I smirk. “Thank you for not ratting me out, then.”
“Of course. So. Your exes were all after you for your money. And you’re worried Sinclair will be the same, is that it?”
I start again, because I never mentioned Sinclair’s name. But she rolls her eyes this time, cackling.
“As if you thought we didn’t notice you feeling one another up half our last lesson, either.” Mrs. Jenkins clucks her tongue. “She’s a beauty, I’ll grant you that. Quiet, a little shy, but she seems sweet. A good girl.”
You have no idea, I want to argue. I clamp my mouth shut over the words, and settle for just nodding, instead.
“If she doesn’t know you have any money, she can’t be after you for it,” Mrs. Jenkins points out. “But if you ask me? What this needs is time, Ankor. Time to develop. Time for you both to figure out what you came here for, and whether you’re open to finding something entirely different instead.” Her eyes sparkle, this time with amusement.
“Time? That’s your big answer?” I lift one eyebrow.
Her smile widens. “Time is all anything real ever truly needs.”
* * *
I arrive at the pool early the next day. I don’t know if it’s so much eagerness to get a head start on the day, or just eagerness to get out of my hotel room—and my own damn head. All I can think about is Sinclair. I dreamt about her. About her long, lean legs wrapped around my waist. About the sounds she makes when I’m buried deep inside her; the way her lips part just a little and her eyelids flutter and her hands clasp at me like I’m the only solid thing in the world.
When I wake up, I take a long shower, and as I wrap my own fist around my cock, all I can think about are her soft, delicate hands wrapped around my shaft, her soft blue eyes on mine, hot with lust and frustration when I kept teasing her to the brink of orgasm.
God, she’s fucking beautiful.
She’s fucking dangerous, too. The kind of danger I swore to myself I’d stay away from. Now look at me. A handful of days after meeting her, I’m a fucking mess.
No wonder she decided this thing between us was too strong. That she needed to run from it. I’m starting to get worried too, the longer I go without being able to get her out of my mind.
So, I head to the pool earlier than usual. Long before any of my regulars will be up and at it. I figure I can get in a few laps before class starts.
Instead, I freeze at the edge of the pool, my eyebrows lifting as I find Sinclair in the shallow end—clinging to the wall but looking a lot more comfortable than she did in the water at her first lesson. She’s already trying to kick a little, though she hasn’t dared to try a float from the looks of it. Her legs keep flailing, sinking before she can get up any kind of buoyancy.
I watch her practice for almost a minute before she spots me. When she does, she inhales so sharply I worry she’s about to swallow half the pool right here. But then she coughs and recovers, and raises a hand to wave at me.
I cross toward the shallow end of the pool and pause near the ladder. “Sinclair.”
“Ankor.” I watch her throat contract as she swallows. I try not to think about how good those soft, perfect little bow lips of hers would feel wrapped around the shaft of my cock. I try not to think about how much I want to make her come again—and again, and again… “I-I was wondering if I could still take lessons. With you. I mean, would that be okay, if… after… well.” She stops herself short and bites her lower lip.
That bite almost undoes me. Fuck.
As if I could say no to her.
“Of course.” I slide into the water beside her, one rung of the ladder at a time, the way I’d imagine you’re supposed to approach an easily spooked horse. She doesn’t spook, though. She just watches me, her expression unreadable, somber. “I’ll teach you for as long as you’d like, Sinclair,” I promise, and I mean it. Whatever she wants or doesn’t want between us, this is my job, after all.
And I’d do anything to see the kind of smile she breaks out into now more often. It’s small, but it’s real, the kind that crinkles the corners of her eyes. All I want to do is whatever I can to make her keep smiling like this.
It’s not until after our lesson—our incredibly polite and minimal touching lesson—that it occurs to me to wonder if maybe Mrs. Jenkins is right about this after all.
6
Sinclair
After a week of lessons, I’m finally able to swim the entire length of the shallow end and back. There’s still no way I’m going anywhere near the deep end, and I can only do the breast stroke so far. Butterfly is way too much coordination, and freestyle freaks me out. It feels too much like drowning in between strokes for me to be comfortable with it.
Backstroke I don’t mind as much, but it still unnerves me to float at all, let alone to float and move too. But I’m working on it. Getting stronger every day.
All thanks to Ankor.
I don’t see him outside of our lessons. I avoid the resort and spend most of my days after our morning class down at the beach, hiding out under some palm trees that offer shade and eating the cheapest food cart snacks I can find. Already, even after just one week, my money supply is dwindling. It makes me nervous. Because I know what I had to do just to get my hands on this much, and I don’t know where I’ll be able to find more.
So far, my escape to paradise plan isn’t proving very practical. At this rate, I’ll be living on the beach pretty soon. But then again, I’ve seen some hippie tents down at the far end of the beach, and they don’t look too bad. Maybe I can join a hippie commune.
Yeah, right, I think. With what skills to offer? I could offer to do their laundry and clean dishes, maybe. That’s about it. Pretty sure most communes have a stricter entrance requirement than that.
The morning before my ninth—or is this tenth? I’ve lost count—swimming lesson begins, I open the safe in my room and thumb through the stacks of cash, just to be sure. I can probably do five, maybe six more days at this resort, max. After that, I won’t have a choice. Hippie commune it’ll be.
I should probably leave sooner. Check out today, if I’m smart, and find some little crappy hostel to rent an ultra-cheap room from. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Every time I think about leaving, my throat closes up, and all I can think about is Ankor. The way he watches me every single lesson, sharp as a hawk, like he’s ready to swoop in and save me at any possible second from anything that could go wrong.
He’s the only reason I feel safe in that water. The only reason I don’t dissolve into panic every single time I feel my whole body emerged in the pool. Because I know he’d never let anything happen to me. Because somehow, even though we only spent a handful of days together, I know he’d never hurt me.
Before our lessons in the mornings, when it’s just the two of us, we talk. Not about anything important. And he never presses me again—he doesn’t ask about my scar or for more details of my past. We just chat about shows we like, books we’ve read. About the weather and resort life, and places I should check out on Maui.
Those last, he always offers up with a sad little smile, like he’s letting me know he’d take me to those spots in a heartbeat, if I wanted. And oh, how I want to. So fucking badly.
But I can’t.
After our lessons, I always force myself to leave. To walk straight out the door of the resort, fists balled at my side, shoulders bunched, because if I don’t strain every muscle in my body toward the goal of leaving, I know I’ll cave in and wind up staying.
He must know it too, because I can see how much pain it causes him, every single day, to let me go.
Today will be like any other, I tell myself. A chat, a lesson, and then back to my beach spot. But when I get to the pool, I find Ankor already in the water, swimming laps.
I watch for a moment, breathless at the sight of his glistening back muscles, the streamlined, easy way he glides through the water, as if he was born in it. I’ll never look like him. I’ll never be that good at t
his, that at home in the pool, never mind somewhere like the ocean.
When he finishes, his hand touches the far wall before he hauls himself up, in the deep end, hanging onto the ledge. He turns, and his eyes find me immediately. I love that, too. How every day whenever he spots me, it’s like the rest of the world melts away, and we’re the only two left in it.
“Come on in,” he says.
I smile and start my way down the ladder. When I’m shoulder-deep in the shallow end, I wave. “Okay, I’m in.”
“Oh no.” He shakes his head. Then he extends a hand and beckons me to him. “All the way in.”
A cool sliver of ice sneaks into my stomach when I realize what he means. My throat tenses up, and my heart feels like it’s going to punch out of my chest. “I can’t,” I yell.
“Yes, you can. Sinclair, you’ve been lapping the shallows for almost two weeks now.”
“A week and a half,” I protest. But who’s counting.
“Time to go the whole way,” he says. “You can do this.”
I eye the far end of the pool. The water looks so much darker there. Foreboding. I bite my lower lip, my forehead knitting with worry. “What if I sink?”
“You won’t,” he replies. When I glare in response, he just grins at me. “And if you do, I’ll swim down and catch you. Okay?”
Still, I hesitate, holding onto the wall of the shallow end.
But then his voice drops lower. “Do you trust me, Sinclair?” he asks. And what can I possibly say to that?
Because I do. Whatever’s between us, whatever attraction we’ve both been struggling to fight, beyond all that, I’ve come to trust him. His presence relaxes me, reassures me in a way that he has no right to do, but there it is. I trust him. Without answering aloud, I just take a deep breath, lower my head beneath the water, and kick off the wall.
The first few strokes are easy. It’s the same feeling as when I swim back and forth across the shallow end. I stretch out my arms when my head dips beneath the water, spreading them in the breast stroke, and then pop my head back up for air as I speed forward.
But then I look down. I notice the bottom of the pool dropping away beneath me, the light blue color turning darker, and I know I’m already past the point where my feet could touch the ground. I freeze mid-water, my legs kicking frantically to keep my head above the water as I stare down into that abyss.
“Sinclair.” Ankor’s voice is gentle, coaxing. He’s not going to rush me. But he’s not going to let me sit here treading water, either.
With one last nervous glance at the distant bottom, I resume swimming, in broad strokes. I lift my gaze to Ankor, and keep it fixed there, instead of on what’s below me.
The pool feels longer when I’m swimming across it than it did when I was walking around it up on dry land. But before I know it, I’m nearing the wall. Ankor doesn’t move, doesn’t reach out a hand to grab me. He lets me finish myself. I stretch my hands out the way I’ve seen him do in practice swims, and my palm goes flat against the tile wall of the deep end. Only then do I reach up to catch the edge, holding onto it, even as I let out a laugh of pleasure.
“You did it.” Ankor swims up to me, so close I can feel the heat radiating from his body through the water.
“I did it,” I agree, breathless, beaming with pleasure. My eyes latch onto his. I can’t stop smiling. Because I did it. I swam all the way out here, even when it got scary, even when I thought it’d be too much. I overcame my fear.
Because he was here. Because he talked me through it, and because I trusted him not to let me get hurt, no matter what happened.
“Ankor…” I don’t know when it happened, but there’s barely an inch between us. I lift my face to his, and I feel like I’m falling into those dark brown eyes of his, searching out the little flecks of gold near the center that I love so much.
“Sinclair,” he murmurs, and his breath ghosts across my lips. “You’re so damn brave.” He smiles at me. He smells like mint, and something else. That heady scent I remember in my dreams. The one I couldn’t get enough of. “You can do anything, you know that? You warrior.”
I grin, tempted to laugh, but I don’t. And I crave him. Suddenly and fiercely, I want to taste his mouth on mine, feel his body against me. Feeling bolder than I ever have thanks to that swim, I let go of the wall. Instead of hanging onto it, I reach out and wrap both arms around his neck.
My body slides into his under the water. I can feel his chest against mine, and the hard bulge of his cock against my belly. He still wants me. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. It sends a thrill of pleasure through my veins, to know that he craves me just as much as I crave him.
I raise my eyes to his and find him watching me, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other holding us both against the wall. It’s still early. There won’t be anyone else in the pool for a while yet, at least half an hour. I can’t resist. Not when he’s so close, his body so warm and strong and muscular against mine.
I tilt my face up and kiss him. Tentatively, softly at first, because I’m still hesitant. But that’s all it takes. His arm tightens around my waist, crushing my body against his, and his lips part mine, his tongue twining with mine as he deepens the kiss, claiming me as his once more.
He flips us so he has me pinned against the wall of the deep end, still holding us upright with one arm. I hold myself to him with both of mine, and arch my hips against him, feeling the press of his cock between us. I let out a faint groan against his mouth, and he kisses me harder, inhaling sharply in a way that sounds almost pained with want.
His free hand slides down my waist. His fingers grip my ass once, tightly, hard enough to make me gasp against his lips again. Then he grins and traces his fingers over the arch of my hipbone, before he slides his palm between my legs.
A shiver runs all the way through me, from the top of my head all the way down to my toes, which curl tightly under the water. His hands aren’t even inside, just over the top of my bathing suit. But he starts to stroke me slowly, and I’m already so fucking turned on, my clit swollen and throbbing with want, that it doesn’t take long before I’m bucking against his hand, clinging to him like my last lifeline in a deep ocean, as his fingers rub against me, harder, faster. My whole body trembles in anticipation. Just before I hit the peak, he kisses me again, hard and deep. I cry out into his mouth, the sound muffled by his kiss, and he grins as I come, shaking, my pussy tightening and releasing compulsively as his fingers slow their pace, and he slides his arm back around my waist instead.
When I finally stop quivering, he draws back just far enough to gaze down at me, heat evident in his eyes. “I’ve missed you, Sinclair,” he whispers.
I kiss him to avoid answering. I’ve missed you too, I think. I hope the kiss says what I can’t force myself to speak. When we break apart, he starts to kiss his way down my neck, clearly intent on carrying things forward.
But with the orgasm still racing through my nervous system, and my heart slowing a little, my reason is starting to return. My head clears from the rush of lust, and I remember why I stopped all of this in the first place.
“Ankor.” I press my palms against his chest. When he doesn’t stop kissing me, I sink under the water, ducking under his arm to swim free a few paces.
He stares after me, hurt evident on his face.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, my voice so low it’s barely a whisper. “We can’t do this. I’m sorry. I’ve missed you too, and I really…” My voice hitches. “I really like you, Ankor. But there are things about me you don’t know. Things that would…” My voice breaks this time. He just watches me, not interrupting. Waiting for me to recover enough to explain. I hitch in a deep, steadying breath. “My past is a mess. And it’s the kind of past that won’t stay buried. It’ll come for me, and when it does, I don’t want to get you involved. You don’t deserve that. Not when you’ve been nothing but kind to me, nothing but helpful and kind and…” And hot as hell in bed. Not
to mention more attentive and caring than anyone I’ve ever dated.
I stop myself before I talk my way out of resisting him again.
I swim toward the shallow end. It doesn’t seem as far this time. But when my feet touch ground, I hear splashes. I turn to find Ankor next to me, chest glistening as he stands partway out of the water.
“I have secrets too, Sinclair,” he says, his own voice tight with emotion. “I understand what it’s like to have a bad past. Trust me. And it’s probably stupid to risk everything on a girl I barely know, but I want to. I promised myself I wouldn’t reveal my past, not here. This was supposed to be my fresh start. But I won’t throw away a chance at something special, Sinclair, and you are. This, whatever we have, it’s special. I’ve never felt this way before. Being with you is worth any risk.”
I stare, my lips parting with surprise. Whatever I expected him to say in the face of my admitting to a terrible past, it wasn’t this. I expected curiosity, maybe concern about where I come from. Not compassion. Not an offer of trust. I swallow hard and take a glance around the pool. The resort in the distance had begun to wake up, lights flicking on in the windows as people start to go about their daily business.
Pretty soon, we won’t be alone here anymore. Ankor must sense that, too.
“Not here,” he says. “But let’s talk this afternoon, okay? And I’ll tell you the truth.” He offers me a hand, like we’re making a deal.
I guess we are. I place my palm in his and squeeze, trying not to think about what I’ve just agreed to. “This afternoon,” I say. But I already worry I won’t be able to give him what he wants.
7
Ankor
Sinclair meets me at the resort restaurant at noon. There’s hardly anyone here at this hour—most people are out trying other cuisine around the island, or still napping on the beach or in their rooms after early morning swims. We have the place to ourselves, and what a place it is. Jutting out of the hotel rooftop, it has a view out over the entire beach below us, the jungle in the distance and the mountains behind it.
Married to the Secret Billionaire Page 7