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- EXCERPT FROM IT'S NOT JUST SEMANTICS -
“We’re going to talk. About time, too.”
“We could have talked on the island. You didn’t have to whisk me away. Tom will be worried.”
He sighed, weary and frustrated. “Alex, this is really getting to be tiring. Why don’t you just tell me the story of who broke your heart in the past, responsible for making you cynical, instead of hiding behind a fake boyfriend?”
Her back became more rigid. "No one broke my heart. And Tom is not a fake boyfriend.”
"Alex.” He faced her and gently removed her sunglasses. “For once, couldn’t you be true to yourself? Be honest about what you want? Who you want?” He touched her bottom lip with his thumb.
She swatted his hand away. "Mr. Alvez. I don't succumb to fleeting flesh calls."
"Fleeting?” His brow curled. Where did this girl get such out-of-this-world terms? “Maybe. But pleasurable. Extremely pleasurable, I assure you."
"And then what? Regret everything afterward?"
"There you go again. Being judgmental and overthinking," he grimaced.
"But that is the purpose of having a brain, Mr. Alvez. To weigh things rationally, not to merely surrender to the dictates of a raging libido or overactive hormones. When I give myself to a man—and it’s definitely not to you—it's because of love. There is honor in making love than just having sex."
Rome abruptly released his hold on her. He gripped hard at the side of the boat and stared at the deep blue waters below. She couldn't have said it any clearer. She may be attracted to him physically, but she won’t ever let herself fall for him. Her heart will never belong to him.
Why did that thought hurt so much? Why did he feel like a scalpel has been plunged deep into his chest? For the very first time in Rome Alvez's life, he found it hard to breathe. It was very much like having a heart attack.
Alex was still speaking, unaware of the turmoil happening inside him, and he struggled to concentrate on what she was saying. He wished he hadn’t. Her next words served to rip his heart further apart.
“And you know what? I think your playboy lifestyle just goes to show you’re the coward, Mr. Alvez.”
With sheer force, and because it had become a saving habit for him, he detached himself from the waves of emotions that were coming so close to overpowering him, crushing it down hard with his customary sneer.
"Careful, Miss Hernandez. You're bordering on imitation. You're not being original at all."
She paid no mind to his scathing remark. "You turned your back on your sworn profession because you couldn’t accept your failure. You race at top speed because you’re running away from everything you’ve worked hard for.”
Rome's face turned stone cold on the outside. Inwardly, he was desperately striving to quash the violent amalgam of emotions threatening to consume him. His chest rose and fell as he struggled to get a hold of himself.
"Are you by any chance, now practicing your own sworn profession, Miss Hernandez?"
She went on as if she didn’t hear him. “And you seek for Ava every time you indulge in relentless sex and senseless lust. But inside, you're lonely and you’re hurting because no one can ever replace her. So you cloak it with indifference, bury it under the pretense of coldness. You blindly jump from one woman to another. But not one has barely scratched the surface of your heart because no one can satisfy you."
He sneered. "You’re wrong there. You presume too much. And you're also wrong about not being satisfied. I am always physically satisfied. Which, by the way, is what you are missing," he snapped.
Alex snapped back at him. "And which is totally shallow. A truly satisfying physical intimacy nurtures a deep, solid relationship between two people, built on mutual trust and respect that lasts forever. That's what I want, Mr. Alvez."
He turned to her then, with face harshly set, a smirk on his lips. "Really? Is that the way you and Tom feel about each other? Mutual trust and respect with a satisfying physical intimacy?"
"Of course," she hastily replied with a frown.
Rome smiled humorlessly. "You're lying again."
Her nostrils flared. "Mr. Alvez…”
"I can read you like a book, Miss Hernandez. Whatever your relationship is with him, I don't think you and Tom share a deep mutual trust and respect. And speaking of intimacy, does he satisfy you physically?"
"Mr. Alvez!" she retorted indignantly, her cheeks firing up.
"Don't bother to answer," Rome barked at her. He dragged his hand through his hair, his mouth tight, his expression pained. Then, throwing caution to the wind, he reached out for her, and kissed her.
Fire flared and spread instantly, racing wildly inside him. For a second, panic gripped him as the unfamiliar and frightening passion blazed through him. Unfamiliar because he had never felt this kind of heat before. Frightening because as someone known to have full control of his emotions, this was one instance he felt his restraint was dangerously slipping. But the panic was quickly replaced by the incapacitating surge of desire which he didn’t have the strength to deny to himself.
Her lips were heaven and honey rolled into one. Since they first kissed, he had been completely, utterly enslaved by the enchantment that was her velvety, nectarine pair of lips. Kissing her was what his entire being hankered for every night. What he was waiting for, eager for, every day, all his life. And so, like the last kiss, he poured out his heart, his mind, and everything that he is, in it—conveying all of them. All of himself. It was a kiss at once urgent and pleading, begging to be reciprocated.
His reward came when her mouth blossomed like a flower, welcoming him, permitting him access. With a groan, he devoured it with his tongue—urgent, hungry, thirsty, all at the same time—feeling a great sense of joy and exhilaration when he heard her moan softly. Their mouths and tongues danced the sensual tango, perfectly attuned and synchronized, untiring and unrelenting.
The kiss grew deeper and deeper, and Rome could feel himself drowning in its quicksand depths, wanting more, needing more. The old Rome would have no qualms taking the kiss further. But a strong, inner voice spoke to him in hushed tones, of which authority he couldn't, wouldn’t disobey.
“She’s not most girls you know.”
He needed to tread carefully, slowly, patiently. He didn’t want to scare her off. There was too much at stake. He knew what he must do in the following days.
He was now a man on a mission.
Reluctantly, he ended the kiss. With a gentle smile, he whispered, as he placed a chaste kiss on her creased forehead, "At least we already have a satisfying physical intimacy. That leaves us with only the mutual trust and respect to work on…my sweet, beautiful coward."
* * *
W-what was that?" Alex sputtered. Her mind was in jumbles. It didn’t help that her tongue also refused to cooperate. She can’t remember when she’d been this unnerved and disconcerted. This wasn’t her at all!
"That…," Rome grinned as he lightly tapped her nose with his forefinger, "was a proper French kiss. Your very first, I believe."
"That's not what I meant!" she protested emphatically, slapping his finger away.
Still grinning, he continued in a placating tone, "Okay. What exactly were you asking about? The part where I said, 'we already have a satisfying physical intimacy,' or the 'working on mutual trust and respect' part?"
"Mr. Alvez." She let out an exasperated sigh. "We don't have anything. Nothing at all." Her lips quivered at the memory of his kiss as she blurted out the words, deriding her.
He sat back on the seat and shrugged. "Okay. If that's how you want it."
"And I have a…”
"Yeah, yeah. You have a boyfriend." He bobbed his head blithely.
"Mr. Alvez! This is not a joke. What we did…" then, correcting herself swiftly, "what you did was unfair to Tom!"
"If that's what's bothering you, I won't tell him a word, I promise. It's our own little secret," he solemnly stated with a straight face, before adding, holding up his right palm, "I swear, in the name of his briefcase, I won't tell him a thing."
Despite herself, Alex's mouth twitched. She tried to hold back the smile which perched at the edges of her lips, but when she looked up to see Rome grinning from ear to ear, his eyes joyfully twinkling, she wasn’t able to control it anymore. Biting her lip, she grinned too, remembering Tom's briefcase which he never lets out of his sight.
"I see you hate his briefcase too," Rome chuckled.
"It's not that I hate it," she disagreed, feeling disloyal to Tom. "And you're dodging the topic."
"Which is?"
"The…," What was the topic? she asked herself. Even she felt lost, confused on what was actually being talked about. Irritatingly, she retorted, "You know what it is!"
"The French kiss? If you're asking me how it was, I think it was awesome. Certainly, I would like to do it again. I bet you do, too."
She breathed deeply. "Mr. Alvez."
"Yes?"
"Don't think for a minute that because you successfully carried out your threat of kissing me into oblivion…”
"I did, didn't I?" His grin widened even more.
Alex sucked in her breath. She couldn't believe she actually said those words. Quickly, she turned away from him, focusing on the azure ocean, thinking of what to say next that won’t put her in a compromising situation again.
"Of course, I still haven't heard you utter my name in a breathless whisper," she heard him murmur in her ear. "I have to work on that."
She refused to turn her face to him, knowing he was still too close their lips might touch again, and because her cheeks were burning up with an odd mixture of shame, guilt, and…she hated to admit it, anticipation.
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