“Abi! Please!” he implored, his voice cracking. “How can you do this to me? I have loved you like my own.”
I looked back at him over my shoulder, the man that had been my father for as long as I can remember, and the anger and hatred that had fueled me over the past twenty-four hours gave way to overwhelming pity. The strength of feeling in his gaze tugged at me, was it really love I saw there? Or was it purely despair that he had finally been caught out?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter.
“Goodbye, Edward.”
He reacted as though slapped, never before had I addressed him by name. It was a simple, yet effective message to send. And looking back to the sleeping beauty in the bed before me, I pushed him from my mind, just where he belonged. I had far more important things — or rather a far more important someone — to think about now.
Epilogue
“More ice, darling?”
My sunglass-covered eyes met her captivating green ones flashing mischievously above me, an ice cube slipping about in her tanned hand as she crouched over my reclined body.
“I wouldn’t say no,” I said, placing the book I had been reading on the ground next to my sun lounger and giving her my undivided attention.
She smiled, her expression almost childlike with excitement as she lowered the cube to the base of my throat. The ice started melting on contact, the cold water trickling down either side of my neck, the tantalizing sensation making me wriggle with delight.
“Your body is scorching,” she said, her voice full of wonder as her head dipped to lap at the water trail she had created.
She continued circling the cube over my skin, across my collarbone, down between my naked breasts and over my torso, all the while her tongue tracing the path left by the ice.
I brought one hand up to play with her free flowing hair as she dipped lower and lower over my body. “If this is what you’re going to do every time I have my head in a book, I’m going to read more often.”
Her response was to slip her hand beneath the fabric of my bikini bottoms, the intense cold of the melting cube sliding between my folds with such erotic intensity that I bucked beneath her.
“Don’t be so cheeky,” she murmured against my belly button, her eyes looking up at me suggestively, just as the icemade acute contact with my throbbing clit, the smarting cold making me cry out in a heady mix of pain and pleasure.
My cry echoed around the cliff face into which our secluded villa had been built, a reminder that we could make love where we wanted, when we wanted, and no one would intrude, save for the occasional low flying flight overhead ... but that just added to the thrill.
“Nice?” she asked as my lower body became accustomed to the sensation and started to ride the cube of its own accord.
“Always,” I said, my head tilting back against the lounger as her mouth crept back up my body, her tongue seeking out one taut nipple and then the other. She worked them both in turn, the buds, already hypersensitive from the heat of the sun’s rays, sending thrilling sparks straight to my core and my hands thrusting through her hair, their playful caress forgotten as I encouraged her over me, back and fore...
As the ice in my briefs melted away, the dizzying pressure of her fingers took over, her tempo picking up against me as she worked with the rise and fall of my hips to bring me to the exhilarating heights she never ceased to achieve.
“I will never tire of making you come, baby,” she said as she broke away from one nipple to feast at the other.
I moaned my response, incapable of speech, as my body started to tense, the joyous feeling of my climax spreading through every part of me. I arched back as the tide hit, my body pitching beneath her expert fingers, the words tearing from my lips coming straight from the heart, “God, I love you!”
And then her lips were on mine, crushing me in a fierce kiss. Showing me with her actions that she loved me too. I knew she did, even if she hadn’t said it. And in my sated state, I was happy to just know it. We were a year into our relationship and it was as tight as ever, my body’s response to her as profound as ever. It was enough. For now.
Breaking away, she paused above me, her eyes alight with mischief once more. “Just you remember that when young Daniel visits this evening.”
I rolled my eyes at her, the “Daniel thing” had become an age old source of ribbing material for her, used purely for entertainment value since we were all the best of friends these days.
“Young Daniel, as you like to call him, will be in attendance with his beautiful fiancée, or have you forgotten that pertinent fact already?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” she said smiling, “he didn’t hang about, did he?”
That made me laugh outright. “Hey, Miss High and Mighty, have you forgotten that we moved in together pretty much straight away.”
“That’s different,” she said with a wave of her hand. I caught it mid-air, bringing her fingers to my lips to press a kiss to each tip, loving how it made her wriggle in anticipation of my next move. Having just made me come, I knew her sexual coil would be wound tight, eager for release, eager for me...
“How so?” I said, slipping one finger into my mouth, my tongue wrapping around it as I sucked gently back.
She gave a small groan. “You know how so.”
