The villa is breathtaking. It’s set on a private island with only two other homes inhabiting it—one of them being the Montgomerys’. It sits on the edge of the cliff and looks out across the infinite ocean. It’s like something from Lucy’s Pinterest board, only real.
It’s like a shack, but around fifty thousand times bigger and made up of wood and glass panels.
Lucy and Megan are standing in the living room I’ve just walked into. Their faces are just as awestruck as I imagine my own to be.
Wooden beams line the room, which opens up into a state-of-the-art kitchen. Megan takes my hand and pulls me away just as I head in that direction.
“Let’s pick rooms!” she squeals.
“How many are there?” Lucy starts to count the doors as we walk down the corridor and up the steps. This part of the house is set on two levels, and I spin, looking back down the hall where the ceiling opens up, letting the sun beam through four glass panels. This place is insane.
“Six,” Scarlet states, walking up behind us from a different direction with the boys. “Some of us will have to share.”
I try to look around her to see where they came from.
“You’ll have to bunk with me, princess.” Elliot throws his arm over Lucy’s shoulder, but she shrugs him off.
“Uh, no.” She looks offended, and I scoff at her. No sane women would kick Elliot Montgomery out of bed. “Megs, Scar? Looks like we’re rearranging rooms,” she tells them, arching a brow and giving them a look that says ‘go the fuck along with it’.
“Add ‘and drinking cocktails’ and I’m down for whatever,” Megan says, already in full relaxation mode.
“You got it, girl.” Lucy winks.
“What’s the plan?” Scar turns, looking at her brother to take charge. “Are we going out tonight or eating here?”
“We can eat here tonight. Get settled, dinner is at eight.” His hand snakes around my waist, and I purse my lips as I look to Luce. “If you need anything. Any of you. Don’t come knocking.”
They all chuckle as he pulls me backwards and through a bedroom door.
“Ma—”
I squeal as he lifts me off my feet and chucks me onto the bed with ease. His top is pulled off over his head, and he’s on me in a matter of seconds. “Don’t speak,” he tells me, hiking my legs up around his waist.
These moments with him are my favourite. We don’t need words because they only complicate the easiness that’s between us. The way we fit, it’s perfect. But the words we utter sometimes have a way of bending the corners, making us jagged pieces of the same puzzle.
I want to iron out the creases and make them fit. I just don’t want a marriage proposal, not yet, and maybe not a year from now either.
Mase
No.
That’s what she told me. No.
Marriage isn’t something I was interested in before Nina. It was never something I contemplated because I had never met someone who I wanted to share my life with.
Now I have, and she doesn’t want it.
I’ve had women throw themselves at me, giving anything for a date. Yet the woman I want to give my world to doesn’t want a part of it, or at least not yet.
She lies asleep in my arms, her head on my chest as her breath fans out over my heated skin. It’s ten to eight, and I know I need to wake her. I just don’t want to. Everything seems better with her locked tight in my arms.
“I’m coming in.” The door rattles and then a thud. “Guys, come on!” Megan, I think, shouts from the other side of the door.
Nina jolts awake, looking up at me and then to the door. “Time is it?”
“Almost eight,” I tell her, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Nina! You have my strappy sandals. I want my strappy sandals.”
