by Amber Bardan
Clouds folded over the sun. The water turned gray.
I sighed.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs, then Haithem was back beside me. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?” I bolted upright.
He grinned, truly grinned, made me tingle.
“Come on.”
I rolled off the sun bed.
His excitement infected me, sent urgency racing under my skin. He spun me around, and red fabric fell across my vision. He knotted the blindfold behind my head.
I touched my face and the soft covering. “Kinky.”
“Later it will be.” His voice growled against my ear.
I’d hold him to that.
He led me across the deck. My feet flew off the ground as he hoisted me against his chest, one arm around my waist and another under my knees.
I wrapped my arm around his neck and held on. We descended the stairs. He didn’t set me down at the bottom but instead managed to open doors without dropping me. Eventually he lowered me onto something soft and supple.
“You ready?”
I exhaled. “Always.”
He undid the blindfold, and I blinked, staring at a blank wall.
I glanced around.
We were in the big downstairs sitting room. I sat on one of the sofas, but all the furniture had been cleared from in front of us.
“Happy birthday, Angelina.”
I scrunched up my nose, not sure what I was supposed to be seeing. He sat next to me and handed me a plastic case.
“You got me a present?” I opened the lid and pulled out a small pair of gold-and-black binoculars with a handle on the side.
Theater binoculars.
My heart lifted. He’d remembered what I wanted. How’d he even manage that with the moving? I flicked the binoculars from side to side. When I went home, I’d use these. Wouldn’t wait for someone to take me. Wouldn’t wait for a reason to justify the expense; I’d just go to the damn theater.
“Thank you. These are lovely.” I leaned forward and kissed his rough cheek. He’d shaved, but his skin always had a little bite to it.
He pulled something from his pocket and pressed a button.
Sound boomed around us, vibrated up my bare feet.
The wall in front of us lit up with images. I glanced up. A projector had been screwed into the roof. Along with speakers in the corners.
“What...?” The image on the wall projected a stage. As clearly as if we were sitting front row at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre. On-screen curtains parted, and I slipped back against the sofa, glancing from the screen to Haithem and back again.
No way.
He couldn’t have. This wasn’t the movie version. This was the real thing—the theater production.
Les Misérables.
I’d never seen it. Never let myself watch the movies, because I wanted to save seeing it for the stage version. But I knew without a doubt what we were watching.
Karim entered and shut all the blinds, then wheeled a trolley next to us. The scent of fresh popcorn filled my nose. He pulled the cork off a bottle and filled two glasses, then left the room, shutting the door behind him.
I couldn’t draw a full breath. Haithem wound an arm around me, and I leaned into his side to watch something I’d always wanted to see. Experienced something I’d always longed to experience. Haithem’s yacht might not be the same as sitting in the live theater, but somehow this was so much more special.
I glanced up at him.
My chest hurt, a pain gnawing in my breastbone.
I’d never been so afraid that I’d wake up, and this would all be a fantasy. That I’d crash back to reality, where no one could know me so well, care for me so much, give to me so freely. The show finished, and I wiped my face. I wasn’t sure if the tears were from watching the saddest freaking thing ever conceived—or not.
“Was it what you thought it would be?” He brushed my cheek with his thumb.
I sniffed.
He never seemed able to let a tear sit on my face.
I rested my palm on his chest. “More.” My breath shuddered. “Thank you—” I couldn’t get more words out, just climbed into his lap and pressed my face into his neck.
He wrapped his arms around me, rocked us a little from side to side.
Everything rushed through me. Feelings that began in that shower, when I’d fallen in love with him without knowing, became tangible. Now I loved him out loud—even if only to myself. Loved him with the places I couldn’t control and the places I could. I loved him with fear and without it.
I loved him completely.
He stroked my hair.
I leaned back, my lips hovering over his for the space of a sigh before I kissed him.
He opened his mouth to me. I tasted him, tasted my tears, tasted us together. Wanted to cry more. Instead, I paused to unbutton his shirt.
He said nothing, just shrugged out of his shirt without taking his gaze from me. I undid his belt, watching his chest move up and down, faster and faster.
He knew.
He knew everything, because these feelings, they cascaded from my heart and through my body, and then out my skin. I slid down his zipper and pulled out his cock. It was iron in my palm. I squeezed, lifting my hips. I needed him. Needed him moving in me with the same urgency as my emotions. He made a sound and grabbed my waist, flipping my back against the sofa.
My dress pooled at my hips. He crawled over me, kissed me hungrily. My lips smashed against my teeth. I jerked his pants over his backside and pulled my panties to the side. He entered me swiftly, cock brushing against my knuckles as the head pushed inside me. Even with an edge of pain, pleasure stole my breath.
We moved fast and hard and as violently as our grazing lips and clashing teeth. He filled me, filled my pussy and my heart. My feet slid against the leather sofa. I dug my fingers into his backside, orgasm breaking over me in a wave of crushing ecstasy.
His mouth never left mine, but his thrusts went from urgent to wild. My head knocked against the arm of the sofa, bending my neck. My muscles tightened around him, my thighs twitched. He stiffened and pulled out, shoved my dress over my chest, and spilled onto my belly. My abdomen contracted.
The sight burned into the back of my eyes—Haithem suspended above me, cock in hand, coming all over me.
Warmth trickled over my skin.
I gasped, one loud breath after another.
He rolled off the sofa onto the ground and dragged me on top of him. I went limp as a flower that had just gotten more than her share of sun.
Whatever he may not say, whatever he may not have asked me, whatever we may not have discussed, one certainty rose inside me—Haithem was mine, too.
TWENTY-THREE
HAITHEM’S LAUGH RANG through the cabin.
As always, it filled me with glee, even if the cause had me nervous.
I licked an edge of paper, then folded it, trying not to look at what he did. He turned the page on the notepad. It would probably be rude to jump up, rip it off him and set it on fire.
Yeah, there were social rules about setting things people were reading on fire.
He read my play.
Read it not two feet away from me.
No one but Josh had ever wanted to read anything I’d written before. His reading my work made me itchy, as if I could scratch the entire surface of my skin off.
Also other things.
Hot and shaky, and as though my muscles couldn’t settle into a stationary position. He’d been reading for over an hour. If he’d wanted to demonstrate an effort, I’d have been impressed at the fifteen-minute mark. I folded in the corners and sides of the paper, then leaned closer to him, tried to see where he was up to. He glanced at me and held his
arm out. I rested my head on his shoulder and pulled out the corners of the paper. His arm ran around my hip. I pulled more corners out of the back. He held the notepad with both hands on his lap.
I read a few lines.
The part at the very end, where my protagonist, an aspiring news anchor, makes a stellar Freudian slip, then goes wackily off script in an attempt to cover it up—and actually pulls it off.
Haithem’s chest rumbled against my ear. The notepad jiggled.
He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “You’re very cheeky, you know that?”
I set the paper water lily on his chest.
He closed the notepad and put it down on the side table. “How long have you been writing?”
“Since I was about seven or eight. Around the time Josh got diagnosed.”
“Why not do something with them?” His fingers ran from my elbow to my shoulder and back again.
I shook my head. Pipe dreams, that’s what my parents called them. “It’s pretty competitive. Nothing would come of it.”
“I’d pay to see them.”
I looked up at him. “That’s because you enjoy fucking me.”
He smiled one of his panty-exploding smiles. “That I do.” He leaned in, his lips brushing mine. “I’d still want to see them.”
“You don’t think it’s a silly hobby?” I leaned on his chest and picked up the flower. “Like this?”
He took the flower and studied it. “Why would you call it that?”
Then he looked at me, and for once I could read his mind.
“They’re not all bad, you know. They just had a lot to deal with. They didn’t have the energy for anything they thought of as nonsense.”
He put the flower on top of the notepad then touched the tip of my nose with his index finger. “They can’t be all bad—they made you.”
I laughed. “Oh god. You didn’t just say something so cheesy. Who are you?” I laughed again and slid my thigh over his legs.
His smile shifted. “I’m not sure I know anymore.”
The room grew warmer.
* * *
I MEASURED HAITHEM’S breaths with the palm of my hand. His secrets bubbled away under his skin. I could almost touch them. Now we were so close he couldn’t hide the things he used to. I knew they were all there—his many dark secrets. I’d seen the looks flash across his face when he’d stare out at the sea, as though at any moment some great threat would appear on the horizon, cannons blazing. Whatever he’d done, however hard he’d tried to keep me away, no matter how underhanded it may have seemed, now I understood.
He protects me.
I ran my fingers over his stomach.
His secrets, whatever they were, were far more dangerous than he’d ever been. I didn’t need to know them.
He took my hand from his shirt and kissed my fingers.
Pressure built in my lungs, thoughts and words catching in my airways.
I’d thought loss had shown me my capacity to feel. I’d had no idea—my heart was so much bigger, so infinitely more receptive, than I’d ever imagined.
Haithem showed me that.
I was better, deeper, stronger than I could have known.
Those words again.
I love you.
Words tattooed in my breath, so I’d wake from sleep and worry that I’d said them out loud.
Words he’d warned me not to say.
Words he’d warned me not to feel.
He turned onto his side, facing me, and kneaded my hip gently with his fingers. His hands had a way of gravitating to me. There couldn’t be less than three feet of space between us without him laying them on me.
“I love you.”
The words left my lips. Slowly and carefully. Filled the cabin with their truth.
I didn’t whisper, and I wouldn’t repent. Even if he cast my feelings away. Even if he threw them back at me. Denied me words of his own.
I wouldn’t be sorry to have been open and to have loved. Even if it hurt, I couldn’t be sorry for that.
His features shifted.
He gripped my face, thumbs lining my jaw. I braced myself as best I could. Held my breath and waited for the assault of words I never wanted to hear.
He didn’t love me.
Because he’d warned me about this—not to fall for him.
“I love you, too.”
He released my face, his features drawing into tight, angry lines.
The declaration hit like the drop of a guillotine—sharp, brutal and final.
My pulse stuttered.
Had I misheard? Had desperation caused me to imagine words? Because he didn’t look like someone who’d just professed his love—he looked like someone who’d just been spat on.
He rolled off the bed and put on his clothes.
“Haithem?”
He turned his back on me, then walked to the cabin door.
I sat up.
The door shut behind him, and thumped closed.
Haithem
MUSCLES BUNCHED IN my shoulders. Karim knocked the mitts together then spread his arms. I sprang forward, fists driving into one mitt then the other.
He braced, his rear foot sliding. Impact shuddered down my elbows. It wasn’t enough.
Karim shoved back at me with the mitts. “Enough.”
I brought my fists to my chin, pulse slamming through my system like a stream of cannons. “Too much for you?”
Moisture gathered on my eyebrow then dripped into my right eye.
“You should have left her behind. It’s no longer safe to travel with her.”
My biceps seized. No. I tore off the gloves.
“She is not safe for us.” Karim dropped the mitts. “Something must be done.”
Pain shot into my chest. Something. Anything. Nothing. She loved me, and damn her, she’d made me love her, too. There were no easy answers and no simple solutions for us. We might both be ruined.
I jerked forward and threw the gloves across the deck. “I’ll decide what has to be done.”
Karim, my old friend, didn’t flinch. “What does she know?”
“She.” I glanced up at the upper deck. “Angelina doesn’t know anything.”
“Keep it that way. For the love of god, for everything we’ve done, for the peace of your parents—keep it that way.” He shook his head, then bent and picked up the equipment.
I swiped at my dripping face. No. He was right. I’d never tell her. I glanced up again. Imagined her in my room, in my bed. What was one lie in the face of the rest I’d told?
Angelina had no idea what I’d done to her life.
“How long until she’s supposed to be home?” He knew but he asked.
Days.
I pinched my nose. The stink of my own anxiety clung to me thicker than the sweat.
“Right now you’re infatuated with a girl you think likes you.” Karim tucked the gloves and mitts under one arm and set a hand on my shoulder. “But before this week is done, you’ll be dealing with something else entirely.”
Karim went upstairs.
I drove my bare knuckles into the side of the yacht. The panel gave a warbling boom. Cracks split the fiberglass. The sting burst through the bones of my hand. I opened my fingers and stared at the broken flesh there.
Once again in my life, I was about to lose everything.
* * *
I DREW CIRCLES on a brand-new notepad. That was about the extent of my creativity. My mind seemed much more interested in watching the clock.
Tick, tick, tick—six days left.
Yet another ending I couldn’t avoid.
Maybe that’s why I was so reckless. Maybe that’s way I tried to bury my roots i
n so deep with Haithem that it’d take more than an ocean to wash me away.
I threw down the pen, itching to wander belowdecks. But I didn’t. Clearly, he needed to process.
Typical bloke.
I could only hope he figured it out.
We’d already lost half a day, and I couldn’t stand to lose another hour.
The thud of a door burst open. I uncrossed my legs and stood. Haithem stepped in, looking even bigger, even more male in only his black shorts and bare feet.
He walked directly to me, his chin down, gaze fixed on mine.
“Say it again.”
I backed up a step, grabbing onto the armchair behind me. “Say what?”
He reached me, grabbed the back of my head, and tugged me into him. My breasts crushed against the wall of his chest. His scent surrounded me. Sharper and more pungent than usual. As if he’d hit high on the pheromones just to ruin my willpower.
“Say it again.”
I blinked, and my lungs burned with joy and pain. “I love you.”
“Again,” he growled.
“I love you.”
He dropped his head, gaze tearing across my eyes. “Again.”
“I love you.”
His features scrunched before his jaw clamped. He spun me around. Cut off my view of his face. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
His breath rushed against my hair. “How do you know it’s love?” He jerked my hips back against his and slid his hand between my legs. “How do you know it’s not just this?”
Moisture streamed into my pussy. My senses homed in on his touch.
He pushed my panties down and ran his palm over me. “You love what I do to this, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I love you.” Puffs of air flew between my lips, drying my tongue.
He sank two fingers into me. “How do you know?”
I moaned, muscles clamping around his fingers. He rocked them inside me, played me like his very own violin.
I grabbed his wrist, willed my tongue to speak through the sensations. “I just feel it.”
He withdrew from me and pushed my dress down my body. “I love you, Angelina.”