Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
I’m not sure what brand of quiet she’s experiencing, but Anna tucks her face back into my neck, mumbling a “good” after what feels like an eternity. Her hand slides up to rest on my waistband, and I hate that I’ve just cooled the moment when all I want is her touching me.
The horizon has a telling glow to it, the lazy prequel to a sunrise, and I suspect it’s probably sometime just after five. Dad will be up and out soon, and what I want to do to Anna will take much, much longer than we have.
“Three hours is barely enough sleep,” I tell her, reaching to tilt her face to mine. I kiss her, resting my lips against hers. “Let’s head back and be lazy today.”
“Do we have to be lazy?” she asks.
“No…” I pull back so I can get a better look at her expression. The heat in her eyes sends fire licking across my skin. “But if you’re going to look at me like that, we do have to be alone.”
Anna stretches, kissing my chin, my jaw, my neck. Her hand slides down again, gripping me through my pants, teasing me with a tight squeeze. “We are alone.”
“For now.” I tilt my chin up so she has better access to my neck, mindlessly hoping that she’ll leave another mark. Her lips feather over my jaw, and then she bites. “My father gets up at sunrise and every morning has run along the trail that passes about fifteen feet from where we are right now.”
This has the effect I’d hoped, and Anna peeks past my shoulder at the band of light just at the horizon. With a reluctant groan, she shifts her hand from me and slowly pushes up onto her side, bracing back on a palm as she sleepily blinks out at the cornflower-blue darkness all around us. “Are we going to be able to find our way back?”
“Let’s take the shorter path. We haven’t walked it together, but it’s through the garden cabin area and I’m pretty sure there are lights.”
She nods, sitting up fully and rubbing her eyes. I take another long, appreciative look at her back in this dress; even though the cream satin is rumpled from dancing and walking and fucking and sleeping, it still gleams in the moonlight against her smooth skin.
But there’s also something vulnerable about her that has my chest constricting. She’s hunched over, hugging her knees, and her spine presses against her skin, sharp little points all the way down her back. Her personality is so big, her confidence so solid, that until I had my hands all over her last night, I didn’t fully realize how slight she is in more tangible ways. The view of her from behind in the blue-black darkness sends something inside me emerging protectively. It’s easy to forget, while she’s here and dressed in designer clothes, overfed at every meal, and basking in sunshine, that her life back home is hard, that she’s barely scraping by. That this trip is a break from her reality, and when she returns to Los Angeles, she’ll become that other version of Anna Green, the underemployed one, the one with food insecurity and unpaid bills, the one with responsibilities she’s hinted at but never fully detailed.
She has money now, I remind myself. You’re paying her more than many people make in years. You can give her more. You can ensure she never has to worry about money again.
Leaning forward, I press my lips to her shoulder blade, and kiss halfway down her spine, feeling my desire for her rise like the tide, mixing with this unexpected vigilance wrapping steel around my veins. I send an arm around her middle, hand sliding up over her breast, pressing my palm flat over her heart.
The words slip free in my thoughts—Please be okay after this—and I squeeze my eyes closed, pressing a final kiss to her back, not sure whether I’m making the wish for her or myself.
“Should we go?” she asks, setting her hand over mine on her chest. “This feels like the start of something we don’t want Ray to see.”
Laughing, I push myself to standing, extending a hand to her. Anna stretches, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I’m sad to leave the spot of the best night ever.”
“You still feel that way after sleeping on the ground?”
“I had a comfy pillow.” She steps back, taking my hand, and we start the trek back to our bungalow.
Twenty-Seven
LIAM
I suspect the only thing that would tip my family off to our scheme more than Anna and me appearing to know nothing about each other is how we suddenly seem like newlyweds, blocking out everything else on the island.
But there’s nothing to be done. For the next two days, we rarely leave the bungalow. And when we do, I can’t keep my hands off her.