Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“Maxim!” Alessia is scandalized, but she scans the shoreline where there are a couple of villas, but there’s no one in sight on the beach or in the sea. She gives me a coy smile, kisses me again, and grinds against me. Then reaching into my trunks, she grabs my more-than-ready dick.
Fuck… we’re doing this!
Our paddleboards hover beside us as they’re still attached by their lines to our ankles, providing us with a modicum of cover. Gently, I sweep aside her bikini and ease myself inside her. She pushes down on me, her teeth toying with my lower lip.
Ah!
The surf is gentle, keeping us buoyant as I slowly start to move, holding her to me. She starts tipping her hips toward me, rocking against me at an agile beat. And soon, we’re lost in our rhythm. Together. Breath mingling, eyes closed, eyes open, and mouths slack and hungry as we consume each other.
Fuck, she’s hot.
She tips her head back and groans as she comes, taking me with her, and I ride out my climax in the clear, blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.
* * *
It’s our last night here, and the candles flicker in the gentle breeze as we sit in the airy gazebo enjoying another of Chef’s incredible meals. Alessia sips her rosé and stares out at the sliver of pale sky that straddles the horizon. The sun has long set, but there’s a whisper of the day left at the edge of the Earth. She’s wearing a green silk dress, again courtesy of Pink House; her hair is tied back, but tendrils have escaped and frame her beautiful face. At her ears are the pearl earrings I bought her in Paris. She looks every bit a countess.
My countess.
I reach across the table and take her hand.
“How is it?”
She turns dark eyes that shimmer in the candlelight toward me.
“Beautiful,” she says, but there’s an edge to her voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do we have to go back?”
I laugh. “Sadly, yes. I don’t think my uncle’s hospitality will extend beyond this week.”
My uncle Cameron, my father’s brother, was the bête noire of his generation. After a monumental fall-out with my mother and father that happened before Kit was born, he fled to LA and established himself as an artist. During the late ’80s, he took the American art world by storm, and these days he’s mentioned in the same breath as David Salle and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He now resides in the Hollywood Hills and owns two properties on Mustique.
We are in one of them. An elegant two-bed, Oliver Messel–designed, beachfront villa named Turquoise Waters—it’s stunning, and he was delighted when Alessia and I chose to spend our honeymoon here.
Congratulations, Maxim, my dear, dear boy. I’m delighted for you. Of course, you can use the villa. My wedding gift to you.
I haven’t been here since my mid-teens when my mother reluctantly let Maryanne and me stay with Uncle Cameron after our father died. There is bad blood between them, so much so that Cameron only made a brief appearance at my father’s funeral, and an equally fleeting appearance at Kit’s. He didn’t stay with us, and he and I only exchanged a few words afterward. I can’t decide if he doesn’t like us, or if Rowena doesn’t like him because he’s so much like her—he shares her passion for young male lovers—or because he doesn’t tolerate her bullshit.
Either way—they don’t talk. Ever.
It had been a pain in the arse to get to Mustique. I couldn’t fly Alessia through Miami because she needed an American visa, and we didn’t have time to apply for one. I didn’t want to fly via London, so we’d come via Paris to Martinique, ferry to Castries, and then we flew to Mustique from there.
And Alessia had never been on a plane before.
Going home will be more straightforward.
“I love that your uncle has a place with a baby grand piano. This place is magical,” Alessia whispers.
I kiss her hand. “It is, with you here.”
Bastian, our butler, appears. “May I clear for you, my lord?” he asks.
“Thank you.”
“A digestif?” he offers.
“Alessia?” I ask.
“I’m happy with the wine; thank you, Bastian.”
“My lord?”
“Cognac, please.”
He nods and clears away our dessert plates.
“Tell me. Something’s troubling you,” I ask once more.
“I’m not sure what will be expected of me. When we are home.”
I squeeze her hand and sigh. “To be honest, I don’t know.” I have no idea what Caroline, or my mother for that matter, used to do. I wish I’d taken more notice. “But don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”
She withdraws her hand and places it in her lap. “I am…um…nervous that I will eat a meal with the wrong knife or I will say the wrong thing to one of your friends, and I will embarrass you.”
Shit.
“And there will be staff like here,” she says.