She exhaled slowly, watching them go. Her fingers flexed at her sides, a small, unconscious movement that told me more than any scale could.
“Scale,” I said quietly, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Still an eight?”
She glanced up at me, eyes bright. “Holding steady,” she said. “Maybe… eight and a half.”
I smiled, something warm and fierce cracking open inside my chest. “Good girl.”
Her pupils blew just a tiny bit wider. Fuck. I was going to be useless all night. I’d gotten so used to just taking her whenever, wherever, that this was going to be a challenge for me.
“Come on,” I said, curling my hand around the back of her neck, thumb pressing into the spot that always made her lean into me. “Let’s feed the animals.”
“Just wait until we drop the news of the wedding,” she whispered, melting into my side.
We walked down the hallway together. I could hear Marco already rifling through the cupboards like he owned the place, Ivy telling him to stop touching things, Kimi asking where the wine opener was, Lucy making a soft, awed sound as she caught sight of the view through the terrace doors.
The villa opened up around them, all white walls and pale wood and that endless stretch of darkening sea. The kitchen light spilled golden over the countertops, over the pot on the stove, over the candle I’d lit under the guise of “ambience, not romance,” as if those were ever separate things with us.
As if everything in this place wasn’t a shrine to the fact that I was utterly, irreversibly gone for the woman at my side.
She peeled away from me to head for the stove, slipping back into her role as chef like she hadn’t been shaking around my fingers not that long ago. I watched her walk for a second, the sway of her hips, the way the romper skimmed the curve of her ass.
Yeah. Feral was one word for it.
I dragged a hand over my face.Focus, Fraser.I needed to keep her bubble intact first. Then I could think about how to get her back on the counter.
“Oi,” Marco said, snapping his fingers near the breadboard. “Host with the most, you promised carbs and trouble. Where is the wine?”
Aurélie shot me a smirk over her shoulder, wooden spoon in hand. “He needs his own bottle, baby. I like when Marco’s inhibitions are in the wind,” she mused.
I stepped up behind her, bracing a hand on the counter near her hip, claiming my territory with a casualness I did not feel. “Careful, mo chridhe,” I murmured, low enough that only she could hear. “Keep talking like that and I’ll give them a live demonstration of why you haven’t put knickers on all day.”
She swallowed a laugh, shoulders shaking. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered back.
“Try me,” I said.
Her eyes flashed. Heat, mischief, love. All of it, just for me. Then she cleared her throat. “D’accord. Secretly I just want to see what an intoxicated Marco does to Ivy’s nerves.”
“Hey!” Ivy protested, slipping onto a barstool, aghast. “I had to sit next to him on both flights the entire time. My nerves are already shot.”
I reached for the wine cooler, keeping one hand on Aurélie’s hip as I pulled out one bottle to set it on the counter, then another.
Let them be here. Let them laugh and eat and crowd our kitchen.
They’d walked into our island. Our bubble. Our rules.
And over my dead body was I letting anyone—paparazzi, teams, or well-meaning friends—take this from her again.
“Well, they’re about to get worse,” Aurélie shot back, and I grinned, knowing where this was going. Her right hand stirred the sauce while I slid the bottles across the counter toward Kimi, who held the wine opener. He immediately got to work while Marco pulled four wine glasses out of the cupboard. Mine and Aurélie’s were still on the counter from earlier.
I strained the noodles as our friends gathered around the breakfast bar expectantly, their glasses full of the inky Naxos red I’d promised earlier—cherries and trouble swirling in crystal.
Aurélie stopped stirring and grabbed my wrist, hauling me into her side. Then she dropped the bomb.
“Before we eat,” she said, lifting her voice just enough to cut through the chatter, “we have one more rule.”
Four heads snapped toward us, a collective groan already loading.
Marco pointed his glass at her. “If this is about shoes again?—”
