Page 90 of The Unfluencer

“Never.” I draw in a sharp breath as he sucks my nipple through the fabric. “And I feel… everything.”

Breathless, I roll my hips. Stretching, clinging to him, head back, body arched and aching for more, I glide closer still, bucking against his strokes, fusing myself to every curved and muscled line of his granitelike physique.

We both laugh at how wild—and clichéd—this whole thing is.

A few minutes in that storage building and the suddenly they can’t keep their hands off each other shoe absolutely fits. We’ve experienced the danger all through the jungle. The high stress. The adrenaline.

And now it’s like tunnel vision. All I want, all I can think about, is Warner. His warm breaths and the scruff of his beard on my neck as he rocks us slowly. Feeling his hard, sculpted edges fit so perfectly against all my soft curves. Definitely not the fact that the only thing I know about love is that it’s conditional. That it never lasts.

“Whitney?”

“Hmm?”

He swallows hard. “I don’t know”—it’s only a slight pause, but I hear the hesitation in his voice— “if my heart knows how to do this again.”

“Everything all right? Is this okay?” I tip up his chin, brushing my aching lips over his.

“I’m just a little out of practice.” He glides his hips between my thighs again, slow, mind-numbingly tender. Then a small, shaky smile breaks over his gorgeous face. “My heart is full. I love everything about this day, the too-real danger, the sex afterward.”

“Oh well, the sex.” I chuckle. “That’s definitely not our problem. I mean…”

We both laugh.

“You really saved my life. With a damn paring knife.” He’s so adorably distressed.

“Baby, that’s a good thing.” I search Warner’s dark eyes. “We’ve found something good, right? It’s okay to be happy.”

He looks at me, and something in his eyes makes me want to lose myself in his arms, to forget that, despite everything, when he says things like I don’t know if my heart knows how to do this again, what I’m really hearing is grief. To somehow disregard that the reason he’s so attentive, so intentional with me… Well, maybe it’s because he’s done this before. He’s been a husband. Rough patch and amicable divorce or not. He didn’t just forget how to inhabit that role because a year passed.

Warner’s still inside me.

He takes his time, moving his hands between my neck and hair to my breasts and thighs as he chases my kisses, and it’s almost hard to hold on, like my body is lost somewhere between his and mine.

“It’s okay,” I whisper against his lips. “I’m happy too.”

My heart’s beating so fast.

I just hope this feeling lasts because we’ve evaded danger. Twice. But that’s just it. Now, there’s nothing to stop us from falling.

Chapter Twenty

Warner

Lost Liaisons

“I’m in,” I tell Whitney from my side of the bed, where we’ve been camped out, piecing together her oceanfront oasis puzzle on top of a Monopoly board by candlelight while The Lost City flickers on her iPad.

She glances from the white-speckled seafoam-green piece between my fingers to my eyes.

“Oh, that’s part of the shore, near the palm tree. See where the surf is coming up here?” she explains, pointing to the tri-folded poster lying on the pillow, misunderstanding me.

Well, I did sort of blurt it out without context.

Dammit, you can do this.

“Yup, you’re right.” I fit it into place just where she pointed and grab another piece, pretending my thoughts aren’t skating around how to play this cool without sounding like some desperate simp.

I’m about to try again to say that this, us, has never been about just fucking—that my feelings are involved—when my phone lights up with a calendar reminder.