Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27
Ash
Every inch?
As soon as I was in my tent, I pulled all the sides closed as if I was hiding from someone. I was. Him. Him and all his whispered inches that were right now making me feel so hot that I felt I needed to peel my clothes off and climb into an icy shower. Did he mean . . .
Alllll the inches?
I got a chilled bottle of water out of the bar fridge and half downed it in one sip. I scratched my ear. It itched from the feel of his breath against it. I had never been more turned on in my entire life!
“Oooh dear,” I mumbled out loud. A hot, sticky feeling of pure raw lust started building inside me, which was so inconvenient because I was on a detox—albeit a seriously tenuous one that seemed to waver every other moment—and because it was my ex, Max.
“Oooh dear!” I mumbled again, and physically fanned myself.
That inch too?
No one had gone near that inch in thirteen years. Not since the unfortunate blowing incident, of which, it is important to acknowledge, he was the very cause. Every single time a man had tried to do that, I’d grabbed him by the hair on his head, except the bald guy, and pulled them right back up. That inch had remained unexplored territory for so long. I furiously scratched my legs. I had bites all over my bloody body, but Max’s trick was working. I started pressing crosses into the bites on my legs and the itching began dissipating somewhat. The itching on my back, however, was another story. I ran to the center pole in the room after trying all manner of pretzel-like yoga moves to scratch it, and started rubbing my back against it. I let out a very long, satisfied moan as the itch was momentarily scratched.
The mosquito bites were making me itch, but there was something else that was making me itch too—Max. And I wasn’t sure which was worse as I continued frantically rubbing my back against the pole. I couldn’t even work out what itch was Max and what itch was the mosquitoes anymore. The itches had combined and now my entire being felt itchy.
I kept rubbing, hoping to scratch both itches at once. Rid myself of the itchy mosquito feeling, but also rid myself of the itchy Max feeling. But truth was, Max had been making me itch long before tonight, before I even knew who he was. Those emails we’d exchanged had started it, and then seeing him, having him lock eyes with me, tend to my bleeding foot, whisper words in my ear . . . all that had only exacerbated the itch, which seemed to be growing and gathering momentum constantly. I pulled my phone out while still rubbing my back against the pole. Just because I was itchy all over, in more ways than one, did not mean I was about to ignore all my work responsibilities. But when I looked down at my phone, the phone that was picking up zero internet, I tossed it across to my bed. I would have to send Sebastian my watering-hole pictures later.
The itch on my back was just not going—the pole was not quite reaching. I looked around the room and saw the umbrella by the door. I raced over to it, and tried to use it to scratch, but the sharp top of the umbrella felt as if it was scratching through my skin. I threw it down on the floor.
Every. Single. Inch.
I couldn’t get his words out of my head. Last time he’d been near that inch, it had been a disaster, but now I was in no doubt of his apparent sexual mastery. You couldn’t look at Max and not feel on some primitive, instinctive level, that this man was going to give you mind-blowing orgasms. He oozed sex. Even when he wasn’t trying to be sexy, he gave off this sexy-as-fuck, big-dick energy that was enough to turn any woman wild.
Any woman . . . and probably many, many if the rumors were to be believed. I didn’t know how I felt about that, though. He’d probably kissed so many inches that if you lined them up, he’d already run a 10K marathon.
This Max, sexy, broody, whispery, hairy Max, was certainly not the young man I’d once known. Who’d waited to have sex with me, who’d said that I was it, I would be the first and last person he’d ever sleep with. I’d also thought that at the time. In fact, I’d never been surer about anything in my life, until I wasn’t and realized what a na?ve, stupid dream that had been.
He’d destroyed me. He’d been the one person that I’d been able to talk to and confide in, maybe even more so than Sarah at the time. He was the one person I’d told everything to, all the details of my sister’s death that I’ve hardly shared with anyone. How I’d felt so powerless standing in the doorway and not knowing what to do. How I’d never felt more panicked and terrified in my life and how still today I get that same panicked feeling if something feels out of my control. I’d told him all about my mom’s recuring depressive spells. She would be okay for a while, a year, two years, and then she would collapse into a pit of darkness and vanish while my dad disappeared into a bottle.
Everyone went away, even when they were sitting right there on the couch next to me. He’d also gone away. But now he was back and I had so many complicated feelings about him.
“Fuuuck!” I hurried back to the pole in the middle of the room and rubbed my back against it furiously. The itch was killing me and there was no way I was going to be able to relax, let alone sleep, tonight. I stopped scratching and realized that there was only one person here who could attend to that itch. He could probably attend to all the itches, but I certainly wasn’t going to let him scratch that one . . .
Was I?
“Detox. I am on a detox!” I said out loud as I raced for the door.