by Amelia Wilde
I don’t know what to say, so I just wait, my eyes locked on her face.
“That night she really wanted to come with me, so I made some excuse about taking her with me to a friend’s house—the girl had a sister the same age, so it was going to be perfect. She was at that party, too. We were all drinking.” She shakes her head. “It was so fucking stupid.”
“You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to.”
Her eyes are on mine instantly, burning with determination. “You have to know, Gideon.” She takes in one big breath, looking back down at her plate. “We were drinking, and at the end of the night, this other guy named Eric offered us a ride home in his car. I had a huge crush on him, and I—I fucked up. I thought he was fine to drive. But he wasn’t. I knew it right away, as soon as he started driving, but I didn’t say anything. He rolled the car, four times into the ditch. He was pretty badly injured, but lived. I walked away with a broken arm. But Abby—” Tears come to her eyes, but she steels herself, blinks them back. “She’s in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”
Kennedy drags her gaze to mine, and there’s real fear there. “So that’s why,” she finishes, her voice barely above a whisper.
I put my plate on the table, get up and go around to her chair, and wrap her in my arms. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not.”
“It will be.” I kiss her gently on the lips. “It really will. I promise.”
Chapter 25
Kennedy
Telling Gideon about Abby is like waking up to a new dawn. My entire body feels lighter, freer, and the tension is gone from my shoulders. I thought it was serene before, sitting out here in the morning sunlight, watching the waves roll in, eating what has to be a five-star breakfast. Now it’s like something out of a dream—almost too perfect to be real.
Although, if I think about it, this entire thing is too perfect to be real, right down to the staff member in crisp shorts and a white, short-sleeved dress shirt who appeared at the front door of the cottage only a few minutes after I’d wandered out into the living room, showered and fresh, my perfectly fitting outfit whisper-smooth against my skin.
When I opened the door, he pulled a rolling tray in behind him with a quiet nod. “Good morning, Ms. Hawke.”
I’d gone pink at the mistake, but didn’t correct him. As long as I’m here, in what’s turning out to be an extended daydream with sex so hot I would never have imagined possible before this, I can let the innocent mistakes slide. I can be “Ms. Hawke” for a minute before Gideon wakes up.
Even after he returns to his seat, reclined under its own umbrella, I still don’t mention what he said to me last night. I don’t breathe a word about it, though the memory causes a new rush of heat to work its way down my spine, and a new warmth to spread across my chest, soaking my heart in its glow.
I want to turn to him right now, when he’s midway through eating his second slice of bacon, and tell him that I love him, too. I should have said it last night, because it’s truer than anything else I’ve ever felt for another person in my life. But it’s also such a fierce, wild emotion that I don’t know if I can depend on it to really be true. I just don’t know. Yet.
What I learned yesterday is that I can depend on Gideon.
“Now’s my chance,” he says suddenly, breaking into my thoughts.
“Your chance to do what?”
“Ask you more questions.” He raises his eyebrows and pops a strawberry into his mouth. “Now that we’re out of that whole ‘dessert conversation’ phase.” Then he narrows his eyes, giving me a playfully searching expression. “Unless there’s something else you want to tell me.” Gideon purses his lips, considering. “I don’t think you have any deeper, darker secrets, do you? Besides the fact that you like to get just a little kinky when—”
“Gideon!” My face has gone redder than the strawberries on Gideon’s plate.
He laughs, the sound rich and pure. “What? There’s nobody else around, and the staff here are always sworn to secrecy about anything they might overhear.” He reaches for more bacon. He drops his voice. “Last night was hot as hell, Kennedy. I hope you feel the same way.”
A shiver of pleasure jolts down between my legs, and my breath picks up the pace. “I do feel the same way.” All those hours blur together into one big fantasy. “Were you really just after other dark secrets? Because I don’t have any. I’m not some kind of undercover spy, or anything like that. I’m really just a fancy travel agent who never goes anywhere.”
“Not never. You’re here with me right now.” Gideon slides his plate onto the table between us and stands up, stretching, his t-shirt lifting to expose his hard-as-rock abs.
I put my plate down, too.
Before I can stand up, Gideon crosses over to me, kneels down next to my chair, and presses his lips against mine. I’m instantly wet, despite how long we devoured each other last night, and without thinking I spread my legs, leaning back into the chair.
He puts one hand on my knee and runs it slowly up my thigh until his fingers make contact with the barely-there panties I’m wearing under this, and as he continues kissing me, gently, mindful of the fact that my lips are still sensitive from last night, he pulls them down to my knees. I raise my hips from the chair to help him, but there’s a little seed of anxiety brewing down in my gut.
“We’re outside…” I whisper the words against his mouth. “Anyone could walk over and see…”
He leans in closer, his fingers inching back up again, stroking my slit with the most gentle pressure imaginable. I moan a little, and he answers me with words that send a spike of pleasure straight to my nipples. “Would you really mind if someone saw us?” His voice is so low that I want to wrap my entire body around it and never let go.
“That would be…” He’s playing me like a master musician, the waves of heat radiating from my core like a sonata. “That would be so embarrassing—”
“Would it? Or would it be fucking hot for someone else to stumble upon you—you, Kennedy Carlisle—coming so sweetly on my cock, giving yourself to me again?”
I have to fight to open my eyes. “I’m not on your cock right now.”
He laughs, the sound so sexy it almost pushes me over the brink into an orgasm. “Stand up.”
He pulls his hand away and I groan at the loss of his touch, but scramble to right myself into a standing position. Gideon puts his hands on my hips and guides me to the back of the lounge chair, then puts his hands on mine and curls them around the sturdy metal backing. “Bend over.”
I bend, the breeze blowing between my spread legs, whispering against my exposed pussy, and then Gideon is pushing into me from behind, his hands bracing himself on my hips, and his knees knocking my legs farther apart.
It’s so intense that I cry out, but Gideon doesn’t raise his hand to cover my mouth. “That’s it, pretty thing. You love this.”
“I love it,” I gasp, as he starts a slow, powerful rhythm, plunging deeper inside me with every thrust, stretching me and claiming me again, right out here in the open, where anyone could see. My nipples are rock-hard at the thought of someone coming across Gideon taking me like this, and even though the cottage’s private beach is silent except for the sound of the wind and the waves, imagining their eyes on us, burning with jealousy, makes me gush around him.
I’m swollen and sensitive with pleasure, but every movement he makes around me is a damn revelation, and he must feel it, too, because he doesn’t linger. The moment I start to come, knees shaking, legs trembling, every muscle clenching around him, he comes, too, hips rocketing into me.
When we’re finished, he pulls me upright and wraps his arms around me, letting me lean my head against his shoulder. The breeze is warm and sweet, and I close my eyes, trying to memorize how it feels to be here in this moment.
Then Gideon slides his hands down to the hem of my dress, pulls it over my head, and undoes the clip of my bra. His voice vibrating next to my ear is sultry. “T
ime for a swim, don’t you think?”
Chapter 26
Gideon
Kennedy swims like she was born in the water, so graceful that it reminds me of the way she moved on the dance floor. It seems like that night at the club was years ago now. I keep counting back, only to be surprised that it was only last weekend.
It’s cute as hell how she keeps emerging from the water, running her hands back over her hair, and glancing toward the shore, her cheeks pink and her eyes shining.
“I’m telling you,” I say with a laugh. “Nobody is going to bother us.”
“But how can you be sure?”
“Kennedy, you just bent over the back of a lounge chair while I—” She opens her mouth, pretending to be shocked. “While I took you for anyone to see. We’re in the water now.”
She licks her lips, turning toward me. Her skin is already turning tan in the sun, but her nipples are still a dusky pink, pert and hard from the difference between the temperature of the air and the water. “That doesn’t mean someone can’t see us.”
I lunge toward her, wrapping my arms around her waist as soon as I reach her, and she screeches, laughing. “You wouldn’t really mind it if they did.”
“Most days I would mind. Just not today.” Then she sighs. “Seriously. How can you be sure nobody’s just going to come strolling along the beach?”
“They might stroll along another part of the beach.”
“You didn’t do something insane like rent out the whole resort, did you?”
“No!” I say it with a scoff in my voice, nuzzling my lips into the back of her neck. Her skin is salty. “I reserved the two cottages on either side of us, though. I wanted to be sure you had enough privacy while we were here.”
She relaxes into me. “Did you plan to do all those naughty things with me?”
“I don’t know if I would call it planning. Hoping is a more accurate term.”
“Even after what we did on the plane?”
“For someone who’s worried that a passerby might catch us skinny-dipping, you sure do love these filthy topics of conversation.”
“That’s not all I love.” Kennedy laughs and breaks away from my hold, diving back under the water and surfacing a few strokes away. She peers up toward the sun, shading her eyes. “I think I’ve had enough of this salt water, though.”
“Agreed.”
We wade toward the shore, my cock rising in anticipation at the sight of water droplets glistening on her smooth skin. Not again. Way too soon, I tell myself, but even my inner voice has a regretful tone.
Back in the cottage, Kennedy turns on the shower and we step inside together. She’s halfway through shampooing the salt out of her hair when she speaks again. “What time do we take off?”
“Take off for where? I’m a permanent resident at this cottage now. I never want to leave.”
She laughs softly. “I don’t want to leave, either. But I’ve got to get back to work.”
“I’ll pay you an allowance if you just stay here with me until the end of time.”
Kennedy makes a face. “I can’t do that. I have responsibilities.”
I shrug, grinning. “You could find new responsibilities.”
She nods, cocking her head to the side and narrowing her eyes, the expression making me laugh harder than I expected. “I like the ones I have,” she says over the chorus of my laughter.
“We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
She soaps up the loofah that’s hanging from one of the hooks on the tiles and works it until she has formed an adequate amount of suds, and then she runs it over her body, handing it to me when she can’t reach her back. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. When this is over, I’m—” The corners of her lips turn down into a frown.
“Afraid it might all have been a dream?”
Kennedy nods once, leaning back into the pressure of my hand soaping her back.
“It’s definitely not a dream.”
“I know that now. Back in New York, when I’m sitting at my desk, taking phone calls from people who are nothing like you but want more than the moon, it might be different.”
“Not a chance.” I almost want to convince her to stay here another week, but there’s strain appearing on Kennedy’s face that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I can tell her mind is already racing back to the city, weighing the options. Pressing her to stay would be a bad move, so instead I turn her body so that we can both be under the water and lean down, kissing along her jawline.
“What if I told you I was already planning our next getaway?”
She spins in my arms, eyes shining brightly. “Our next getaway? We’ve only been on one date.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” She laughs out loud. “This weekend counted as at least three dates.”
“Point taken.” Her smile is brilliant and relaxed. I nailed it. Kennedy bites her lip, eyes focusing on some point beyond my shoulder, and then she claps her hands together, a brisk motion that I bet she uses all the time in the office. “What should I pack?” Then she narrows her eyes. “Wait. When are you thinking this is going to happen?”
I don’t need much time to think about it at all. “Two weeks.”
“Two weeks from now?”
“Yes. Two weeks from now, and it’s going to be a two-week vacation.”
“I can’t take a two-week vacation!” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Kennedy throws her head back and laughs again. “I have to stop saying shit like that, don’t I?”
“You really do.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I’ve been thinking all these years.” For an instant after she says it, a frown flickers across her face. I can’t help but notice it, can’t help but notice that two days away from her regular life might not have been enough time for her to break out of that caged-in attitude after all. It makes me a thousand times more determined to plan something unbelievable, beginning in just two weeks. Less than two weeks, really, if I can convince her to leave on a Friday.
My mind hums with plans as we towel off. Kennedy throws on another cover-up that shows off just enough of her legs and shoulders to drive me crazy, all the way back to the plane, and I lean into it—the adrenaline, the anticipation, that familiar feeling of being on the brink of something amazing and intense.
On the plane that evening, after we’ve eaten, Kennedy falls asleep in the bedroom, curled up against my chest. In the silence, I realize that I’m taking this next outing seriously. Very seriously. And it’s all because of the gorgeous redhead breathing softly in my arms.
I can almost ignore the tiny seed of uneasiness growing in the pit of my gut.
Chapter 27
Kennedy
After the sultry warmth of the British Virgin Islands, the August heat beating down on the streets of New York City suffocates me like a hot, wet blanket draped over my shoulders. It’s one thing when it’s eighty-five degrees and you can leap into the sparkling Caribbean Sea to cool off. It’s entirely another when the walk from the subway to your office building has you ready to change outfits and camp out in the nearest refrigerator until mid-fall.
It might not have been the optimal season to go on a tropical weekend getaway—I’m imagining that watching a New York covered in snowdrifts shrink to the size of a snow globe would be even more satisfying—but going anywhere on Gideon’s plane, with him sitting beside me, is more than enough to make up for the fact that we went from hot to hotter.
From heat to an inferno, if you factor in everything that happened between us in that cottage.
Sitting at my desk Monday morning, I can feel the blush rising to my cheeks. I still can’t believe I agreed to go. I still can’t believe that over the course of one weekend, I went from having a first date with a man who was way out of my league to straddling him in a private jet on our way over the ocean.
“What are you grinning about?” Marina stands in the doorway of my office, her mouth quirked in a smil
e, arms crossed over her chest.
“Oh, nothing,” I tell her with a little smile, waving my hand in the air like it was all really nothing and not the most momentous weekend of my entire life. “I just had a pretty fantastic weekend, is all.”
This has her attention. Almost never does anything happen on the weekends, and Marina is the first to commiserate with me about how we had grand plans to visit museums or try some adventurous new restaurant but never got around to leaving the sofa. I’m not quite on her level—I do like to spend a few extra minutes in my building’s gym on the weekends, and in Sunnyside I’ve carved out a little neighborhood of spots to visit where the cafe owners know me on sight and there’s always a quiet table tucked away near a window where I can read.
Or in the case of two Sundays ago, daydream about Gideon Hawke.
“A fantastic weekend? Did you have a date?”
I can’t wipe the smile off my face, but I can’t give her all the details, either. There’s just no way that would be a good move, given that plenty of people—especially women—in the city seem to know about him. “In a manner of speaking, yeah, I had a date.”
Marina narrows her eyes. “And it went very well.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Just as she opens her mouth, the phone rings on my desk. Saved by the bell.
By the time I’ve calmed one Mrs. Josephine Harlowe, Marina has gone back to her office and it’s time for my lunch break.
I decide to go to a tiny Japanese restaurant down the block, sit at my usual table for one, and call Abby.
“I’m back in the city.”
She shrieks so loudly I have to pull the phone away from my ear. “Tell me everything.”
“I don’t have time for everything,” I laugh. “I’m on lunch break. I only have an hour.”
“Are you going to see him again? Is he everything you ever hoped for in a man? Throw me a bone, Kennedy!”