A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (86)
Her eyes met his, sparkling and utterly unguarded. “Other than this one?”
Ezra’s gaze somehow both softened and caught fire. Drinking her in, he rested his large palm on her cheek, lightly running his thumb along her bottom lip. A languid wave of heat rippled through her. Ricki’s tongue lightly touched his thumb, and his expression flared into something primal.
As if burned, Ezra snatched his hand back.
“Sex break,” he groaned, adjusting the massive bulge in his boxer briefs. “Jesus Christ. You’re gonna kill me.”
“Sex break, right.” She sat up next to him and pressed her thighs together. Suddenly hyperaware of her toplessness, she grabbed Ezra’s discarded T-shirt and slipped it on.
“My favorite moment,” she murmured, thinking. “It was my sophomore year in college, back in 2014. I was studying abroad for a semester in Seville. I don’t know how I got my dad to agree to it. I think he thought if he said yes to this one quote-unquote wild idea, I’d buckle down once I graduated. Anyway, I’d never been off on my own. One night, I went out to this nightclub, Club Catedral. It was smoky, loud, sexy. I’m sitting at the bar, nursing a sangria, all by myself. I couldn’t speak conversational Spanish yet, so there was no pressure to socialize. So I just watched. And I experienced all this life, this fucking gaiety, without the pressure to jump in. And I’d never felt so free. And it occurred to me then that no one back home knew where I was.
“I stayed till closing, around five a.m. As I’m walking home along these narrow, winding thousand-year-old cobblestone roads, I was hit with the most intoxicating scent. I followed it, till I found this tiny, hidden square surrounded by these fragrant bushes.” Ricki glanced at Ezra.
“Night-blooming jasmine?” His face lit up with delight.
Ricki grinned. “I’d never seen them in real life. Just in botanical photographs in coffee-table books at our local library. Growing up, I was obsessed with the idea of this unsuspecting bush unleashing all this secret beauty only at night… but meanwhile, no one who saw it during the day could fathom its power. Quite the metaphor for hidden potential,” she noted. “I fell asleep in the grass.”
“Sounds euphoric,” he said, bewitched.
“It was. Till I was awoken by the Policía Nacional. They charged me with drunken vagrancy and dragged me to the station. I was sent home from the program,” she said with a rueful chuckle. “The Seville thing became my parents’ favorite piece of evidence proving that I was an unfit human. But I didn’t feel ashamed, or even sorry. I felt alive. And ever since, I’ve held on to that memory of freedom, waiting for the day I’d feel it again. The ironic thing is, I feel it now. Despite what’s waiting for us.”
“I feel it, too,” he said quietly.
He didn’t tell her what he wanted to say, which was This is all my fault; I ruined you. How in the everlasting fuck do I live without you? More of me belongs to you than doesn’t…
But Ezra didn’t go there, because they’d agreed they couldn’t. So he kept asking her interview questions—favorite movie, favorite place, worst thing she’d ever done, best meal she’d ever had—because Ricki was the most entertaining person he’d ever known, and he had the best seat in the house. And it drowned out their existential terror.
She told him all the stories she could think of until she got drowsy and drifted off into hazy midmorning sleep. Ezra was wide awake. Ricki didn’t know it, but he’d barely slept in days. He couldn’t, because he was keeping watch. He kept his eyes on her whenever she slept. He searched for anything out of the ordinary—her breath slowing down or her heart beating erratically. How could he find rest while she was in peril?
Ricki was curled into him, holding his hand tucked under her chin. The world around them fell still; his fingers twirled into her lush cloud of coils as his mind drifted in and out of a zillion pointless rescue scenarios.
Ezra studied her sleeping face. Her breathing had started to speed up. Her brow furrowed, but her face looked relaxed. He heard her emit a soft, melodious sound. Was she humming? She sighed contentedly. Let out a soft whimper. And started humming again. Then he recognized it.
It was their song. Her song. The one he’d been writing for her forever.
Lost in some dream, she rolled onto her back. She whimpered again and then gasped, her back arching. Her nipples rose to points under the flimsy fabric of her T-shirt. Ezra drank her in, mesmerized and instantly, inconveniently hard.
Brow tensed, her tongue darted over her lips and she moaned a little. She hummed again, her hands running down the front of her body and between her thighs. Biting her bottom lip, she grinded against them, breathing out a shaky “Fuu-uck me.”
Ezra was helpless to do anything but watch, his eyes wide. Dick throbbing. Mouth dry. Hands itching to manhandle her in several unlawful ways.
But then her eyes flew open. In a split second, she realized what was happening, and she clapped her palm over her mouth.
“Wait. Noooo!” She wail-laughed, hiding her face in her hands. “Oh my God… tell me you weren’t watching…”
“That good?” He smirked, loving this.
“I feel so exposed!” She dropped her hands and peered at him, her cheeks sleep-creased and flushed. “Ugh, what did I say? Did I look crazy?”