Iwake up nestled against something warm and solid.
It’s pleasant and comforting, but it doesn’t make sense. This warmth has weight and shape and a heartbeat, a solid wall of heat pressed along the entire length of my back, and there’s something heavy draped across my waist that my sleep-fogged brain is taking its sweet time identifying. I haven’t opened my eyes yet. I don’t need to, because whatever this is, wherever I am, my body feels loose and rested in a way I’d forgotten was possible, like I’ve been sleeping inside a heated cocoon that was custom-built around me, and every muscle I own has decided to surrender at once.
I can hear the ocean through the louvers, the soft crash and pull of waves, and the sheets against my skin are so ridiculously soft that waking up feels like a crime. I haven’t slept this well in months. Possibly years. It feels so good I just want to stay in this warm, heavy, perfect place for five more minutes.
Then my brain finishes booting up, and I realize with a jolt that the warm, heavy, perfect place is Alec Beckett.
The pillow wall is gone. Not simply compromised. Obliterated. I can see the casualties scattered across the mattress from here, one wedged against the headboard, anotherdangling off the foot of the bed, the entire fortification I constructed with such care reduced to decorative debris.
And I am nowhere near my side of the bed, because my side of the bed is approximately three feet to my left, and what’s currently behind me is a man’s chest, warm and broad against my spine. His arm, heavy and muscled, is wrapped around my waist, and his knees are tucked behind mine like we’ve been sleeping this way for years instead of having met on a plane yesterday.
We are spooned. Fully, aggressively spooned, his breath slow and warm against the back of my neck, each exhale hitting a patch of skin that sends a shiver rolling down between my shoulder blades and settling somewhere much lower. My pulse speeds up before I’ve even processed why, my body apparently working on information my brain hasn’t caught up to yet.
And then I feelit.
Firm and unmistakable pressed against my ass. Thick and hard. Alec Beckett, the man who thinks sugar is a moral failing and fun is a communicable disease, is at my backside with an erection that can only be described as gargantuan.
Oh. My. God.
My face catches fire. A full-body flush rolls through me, scalp to toes. Because the appropriate response to waking up with a stranger’s hard-on against your back is alarm, or disgust, or at least the basic self-preservation instinct to move. What my body is actually doing is sending a slow, liquid coil of warmth between my thighs, which is so unhelpful I could scream.
I need to get out of this bed before he wakes up. As in, now.
Unfortunately, moving requires separating my body from his, and my body is not fully on board with this plan. My skin is already protesting the idea of cold air where his bare forearm is resting. I start with the arm anyway, curling my fingers around his wrist and lifting it one careful millimeter at a time, holdingmy breath so hard my ribs ache. His arm slides against my tank top as I raise it, and the friction sends a prickle of heat across my stomach that I aggressively ignore.
The moment his arm clears my waist, the absence registers like someone pulled a blanket off me in January. I feel exposed and cold and stupidly, irrationally disappointed, which is mortifying and also not something I can control.
Now the hips. I inch away from the part of him that’s been pressed against me for God knows how long, and every shift of my weight makes the mattress dip in ways that threaten to wake him. But I’ve got this. I’ve carried four loaded plates on one arm through a packed Friday night rush without spilling a drop; I can manage a slow retreat across six inches of Egyptian cotton. The problem is that every inch I gain is an inch of cold air replacing the solid heat of him behind me, which he can probably feel too.
He makes a sound. Low and rough, not a word, just a rumble from somewhere deep in his chest that vibrates against me. I freeze, every muscle locked, my pulse hammering so loud I’m convinced he can hear it. Three seconds. Five. His breathing stays slow and even.
I gain another inch, then two, and the empty space between us feels like a punishment I’m giving myself for reasons I’ll examine approximately never. My skin is still buzzing where his body was, a full-length imprint of warmth and weight that I can feel like a ghost outline, and the specific pressure that was against my ass is the last sensation to fade.
I’m almost clear when the room suddenly erupts with a shrieking phone alarm. His, naturally. It can’t even be six o’clock in the morning yet. Forget trying to extricate myself without waking him. This is ridiculous. I give up my escape, grabbing the nearest pillow from the wreckage of my boundary wall and hurling it at him.
“Are you kidding me? What kind of lunatic sets an alarm for 5:30 on vacation?”
A grunt, and the alarm dies. The mattress shifts as he sits up. “I run in the mornings.”
“Of course you do.” I bury my face into the pillow beneath me, which turns out to be his pillow, because the whole bed smells deliciously like him now and there’s nowhere safe to put my face. My skin is still tingling under my tank top where his arm was, and my body is still running a full sensory highlight reel of the last five minutes. “Some of us came to Barbados to sleep past dawn, Alec. Like normal people on actual vacations.”
He doesn’t answer, and the bed shifts as he stands. I keep my eyes shut, committed to this performance even though my pulse is still running at a pace that would get me flagged at a doctor’s office. I hear his bare feet shuffle across the marble, then a pause. A single word muttered low and dark, and I burrow harder into the pillow because I know exactly what just happened. He’s vertical now, and gravity has made his situation impossible to ignore. His low curse sounds raspy and aggravated. Good. At least this can be awkward for both of us now.
The bathroom door closes and the light flicks on inside. I flop onto my back and lie in the dark, trying not to track the sounds of his morning routine. Alec peeing. Toilet flushing. Water running in the sink. The hum of his electric toothbrush, which I can picture standing next to mine, side by side in the cup on the counter like they belong to two people who chose to share this romantic suite. Something pulls tight in my chest at that, which I smother immediately.
Alec Beckett is the last man I’d ever voluntarily share space with, never mind my life. Too bad my body doesn’t seem to agree. As he continues doing his thing on the other side of the closed door, I’m thinking about the way we fit togetherso naturally, his big frame sheltering me, our mingled warmth more comfortable than the fluffy down duvet spread across the bed.
I hear him come out, hear drawers opening and closing. My lashes part. Maybe a millimeter. Just enough to see him standing near the dresser across the room in running shorts and a fitted shirt, his hair slightly disheveled in a way that makes him look less like a robot in a button-down and more like an actual human being who just woke up, which is somehow worse.
He leaves the bedroom without comment. Then the suite door clicks shut behind him and he’s gone.
I lie still for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling fan turning its slow circles. The bed is still warm where he was. The mattress still holds the dip of his body, and I’m lying in the residual heat of him, and the room feels too big and too quiet now in a way that doesn’t make sense.
My hand reaches across the mattress, finds his pillow and pulls it toward me. His scent is in the fabric, warm and clean and completely unclassifiable. I press my face into the soft down and close my eyes. I moan a little, because God, he smells good.
Then I hear what I’m doing, and the horror lands like ice water.
I shove his pillow so hard it hits the headboard and bounces. Then I’m out of the bed, my feet on cool marble, hands in my hair, pulse going haywire. What the hell, Ella? What the actual hell? You have known this man for less than twenty-four hours. You do not sniff his pillow like a golden retriever with a crush.
