It’s definitely his sun lounger, then.
“I’ll get out of your way,” I mutter, turning and starting to gather my various belongings so I don’t have to watch the way he’s caressing that chest of his with the towel. “Sorry again.”
“It’s fine,” he sighs, holding up a hand to stop me. “Keep the seat. There’s another one over there I can use.”
He points at a now-empty lounger on the other side of the spa, and I sink back against my seat as he walks over to it, the muscles in his shoulders rippling underneath the smooth skin as he spends a few seconds putting up the umbrella next to it for shade, before lying down and pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes.
I peer at him covertly from behind my own glasses. After that moment at breakfast when I found myself feeling briefly territorial over him, I’m feeling weirdly unsettled around him; almost as if he could conceivably know what I’ve been thinking.
Alex’s lounger is opposite mine, which puts me right in his line of sight, with the bubbling waters of the spa between us. He doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to me at all, but, even so, I can’t help but feel stupidly self-conscious in my little black bikini, which looked perfectly respectable in the bathroom mirror, but which feels borderline indecent under the (completely imaginary) gaze of Alex Fox.
I close my eyes to remove the temptation to keep watching him, and allow the hot sun to wash over me. When I open them again, it’s over an hour later; the sun’s at its height now, and the majority of the sun loungers around me are empty, most people presumably having escaped into the shade, or gone to get ready for lunch. I glance around furtively, hoping I haven’t been drooling while I slept, but someone’s pulled one of the huge sunshades that are dotted around the place overmy lounger, with another one opposite, so I’m mostly hidden from view, as well as being protected from the sun.
I pick up my sunscreen and start to reapply it, wondering if it could have been Alex. He’s the only one around who vaguely knows me, after all, but he’s immersed in the pages of his book, and doesn’t look up, even when the slippery bottle goes shooting out of my hand and almost hits a passing child on the head.
Whoops.
“Need some help with that?” Alex says immediately. “I’d offer to come over and do your back for you, but I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea. You know, seeing as I’m the kind of guy you want to sleep with?”
I pause in the act of rubbing lotion into my shoulders.
Is heflirtingwith me? Is that what he’s doing? Or is he just being mean again? Because it’s hard to tell with him…
“I said you were the kind of guywomenwant to sleep with,” I point out, glancing around to make sure there’s no one sitting close enough to hear this conversation. “Not that you’re the kind of guy Ipersonallywant to sleep with.”
“No?”
He swings his legs off his sun lounger, then gets up and strolls over to me, looking likeexactlythe kind of guy I’d like to…
… on second thoughts, it’s probably best if I don’t continue that thought.
“Give it to me,” he says, standing in front of me and holding out his hand. I look up at him, eyes wide.
“The sunscreen?” he says. “So I can do your back for you?”
“Oh. Er, no need,” I say hurriedly, turning away from his crotch, which is currently at my eye level. “I can manage. I’ll just… I’ll just make sure I lie on my back.”
“Summer,” Alex says firmly. “Give me the bottle. Look at your feet. You’re already burning.”
I glance down at my feet, which are propped up in front of me. Sure enough, the tips of my toes are bright red from where they’ve obviously been peeking out from underneath the umbrella. This is what happens when you have skin the approximate color of milk.
“Give me it,” says Alex again.
I reluctantly hand over the bottle of sunscreen, then turn around so my back is facing him, letting out a little yelp of surprise when the cold liquid hits my shoulders without warning. I feel the sun-lounger sag beneath me as he sits behind me, his bare chest to my back.
This is… normal.
He spreads the sunscreen over my back, then starts to gently rub it in, his hands moving in slow circles over my shoulder blades in a way that makes me want to whimper with pleasure.
This is absolutely not ‘normal’.
Not even close.
“That feel okay?” asks Alex in a low voice. His hands are working their way down my lower back now, the fingers brushing the edge of my bikini bottoms as he massages the sunscreen into my skin.
“Um, yeah, that’s… that’s fine,” I tell him, swallowing hard. “You can just leave it there, thanks. I can do the rest myself.”
“You sure?” His voice comes from somewhere just above my left ear, and sounds slightly strange, although it might just be the blood pounding in my head that’s making me think that. “You don’t want me to do your legs, too?”
