Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Theo shook his head. “Tell me something else, something I don’t know.”
“I like the way you look at me.”
The words slipped from my tongue like oil, slicking my inhibitions on the way out. I couldn’t believe I’d said them.
I couldn’t believe I wasn’t tripping over myself to take them back.
Theo inhaled a stiff breath through his nose, nostrils flaring a bit, his eyes bouncing back and forth between mine. His lips parted like he wanted to speak, but something held him back.
Around us, the night came alive.
The water seemed swept away in a storm, a sudden gust of breeze sending it crashing instead of softly lapping as it had been. I somehow heard laughter floating over the water, all the way from shore. I somehow saw every crater on the moon reflected in Theo’s eyes. I suddenly felt the vibration of each star in the sky, humming through me like a bass drum.
“Your turn,” I said, and I would have sworn it was someone else possessing my body when I inched toward him in return. “Tell me something true.”
Theo swallowed, and it was inexplicable, what that simple notion did to me. I watched the bob of his throat, the hollow area where his neck met his collarbone as it ebbed, and something hot and bewitching slid between my legs. Every muscle tightened, a frenzy of fire and ice, and I squeezed my knees together against the ache I’d never felt before in my life.
“Something true?” he asked softly.
I nodded, lips parting of their own accord.
A breath of a laugh came from his nose, and he shook his head, almost imperceptibly, like I’d asked him an impossible task. Then, slowly, he glided through the water, closer and closer, until the confidence I’d had moments before vanished in a puff of smoke.
I swallowed at the intensity of his gaze, backing away from him like I was his prey until my shoulder blades hit the edge of the tub.
“I always get what I want,” he husked, his nose skimming the tip of mine.
“Something I don’t know,” I said, throwing his own words back in his face.
His eyes cast down on mine, and the corner of his lips tilted up just a tick, like I was just a toy he’d dragged out of his toy box out of boredom, completely at his mercy.
Under the water, warm fingertips brushed the outside of my thigh — just above the knee, and just lightly enough that I questioned I’d felt it at all as my next breath lodged in my throat.
Suddenly, Theo pushed back, the water parting for him as if he were Moses. He turned just as my breath came back to me in a kick, and in one fluid motion, he pushed himself up out of the hot tub as the oxygen burned my lungs.
He turned to face me then, water dripping from his hair, down his chest, over his arms and the swells of his abdomen. His jaw was set, arms rigid, back straight and shoulders square.
But my eyes locked on where a large bulge strained against his wet shorts, the fabric outlining every single inch of him.
Theo had to have known where I was looking. He had to have known that I could see it now, the way I affected him, but he stood rock solid and proud and unashamed.
And that icy-hot ping of electricity struck me at my core again, making me squirm under the water.
Without another word, Theo swiped his towel off the back of the chair behind him, wrapped it around his waist, and let heavy, wet footsteps carry him across the deck and down the stairs, leaving me in the toy box yet again.
Later, when I was back in my room, I stared at the text he’d sent me after I’d given him my number.
Bonjour.
I stared at it until the word no longer made sense, until the letters blurred and the syllables became more foreign than the language the word was written in.
Then the phone buzzed in my hand, and a new text came through.
Goodnight, Miss Dawn.
Joel kept his promise.
The next night, after his shift and after we both had a quick dinner with the rest of the crew, we crawled into bed together and turned on a movie. Joel held me close, laughing when appropriate while I let my eyes go in and out of focus and always laughed a little too late.
I was too busy chastising myself to truly watch the movie.
I felt like the scum of the earth after last night, even though I hadn’t technically done anything wrong. In my mind, words were just as potent as actions, and I couldn’t believe what I’d said to Theo. More than that, I couldn’t believe what I’d seen when he got out of the hot tub. Even the simple, kind, and innocent texts from him on my phone seemed to haunt me, like they were something I should be ashamed of, like I should hastily delete them and his number altogether from my phone the next time Joel got up to go to the bathroom.