“And?” Lexi doesn’t move, doesn’t tense up or sit straight. She only stares at me, relaxed and seemingly unfazed. Must be the wine.
“Reed’s not paying the hackers. They don’t know when, but that video is going to go out into the world.”
There’s a beat of silence between us, where the dimmed night songs of the bugs and birds rise above the far-off waves.
“Okay.” She swallows hard. “Jeez. What a fuckup.”
“I know.” I reach for her hand, sliding my thumb over her fingers. “It sucks.”
For a long moment, she struggles to keep her emotions contained. “There’s nothing I can do about it. Absolutely nothing.” She hitches her shoulders with a sigh. “That world is so far away from here. I mean?—”
“Yep. Seems kinda dumb.”
“I know, right? There’s important work to do here for other people. This is Mia Reed’s problem. She has her own agenda, over which I have zero say. I was so busy with Deshni’s proposal that I didn’t check social media today. It’s liberating.”
“Yeah, going offline is liberating.” I reach for her hair where it’s piled on the sofa’s back and play with a few strands. “You know I’m your person here, right? Whatever happens, we’ll weather it together.”
“Yes. I know. Just as I’m yours.”
Those words…She’s mine.And I’m fucked.
“I’m going to rinse these out,” I say, letting go of her hair and picking up the dirty bowls. I need to get physically away from her, because all I want to do is pull her onto my lap, have her straddle me, and kiss her senseless—just like I wanted to do earlier when I had her in my arms.
“I’m going to read,” she says. “The library here is stocked with loads of books I’ve always wanted to get to but never had the time.”
“Good.” I stand and take the last sip of my wine. “I’m going to work on the footage I shot today.”
“You getting anywhere?”
“Yep. A few things are coming together that can make a story. I’ll see where it goes over the next few weeks.”
“Great.”
I scoot past her, but at the last second she blocks me by putting her foot on the coffee table. “To think, we could be having a threesome right now.”
“Yeah?” I look down at her, surprised by the teasing smile on her lips. “You’re into that type of thing?”
“No. I never have been…” Lexi trails off as a blush invades her sweet face. “You?”
I shake my head with a chuckle. Might as well address what happened this morning. “Nope. As you’ve seen, I’ve been sailing solo for some time now, so going from one to three is skipping an important number for me.”
“Yeah? Two. You do two?”
She’s poking at me now like I poked at her, and I’m game to see where this goes. “Two max.” I sit on the coffee table and put the bowls down. Her foot is right there, snuggled against my hip.Fuck. I’m going to have to keep things in check here.
“Does that make us dull?” She puts her other foot on the coffee table too, effectively trapping me right where I want to be, between her legs.
“Dull?” I rest my hands on her feet and gaze into her eyes, making sure she’s on board with my touch.
She doesn’t shy away from staring right back at me. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “What’re you doing?”
Lexi chuckles. “I’m flirting with my fake fiancé.”
“I see.”Two can play that game. This will be such torturous fun. I slide my fingers around her ankles and higher, to hercalves and the folds of her knees. Goosebumps speckle her skin, and I smile. “Babes, to get back to your question of being dull—I don’t know who you’ve been having sex with, but two is definitely not dull.”
I smooth my hands up to her thighs, letting my thumbs caress the inner slopes that lead to her sex. A shudder runs through her body, and with a soft moan, she seems to sink deeper into the sofa, her legs opening a barely perceptible inch. She’s going to drive me nuts, but instead of running my thumbs along the hem of her shorts and over her pussy, I circle my hands to her hips, pulling her toward me and making her drop her feet to the floor. I lean closer, and her chest rises and falls in anticipation of what I’m going to do next.
