I try to focus, but the sensation of his hard muscles against my chest doesn’t make it easy. “I’d take you straight to the beach. I know you have beaches in England, but California is different. It’s much warmer there; the water is, too. I think you would lay in the sun for hours.”
He traces his hands up my arms and down my back, and my nightgown bunches and spills everywhere he goes. “What else?” he asks me.
“I’d teach you how to surf. That’s where you stand on a board and ride the waves. You wouldn’t be good at it at first, but you’d learn quick. You’d want to go back every day. It’s addictive like that. Sort of like riding a horse.”
He pushes my hair behind my shoulders, baring my neck to him. My skin is tingling, and my blood is humming.
“I’d take you for tacos at my favorite spot. I’d buy you sunglasses and a T-shirt. Maybe a backward hat. You’d be classic California.”
I can’t stop touching him. His broad shoulders. The strong column of his throat. Having him in my grasp here but envisioning him in the future is a heady combination.
“Then what?” he asks, kissing the hollow dip of my collarbone.
Breathing is so much harder with him doing that. “Then we’d go back to my apartment—where I live. It’s small, but it’s cozy. I think you’d be happy there.”
He pulls back to look at me, a soft storm of emotions etched across his moonlit face. “I would be there with you?” The question comes out more like a declaration. Like there’s no other possibility other than the two of us being together.
“Of course,” I answer.
“Then I know that I would be happy.” His hands drift to my waist again, and he lifts me up to sit on the edge of the mattress, looking down at me and cradling the back of my neck. “Would you be happy there with me?” he asks.
I’m almost happy now, and here we’re standing on the brink of our world collapsing. If this is how I feel in his arms now, I can hardly imagine how I’d feel tucked away with him in my safe, quiet life.
“I’d be the happiest I’ve ever been.” I say it without a hint of doubt because I have none.
I picture what we could have again, and I’ve never wanted anything more. It isn’t fair. None of this is. Simon and I should have nothing but time in front of us. Instead, it’s slipping away faster than we can fathom.
“Stay.” He pulls me tighter against him, sensing or seeing my fear. “Stay with me.”
My mind is reeling, and Simon must know that there’s only one way to stop it. He dips down and pulls me up with a frantic tug. Our lips meet and everything goes quiet. I can stay with him here. Not in the palace, but in this place that only exists when we’re together—a state of want and need. Acceptance and escape.
His mouth parts as he takes in a labored breath, but it’s like he’s stealing mine. I tilt my chin up, giving him a slow kiss before easing away to slide back toward the center of the mattress. I stay sitting up as I move, and he crawls over me, following my path. My arms are straining as I lean my weight backward, and Simon keeps moving over me, enveloping my body in his until I drop down. He pushes up on his arms as he hovers over me, holding my gaze like we’re the only two people on earth.
“It doesn’t matter how long we have,” he says, his voice achingly low. “It always would have seemed short. No matter how long we were together.”
My arms reach around his neck. I try to pull him down to me, but he doesn’t move. I watch as a primal kind of hunger fills his eyes.
“Tell me that you’re mine.” His hips bear down on me at his words, and I automatically rub against him in return.
“I’m yours,” I whisper, trying and failing again to bring him closer. “And you’re mine.”
He smirks at the possessiveness in my voice. “Yours,” he tells me, finally letting me feel the weight of him. “Ours. This could only be ours.”
When we kiss this time, it’s not tender or slow. This kiss is a clash of fire and fear, and we stoke the flames as high as they can go. His tongue delves into my mouth in a consuming sweep, and I’m there to meet it with mine. I knot my fingers into his hair and my hips never stop moving, jolting upward to grind against him. He feels impossibly hard, and we’re not even undressed yet.
He pulls back to bring his lips to my neck. Mouthing it and grazing it with his teeth. In my fevered state, I almost want him to bite down. I wrap my legs around his waist and pin my body to his, rolling my hips as I draw my fingers down his back through the thin layer of his shirt.
“Greedy,” he chuckles into my ear. “Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
I wish I could return his smile, but I can’t. All I can think about is how this might be our last time. The last time I can be with him like this. When I speak, my voice is cracked, and my hands are shaking as I pull him closer. “I just want you. Please.”
Simon looks down at me in a breathless kind of awe. I watch as the playfulness dissipates from his gaze, and he seems like he wants to say something but can’t. It’s all right. He doesn’t have to.
He ducks down and kisses me, and this is what it’s supposed to be like. This feeling of utter rightness. My fingers reach down to grab the bottom of his shirt, and he leans back so I can pull it over his head. When he moves close again, the hard ridges of his chest brush against me. I want to tell him more, show him more, but words don’t seem good enough. Instead, I tuck my hands and push at him, urging him to roll over and lay flat on the mattress.
He lets me lead with the smallest question in his eyes, which gives way to a hazy hunger as I climb on top of him, straddling his waist. My nightgown bunches up beside me, and on my part, there’s nothing between us when I roll against his pants-covered cock.
He hisses out an undistinguishable curse as I draw my center back and forth, and he tilts his head back into the pillow. Moving in near slow motion, I reach down and draw my nightgown up, dropping it onto the mattress beside us and baring myself to him completely. He seems in a trance as he drinks me in, his hands drifting to my hips so he can anchor me to him. I start to tremble—not from the night air roving over me but from his penetrating gaze. I lean down to kiss him, and he wraps his arms around me like I’m something so precious, he would protect me from anything.
