This time, she wasn’t able to stop her fingers from pushing a lock of hair away from his eye. He instantly stilled, his gaze so sharp she quickly dropped her hand and curled it into a fist.
Stupid, stupid Alex!
He opened his mouth, and she was sure he was going to say it was time to leave. Sure she’d ruined everything by touching him. So when he said, “I wanna accept your offer,” her mouth fell open.
Quite a feat considering she was still flat on her back. She wasn’t sure how the physics behind that worked.
For a few seconds—or hours? Time no longer held meaning—she turned his words over in her head. They couldn’t mean what she thought they meant. Could they?
Nah.
And yet…
Slowly, she pushed into a seated position. “Just to be clear”—her voice was a harsh rasp—“are you talking about the offer of my virginity?”
“Ya-huh.”
Ya-huh.Strange how two tiny syllables spoken in a New England accent could make her heart feel so airy and light she thought it was a miracle it didn’t float away on the breeze.
“But there are conditions,” he added. “Everything I told you is true. We like each other. We respect each other. Heaven knows wewanteach other. It’d be too easy for one of us to let our feelings grow into something more.”
Too late.
“Haven’t changed my mind, Alex. I don’t wanna fall in love again.” His eyes implored her to hear what he was saying. “I can’t be someone’s everything. I’d just disappoint ’em. And I’d disappoint myself.”
She tried to listen with an open mind. But she couldn’t shake the thought that if people could choose how and when they fell in love, or who they fell in lovewith, they’d choose not to fall at all.
Falling was scary. And in her experience, ithurt.
“To make sure that can’t happen, we gotta limit ourselves to one day.Thisday.” He glanced down at her hands, and she realized they were fidgeting in her lap.
She tried stilling them by curling them into fists. But that just made her knee jump. “Tomorrow, we wake up and go back to being friends and colleagues.” His elusive smile held a hint of bedevilment. “Difference being you won’t be a virgin, and we will have scratched this fucking itch we got. What d’you say?”
She couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. Her own might reveal too much. So she directed her answer to his chin. “Okay.”
The word came out hesitant, making her frown.
If she appeared even the slightest bit unsure, he’d call off the whole thing. Then where would she be?
She’d have lost her one chance to make love to the man who held her heart in his hands. And even if he didn’t want it, even if he was determined that no one would ever hold his, didn’t shewantthat chance? Wasn’t something better than nothing?
Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin. “Okay,” she repeated, sounding far more certain.
That seemed to satisfy him. Because he pulled her into his lap and claimed her lips.
His first kiss made her lose her mind. His second convinced her she’d never need it back.
Chapter 21
12:31 p.m.
The nice thing about living on an island was that few clothes were required. It was possible to get naked in about two seconds flat.
Which Alex seemed dead set on doing.
Straddling Mason’s lap, she kissed him with a desire that was equal measures sweet and fierce. Between licks and sucks and nips and nibbles, she managed to whip his tank top over his head as well as her own T-shirt. Through it all, she rocked her hips against his hardness in a rhythm guaran-fucking-teed to drive him wild.
One of her hands speared into his hair. The other reached between their bodies, past his waistband, and wrapped tightly around him.
