Page 23 of A Love Most Fatal
“Isn’t that just tennis?”
“No, no, Vanessa. Tennis is tennis. Pickleball is kind of like tennis, but smaller. More like ping pong.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she says.
“You must not spend much time with middle-aged people.”
This earns me a laugh, and I revel in the sound like it’s a heated blanket.
We are just about to my building, and I slow my steps further until we’ve stopped walking. I’m still holding her hand as we stand under the lamp post bathing us in yellow light.
“I’ve had a really nice time tonight,” Vanessa says. “I don’t get to do this very often.”
“Me too.”
I’m bad at stuff like this, holding hands in quiet moments on the precipice to another moment. I never know how to gracefully tip from one into the next.
She makes it easy.
“Nate?”
“Hm?”
“You can kiss me,” she says, and I don’t waste any time.
I let one hand slip around the back of her neck as my mouth descends on hers, her lips warm and pliant against mine. I deepen the kiss when one of her hands snakes around my waist and sigh into her open mouth.
Her tongue tastes like sugar and strawberries, and it dances with mine. I’m backing her up into the alley between my building and the next one for some semblance of privacy, and she moves willingly, her tongue still enthusiastically traveling around my mouth, pressing against my teeth, making me let out these involuntary moans. I press her against the brick wall while bringing our bodies flush together, one of my thighs pressing between her legs.
She sucks my tongue into her mouth which makes me lose my mind.
I’m barely thinking, just feeling her hands so eager traveling over my torso and into my hair as I draw her closer and pour myself into her mouth. I want to consume her and be consumed; I am lightheaded from this kiss and her soft hands.
I recognize that we could be inside my apartment within two minutes, less if we hustled up the stairs, but I can’t even consider the idea of stopping this, not when she’s grinding against my thigh and pressing her tits into my chest, not when she’s biting my lip and huffing little breaths in my ear as I trail a mess of kisses up her throat.
My hand is traveling up her side and skating across her bare back beneath my jacket when she goes still. I follow suit and look at her questioning.
Did I go too far? Was I too much?
“Are—”
“Sh,” she puts her finger to my lips and is looking just behind me like she’s listening for something.
The only thing I hear is my heart still beating in my ears and my neighbor’s reggae playing through his window upstairs. A carrolls past, and I’m pretty sure they can’t see us shrouded in the dark, but I still shift to cover her body more.
Vanessa lets out a breath and relaxes her shoulders, and I think whatever gave her pause has passed, but then I hear it too. The footsteps from the street behind us are so quick, I don’t even have time to untangle myself from Vanessa before palms are landing on my shoulders and yanking me away from her.
I am on the ground, the breath knocked from my lungs in the space of a breath. Another man has sprung for Vanessa, but she jumps from his reach. I want to move, to help defend her, but a boot lands on my chest and presses down before I can.
“I’ll shoot him,” the man above me says, and Vanessa halts. The other man still approaches her.
There’s a gun pointed toward my face, and I cough, trying to sputter some sort of surrender. I have two credit cards with decent, but not great, credit limits, but I’ll give them whatever they want.
I put my hands up by either side of my head; Vanessa does too. The other man stalks towards her, and I see that he’s got a gun pointed at her.
“Come on, we can work something out,” I rush to say, and his foot presses harder on me. I am about to yell watching the other man reach to grab Vanessa when she moves faster than lightning.
Many things happen at once.