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Vincent Whittman had a face carved from angelic marble, meticulously detailed with only the finest of silvery blades and precise stencils.
Perfect in the angular cut of his jaw. In the broad slant of his shoulders. In the crooked slope of his nose. In that charming, vivacious tonality of his.
Even in the unconventional pigmentation and flecks of color in the swirl of his irises.
A pair of stormy seas and windy fields.
Of sapphires and emeralds pierced and aglow by a backlight of sunbeams.
It was an urge she’d been battling for the past hour; to let her eyes drift from the projected splash of colors canvassing the large screen of moving pictures to her lover’s enraptured visage. To watch with blissful adoration as the corners of his eyes crinkled around a laugh at some scripted joke her ears had decided to filter out in favor of listening intently to the breathy chuckle that lifted his shoulders and made his chest rattle.
She really should have been watching the movie. He’d paid for the tickets, had parked them in a prime spot to catch every colorful frame and wonderfully orchestrated detail of the film’s soundscapes. He’d even gone to the bother of stuffing his car’s trunk with blankets and pillows so that they could cuddle up within the little nest he’d forged.
But he had a face made for television. A face made to be seen by the masses and admired by the many.
And, just like the vast majority of audience members and sycophants alike, she too found her gaze magnetized to the shadowed face of her boyfriend.
She sighed wistfully as her head lulled against his thigh, legs crossed and thrown over the side of his car’s open trunk, eyes eternally drawn to the amused countenance of Channel 6’s latest and greatest golden boy, like a sunflower was drawn to turn and twist and angle itself in a constant effort to seek the touch of the sun’s cascading rays.
“What are you lookin’ at?”
He hadn’t turned his head to question her, hadn’t let temptation seduce his eyes into relinquishing the captivation the film had on him to let his mismatched eyes flick down to find hers yet. Though the smirk that quirked the corners of his lips and narrowed his eyes told her he knew exactly what she was looking at. That he was just being his usual floaty, arrogant self and piercing the veil of quiet that had befallen the trunk only so that he could preen under the warm glow of her reluctantly admitted adoration.
She hummed, lips pursing around the fond tilt of her mouth, shrugging up at him in response to the goading inquiry that he already knew the answer to. “I’m just enjoying the show.”
He let out a huff of amusement through his nose. And she watched as those wonderfully idiosyncratic eyes of his glinted under the reflected, colorful light bouncing off of the drive-in theatre’s screen as he rolled them.
He hummed short, musing tune, tired gaze concluding its amused rotation by affixing itself to hers, the fingers he’d slotted over hers atop her stomach curling a little tighter. His thumb stroked gentle patterns over the bumps of her knuckles, brow arched as his head nodded towards the scenes rolling across the draped screen. “Show’s out there, sweetheart.”
“You’re so pretty, though,” she cooed impertinently, untangling her fingers from his mindless caress only so that she could reach up to pluck a loose strand of hair away from the pushed-back coif crowning his head. She twirled the strand gently around her ring finger, proffering a slight tug to his scalp as she added through a teasing murmur; “Outta my league.”
His head followed the downward urge of her tender pull, spine curling as his palms settled firmly over the uneven terrain of the assorted mass of cottony blankets and fluffed-up pillows. The cast shadow of his upper body canvassed the strewn form of his lover, grin glinting against the backdrop of a night sky and headlights as he leaned down over her to playfully correct her assertions; “I’m out five bucks ‘cause you won’t sit up and watch the fuckin’ movie.”
“You can tell me ‘bout it later,” she assured, waving him off with a limp bend of her wrist as she tossed her own gaze to the stars. “You love the sound of your own voice.”
He scoffed, tongue clicking against the back of his teeth as a disbelieving smile edged its way onto the enticing pink of his lips. “Everybody loves the sound of my voice.”
It was arrogant, and pompous, and ever so presumptuous. It made her long to drag his perfect face down, down, down to pepper his smirking visage with a flutter of chaste kisses. Until he was just as dazed and drawn to her lustrous expression as she was to his. Until his tongue weighed heavy in his mouth and his lips tingled with the phantom press of her lip gloss, to let her lips ghost over the plush flesh of his until he was whining and pliant beneath her.
She sighed through her nose, butting the inside of her cheeks to stifle a wanton grin. Because, prickling as the man’s boasted ego could be, she’d always been beatified to satiate it.
“So,” he chirped, interrupting her musings with all the attention-demanding charm she’d long since learned to embrace. He inched his face closer to hers, bending his knees just enough that her head was lifted and her nose bumped against his. “Try again.”
He finalized his demand for a redo by jabbing two of his fingers between her ribs, purposeful and unrelenting in his bid to elicit a very particular reaction from his lover.
Her bodily response was immediate. A sharp intake of breath that left her lungs in an ebullient bark of laughter, body contorting in a fitful effort to rid the ticklish touch of her boyfriend from her side.
It was loud and obnoxious and entirely unladylike. But Vincent found that he really didn’t care. Not so long as the sound sent pleasant tremors through his spine, not so long as the lines bracketing her involuntarily grinning mouth remained defined and ever-present. And not for the first time since he’d fallen to her whimsy, since he’d stumbled over his own heartstrings and followed her into a shared life of dichotomous violent ladder climbing and domestic bliss, Vincent felt something soft, enamored, and uniquely sentimental coil beneath the bones of his sternum.
Fondness etched itself into his smug expression when she finally escaped the ticklish dig of his fingertips, sitting up and slapping his hand away with a wobbly frown.
“Hey-!”
Her aghast exclamation was hindered and interrupted by the decry of a man’s voice calling for her to ‘shut up’. Both she and Vincent’s heads snapped to find the driver of the car parked next to them glaring over the shoulder of his girlfriend. Vincent threw a placating wave to the man, flashing that disarming smile of his their way, shoulders lifting with satisfied pride and replete when the lady in the man’s company gasped with recognition.
He lay back in the safe haven of his trunk before he was gifted with the sight of the incredulous expression that would undoubtedly play across the man’s visage when his date began to ramble and chastise him for snapping at somebody as locally eminent as Vincent Whitman.
But he didn’t care about them.
They didn’t matter to him.
They weren’t slumped in his car trunk and looking like they needed a breath-stealing caress of lips and tangle of tongues.
“Yeah, baby,” Vincent crooned, taking her hands in his and wordlessly urging his lover into his lap. She followed his guidance with learned habit and a flattened expression, settling with her legs astride his hips. Her faux annoyance only dulled darker when he settled his hands with intimate familiarity over her hips, teasing remark serving as the score to the gentle guidance; “Some people are trying to watch the movie.”
She sighed at him, lips quirking up at the corner, and shook her head at his relentless jesting.
His hand reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, letting his fingertips linger at her jawline long enough that she had opportune time to tilt her cheek into his palm.
He swore he could practically feel the way his pupils dilated, the way his eyes zeroed in on her, and everything else faded away until the only thing his mindscape could conceive with unified clarity was the serene visage of his lover.
Instinct urged his face closer to hers, lips ghosting over the shining gloss adorning hers, eyes flitting between her lidded eyes and her parted lips, voice low and amorous; “Or, do I have to shut you up myself?”
“It might help,” she admitted, slow and coy, taking her time to follow along the veins of his exposed arms, fingertips dragging along the bunched-up fabric of his shirt sleeves. Her fingers curled around the fold of his collar, though she didn’t need to pull him in.
Because Vincent was as insatiable for her touch as he was for the thrill of the kill and every subsequent step up on the corporate ladder.
A single bat of her lashes was all that he needed to close the space between them, hands roaming over familiar curves, fingers slipping under the waistline of her skirt and staying there, serving as a constant point of contact as he hooked his fingers and tugged her closer.
He pressed his mouth to hers in a smatter of short, chaste, fluttering kisses.
At one corner of her mouth, to her top lip, to her bottom lip, to the other corner.
Each kiss was broken by a burst of helpless giggles bubbling behind her lips as his hands renewed their efforts now that he had her in his lap.
And, it was only when she resisted his insatiable mouth, when she turned her head against his hand in a bid to avoid his mouth and express a breathy guffaw, cheeks aglow and eyes teary, that he relented.
He sat back against one of the pillows, lips tinted pink and glittering with the remnants of her lip gloss. He drew his knees up behind her, wordlessly proffering a backrest for her as he tilted his head and arched a nosey brow at her. “Done?”
“Vince.” She hissed his name through her teeth, helpless chuckles subsiding as she snarled around a reflexive burst of persisting giggles, hugging her arms around her torso protectively and leaning back against his thighs.
Vincent sighed, entirely exaggerated and dragging.
“Guess we better try again,” he shrugged, feigning enduring despondency despite his grin, sharp and gleaming, glinting with twinkling anticipation in the shines of his eyes as he leaned in, tipping his chin back to peer up at her with teasing delight sparking along the edge of his irises.
Large hands proffered an urging squeeze to her waist, fingers teasing a ticklish press over the cage of her ribs as her hands navigated familiar terrain and dragged along the broad slope of his shoulders, fingers interlacing at the back of his back as her head lulled back in time with an exasperated upward toss of her gaze. “Christ, you’re a loon.”
He admonished her breach of silence with a quick peck to the lips.
“I’m gonna keep going ‘til you’re quiet,” he mumbled against her mouth, certain and spoken with a promise, brow arching as a dangerous grin crept over his visage.
“What?” She pouted at him, head tilting as her brows pinched into an expression of faux woundedness. “You don’t love the sound of my voice?”
He punctuated the question with a kiss to the corner of his mouth, pulling away to nudge his nose against hers, murmuring cheekily into the air between their mouths; “I didn’t tell you to stop talking, did I?”
He kissed her again, preemptively silencing the snarky retort dancing along the tip of her tongue.
He did it again as soon as he’d pulled away and her brows had dipped into a downturned scowl, pouty lips parting with every intention of chastising him.
And again.
And again.
Until her attempts to castigate her lover spindled into nothing more than content sighs of resignation and reciprocal mewls for more. Until the chaste caress of mouths smoothed out into something soft and lasting, something both gentle and hungry.
His tongue parted the seam of her lips, and her fingers scratched through his hair, undoing every dragging effort he’d put in to perfecting the neat styling in little more than a few seconds of roaming hands.
Vincent found that he didn’t mind.
Not with her pulse thrumming under his fingertips.
Not with his eyes closed, head dazed, and lips tingling with the constant, intent press of her lip gloss.