Then he reaches for my hand and guides me in, gently pulling me towards him, until I’m not merely submerged, but somehow, unfathomably, cocooned in his arms. My shivering stops in an instant. This could be down to some kind of transfer of body heat, but honestly? I’m now generating so much of my own it’s like some kind of molten centre has erupted inside me. I am hyper aware of the water lapping gently over my breasts. Of the silken feel of his skin. Of the shift in energy the two of us create when pressed together.
‘Better?’ he whispers.
‘Much.’
I become suddenly and acutely aware of the entanglement of limbs beneath the surface. The way my thigh has slipped between his knees and one ankle is grazing his.
‘I had so much fun tonight,’ he says softly, as his lips drop to my mouth.
‘Me too.’
‘You know, I don’t mind admitting it. You’re all I’ve thought about since that day at the club. I’ve been trying to think of reasons I might be able to persuade you to lock me in a shed again.’
I smile as he tilts his chin until our foreheads are pressed together. He gently brushes his nose against mine, then pulls back to look at me. He pushes a tendril of hair away from my face and for a moment looks like he’s trying to consign every tiny feature of me to his memory.
I can’tnotkiss him after that. I press my lips against his and he responds with his whole body. Within a moment, I am wondering to myself, what does it take to get this good at kissing anyway? Is this a gift? Is it practice? I feel like someone could devote years of intensive study to the subject and they’d still never match his ability to know the precise tilt of jaw, the pressure of lips and deepening of tongue that sends my senses into free fall. I am weightless in his arms, floating inside my head.
Together, we glide to the side of the pool and my submerged spine presses against the wall. His hand slides behind my lower back, his fingers skimming the top of my pants. He drags his lips down my neck, along the stretch of my clavicle, painting my skin with kisses as soft as butterfly wings.
I wrap my legs around the muscular heft of him, as my eyes blur on the moon. I have never taken drugs and I am suddenly questioning why anyone would. This is better than any synthetic high.
‘What happened to friends?’ I murmur.
‘I’msurewe can still be friends,’ he sighs, facing me now.
But as I register how hard he is through the thin layers of fabric separating him from the folds between my legs, this is feeling way more than friendly. I push my groin onto him and feel him spring back against me with a deep moan from his throat.
He brushes the side of my breast with his hand, before sliding it under the bottom of my bra. He plays and massages as I shudder a sigh from the back of my throat, my nipple tightening against his fingers. He kisses me deeper and harder then, as I lose myself in the hot slide of his tongue and my senses are suspended somewhere in outer space, up there with the stars.
Until . . . all of a sudden . . . he freezes.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
But he doesn’t need to answer. I’ve already heard it myself. There’s a couple on the balcony of one of the adjacent villas, having an argument in rapid-fire Spanish. They’re trying to be quiet. Failing entirely. We are not in their eye line, but it wouldn’t take much before we were. There’s only a tree and a couple of bushes concealing this end of the pool.
I swallow as he withdraws his hand and pulls me into something more akin to a hug. ‘I don’t want to go but I think we might have to,’ he says softly. He tenderly presses his hot lips against the curve of my ear.
He softens his gaze on my face again, drinking me in. He reaches up and draws a finger across my chin, before leaning in for one last kiss.
‘Come on,’ he whispers and takes my hand to help me out.
Chapter 39
Morning sunlight knifes through the windows, piercing the retina of the one eye I have open. Lying on my front, I attempt to peel my face off the pillow, managing to lift it an inch before it drops down again, a dead weight. I’m sure hangovers never used to be this bad. Admittedly, it is at least twenty-five years since I’ve had a night like that. But I’m sure I didn’t feel like this then, with a foreboding sense of doom pushing in at the back of my head.
I groggily roll onto my back and register that Nora is still asleep. She’s wearing her eye mask and has also stuffed in some earplugs, which presumably means I have been snoring. Or grinding my teeth. Or both – because I left my mouth guard out and my jaw now aches like I’ve been punched in the face.
I need to empty my bladder but am in denial, only willing to lie here in the illogical hope that the urge will pass. I’m hit by an explicit flashback from last night and heat spreads through me like lava. I am momentarily powerless to do anything but succumb to the bliss of it and then . . . something else entirely. That specific type of low-level panic that immediately precedes something bigger, like a rumble of thunder at the start of a storm. I shake my head and reach for my phone. There are no new messages from Frankie, who clearly had an early night at their nice hotel. It comes to something when my daughter is the most sensible one in the family . . .
I click on Instagram. The first reel that appears is from an account called @SoberSenorita48. It opens with a woman glaring at the camera, looking like one of the zombies in theThrillervideo. The caption reads:
‘This was me this time last year, when I was a slave to alcohol, sometimes drinking three or four glasses of wine
A WEEK.’
I attempt a quick calculation of how much I downed in one night alone with a renewed sense of self-loathing. ‘Here I am now . . . sober, sexy,sensational!’ She spins around and grins at the camera, filtered and ring-lit to the nines, arms open like she’s performing42ndStreeton Broadway.
I swipe her away intolerantly as the urge to urinate becomes too much to bear. I put down the phone and climb out of bed. Every joint in my body creaks. A little hammer taps away at my temples. I pad to the bathroom and after using the toilet I look in the mirror. It’s every bit as bad as I’d feared.
