by Imani King
“I don’t think so,” I say at last.
The plane starts to taxi out to the runway, and our conversation is interrupted by Eva grabbing onto my arm with a vice like grip that threatens to cut off all blood flow to my hand. Putting my free hand on hers I pat her arm.
“This is the worst part,” she says through gritted teeth.
“I know,” I say. “But seriously, it’s not that bad okay? We’re fine.”
“I know, it’s just…”
“It’s nothing,” I finish for her. “Seriously, just breathe and relax.”
She nods, closes her eyes, and slowly her death grip on my arm relaxes.
“Okay,” she exhales. “So it’s not a prank?”
“No,” I shake my head and tears start falling as I realize it with a deep certainty. “When he was here last there were these odd texts on his phone. I saw the messages, and he tried to cover them up, but it was strange, you know? It seemed like they were from another girl but the name was Alex and he said it was a guy friend of his.”
“Oh honey, I’m sorry,” she says. “You’ve been with him for what, forever?”
“Freshmen in High School,” I answer and as I say it my stomach falls to the floor.
The plane is speeding up and I want to keep Eva’s mind off of the takeoff. Talking seems to help her and no matter how much I don’t feel like talking about this, she’s my best friend. Helping her takes my mind off my own troubles.
“Well, fine,” she says. “Here’s what we do. We’re going to Gibraltar for the weekend. This is our fun vacation and I had big plans anyway. So now we just add to them. You need to find a new guy, a bounce back we call it back home,” she says.
“A what?” I ask.
“A bounce back, skip over, one-night stand,” she continues explaining.
The ache in my chest is overwhelmed by fear at the idea she’s suggesting. This was supposed to be a weekend getaway, a break before the run up to finals, nothing like this was on the agenda.
“I don’t know,” I reply.
“Sure you do!”
The plane is picking up speed as it heads down the runway, but Eva is oblivious to this. Her face is alight, and she’s talking quick.
“I’ve never-”
“I know,” she cuts me off. “And that, my dear, is exactly the problem. How can you know what life is if you haven’t lived? You need to sample the world before you settle for one thing to have for the rest of your life. I never understood you on this point, and now Roger has given you the perfect reason. He’s cheating on you. There are pictures on your phone to prove it, what else do you need to know?”
“I don’t know,” I say, fear and hurt vying for control of my feelings.
“Of course you don’t,” she says. “You’re hurting, and I get that. Best way to get over the pain? Find a guy, use him, then go home. Which this weekend is perfect for. We’re going to Gibraltar, vacation spot of the world. No one is there looking for long term. So don’t look either.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Think, schmink,” she rolls her eyes. “This isn’t the time for thinking, this will be a weekend of non-stop action. We’ll drink too much, dance too long, sleep not enough, and it will be grand! We’ll make memories to tell our grandkids, or maybe not. Probably not appropriate huh?”
Eva laughs and it’s infectious. Mid-laugh she stops, looks around wide-eyed, then her head turns sharply back to me.
“Are we stopped?” she asks, gripping my arm again.
“No hon, we’re in the air,” I smile.
“You’re kidding me?”
“No, I’m not.”
She cocks her head to one side listening to the low whine of the engines that cut through the cabin.
“Well I’ll be,” she says. “That was better than normal.”
I smile and pat her hand. She grins and breathes a sigh of relief.
“Not so bad huh?” I ask.
“I guess the secret is to have something else to think about,” she says. “Now back to hot, delicious, beautiful men.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind.”
“You’ve got a limited world view.”
“True,” I say and pick up my phone.
As soon as I unlock it the picture is there waiting for me. Roger leaning back in a chair, a beer in one hand, some kind of hand-rolled cigarette in the other, and a blond head between his legs. My stomach tightens and fills with acid.
I thought you should know, the message above it says.
Yes, yes I should know. How could he do this to me? Why didn’t I see it?
“Delete it,” Eva says. “That part of your life is over. Close the door because sister it’s time to move on!”
My finger hovers over the delete button, but it refuses to touch it. I try, I really do, but it won’t move. I hit the home button and it disappears.
“You’re right,” I say, making my decision.
“I’m right?” Eva asks, taken by surprise.
“Yes, I’m going to do it.”
“You are?”
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s do it. A one night stand. No strings, no expectations, just one night of fun.”
“Right on!” she exclaims loud enough that the passengers around us all look over.
My cheeks burn hot and I want to crawl under my seat.
“You could be a little discrete,” I admonish her.
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
I shake my head then lean my seat back. Closing my eyes I let my thoughts drift. Roger keeps appearing, sometimes at the edge, sometimes taking center stage. It hurts so much more than I want to admit but maybe Eva is right. I just need to get some payback. Balance the books so to speak. He’s cheating on me. Probably more than once. When I first came to Glasgow we’d talk every night, sometimes for hours then it became every other night. Lately, we barely talk once a week and then most often by text message.
I knew, the entire time, something was wrong. I didn’t know what and I was so busy with working on my degree that I didn’t take time to look at it. I should have. Maybe it’s my fault? Did I not give him enough? Could I have done something different? What did I do to deserve this?
Sleep eludes me no matter how hard I try to clear my head. Somewhere in the plane, a child starts crying showing no sign of stopping. Giving up on sleep, I dig in my purse and pull out my iPad and open up one of my textbooks to review the class material. Eva is sleeping, so I let her be, losing myself in the biography of Picasso.
“Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts,” the announcement echoes through the cabin.
People shift around, and I put away my book as we prepare to land. The plane’s engines change their sound and then we’re coming in for a landing. Eva grabs onto my arm as the plane angles down and her death grip returns with a vengeance, making up for lost time. When we’re on the ground and she finally lets go I can see her fingerprints still on my arm. Shaking my head, we get our carry on baggage and make our way off the plane.
It’s not long before our car drops us off at our hotel and we’re walking in. A concierge greets us and takes our luggage while we finish checking in at the front desk.
“Welcome to Gibraltar,” a new concierge says. “May I show you the amenities we offer before I take you to your room?”
He’s a young man, sharp dressed in a white suit with black shirt and high polish shoes.
“Sure,” Eva says.
“Right this way ladies,” he says, leading us through the lobby. “This way you will find our hotel bar. You see it is well established for the discerning guest.”
The bar is beautiful. White with gold and wood accents. The bar is a horseshoe in the middle with white leather seats and small tables dot the floor with booths along the walls. A few guests lounge around, one of which catches my eye. Dirty blond, just out of bed messy hair, sharp features with a strong jawline bragging a five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning. He’s
broad shouldered, tall, wearing a tan blazer and matching slacks, his shirt is sans tie revealing a hint of olive-tanned flesh. He looks over as we walk by and our eyes meet. Electricity crackles between the two of us. I can’t tear my eyes away--I want to lose myself in his emerald green pools. A tingle runs down my spine, and my core tightens to a hard knot. He has full lips and the way he leans towards me, even at this distance, is aggressive but not in a threatening way. More like a ‘he knows what he wants and is going to take it’ way that makes me weak in the knees.
Those amazing green eyes roam up and down across me and I feel myself flush. I’m melting into him and we haven’t said a word to each other. Someone touches my arm and I jump, looking around. Eva is smiling.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say too fast, too embarrassed and burning hot in my cheeks and chest.
“Uh-huh,” she says, looking around but he’s gone.
Blinking, I look around and we continue our tour of the amenities before being shown to our suite. Eva tips the concierge and we find our bags are already waiting for us.
“Well?” Eva asks.
“Here we are,” I say.
“Let’s go then!”
“Sure,” I say, my thoughts still full of the man I saw in the hotel bar.
“There’s a dance club not far away I want to check out,” Eva says.
We walk the short distance to Casemates Square. Bars and restaurants as well as shops line the massive open square. The sun is setting and the crowds are forming as music begins to pour out of the different locations. We make our way to one of the bars that seems interesting based on the number of people walking in and out. As we make our way in, the music is pounding, the crowd is pulsing, and the air is electric.
“What do you think?” Eva asks, shouting to be heard.
“Seems great!”
“Let’s dance!” she says, pulling me towards the dance floor.
“Sure!”
I want to make the most of the weekend, and a few drinks and some dancing seem the best way to keep my mind off of everything from back home. We join the crowd on the floor, all of us moving to the beat.
I lose myself in the music.
Click here to buy Kian or borrow it on Kindle Unlimited!
~~~~~~
Read an excerpt from my other royal book, Rylan, right here!
Rylan
Holidays, if you’ll take my word for it, are about the four S’s: Sun, Sand, Surf, and Santorini. And Sex. In fact, you can keep the sun, sand, and surf—they’re fun, but non-essential. I’d say that you could keep Santorini as well, but call me crazy, I think sex is better there than anywhere else in the world. Trust me, I’ve done the research. There are precious few countries in the world I haven’t visited—the ones I haven’t been to aren’t worth visiting—and I’ve had sex in most of them. I take my research seriously.
Admittedly there may be a slight statistical bias in my findings, as I have a villa on Santorini. I spend more time there and have more sex there, but I still think there’s something special about the place, and not just from a carnal point of view. Santorini is my escape, my retreat, the place I can go to escape the rigors of everyday life. In this hectic, fast-paced, workaholic world in which we live, everyone needs to have a place they can go to take a break, get some downtime, to be at peace and oneness with the universe. That’s what I’m doing right now, sitting on the balcony of my beachfront villa with a pair of powerful binoculars, checking out the tourist talent to see which bikini-clad hottie I’ll be enjoying oneness with tonight. As an activity, it’s kind of a Zen thing, helping me to achieve a state of higher consciousness. I’m like a monk.
My villa is ideally placed for this sort of window-shopping, as it overlooks the part of the beach exactly equidistant between the yacht clubs and the nightclubs. In this part of the beach you get the best mix of women, from the trophy wives who married for money and are looking for something their elderly husbands can’t provide, to the sunburnt clubbers trying to drink their body weight in forty-eight hours, and everything in between. This is the place where they mix. And that’s important to me. I’m not a prejudiced man; I don’t favor any race or social class—hot is hot. Variety is the spice of life and I like my life spicy.
So what am I looking for? I don’t know really. If you’d asked me last week I’d have said something Italian, but that may just be because I watched La Dolce Vita recently. So far this week I’ve spent a night with a blonde from Holland, picked up a Greek waitress for a little afternoon delight, and managed to get an Englishwoman to lose her inhibitions enough to do it on the beach at sunset, and still it’s only Wednesday. My point being: I don’t know what I’m looking for. That’s part of the joy of window-shopping for girls on the beaches of Santorini—everybody comes here. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when I see it.
You’re probably wondering if this is an ordinary week for me. The answer is yes and no. I have a healthy attitude to sex and relationships—I like one, not so keen on the other. And let’s be quite clear, I don’t dick girls around, I don’t lead them on, I don’t pretend I’m interested in them for anything more than a few hours or maybe a day. I may be a jerk, but I’m an honest one.
So yes, I sleep around a bit, but to be honest, I think a handsome man with a decent bank balance is an idiot if he doesn’t. That’s just throwing God’s gifts back in His glorious face. All that having been said, it is possible that for the last month or so I’ve been one-night standing a little more than usual. A month ago I got engaged. In six months’ time I’m off the market. I suppose I could cheat on her, but that’s not really me. Again, I may be a jerk, but I’m honest. If you tell a man that in six months his diet for the rest of his life will be bread and water, then that man is going to dine out a lot in those six months.
But I digress; the beach today is as full of nubile lovelies as always. Nothing is catching my eye yet, but it’s early. I let my gaze wander across the sunbathers, the beachcombers, the joggers, the surfers, and the swimmers.
The swimmers...
As my binoculars scan along the water, filled with happy bathers, a flash of red bursts briefly into my vision and is gone. It’s so quick that I only register it subconsciously, but I have my subconscious pretty well trained. That flash of red was a pair of bikini bottoms closely hugging the most beautiful ass I’ve seen today—and on Santorini in tourist season, that’s saying something. I search around, looking for the girl in the red swimsuit and... there! A stunning black girl bursts through the waves, beaming a happy smile and bouncing unavoidably in her skimpy swimsuit, which is attempting to achieve the near-impossible task of keeping her voluptuous curves under control.
Like I said: I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I know when I find it, and at this point then there’s no need to keep on looking. I make a mental note of where the girl is, hang the binoculars back on their hook by the door—I’ll need them again tomorrow—pull on a fresh shirt and a pair flattering shorts, and head for the beach.
I always create a bit of stir when I walk onto a beach—that’s not arrogance, that’s just the way it is—and today is no different. Heads turn, eyes drift, people do extravagant double-takes as I go past. Mostly women of course, but a few men too, and why not? But I don’t have time for any of them. I’m like a guided missile—I’ve acquired my target and I won’t deviate from my course until detonation.
The girl in the red bikini is still out in the water. I try to get a sense of whether she’s with other people, friends, family, et cetera, but she seems to be here alone. That’s a bonus. Boyfriends make this sort of thing so damn difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Suddenly she looks in my direction and catches me staring at her. I guess a girl like that, with a body like that, is probably used to men staring—eyes wide, jaw on the floor—but she doesn’t seem irritated. In fact, she flashes me a smile.
And at the sight of that smile, I hesitate. It’s not
that she’s any more beautiful out here in front of me now than she was through the binoculars earlier, it’s... something. There is something about her as I look at her now in front of me that was not there when I was admiring her from my balcony, something that makes me pause—which is not something I often do. Maybe it’s something about that smile—it seems to go straight through me and out the other side, before doubling back and going through me again.
I’ve been with my share of women—in fact I’ve been without about ten guys’ share of women, perhaps more—but I’ve never come across a smile like that before. To be honest, I’ve never really noticed one. A smile is nice for as far as it goes, and given the choice you’d prefer a girl with a good smile over one without, but in the list of attributes I look for in girl, smile doesn’t make the top ten. It barely creeps into the top fifty. And yet this girl’s smile stops me in my tracks.
Quite unexpectedly, my mind turns to Claudia—the woman who, in just six short months, I’ll be marrying. Claudia is a very beautiful woman, a very sexy woman, the sort of woman who, if I saw her on the beach of Santorini in a bikini, I might well be targeting. But none of that is why I’m marrying her. I’m marrying her because I’ve been told to, because she is “suitable.” If there is one word that every young prince on the planet hates to hear said to him, then that word is “suitable.”
“This woman will make a suitable bride, your Highness,” and my opinions on the matter don’t count for a damn thing.
Why Claudia would pop into my head now, I can’t say, except that maybe this girl is the anti-Claudia in terms of suitability. But why would that matter? A girl in a red bikini smiles at me and all of a sudden I’m worrying about her marital suitability? If I stopped to worry about that every time I hooked up then I’d never have any sex at all!