by Jo Watson
His smile grew. “I guess we can.” He lowered his head and planted a small, soft kiss between my breasts.
“You taste salty,” he said, keeping his mouth there, letting his lips linger on that sensitive part.
“I’m sweaty.” I laced my fingers through his hair again. It was damp and sticky.
“Me too,” he said, moving his lips over my nipple and blowing on it.
I winced, a mixture of cold pain and hot pleasure stabbed me. He lifted his head back up to me and smiled again. The heady scent of sex lingered in the air. Sex and sea air and cologne and sweat.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, pushing a wet strand of hair out of my face. I reached up and grabbed his hand. Brought his fingertips down to my lips and kissed them one by one. Everything about this moment felt so natural and normal and comfortable. It didn’t feel awkward in any way at all. My body seemed to instinctively know what to do with Alex in a way that I had never known before.
I pulled his hand away and looked at it, tracing it with my fingers. “You have such beautiful hands,” I said, admiring them. I’d always liked them, but it was only now that I was getting to see them up close. “This is loose,” I added, looking at the green ribbon on his finger.
“Take it off,” he whispered to me.
I turned and looked at him. Our eyes met and he looked at me like he’d never looked at me before. I tugged at the little knot and the ribbon immediately loosened, and fell from his finger onto the bed. Our eyes both drifted down to where the ribbon was now lying; there was something so final about it lying there like that, as if it was dead. Alex picked it up between his fingers, then lowered it to my face. I closed my eyes as the tip of the ribbon came into gentle contact with my skin. It tickled. He ran it down my nose, over my lips, down my neck and I arched my back once more as he trailed it teasingly over my breasts.
I opened my eyes again and looked at Alex. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then stopped himself.
“What?” I raised my head.
“I just wanted to say that this last week has really, really meant a lot to me,” he mouthed quietly.
“Me too,” I said. “It’s meant the world.”
This moment. Right here, right now. Suddenly, it felt like everything we’d done over the last week had somehow been building to this exact moment for Alex and me. As if this was meant to happen. As if it had somehow been ordained from the very first moment we met. A realization hit me, well, part of one—I wasn’t sure I had the full picture yet, I could only see parts of it. Fragments.
“You mean . . .” I started talking, “you’ve come to mean so much to me, Alex.” I said softly. I knew I wanted to say more, but I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I wanted to say, or if I should say it?
“You, Val,” Alex brought his lips to my forehead, “have come to mean so much to me too.”
I waited for him to maybe say more, but he didn’t. Something was lurking on the tip of my tongue. They were words that I suddenly felt rather frightened by. Words that I dared not speak out loud . . . the words seemed so inappropriately big. So unexpected that I wasn’t sure I trusted them just yet. My thoughts suddenly drifted back to number one on the list . . . were these feelings I was feeling even real?
And then Alex stood up and extended his arm for me to take. I sat up on the bed and looked at him. Totally naked and so fucking gorgeous it was a sin. A sin to waste that naked body by not doing something with it.
“What say we shower?” Alex asked.
I smiled. That was more like it. I could definitely do something with that body in the shower.
The warm water rushed over us, washing away all the sweat and sex and the beach sand that I’d only realized now was clinging to my ankles. Alex picked up the bar of soap and then started washing me. Every inch of me. Running the soap all the way over me from my feet to the tips of my fingers. When he came to my finger, he looked up briefly, and then slipped the ribbon off, dropping it onto the floor. The feeling of the hard slippery bar on my breasts was amazing, and it got that ball of energy all coiled up inside me again.
He took his time making sure that every inch of my breasts were clean. I closed my eyes and put my arms up on the wall behind me, giving him full access to every possible part of them. The sides, underneath them . . . everywhere. The warm water trickled down my body, caressing it softly, and at that moment Alex took a nipple between his fingers and squeezed. Hard. I jumped with surprise, the pain was ecstasy. I opened my eyes and looked at him again and he did it again to the other one. Pain and pleasure melted together to create something new and intense that needed exploring.
And then suddenly Alex turned me around and pressed the front of my body against the cold, hard wall of the shower. He suddenly kicked my legs open and a hand dived between my legs. He came up behind me, his lips to my ear and he whispered something that I couldn’t hear through the sound of the falling drops and then I felt him inside me again. Alex was definitely not too nice, after all. Nice guys didn’t do . . . this.
He pinned me to the wall even harder, holding my hands in place as he thrust into me. My body smacked into the cold wall with force and then he said something into my ear again. I was just about to ask him to say it again when my body started tensing again and all I could do was keep still and let the feeling crash through me. It was so intense it made my legs shake. I could feel Alex was starting to lose control too, his movements were getting more erratic and frantic. I was just about to remind him that he wasn’t wearing a condom when I felt him slip out of me. He moaned into my ear and I don’t think I’d ever heard such an amazing sound before. I smiled. It had been quick, and dirty and totally satisfying.
We stayed like that again for a while until Alex turned the water off and then turned me around to face him once more. I couldn’t help smiling at him.
“What?” He smiled back.
“Doctor Alex Fletcher, you are a sex god.” I let out a girly giggle.
“Only because I’ve been reading all your articles,” he said putting both his hands on the wall behind me and leaning in for another kiss.
I kissed him back and we didn’t stop. Even while drying ourselves with the towels, we were kissing. Even while walking back through to the room together, we kissed. Even as we both climbed into bed, we kissed and even as we fell asleep in each other’s arms, we still kissed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I had this crazy dream. I dreamt that Alex and I were getting married. Which was insane of course, but it felt good. I walked down the aisle towards him and he looked at me with that look. That look that made the words tingle on the tip of my tongue again. And when that moment came, that moment to say our “I do’s,” a fog started rolling in. A heavy mist suddenly made visibility hard. Alex’s face was blurring, but I could see his lips were moving, he was trying to say something to me. I leaned in to listen, but all I could hear were whispers again. I opened my mouth to speak, words wanted to come out, but they didn’t and then . . .
A knock on the door.
I sat up in bed with a fright and looked around. Alex was gone but the little note on the pillow told me that he’d gone to fetch breakfast.
The knock again.
I smiled. Excited to see him I climbed out the bed, grabbed a gown and raced to open the door. I swung it open excitedly, expecting to see Alex standing there. But it wasn’t Alex.
“MATT? What the hell are you doing here?” I stumbled backwards from the door in total shock. Matt looked so foreign here. So out of place. And I couldn’t quite reconcile him being here.
“Val. Oh my God, I’m so happy to see you.” And then suddenly, he was inside. Rushing towards me. Pulling me into a hug.
I pushed him away. “What are you doing here? Where’s . . . uh . . .” I looked behind him to see where she was lurking, “Sam?”
“She’s not with me,” he said, a massive smile sweeping over his face. I stared at him. I had no idea how the hell t
o interpret that smile.
“Where is she?” I asked,
“She’s back in Cape Town,” Matt said, moving closer to me again. “Permanently.”
I shook my head. Nothing about this was making any sense.
“We’re no longer together.” Another massive smile swept across his face.
“You . . . WHAT?”
“I know now!” Matt started walking towards me again. I stepped backwards. Backing away from him.
“Know what?” I asked, as the back of my knees bumped into the bed behind me. I was trapped and couldn’t walk any further.
But Matt continued to move closer, until he was right in front of me. Close. So close. He reached out and put his hands on my cheeks, cradling my face gently and coming even closer.
“It’s you,” he said, his eyes sweeping over my face. “It’s always been you.”
“Me?” My mouth dried as I stared into his eyes. I knew those eyes so well. I’d studied them so many times before. Stared into them and wished that they would look back at me with that look that I’d been longing for for so many years . . . hang on—
That look!
He was looking at me with that look.
“Wh . . . what . . .” I stumbled over my words. My stomach was churning, but not in the way that I would have expected it to churn in this moment.
“Val, you were right about us.” He stepped closer to me. His face now inches from mine.
“Right? About what?”
“I’ve been so blind. It was like I couldn’t see what was right in front of me this entire time. But now my eyes are open and it’s so clear to me. As if I’m wearing a new pair of glasses and everything has come into focus since the engagement party—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” I cut him off and tried to move away from him, but he held me in place.
“I do.” He tried to make eye contact again, but I couldn’t. I looked to the floor. He placed a hand underneath my chin and tilted my head up, forcing me to look at him once more.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about what you said. That we’re perfect together. We are perfect for each other.”
“Forget I said that,” I quickly added.
“I can’t, because you were right. And I can’t believe it took me three years to see it. But when Sam gave me that ultimatum, it all became so clear.”
“What ultimatum?”
“She said I could never see you again. That it was you or her, and I chose you, Val. I choose you because I can’t imagine not having you in my life.”
My mind was racing at a million miles an hour. Thoughts and images swirled through it like an uncontrollable whirlwind was raging inside my brain. I didn’t know what to think. Was this really happening? Was this it, the moment I had dreamed about, prayed for, wished for, obsessed over for so many years? Was it finally, finally happening?
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“That I love you,” he said.
And just like that, it rolled off his tongue.
Those three words.
The three words that I’d pined for. The words that I’d said to him silently in my head so many times before. I’d opened my mouth to say them to him so many times before, but never had. They were always on the tip of my tongue. Residing there. Waiting to be freed. But now they weren’t there anymore. Where were they? I no longer felt the unstoppable urge that was so great that sometimes I had to bite my lip so tightly that it hurt.
“Matt, I . . . I—”
“I know,” he said, cutting me off. “You’ve always loved me and I’m so sorry it took me so long to see it.”
“But you’re getting married, Matt. To Sam,” I said.
“It’s over between us.”
I was about to open my mouth to say something, anything, I wasn’t sure. But suddenly his lips were on me. His lips felt hard and cold and a chill ran through my body and into my feet. I felt sweaty and clammy and confused.
I tried to pull away from the kiss, but Matt obviously took it as something else, and pulled me in even more. This was what I had wanted. Wasn’t it? But it felt so strange; his lips on mine, his tongue pushing its way into my mouth, his hands running down my back, pulling me closer to him. I felt as if I was out of my body, floating above myself looking down at what was going on.
“I love you,” he whispered against my mouth. It sounded so genuine and so sincere and he said it with the exact tone I’d always imagined he’d say it with. Something in me stirred.
“Say that again,” I said. “Say that again.” I wanted to know if this was real.
He pulled away from the kiss and held my face between his hands. He looked deep into my eyes and were those . . .? God, he had tears in his eyes. This was the exact script I’d written in my head. He would look at me, tears in his eyes, and tell me how much he loved me and what a terrible mistake he’d made all these years and how he needed me.
“Val,” he started speaking slowly. ‘I love you. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before, I’ve made such a mistake. But I need you. Please . . .” A tear left his eye and rolled down his cheek.
“Matt,” I whispered back to him. My voice shaking with emotion. So many different emotions I wasn’t even sure I knew or understood them yet. I’d wanted this for so long . . .
I leaned in and placed my lips over his. I’d always wanted to know what it would feel like to be able to do that. To be the girl who could just kiss Matt whenever she wanted to. I’d always wanted to know what it would feel like to run my hands through his hair . . . so I did. I kissed him and I ran my hands through his hair. I’d always wanted to know what it would feel like to splay my fingers across his chest . . . so I did that too. I’d always wanted to know what it would feel like to have him desire and want me and lust for me. So I pushed myself into him just enough. I could feel he was hard, but was this what I wanted?
“Val?” A voice from the doorway. I knew exactly who it was the second I heard it.
I pushed Matt away from me and stared at the door. Alex was standing in it holding a plate of breakfast in his hand. “Alex,” I said.
Alex looked at me. His face dropped and then he looked over at Matt.
“I should go now,” Alex said and turned away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I ran out of the room leaving Matt behind me. “Alex, wait!” I called after him as he walked briskly down the corridor towards the reception area. But he ignored me and kept on walking, leaving the hotel and marching straight for the beach.
“Wait, Alex. I can explain!” My words came out in desperate bursts. Why was I explaining? And what exactly was I explaining?
Alex finally stopped when he reached the beach. He swung around and faced me. His face was cool and calm and betrayed nothing of his feelings. What was he feeling?
“It’s Matt,” I said. “He’s left Sam. He’s here. He says he’s in love with me. He cried.” The words cascaded out of my mouth. “I didn’t know he was coming here. I didn’t know.” I sounded frantic and panicked and I didn’t quite know why. Nor did I quite know what these feelings rushing through my body were. Hot, cold, anxious, angry . . . Everything buzzed and whirled and my heart pounded.
“I see,” he said. And then he got very quiet and thoughtful for a moment. My heart raced, waiting for him to say something back to me. “It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? It’s what you dreamed of?”
I hesitated. “Yes.” I nodded. “It is what I wanted.”
“And now it’s happening.” Alex smiled. Not a warm, friendly one, but a smile that made my chest feel tight. “He left his fiancée and he’s come all the way here to tell you he loves you and sweep you off your feet.”
“Yes.”
Alex paused. He looked at me for the longest time and then his body language seemed to change somewhat. “I’m happy for you, Val. I really am,” he said.
“You are?” I asked, completely taken aback by his answer. Suddenly, something felt like it e
xploded in my chest. It took my breath away momentarily.
He nodded. “Sure. You’ve been in love with him for so long. This is your dream come true, right?”
“Um . . . I guess,” I acknowledged. This had been my dream for so long, so why was there a part of me that felt like it was a total nightmare too?
“I . . . I . . .” I stumbled over my words again, they were barely coming out. They were barely making sense in my head, so how was I even meant to speak them out loud? Nothing was making sense right now.
“But the list.” I took a step closer to him.
“What about it?” He shrugged.
“We made a promise to get over our exes together. We made a promise not to get into a relationship with anyone with the ribbons . . .” I raised my hand and realized the ribbon wasn’t on it anymore.
Alex raised his hand and his finger was empty too. “Like you said at the very beginning, Val, don’t believe everything you read in magazines.”
“But . . . but . . .” I grasped for words. They were not coming. And then some did. “Last night?”
“What about it?” Alex finally looked up at me. His gray eyes were almost black. A turbulent, stormy black color.
“It was—” I stopped. Not knowing what word to put in that sentence, hoping that maybe he’d put a word into it for me.
“It was two friends helping each other out so that they could move on,” he said, looking away again.
“Was it?” I asked. That heavy feeling in my chest again. “Was it just sex for you?”
Alex swung around and looked at me again. This time he looked angry. “What do you want me to say, Val? That I felt something? Because I did. Okay. I felt something. I still feel something. I’ve felt something for days now.”
“So what are you saying, Alex?” I asked, the sound of my heart beating was so loud.
“That the list worked for me. I’m over Connie. I’m totally over her, and this last week with you has made me realize how we were never suited for each other in the first place because I’ve met you and you and I are so—” He stopped talking abruptly.