As we start to pack up the leftovers, I can’t help asking, “What are your plans for the day?”
Because yes, I’m kind of hoping he’ll invite me along.
“I have to work,” he says. “I’ve been training a new employee. It’s been…challenging so far.”
“Ah. Should we get going, then?” I ask, trying to sound cool and aloof even though my hopes have just been dashed. What if I never see him again?
Except that’s the whole point of a one-night stand, isn’t it? And I knew that going into this. There’s no reason for me to be feeling so attached. Which I’m totally not. I just had a really good time.
Getting up, he reaches for my hand and pulls me to my feet. Then he cups my face and leans in to give me a slow, sweet, knee-weakening kiss. A goodbye kiss, I’m sure of it.
“So we’re going?” I say, once we finally break away.
“Yes,” he says. “We’re going to check out the tidepools by those rocks over there.”
A stupid smile pulls up the corners of my mouth. “But you have to work.”
“I have every intention of putting in my hours today.”
He leads me down the beach until the waves are lapping around our bare feet. The tidepools are shallow, warm as bath water, filled with an incredible array of life. Scowl points eachsea creature out to me, naming them one by one. Spiny sea urchins, hermit crabs, brightly colored starfish, and anemones in shades of blue and green and orange and pink.
“So beautiful,” I say, crouching down to get a better look.
He lets out a little laugh, and when I look up at him, he just shakes his head.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. I just…didn’t know it could be this easy.”
I don’t ask him what “it” is. I think I know. Just being together like this, enjoying each other, with no expectations. I haven’t even seen his trademark scowl once today. I don’t push him to explain what he means, either, because I know that if he wanted to talk, he’d talk. Instead, I just tease him.
“Are you calling me easy?”
He pulls back, a horrified look on his face. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
I make a horrified face of my own and say, “But I’m trying so hard to get laid again!”
It takes a second before a smile cracks on his lips, and then he’s lifting me up and pushing me against a smooth boulder, the two of us kissing in the privacy of a half-circle of tall rocks. No one on this beach could see us even if they did ignore all the No Trespassing signs and walk by, which is good, because I’m already tugging his shorts off and stroking him in my fist, my other hand digging for the condom I slipped into my pocket just in case.
By the time he pulls my panties down and starts fucking me against the warm, smooth rock, I know that it might already be too late.
I might already be too attached.
5
SEBASTIAN
It’s beendays since I last saw Sunshine, but I can’t get her out of my head. Her tight little body, that laugh, the smell of the sandalwood perfume behind her earlobes. The sweet glide of her pussy. How the hell did everything between us feel so easy? There was nothing complicated about it.
The complicated part is the aftermath.
Because it’s so out of character for me to dwell on a one-night stand that I don’t know how to reconcile it in my mind. I wake up every morning with a raging hard-on for her; at work I’m taunted by flashbacks of her on the beach, at the bar, in her hotel room. I beat myself raw in the shower at night trying to release the tension enough to fall asleep. Still, the memories linger.
And meanwhile, attempting to train the new client concierge has been a living nightmare. It was sheer idiocy on my part to take that half a day’s vacation on the beach with Sunshine after we slept together, because letting my concierge trainee do anything on her own without me standing over her shoulder to supervise has been nothing short of a disaster.
I’d left her with a very simple task the day I was at the beach, which was to update the resort’s database of local bar and restaurant recommendations to ensure we have thecorrect operating hours, directions, phone numbers, that kind of thing. We also need to delete any businesses that have closed permanently and add any new establishments that have popped up. So what did Daisy do for five hours?
She read restaurant reviews on Yelp. For five whole hours. That is all she managed to do.
