God, I hated that he looked so sexy right now. Casual and heavily buzzed and with no hint of the annoying man that he usually was. I guess it wasn’t all annoying though. He was, after all, the only person I could really fight with. He wasn’t afraid to challenge me or call me out on stuff. And he made me laugh every day, even if I didn’t let him know it.
“What are you thinking, Katya?” he asked, his voice thick with desire.
I raised my chin. “That I actually do need my beauty sleep.”
His grin grew, it was sloppy and dare I say cute. “I don’t think you need any beauty sleep,” he said.
“No?” I asked, tilting my head.
He shook his. “No.”
I finished my mojito off and put my empty glass on the bar. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I was to lean over and kiss him right now. The memory of us kissing in the pool earlier today was like a whisper on my lips and I subconsciously reached up and touched them. His gaze followed the slow movement and I realized my heart was beating against my chest erratically.
Suddenly, it wasn’t a subconscious thing but purposeful. My finger traced my full bottom lip before slowly sucking it into my mouth, my gaze firmly on him the whole time. He groaned as he watched and I squeezed my thighs together ready to throw caution to the wind for one night.
“Katya,” Nikolai said my name, and it was so thick with need that my nipples hardened at just the single word on his lips. “Maybe we both need to get some beauty sleep,” he suggested, and by the look on his face, he wasn’t talking about sleep in any way.
I opened my mouth, ready to say yes when Alex strode over and slapped a hand on Nik’s back, startling us both back into the here and now.
“There you are, Nikolai. Marisha has given me the night off,” he said happily, with barely a glance in my direction.
Nikolai gave one last long look at me before breaking away. “A night of freedom? Well, aren’t you the lucky boy,” he said with a laugh.
“Well, I won’t be chasing ass if that’s what you mean. But I thought we could have some fun regardless. Come on, before mother catches me and lectures me on how indecent it is.” Alexander started to walk away, throwing a quick smile my way. “You don’t mind, do you, Katya? You were getting an early night anyway, right?”
“Right,” I agreed.
I slid off my stool and started to walk away when Nikolai called my name. I glanced back, my smile gone completely and suddenly far too sober.
“Have a great night, Nik,” I said before heading out of the bar.
Chapter Thirteen
Nikolai
Sunlight invaded my room, and I mentally willed it to go away, because I wasn’t fucking ready for another day.
Cavorting around Fiji with a pussy-whipped Alex wasn’t the evening of adventure I’d anticipated.
He’d spent most of the night texting with Marisha and talking about his upcoming wedding. For my part, I’d spent every damn second thinking about Katya in that delicious blue dress, even as I attempted to flirt, dance, and drink my way through the ten to midnight female club populace. Her tits and legs… God, just picturing them again gave me a hard-on.
No matter how hard I tried to shake the vision of her from my mind, I couldn’t. Even in a sea of tanned women, gyrating to insanely loud music, with cocoa butter laced air wafting around me.
What was wrong with me?
This was Katya for fucks sake.
Annoying, but beautiful, tagalong.
Golden snitch with a golden snatch.
She’d pissed me off for as far back as I could remember and our tormenting of one another was well known.
Yes...this was Katya...body made for sin, mouth made for deviance, and a mind as free and wild as my own.
Had I underestimated her for all these years?
Later in the night, or in the small hours of the morning rather, things only got more frustrating. If I’d expected to tackle the post-midnight desperate chicks looking for hook-ups? I’d have been wrong. Because at exactly before the stroke of twelve, like Cinderella turning back into a pumpkin, Alex had suggested we head back to the resort because Marisha wasn’t able to fall asleep without him there.
