“That someone’s after Ash for something.” I didn’t say any more, something stopping me, fear, maybe, that I’d find out something I didn’t like.
“Sounds about right. I wouldn’t worry about it. Just enjoy your holiday.” He turned the radio on and started singing along to the song that played, his expression lightening, along with my worries.
The night was heady, the heat sultry and lingering. The days of early summer, when the evenings were cool, had evaporated with the last of the early sunsets. Tonight felt like the first day of the rest of the season, one that felt portentous with its promises.
And a night ahead that was making me almost shake with nerves.
“Where do you live?” I had no idea where Tommy was taking me.
“I have an apartment in Santa Gertrudis. There’s the flat above the bar, but I’m not taking you back there.”
“I’m not a princess. I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at it.”
He laughed. “You are a princess. And the apartment is pretty basic, butCòctelswill be noisy tonight, and I’ll probably end up having to sort some shit out if we go there.”
“I get it. I’m imagining some bachelor pad. An unmade bed and nothing in the fridge.” Nerves kept me talking.
“You’re right about the fridge, but the cleaner’s been in today, so it might almost meet your standards.”
I realised he was nervous about me seeing his place, something which surprised me. He was older, more self-assured. He’d had far more of a life than I had.
“We could’ve gone back to mine.”
“But then I wouldn’t have gotten to know what you looked like spread out across my bed.”
His words made me clench my thighs together.
“And I wouldn’t have gotten to know how it feels.”
I spentthe night on Tommy’s sheets and found out exactly how it felt. Thick cotton against my back as he fucked me first, then on my knees when he took me from behind for a second time. We talked, and kissed, and felt, and came, and my body found new ways to respond. He learned what made me writhe beneath him even more fluently than before, and our touches became a new language that only we seemed to understand.
Sometime in the middle of the night, just as the first glimpses of dawn started to peak through the blinds, I woke. Tommy’s body was curled around mine, his breath warm against the naked skin of my shoulder. A sheet was tangled around our limbs, the night too warm for anything more, and his hand cupped my breast.
I stirred, needing the bathroom and a moment to myself, and as I did, I disturbed him.
He said a name in his sleep, clearly enough for me to tell whose name it was. I would’ve expected it to be Leila’s, his fiancée who died, but it wasn’t.
It was mine.
Chapter Seventeen
Jameson
The next few weeks blurred into a mix of sand and sun and sea.
And sex.
Lots and lots of sex. We went for dates when we were able, when my family wasn't demanding we did things together, when Tommy didn’t have to be at the bar, or have family stuff himself to deal with, when Lala wasn’t pulling the sister card and insisting we shopped or day tripped or hung out. There were breakfasts that turned into quickies in the back ofCòctels, afternoon delight at Tommy’s apartments and nights spent where we could.
I’d never had an addictive personality, until now. I missed his body when I woke up without him, and found myself randomly wondering what he was doing at odd times when I should’ve been focusing on something else, like Daisy, our half-sister who’d decided that she was now old enough to terrorise Ibiza in the same way me and Lala had when we were underage and just about able to persuade the bouncers to let us in.
I hadn’t spent much time with Daisy-Mae in the last three or four years, and now it felt that all of a sudden she was a different, older person, one I recognised as being very much like Lala at the same age.
“Who’s the guy you’re dating?” Daisy asked me as I drove her to Els Lloros for a ‘posh breakfast’.
She was only interested in doing things that were in therightplace, with therightpeople, and while wearing therightclothes, something Gav hadn’t gotten his head around.
He’d by-passed me and Lala turning into overgrown girls because he’d had Daisy to fawn over, and be his little princess – and yes, he had called her that, but now that she was on the cusp of fluttering gracefully from the nest, he wasn’t so graceful.
