Page 50 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Feyi’s pulse skipped. “You sure?”
Alim smiled down at her, looking a thousand times calmer than she felt. “Feyi, with the things I want to do with you, it really doesn’t matter where we are in the house.”
“You do have a little hang-up about the kitchen,” she teased, trying to mask how nervous she was.
“Knife play is only allowed in controlled situations. That was not one of them.”
Feyi smothered a smile at that, hiding her face in his shoulder. He smelled so good with his skin bare and warm against her. If she could’ve talked to Joy, if Alim was any other guy, she’d be blowing up her friend’s phone from the bathroom with text messages—Bitch, he’s kinky! And Joy would shriek because, honestly, jackpot.
Alim kicked open the door to his bedroom and strode across a rug, depositing Feyi on the massive bed in the center of the floor. Feyi laughed as she hit the duvet, drowning in a cloud of white, then emerged to look around the room. She’d been wondering what his space would be like since she got there.
It was stark and soft at the same time—monochrome bedding, a large television spilling black glass across a wall, metal sculptures. The far wall was entirely glass looking out into the mountain, nothing but trees and jungle stretching to the horizon. It was—like most views in his house—magnificent, and Feyi swung her legs out of the bed to go take a closer look, crossing the cool floor and pressing her hand against the glass. “This is gorgeous,” she said, glancing back at Alim.
He was looking at her with an odd expression on his face, still shirtless, his arms corded, his torso carved.
“What?” she asked. “You’re staring.”
Alim ducked his head and cleared his throat. “I’m just—I was just having a moment.”
He walked over to her and slid his arms around her waist. Feyi hugged him back, marveling that she could hold him, that she was holding him.
“You don’t know how many times I lay in that bed,” he said, his voice muffled by her braids, “wondering what you would look like standing right where you’re standing.”
Feyi turned her face into his neck and inhaled, citrus and earth and him.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, and something chipped off his voice on the last word, a fragment breaking apart.
Feyi squeezed her arms tighter around him, blinking back unexpected tears. She knew exactly what he meant. Here as in his arms, his room, with him, without the careful distance they’d been trying to build since that first night they’d been alone in the garden. He sounded like she felt, so full of wonder that it hurt a little.
When he pulled away, he wouldn’t look at her for a moment. “Maybe we should talk now.”
Feyi didn’t know what to do with her hands once they were separate from him. She shoved one into the pocket of her romper and tried not to stare at his back or imagine her teeth in his shoulder. Before she had time to worry about if he was pulling away, Alim turned back to her and took her free hand, tugging her down to sit with him on the bed.
“So,” he said. “That just happened.”
A laugh leaked out of her, even though she was starting to panic a little. They weren’t supposed to be talking or thinking. This was entirely too dangerous.
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing her palm. His mouth on her scar sent a wave of anxiety through her, like a ghost of Nasir had just passed through the room. “You’ve done nothing wrong. Besides, I kissed you first.”
This was coming down to earth too fast, starting to smell like regrets and mistakes. “Do you wish you hadn’t?”
“Hmm.” Alim stroked a thumb over the inside of her wrist and smiled at Feyi, his eyes wrinkling. “I don’t know if I should have, but at the same time, a part of me wishes I had done it sooner.” Her pulse stumbled at that. “The morning we watched the sunrise, maybe,” he continued.
“Did you want to then?” It was hard to imagine that he’d been thinking about the same things she had, that they’d walked side by side with silent mirrored wants drumming inside them.
“Very badly,” Alim replied, his voice soft. “You were so beautiful in that light, and when you held me, I thought I was going to break.”
“You pulled away.” She couldn’t help reminding him. Even the memory of it still stung.
His smile twisted. “Sweetness, I couldn’t—I’d been trying so hard. I don’t want to hurt Na—”
Feyi covered Alim’s mouth with her hand before he could finish the sentence. “Not yet,” she whispered, feeling like she might cry. It was too soon to break this dream apart. “Just a few minutes more.”
She’d never gotten to see his face this close, to look as openly as she wanted, for as long as she liked. She could reach up and touch the salt-and-pepper stubble along his jaw, calling back how it had felt scraping along her throat, and so she did, running her hand along his face. If it was just the two of them, then nothing and no one else had to be real, had to interfere.
“Careful,” Alim warned, his eyes smoky. “We’re not going to get around to talking if you keep looking at me like that.”