I arch a brow. “And what’s your revised assessment?”
She looks at me. The humor’s still there, but underneath it is something unguarded. Warmer than banter. Riskier. “I haven’t figured out how to word it yet.”
She doesn’t push it. Neither do I. What she left unsaid sits between us alongside the fruit plate. I leave it alone because I’m not sure what this is either. Six days ago we were strangers fighting over a hotel room. Now we’re naked and eating breakfast in the same bed we’d divided up like battle lines. Neither of us has mentioned what happens when this vacation ends. I suspect we’ve both noticed the omission and silently agreed to leave it there.
I don’t do undefined. I build systems designed to eliminate it. Whatever is happening between me and this woman has no label and no stress-test, and I’m lying here in it anyway. Eating a purple smoothie bowl and enjoying it. Enjoying her. The part of my brain that should be sounding alarms about the exposure has gone oddly quiet.
Ella’s suddenly nervous, chatty. She starts telling me about Lisa, how they met working the morning shift at the diner. How they became best friends. “For two years, we’ve been dreaming of a big trip to somewhere amazing,” Ella says, pulling apart a piece of avocado toast. “We have a Pinterest board. We bought matching beach bags. Then her sister’s pregnancy went sideways and Lisa dropped everything to be with her, because that’s whoshe is. She remembers birthdays. She keeps plants alive. She always has a first-aid kit in her purse.”
“And you?”
The sheet gave up entirely at some point during this story and she hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care. She’s sitting there bare and animated and completely unselfconscious, and my hand moves to her breast without any input from my higher brain. My thumb traces the soft underside, grazes her nipple. She inhales mid-sentence but doesn’t stop talking, just leans into my palm, and the casual acceptance of my hands on her body, the way she folds it into the conversation like it’s already normal, sends a low pulse of heat through my groin.
“I’m the one who killed a cactus. A cactus, Alec. The plant literally designed to survive neglect.” Her mouth curves at her own expense. “Lisa would’ve loved this place, though. She’d have befriended the entire kitchen staff by noon and organized some kind of group activity nobody asked for but everyone secretly enjoyed.”
She says this like Lisa’s the remarkable one. Like she can’t see that she just described herself, that she’s the woman who befriends kitchen staff and organizes group activities and lights up every room she walks into. Her blind spot floors me.
I lean across the tray, take the avocado toast out of her hand, and kiss her.
Not a quick morning kiss. I hold the back of her neck and take my time. The small, startled sound she makes when my tongue brushes her lower lip vibrates through my chest and arrows straight to the base of my cock. Her palm slides up my sternum. Her thumb finds the hollow of my throat. When I pull back her eyes are heavy, her lips flushed, and I nearly forget about the rest of breakfast entirely.
“Eat,” she says, but her voice has dropped half an octave.
“I was eating. You interrupted me.”
“And now you’re interrupting my central nervous system.” Her blue eyes glimmer with a playful spark that’s also sexy as hell. “We should finish breakfast so we can get the tray off the bed.”
I nod. “Sounds like a plan.”
I reach for the bacon. There’s a small plate of it near the edge of the tray. Crispy strips, golden-brown, glistening with salt. The one concession to real indulgence she conceded to on a spread that otherwise reads like a prescription. I’ve been working through it steadily. My third piece. Good crunch. Good smoke. The only item here that doesn’t require a nutritional justification.
Ella watches me chew. Her lips press together like she’s biting back a secret.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Too controlled. Too innocent. I’ve run penetration tests on corporate systems with better poker faces than this woman.
I look at the half-eaten strip. Then back at her. “What is this?”
“Bacon.”
“Ella.”
The giggle ruptures through her composure. She claps a hand over her mouth, but the damage is done. “It’s vegan.”
I stare at the strip in my hand. Three pieces. I have eaten three pieces of plant-based imitation and enjoyed every one.
“You’ve been feeding me fake bacon?”
“You insisted, so I asked the kitchen about heart-healthy alternatives.” She’s grinning like she just breached a Pentagon firewall. “Apparently it fools everyone.”
I scoff, but there’s no heat in it. “You didn’t fool me. I was just being generous.”
She snorts a laugh. “Oh, please! You’re on your third strip. Eating it with your eyes closed.” She leans forward, delighted. “That’s not generosity, Alec. That’s commitment.”
The lean puts her breasts practically under my nose, and the sight of the firm swells and dark pink nipples derails my false outrage.
She tricked me because she gives a damn about my heart. My actual, physical, medically compromised heart. This sneaky, thoroughly Ella act of care does more damage to whatever’s left of my walls than last night did.
