When he doesn’t even try to make conversation, I decide not to linger. “Well, don’t let me keep you from your glowering. I’m going to go enjoy the sun like a normal person.”
I pick a chaise several down from his and drag it farther into the open sunlight because, unlike him, I didn’t come to Barbados to sit in the shade. Then I unpack my tote, which is something of a production. Sunscreen, ebook reader, water bottle, phone loaded with enough playlists to soundtrack a cross-country road trip, earbuds, a towel that I bought specifically for this vacation because it has cute dancing flamingos on it, and a small inflatable beach pillow that I have to blow up, which takes longer than it should and makes me lightheaded.
I can feel him watching. I don’t look, but the awareness is there, a low hum along the back of my neck that sharpens every time I bend to rearrange something. I catch myself smoothing my sarong across my thighs and feel a spike of irritation at my own hands for caring about their choreography.Stop it, Ella. If he’s going to watch, let him watch.
I settle in, face tipped toward the sun, and reach for the sunscreen. I begin applying it, arms first, then legs, then my stomach and chest, working the lotion into every inch I can reach with the efficiency of a fair-skinned woman who has burned badly enough, often enough, to take this seriously. ThenI twist to get my back and the whole operation falls apart. I reach over my right shoulder, get maybe four inches of coverage. Switch to the left. Same result. I try the under-arm approach, contorting like I’m playing some terrible one-person game of Twister, and manage to smear a patchy streak across my lower back that probably looks like I lost a fight with a tube of toothpaste.
“You missed a whole patch of skin back here.” Alec’s deep, annoyed voice is suddenly close. “Give me the lotion. I’ll help you.”
I didn’t even hear him move. I turn my head and he’s standing behind my chaise, close enough that I can see the fine sheen of perspiration at the base of his throat and the way the sun catches the lighter streaks in his dark hair. His expression is matter-of-fact. Practical. A man who saw a problem and is offering a solution, which would be easier to process at face value if my entire nervous system wasn’t already sending up flares.
“Oh.” I hold up the sunscreen bottle. “Sure. Thanks.”
Sure, thanks.As if his hands on my bare skin is a casual favor and not the thing my body has been replaying since I woke up pressed against him this morning.
His hands land on my shoulders, and every thought I was having scatters like birds off a wire.
His touch is warm and sure. His palms feel large and strong, fitting across the span of my shoulders with a confidence that suggests he approaches sunscreen application the same way he probably approaches everything: thoroughly. His fingers curve over the tops of my shoulders and begin working the lotion into my skin with slow, even pressure, and the sensation is so immediate, so irrationally intimate, that I have to lock my teeth together to keep from making a sound.
This is not the same as waking up with his arm around me. That was unconscious, unintentional, something our bodies did without consulting our brains. This is deliberate. His hands choosing to touch me. His fingers pressing into the muscles along the back of my neck, his thumbs tracing parallel lines down the channel of my spine, and every point of contact is a lit fuse connecting to a network of nerve endings that have been on high alert since I first laid eyes on him.
I need to talk. If I don’t talk, I’m going to sit here in silence cataloging the exact pressure of each fingertip, and that way lies madness.
“Did you get any work done?” My voice sounds almost normal. Almost. “What was so important that it couldn’t wait until you’re back home?”
“Nothing specific. My job doesn’t turn off just because I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
“Supposed to be? You make it sound like some kind of penance.”
He grunts but doesn’t offer anything more. His hands move lower, spreading across my shoulder blades. Methodical. Thorough. Taking his time in a way that sunscreen does not require. His thumbs press along the edges of my shoulder blades, slow and deliberate, and the pressure sends warmth radiating outward across my ribs, down through my stomach, settling into a low, liquid pulse that I am aggressively trying to keep off my face.
“There’s a limbo competition on the beach tonight,” I manage, though my voice has gone slightly thin around the edges. “You should enter. I’d pay good money to watch you try to limbo.”
“I don’t limbo.”
“You don’t do fun. You don’t eat sugar. You don’t do loud and happy. You don’t limbo.” I’m listing to keep my brain occupiedbecause his hands have moved to the center of my back and his pace has changed. Slower. His palms gliding over skin that’s already been covered, retracing territory with a care that has nothing to do with SPF protection and everything to do with something neither of us is saying. “What do you actually do, Alec, besides sit in paradise looking miserable and?—”
His fingers graze the side of my neck. Light, incidental, possibly accidental. And the sentence I was building just... stops. Dissolves. His thumb follows the path his fingers traced, a slow stroke along the curve where my neck meets my shoulder, and a shiver rolls through me that I couldn’t hide if my life depended on it.
He pulls his hands away.
The withdrawal is abrupt, a clean severance of contact that leaves cool air rushing across every inch of skin where his palms just were. The temperature drop is so stark it feels like stepping out of a warm building into winter, and my back is suddenly just my back again, untouched and ordinary, except it’s not, because every nerve ending he activated is still firing and the shape of his hands is imprinted on my skin like a sunburn that hasn’t surfaced yet.
I turn around to face him.
He’s closer than I expected. Still standing right there behind the chaise, and the expression on his face stops whatever light remark I was constructing in my throat. His eyes are darker than usual, the green almost swallowed by his pupils, and he’s looking at me with a focus that has no neutrality to it, no careful control. Just heat—open and undisguised—as if his hands forgot to tell his face that the pretense was over.
I feel it in my chest. In my palms. In the pit of my stomach where desire is pulling tight and warm and entirely beyond my ability to joke about.
Neither of us speaks. The pool sounds, the music, the laughter, all of it is still there but it’s receded to the periphery of whatever this is, this strange space between us where the air feels thicker and my pulse is so loud in my ears I’m sure he can hear it.
“Well,” a female voice says from somewhere behind Alec, “since you’ve got the sunscreen out. Would you mind getting my back too?”
The blonde. The one who’s been trying to catch his attention this whole time. She’s standing at the edge of our little tableau with a smile that is perfectly friendly on the surface but seems colder the longer I look. Up close, she’s stunning. Tall, toned, cheekbones that could cut you, and she’s looking at Alec with the focused interest of a woman who has identified what she wants and doesn’t see any obstacles worth worrying about.
Alec blinks. The heat in his eyes shutters so fast it’s like watching someone close a window. He straightens his shoulders, takes a half-step back from my chaise, and I can see the shift happen in real time: desire packed away, composure restored, the controlled version of him sliding back into place like armor.
He hesitates. Starts to hedge.
