A Big Brothers program for refugee kids who’d lost a parent. So there was more to his new life than just moving away from the past. She waited again, but he didn’t say more. Simon’s back was still to her. He poured water into a rice cooker and turned it on.
“Done,” he said. “Just needs to simmer for a while.”
He rested his hands on the counter, still not facing her. Just a few more days, and she would leave this country. Probably for the best, since each new revelation was causing seismic shifts inside. Sooner or later, these fault lines would break apart and leave her in pieces.
There was only one direction to take this. Back to the place where she knew exactly how things worked.
Marianna walked to the kitchen and leaned against the counter next to him. His arm muscles tensed—hard, defined layers of strength he protected himself with. And her. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her. He drew in a breath, uneven, as his deep green eyes bored into hers.
Marianna wet her lips.
“Show me your bedroom,” she whispered.
His eyes flashed with something dark. “That’s not part of the official tour. You know what you’re asking for?”
Marianna nodded, and Simon looked down at the counter again. He said nothing. Finally, he straightened, and with one more glance at her, he headed for the steep staircase. She followed him, bolts of lust shooting through her. She caught up with him at the bottom step, and he moved aside, gesturing for her to go first. She bit her lip and started up.
Her skirt was on the shorter side with a slit up the back, and he was close behind. Her heart stuttered. Would he touch her, here on the stairs, or would he draw this out, the way she would with him?Every single night, wanting more.The echo of his words sent erotic shivers through her, and she braced her arm on the wall for support.
Simon’s hands were on her hips seconds after, low, his thumbs on her ass. His groan was so soft she almost missed it. Marianna stopped and gulped in a calming breath, but she was still unsteady in every possible way. And that wasn’t where this was supposed to take her. Sex was the way she got under a man’s skin, not the other way around.
The upstairs hallway was much like the downstairs. Bare, white. Another flight of stairs continued up.
“Where do those go?” she asked.
“There’s a little room up there that opens onto a deck on the roof.” His voice was low, rough. The view from the roof was probably the last thing he was thinking about right now. Maybe another time. If there was another time.
He brushed by her, his hand lingering on her hip. “This way.”
Simon opened the door into an enormous room that spanned the entire width of the house. It was mostly bare, much like the downstairs, with a massive bed, a nightstand, empty except for a reading lamp. Completely tidy, though he’d had no idea he’d have a visitor. Once a military man, always a military man.
The front wall was lined with windows out to the balcony that seemed to hover over the ocean. He crossed the room and slid one of the balcony doors open. The crash of the waves below blew in with the salty air. Did he sleep like this every night, the sounds of water echoing through the room?
“It’s peaceful in here,” she said.
Simon shrugged. “It helps.”
Helps what? But she could guess the answer. There were a lot of words to describe him, but peaceful wasn’t one of them.
Marianna rounded the bed and stopped next to him, close enough to feel the heat from his body.
“When we were out front, you said you always wanted to live by the ocean, among other things,” she said. “What were those other things?”
He looked down at her, his eyes wary. “The usual list a kid like me would have wanted. A nice car, the kind of money I saw when I worked for my father, hot women giving me blow jobs, shit like that.”
Marianna frowned. “I guess you got what you wanted.”
“You mean I’m living a teenager’s dream?” he said dryly.
“I think there are plenty of grown men out there who want those same things.”
“Maybe,” he said. “It’s a relief not to worry so much about money, though I still dream I’m back there every now and then. Not in a good way.”
Maybe that part of him would probably never disappear. But she was almost sure it was tied to the part of him that couldn’t see past her advantages, that after all this time, he still saw her as a carefree rich girl who didn’t know want and hurt like everyone else. So she changed the subject.
“And what about all those hot women giving you blow jobs?”
His eyes sparked with heat. “Turns out that wasn’t what I wanted after all.”
