by Sarina Bowen
“I’m a nervous tapper,” I admit. “My assistant does the same thing, but she isn’t as nice about it.”
“Not a fan of the water?” she asks.
“No it’s…” There’s no explaining it to a stranger. “I’m Delilah, by the way.”
“Oh!” Her eyes light up. “I thought you looked familiar, and now I remember why. You’re Silas’s date. He’s the cutest. They’re taking bets over whether you’ll show up.”
“Yes. Right.” I am stammering. “Wait, why?”
“Just to tease him. He never brings a date anywhere.” She smiles again. “They’re always betting about something. You get used to it. There’s also a betting pool over whether Dave and I will have a second child by the end of next season. Dave just retired, so I guess that’s where their minds go.” She rolls her eyes.
“Daddy coming now?” the little girl asks.
Zara replaces the hat on her bright red hair. “You’ll see Daddy in five minutes, I swear. Now leave that hat on before I glue it to your head.”
The little girl gives her an evil grin.
“We’ve lived apart,” Zara says. “Long story. Nicole is fascinated with the idea that Daddy is going to live at our house.” She laughs. “But when you’re two, normal is whatever you know.”
“I think normal is generally pretty elusive. Right now, for instance.” Flying to a private island to see Silas feels so crazy. And yet here I am.
“Too late now,” Zara says cheerfully.
I look up to see an island on the horizon. On one end, the land rises to showcase a mansion with a multifaceted roofline and a sweeping terrace. Trees hide any other buildings on the property. There’s a little harbor with a dock. “Wow.”
“I know!” Zara says.
“Daddy!” the little girl screams, scrambling to climb up her mother for a better look.
“Easy, killer.” Zara sighs, freeing a small, sandaled foot from her crotch. “The flight was basically just like this. Hey—I think the whole team is waiting for this boat.”
Indeed, there’s a crowd of handsome men standing around in swim trunks and sunglasses. I scan their faces, spotting Silas on the end. He’s wearing a tight gray T-shirt and has his hands thrust into his pockets.
And, wow. Hi, hormone rush. If there’s a more appealing man on the planet, I haven’t ever seen one.
The moment the boat nudges the dock, the dark-skinned pilot hops out to secure it. That’s when Zara’s daughter gets free of her mother and scrambles, dodging other passengers as she breaks for the dock.
“Nicole!” Zara calls, her voice sharp. She stands up, but there are others in her way now.
The pilot steps back into the boat and catches Nicole neatly by the T-shirt before she can climb overboard. And a redheaded man, laughing, runs down the dock toward the boat. “I’ll take that off your hands.”
“DADDY!”
There’s a wave of laughter from the people onshore.
“Mom fail,” Zara says with a sigh. “I may not sit down the whole time we’re here.”
“That sight, though.” The redheaded man has his little girl wrapped in a tight hug, and it’s so sweet that watching them makes me feel like I’m intruding.
When it’s my turn to step off the boat, Silas is waiting. “Hi,” he says quietly, lifting the brim of my hat a few degrees so he can see me. Then he gives me a quick kiss on the jaw.
“Hi, yourself.”
He smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle. I could stand here admiring him all day, but a gauntlet of his friends are waiting, and I am suddenly intimidated.
For someone who is required to meet and charm strangers all the time, I’m not very good at it. And Silas has a lot of friends. They’re all tall and healthy-looking and staring at us.
“Guys,” Silas says, taking my hand. “This is Delilah. Say hi.”
I swear they shout it in unison, goofy smiles on their faces. “Hi, Delilah!”
“I’m Georgia,” says a blonde woman about my age. She pushes her way past the players to shake my hand. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Nice to finally meet you,” I say, my voice squeaking.
“If you need anything while you’re here, just holler,” Georgia adds. “But I have a feeling Silas will take very good care of you.” She turns around. “Guys, no photos of Delilah unless you ask her first. And no social media at all. Not until Monday. Then you can post family-friendly photos of the wedding.”
“But I was going to sell wedding pictures to People!” a handsome guy argues.
“That one is my husband,” Georgia explains with a shake of her head. “He’s smarter than he looks. They all are, actually.”
“Good to know,” I say.
Silas clears his throat. I just want to stare at him, honestly. I can’t because there are all these people here, but I feel his calming presence beside me. I swear, it isn’t even the chance at more sex that brought me to crash a wedding on an island full of strangers. It was the chance to stand close to him again and experience the weird magnetic energy between us.
“You don’t have to remember all these names,” Silas says. “But this is Leo and Jason and Heidi and Ari and O’Doul.”
I go down the line, shaking hands. He’s right—there’s no way I’m going to remember all these names.
“Ping-pong time!” O’Doul says, clapping his hands. “Let’s do this.”
“Awesome,” Silas says. “We’re just going to put Delilah’s bag in the cabin. Go on and start.”
“You guys want a doubles bracket?” O’Doul calls over his shoulder.
“Nah,” Silas says. “We’ll take over for someone else, maybe.”
Jason—the handsome, olive-skinned roommate I just met—looks back at us and smirks. “Later,” he says, and then his cute girlfriend swats him on the arm.
Silas ignores all of it. He scoops up my suitcase in one hand, putting his other hand on the small of my back.
“That has wheels,” I say.
But superheroes don’t use wheels, apparently. He leads me away from the group and into a grove of well-pruned fruit trees—oranges, maybe?—with occasional palm trees mixed in. I don’t know anything about the tropics.
“Wow. This place is so beautiful.”
“Isn’t it? I’ll give you the tour before dinner,” he says. “Wait until you see the pool.” Silas stops suddenly, putting the suitcase down and turning to me.
When I look up into his eyes, the intensity I see there steals my breath. “What?” I whisper.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I almost didn’t,” I blurt. “I thought that…” He waits for me to finish, but my hesitation isn’t easy to describe. “I thought I’d ruin it. That maybe we wouldn’t be the same again.” Like maybe I’d imagined how alive he makes me feel when we’re in the same space.
“And?” he asks quietly.
And you’re just as amazing as I remember. That sounds crazy, though. It’s hard to put into words how strongly I feel the pull every time he shows up in my life. “I’m really glad I got on that boat.”
He pulls me in until I’m folded against his solid chest. “Goddamn, I missed you,” he says, removing my hat and kissing me on the forehead. “That was a really long two and a half weeks.”
My heart swells. “You amaze me,” I tell his T-shirt.
“Why? Because I’m smitten?”
“No.” I laugh. “That you can say so. Like it’s no big deal to say how you feel.”
His big hand has a pleasant grip on my back. “But you do the same thing all the time, no? You put a lot of heart into every song.”
“It’s not the same at all.” I take a step back so I can look up into those warm eyes of his. “The song isn’t personal. It’s for everyone. And if I do manage to say something personal, I disguise it very carefully. So nobody could ever guess why I ever really felt the things I’m singing about. I never have to look someone in the eye and lay myself bare.”
Even though it’s eighty-five degrees on this island, I feel goosebumps. “I want to be more like you, Ralph. But I don’t know how.”
“Sorry, can’t tell you,” he whispers, his lips grazing my hairline. “I’ve been me all my life. It comes easy.”
That’s when his eyes lock on mine, and I know he’s finally going to kiss me. Suddenly, I feel incredibly self-conscious. I’m standing here in beach clothes that I obsessed over and lipstick that I touched up on the boat, for a guy I barely know but desperately want.
“Shh,” he whispers, as if he can hear the clanking of the gears in my head and the thumping of my heart. Then he takes my face in his hand and draws me in.
His lips are warm as he takes my mouth. His kiss is slow, like he knows I still need a minute to accept that this is real.
The first kiss calms me down. I feel my mind go quiet as he tilts my head and deepens our contact. His eyes close as my lips part for him. He tastes me slowly and then not so slowly. My arms grip him, pulling him closer. His hand tugs on my hair, and I lift my chin, exposing my neck.
Silas crushes me to his chest and kisses me ten different places in quick succession. “Jesus,” he whispers against my skin, and I shiver.
He steps back with a grunt and lifts my suitcase again. “Right. Where were we?” He takes my hand in his. “The cottage is just through here. They all look alike, so if you get confused, remember that ours is Number 11.”
Ours. I like the sound of that. I’m a silly girl who can’t wait to play house on an island for a few days.
There’s a tidy paved path between the little structures, and Silas opens the door to Number 11 with just a twist of the knob. “We haven’t been locking up. Everyone on the island is either a hockey player or a rich tech executive, so…” He shrugs. “There’s a safe in each bedroom. For valuables. You could put your wallet in there.”
“Got it,” I say as he leads me into a comfortable living room with rattan furniture and throw pillows. There’s a kitchen area along one wall and a basket of muffins on the countertop.
We pass through into a short hallway with three bedroom doors. “They gave me the smallest bedroom,” Silas says, walking in and placing my bag down in a corner. “I never show up with a date, so it’s a habit.”
It is a small room. Small enough that I can reach out and place a hand on his chest. “Never?”
“Nope,” he whispers. “Didn’t have the right girl. So what’s the point?” He covers my hand with his.
And—like gears in a clock—we each turn a few degrees, fitting ourselves together. His chin tilts down, mine tilts up, and our kiss is inevitable. There’s nothing tentative about it. One kiss turns into a quick dozen. Then he lifts my top off and sheds his T-shirt.
No words are exchanged at all as he nudges me onto the bed. When I turn to crawl farther onto the mattress, he catches me by the hips and relieves me of my skirt and my bikini bottom in one smooth pull.
I spread my body out on the bed, face down, inhaling the scent of clean linen as his kisses make a path up my back. I hear a zipper as he frees himself from his other clothes. His skin slides against mine a moment later, his erection a hot brand against my ass as he draws my body against his. He’s all hands and hot kisses and fervor. We are twisting, aching bodies on a bed, reigniting the flame that sparks so effortlessly between us.
Chemistry is something I’d forgotten about entirely until Silas showed up in my hotel room to reacquaint me with the concept. I roll over and cling to him shamelessly as he kisses me and teases me into a desperate fever.
He moves down my body, his mouth burning me up inside. This time I’m prepared. I’ve buffed and shaved and smoothed every naked inch.
Or at least I thought I was ready. I grow self-conscious as he parts my knees with those magic hands. I look up at the white ceiling and wonder if I can do this—spread myself so bare for a man.
But then Silas rests his cheek on one of my thighs and kisses the other one. His hand strokes my leg, and he lets out a happy sigh, as if arriving home at the end of a long day. The sensitive skin of my inner leg gets another kiss. And another. Now I can feel his warm breath on my pussy, and my nipples get impossibly hard.
I catch myself arching toward him. Because even if this scares me, I still crave him. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, I was so full of expectation, so desperate to have him inside me again. My usual solution—getting out of bed to fetch my guitar—wasn’t an option. Any song I wrote would have been filthy dirty.
As he slowly turns his head to kiss my achy body, all my hesitation flees. And, as his tongue makes the first, slow lick, I sink further into the mattress, bearing down, letting go. Just take me, I want to say. Don’t ever stop.
He makes a hungry sound, which only makes me crazier. And I lose myself in kisses and licks, until I’m panting and begging him to fuck me. By the time he flips me onto my stomach again, kicks the bedroom door shut, and tugs my hips up to meet his, I’m desperate. He fills me with one primitive thrust that makes both of us groan.
“Silas,” I gasp, realizing something. “Condom.”
He goes absolutely still, his big hands easing their grip on my hips. “I didn’t forget. You want to see?”
“Oh,” I say as my pulse pounds in my ears. “No, it’s okay.”
But he’s already gone. Cool air hits my back. “Sweetheart.” He lies down beside me. “That’s not something I would mess up. I won’t hurt you like that.”
“Okay. Sorry.” I move closer to him. But I’ve broken the mood now.
He pulls me onto his body and studies me. “You’ll trust me eventually. I’ll make sure of it.”
“It’s not you,” I whisper.
“Oh, I know it.” He runs a finger down my nose. “It’s okay to slow down, anyway. I walked you into this cottage and went right into Beast Mode. How was your trip?”
“Fine.” I run a hand down his sculpted chest and take a good look at his beautiful body. And, yup, there’s a condom looking back at me. “I kind of liked Beast Mode,” I admit. “And we’re home all alone.”
He smiles. “So you wouldn’t rather go outside and play ping pong?”
“I suck at ping pong. You?”
“Champion of the team league. I fucking love ping pong.” He rolls on top of me and kisses my neck. “But not today.”
“No?” I gasp as he takes my nipple against his tongue.
“Nope.” He hooks a hand under my knee. Then he lifts his chin and gazes right into my eyes as he slides his way home again. “I’m right where I need to be.”
We spend the whole afternoon in bed. Eventually we’re so spent that lying under the sheet watching the ceiling fan turn is all we have left.
“How’s the new manager?” he asks, his fingers combing through my hair.
“Nice. No—that’s the wrong word for her. She’s fierce. She has ideas for how I can move forward without Brett’s cooperation.”
“Yeah? Tell me all the news.”
My head rolls lazily to the side, resting on his magnificent chest. “My contract isn’t easy to break, but there are some odd loopholes. Get this—I can’t make another solo album until he publishes the one he’s sitting on. But I could, for example, make a new album that’s credited to a band.”
“You mean the new album could come from—” His deep voice vibrates beneath my ear. “—Delilah and the Sparkle Puppies?”
I lift my head. “Did you say sparkle puppies? What the fuck is that?”
“Puppies are a crowd-pleaser, Delilah. Everyone likes puppies.”
“You’re mocking my demographic,” I tease.
“Puppies are universally appealing,” he insists. “Wait. Are you a puppy hater? Have I bedded a monster?”
We both crack up. I feel so loose right now. I love the way he teases me. We’re discussing all t
he most stressful things in my life, and he’s got me laughing about it.
“I know.” He snaps his fingers. “You should call the new band Free Beer. Everyone loves free beer.”
I let out an unladylike snort. “You’re off the marketing team.”
“What? I’m a marketing genius. Obvs.”
“Obvs,” I repeat happily. My troubles seem smaller when I’m lying next to him. “I’ll run them both past my terrifying manager.”
“Does she really want you to start a band?”
“Only if she can’t find another way to force Brett to do the right thing. That’s our nuclear option. The thought of walking away from my finished album makes me sick. I honestly spend several hours of each day trying to think up an alternative solution. Those songs represent more than two years of my work, and I can’t imagine a future where they’re not out in the world.”
I need Brett to release that album. I need him to blink first. Some days it’s all I think about.
“Is there no way to release those songs as a band?” he asks. “Like, rerecord them?”
I shake my head. “He already accepted them as fulfillment of the second and last album on my current contract. I can’t retract them without handing over another ten songs.”
“But doesn’t he need this release, too? Isn’t he sitting on millions of dollars right now?”
“Yes. That’s what’s so maddening. But apparently I care more than he does, and he’s willing to take some pain to cause me even more pain. Which shouldn’t surprise me.” I roll over and look him in the eye. “I should have listened to you when you warned me about him. I should have asked you to tell me the whole story.”
Silas closes his eyes. “Shit,” he says. “I think you did ask. And I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t reflect well on me, either.” He turns to prop his head on one hand. “Brett wasn’t the only cheater. And I didn’t want you to know.”
Silas
Delilah blinks back at me. “What happened?”
“Well…” I haven’t told this story in a long time. Or even thought about it, really. It brings me too much pain. “Back in high school, hockey wasn’t my only sport. I also played—”