“Do you miss it?”
I looked at him, at the earnestness in his eyes. He wasn’t asking because he wanted the scoop or to be the first person to post about it on socials. He was asking because he cared. “The band or being onstage?”
“Either? Both?”
“I think I miss the band dynamic sometimes. I’m happy to be solo, but there was something about the energy we shared with each other. Even when Raleigh was an absolute fucking monster to me, when we were in front of the crowd for that little while, it didn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry you lost that,” he murmured.
I leaned in and took another kiss. “I’m not. It was always worse when the show was over and real life set back in. He was always so angry at me whenever I got attention.”
“He sounds like a real douche.”
I burst into a fit of laughter. “Yeah. He was a real fucking douche.” I dragged my fingers through my hair, pushing it back away from my forehead. Maybe I should cut it. But then I thought about the way it felt when Ryan twisted his fingers and held me in place with it, and yeah…maybe I’d keep it.
“Come on,” Ryan said after a moment. “Let’s get in the hot tub and boil like lobsters.”
It didn’t take us long to strip down to swim shorts and climb into the steamy water. I was a little more sensitive to temperature since my accident, so Ryan kept the temperature lower and the bubbles high. The massage feature felt like heaven on my back, but when Ryan put his hands on me, it was euphoric.
He moved me into his lap, his warm chest pressed against my back, his arms loose around me. I had never been so content in my life.
“Can we just stay here forever?”
I laughed. “I’ve never been more tempted in my life. But also…hurricanes.”
I could feel his grimace against the side of my face as he leaned in to smudge a kiss along my jaw. “It’s annoying when you’re reasonable.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why you—” I stopped myself before I made one giant mistake and swallowed back the four-letter word. The way he stiffened though, he understood what I hadn’t said. I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I hope this week crawls by.”
His fingers danced down my arm. “Me too.”
We didn’t need to speak after that. We sat and watched the stars winking in and out of existence, listening to the waves, the occasional splash of something neither of us could see and I was too afraid to ask about. But I didn’t feel anything other than safe in his arms.
And when he started to touch my chest, I groaned and leaned further back into him.
“You like that?” he asked against my ear.
I nodded, humming. He could tell how desperate I was to feel tender touches like this. “Yeah.”
“And this?” He pinched a nipple, and my cock thickened in my shorts. He could also tell how much I wanted the sharper ones. Shifting restlessly against him, I could feel him getting hard too.
“Yeah.” My desire not to fuck in a hot tub was dwindling with each pass of his strong hands.
“This?” He trailed his touch lower—lower—until he was toying with the elastic on my waistband.
I sucked in my stomach, and his fingers dipped beneath the fabric, going further still until…
“Oh fuck. Oh shit. I am so sorry! Jesus, I thought you were dead, asshole! Not fucking in a hot tub. Christ, Tarik. Avert your eyes!”
My body went cold at the sound of my brother’s voice, and it took everything in me—every ounce of control—not to tumble over the edge of the hot tub and strangle him to death. Ryan went completely stiff, his breathing stuttered in his chest.
There was only one thing I could do in this moment, so I turned and set my arm on the side of the plastic. “Tollin. Tarik. Nice to see you. Is there a reason you decided to show up and ruin my sexcation?”
My brother and my so-called best friend gave us a few minutes to climb out and compose ourselves. Ryan was trembling with shock and nerves as we toweled off, and he didn’t start breathing normally until I cornered him against the wooden beam of the cabana and kissed him soundly.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
His eyes went a little hazy. “Sweetheart?”
