed to give Aaron the perfect opportunity to keep exploring my skin. His mouth causing my heart to pound against my chest.
“I don’t know,” I murmured distractedly. Scared and turned on too.
More kisses were brushed against my skin, making me fight to catch my breath.
“It’s okay,” he said like he really meant it. “We can break the rules. That’s the magic in being us, the ones making them.”
He took my mouth keenly, getting me out of my head for a blissful moment. And when we came up for air, his head dipped one more time, placing an openmouthed kiss above my heart. “Corazón,” he said softly, so softly that the word seeped into my blood, mixing with my own so it would never be able to leave. “Heart. That’s your heart. Seven letters.”
Looking into his eyes for a long moment, I swore I could see in them everything he wasn’t voicing. I’ll make it mine. And everything I wasn’t brave enough to say. Take it.
When Aaron finally spoke, it sounded like a promise. “I’ll earn my four-letter word.”
And there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would. But at what cost?
Chapter Twenty-Four
The experience of waking up next to Aaron that following morning had absolutely nothing to do with the two other times I had opened my eyes to find him lying in the same bed.
For one, we were naked. Something I thought I could quickly get used to. Effortlessly.
Then, there was this teeny-tiny thing that separated this morning from the previous ones. A technicality really. And that was the beaming grin already on my face. It was stupidly wide, and I was afraid I might have slept with it. Ridiculous, I knew. But who had the time to be embarrassed when Aaron Blackford was right there, all big and naked and ready to be eaten?
Not me.
And not when something definitely not tiny was throbbing against my thigh.
Aaron grunted, shifting and pushing that pulsating part of his body into me.
Ah, hello, new favorite limb.
“Morning,” he rasped. His voice was thick with sleep, begging me to snuggle into him.
“Mmm,” I managed to answer.
It was terribly rude of me, but I was busy with more important stuff. Like learning every inch of his chest with my hands. Or the abs that topped his stomach. And that narrow trail of dark hair. Yes, I needed to get well acquainted with that too.
“Your parents are picking us up soon,” he told me almost breathlessly.
“Yep.” I was aware. “But one hour is sixty minutes, and if we manage to pack our suitcases in five and shower in … three? That leaves us with fifty-two whole minutes.” Time I was planning to spend learning more of Aaron’s body. “One can do many things with so many minutes. It’s all about time management.”
My fingers continued their pathway down, down, down. Finally closing around his length. Aaron pushed his hips up into my palm.
“Baby.” The word sounded strangled. But I continued palming his hardness up and down. “Do you want to kill me?”
He kept asking me that as if I had the answer.
“No?” I rasped, my focus completely gone. “Yes?”
His hips thrust into my hand again.
“What was the question?”
Aaron groaned, and his hand came to rest on the small of my back, pulling me to his side—hard—making me straddle his hip. Unconsciously, instinctively, I rocked against him, looking for release. Just like Aaron was doing into my hand.
At that moment, I was starting to consider the possibility of forgetting about my suitcase, my parents, our flights back, work, life, and basically anything outside this bed. Anything that wasn’t Aaron. I simply didn’t care enough.
And the next thing I knew, we were up in the air. Well, I was.
With my body in his arms, Aaron crossed the distance to the en suite bathroom in a few long strides. He turned the shower on without placing me on the floor.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but fifty-two minutes is not nearly enough time for what I want to do to you. So, we’ll need to multitask,” he explained, placing me under the stream of hot water. His eyes roamed up and down my body, hunger obscuring the blue in them.
“Time management and multitasking,” I told him, watching him step inside the shower with me. “You have an impressive résumé, Mr. Blackford.”