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“My parents have no idea I’ve figured out the code, and they’ll never know. I want you to see it. It’ll be fun. I promise.”
“You know how much trouble you’re going to get into if we’re caught, don’t you? And me with you.”
I open the door, reach inside, and flip on the light before winking at her. “We’ll only sample a little.”
“You’re always asking for trouble, Damion,” she chides, but she’s laughing as we head down the stairs. “One day, you’re going to find it,” she adds from behind me.
I glance over my shoulder at her and say, “I found trouble in a closet with you, remember?”
She laughs and says, “Unfair reply.”
At the bottom of the stairs, we’re in the only area of the “vault,” as my father calls it, that isn’t locked up behind heavy glass doors. Rows of wine and walls of stone surround a small round table where we can sit and sample. Alana is instantly scanning the room with wide-eyed wonder. “This place is magnificent. One day, I want a room like this.”
I set two wine glasses on the table, followed by two bottles of wine, and motion for her to sit. “If you want a room like this, you need to understand and enjoy wine.”
“Why?” She laughs and sits down across from me. “Can’t I just look at it? It’s all so pretty.”
I shake my head. “Pretty? Really? That’s why you want a room like this?”
“I’m not old enough to know if I like wine yet.”
“Yes, you are,” I assure her, opening the corked bottle in front of me—a sampler I tried two nights ago with my father. “This is a pinot.” I fill both of our glasses with a double slosh. “You’re supposed to breathe it in and then taste it. You can smell the different components of the wine.
“I won’t ask how you know all of this. I know. Your family is so very cultured, and mine is not.”
She drops comments like that here and there, and I usually tell her she’s a princess who will one day be the queen of her own desires. She just laughs and tells me I’m old beyond my age. She has no idea how true that is. I don’t let on how uncultured my father is behind closed doors, how brutal is more like it. Being old beyond my years isn’t a choice, but a necessity to survive.
She holds her glass to her nose and sniffs. “What should I smell?”
I lift my glass to my own nose now, draw in the scent, and then attempt to impress her. “It’s a complex array of flavors, from ripe cherry and raspberry to intriguing undertones of forest floor, tea leaves, and sometimes even clove.”
She giggles, and it’s this sweet, sexy sound that’s turned me on since about thirteen, when my hormones first kicked in. “You’re repeating what your father told you when he smelled it,” she accuses
I smirk. “That obvious?”
“Pretty obvious.” She sniffs her glass again and says, “I can smell the cherry. You?”
I’m not paying attention to the wine. I never really was. She’s all that I care about—right now, and most of the time. “I can smell your perfume. It’s jasmine.”
Heat rushes to her cheeks, a pretty pink like her lips. “You’re not supposed to smell me, silly. Focus on the wine.” She points to my glass, and I concur with her command, and we both sip at the same time.
For the next fifteen minutes, we drink wine and talk about her future wine room, which I want to be my future wine room, as silly as all my buddies would call that idea. But fuck them all. Fuck my father, who deems her “beneath me” and a “distraction.” Alana matters to me, and the more wine warms my veins, the more I want her to know how much I want her.
The doorbell rings, and thanks to the advanced electronic system down here, we hear it loud and clear. “I’ll grab the pizza and bring it down here,” I say.
“Hurry,” she encourages. “I’m starving.”
“Me too,” I say playfully. “But that’s your fault,” I add, and this time she doesn’t pretend I’m not flirting.
“Damion,” she murmurs softly, a delicate little reprimand in her tone that does nothing to hide how breathless she sounds.
I stand up, and she stands up, and I pull her to me. “Fuck the pizza.” My hand settles on her lower back, and I fold her into me, and it’s the first time I’ve ever felt her body next to mine. I wonder if she can feel how hard I am, and I want her to know. “And fuck all this friendship stuff, Alana.”
“This is a mistake,” she says, but her tone isn’t adamant or forceful at all, and she doesn’t push me away.
The doorbell rings again, and she jolts as if it’s an alarm and our parents are about to catch us all up close and personal. “Saved by the bell,” she says, pushing on my chest. “And not by the wine. We need to eat before we do something stupid.” There’s a lift to her voice, panic in the depths that I really fucking despise.
“I don’t want the pizza,” I bite out.
