46. Ashley
ASHLEY
I gave Izzy my cocktail vouchers for the pool bar and left her browsing bathing suits in the gift shop.
“I want to catch up with Fox,” I said, “But come for dinner tonight at the villa.”
“Love to. Can I bring anything besides my winning personality?”
“A bottomless enthusiasm for Go Fish. Ryan’s always looking for a fresh mark.”
“What are the stakes? Jelly beans? Should I stock up?”
“Defin— Oh!” I noticed Fox had messaged me through one of my social media accounts.
My phone is in your suite. Heading to my room now. Call me there when you get this .
“Well, that explains— I gotta go!” I hurried out of the shop and found a lobby phone only to see Fox come from where the business center was located.
When I was a kid, I used to pump so hard on the swings the ropes would go slack. That’s exactly how I felt as I glimpsed him. Like I was suspended in mid-air at the very zenith of joy.
He wore a salmon-colored T-shirt with three buttons at the collar. It wasn’t even tight, but hugged his wide shoulders and the sleeve cuffs accentuated his muscled biceps. His low-slung cargo shorts did the same for his legs and butt, hanging off his frame so beautifully, he was like a catwalk model. He ambled toward the elevators with an absent confidence that made heat swirl in my middle.
“Fox!” I called, voice wobbling like I had a case of Victorian vapors. I clapped the lobby phone back into its cradle and hurried after him.
“Hey,” he said in greeting, brows pulling together with consternation. He didn’t return my tentative smile.
A thick, invisible wall had come up between us. It was like a block of gelatin that condensed into a more solid, stickier, airless mass the closer I got to him.
He might look mouthwatering on the outside, but his eyes held the same wariness and weariness I’d seen when I’d picked him up from the airport a few days ago. He was showered and freshly shaved, but his cheeks were hollow.
Something in me sank so hard and fast, my knees grew soft and my head light.
“I didn’t realize your phone was upstairs. I went for lunch with Izzy at the golf club. I’m really sorry.” Really, really sorry. Sick with it, now that I could see there didn’t seem to be anything but a few shreds of cordiality left between us.
He waved me to enter the elevator ahead of him. I used my card to take us up to my floor.
“Shane?” I asked apprehensively.
He shook his head.
“Fox—”
He shook that off, too. “It is what it is.”
And that meant it was bad. My heart scraped the floor, dragging ten feet behind me as I led him to the suite.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked as we entered.
“Nothing to say. Shane wants me dead and his parents are talking about remortgaging their house to buy me out.”
“Oh, my God.” I left my bag on the floor and dropped onto the sofa, head landing in my hands. “I’m so sorry .”
“Are you?” he asked cryptically from where he was standing next to the table, pocketing his phone and key card.
“ Yes .” I picked up my heat, appalled he would doubt it. “I never meant for any of this to happen. If you’re thinking I went downstairs this morning planning revenge, no. I absolutely did not. I wanted...” I dropped my head back into my hands, heels of my palms pressing the sting into the backs of my eyes.
“What?” he prompted in a grating voice.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. Everything I want turns to shit. I grabbed one tiny piece of what I wanted and unleashed a fury on you that you’ll never forgive. I am so, so sorry.”
“Ashley.” His voice was suddenly right above me. He almost never said my whole name. I was always ‘Ash,’ the way my family called me. It made him sound grave. It made me feel like I was in deep, deep shit.
It took all my courage to look up at him because I didn’t want to see his anger and blame and disappointment and hurt. I had hurt him and would never forgive myself .
“Why did you come to my room, then? What did you want? What do you want?” He searched my expression for something I was too terrified to reveal.
I thought about how I’d walked out of his room thinking that was all I would have with him. All I could have. Because I had learned to keep my expectations low and not reach. But I knew what I wanted.
“I want to love you. A little,” I added quickly, because that already felt too big. Too much stretch. My eyes filled and my chin crinkled.
“And you’re sorry you did ?”
“ No . I’m glad we did that, but I’m really sorry I wound up causing— Oh.”
His strong hands took hold of my upper arms and drew me to me feet. “Jesus, Ash. You scared the hell out of me.”
He wrapped his arms around me and nearly squeezed the air from my body. I had been about to fall apart and now he was squishing me back together.
“This has been a hell of a day, not knowing how you felt.” His voice was a deep tremor in his chest. “Thinking— Yes. Love me. God. Please. Do you? Or do you only want to?” He drew back to look at me.
“I think I do, yeah,” I admitted miserably, unable to keep my mouth steady. “And I know it might seem like I’m only turning to you because I’m scared to be on my own. I’m not. I’m scared to not have you in my life. That’s been eating me up all week way more than Shane backing out of the wedding.”
“Oh, babe.” He pulled me back in and tucked my head beneath his chin, heart hammering against my cheek. “I felt awful. You weren’t texting me back. I thought you must hate me.”
“For what?” I hugged my arms tighter around him. “All I could think this morning was that I couldn’t say what I wanted because it would put you in a terrible position. I didn’t want you to feel obligated, like I expect you to choose me.”
“I have chosen you. How do you not see that?” He pressed me away again. “I chose you when I didn’t let you leave my room this morning. I didn’t know what to say after, though. I was hoping for more than five minutes to figure it out.” One side of his mouth pulled in a half-hearted rueful grin.
“What are you going to do? Because I’ll get out of the way. I’ll go back to Pine Grove and...” Wait for him? That would be excruciating.
“Is that what you want?” Tension settled into his jaw and his grip slid to my shoulders.
I shrugged under the weight of his hands, but my quivering lips said “No.”
I might love him, but I wouldn’t halt my life for him. Maybe I wasn’t going to Australia as Mrs. Shane Holloway, but I wasn’t going back to being timid Ashley Barnes, afraid to dream big and make mistakes.
Some mistakes were worth making. Even if he and I couldn’t be together or fell apart tomorrow, I was already glad we had this one week between us. It was ours and no one could take it away from me. Not ever.
“Babe. Tell me what you want,” he urged, giving my shoulders a squeeze.
I wanted him to keep calling me ‘babe.’ My mouth flickered with wistful humor.
“It’s hard for me,” I said softly. “To imagine I’m allowed to go after a bigger bite of the world.” I didn’t have a surf champion for a mom who had taught me that it was completely normal to follow the sun and my dreams.
Fox didn’t either, but he had learned to be ambitious. Izzy was like that, too, even though her parents were like my mom—careful and content with a quiet, secure, conventional life. Maybe the biggest thing Izzy had revealed to me today was that underneath all that bravery, everyone was scared in their own way. No one liked to fail or be rejected or lose.
But you didn’t get what you wanted unless you went for it, whatever ‘it’ was.
“Spit it out,” Fox urged. “There are no wrong answers. You want marriage?”
“What?” My eyes almost fell out of my head. “ No .”
“What then?” He withdrew slightly.
“I mean...” I set a placating hand on his chest. “Maybe. One day. I’m still sorting through my feelings on marriage. I was going into it for all the wrong reasons and it’s not something I see as a goal anymore.” I felt a little foolish that I ever did. “I was using marriage as something to give me independence. Because I saw it as the only way I could pry myself away from Mom and Pine Grove. No, I just think it would be nice if you and I could be together and see what we have.”
“That would be nice.” His gaze softened and he set a tender kiss on my mouth.
For a few seconds, as we held onto each other, all the shaking in me stopped. I hadn’t destroyed what we had. Fox and I were okay. In this moment, everything was okay.
And maybe this was as much security as anyone had—moments of believing everything would be fine, even if it wouldn’t. Even if you didn’t know the way out of the mess you were in.
“You’ll come to Australia?” he asked quietly. “We don’t have to stay there, but you have to get your things and I have to move out.” He sighed and stroked my hair. “We’ll have to find a place to stay. Get jobs that might suck. But let’s aim for spectacular and get there eventually.”
“I envy your confidence.”
“You doubt me? Us?” He frowned down at me.
“No?” My heart was pounding with equal parts excitement and overwhelm. “I don’t want to look too far into the future.” Monsters abided there. That was life. “Do you think we have it, though?” I asked cautiously. “Get-through-anything love?” Because this thing between us was very new and fragile and I didn’t want to delude myself again.
Fox sobered. Then snorted with self-deprecation. “I was a prick to ask Shane that, wasn’t I? But you don’t know until you’re tested and this has been a fucking week, Ash.” He wasn’t talking about the shortness of timeframe. He was referring to all the shit we’d been through since he landed.
“I definitely feel tested,” I said on a strangled laugh, splaying my hand on my side. “What I do know is, Shane and I wouldn’t have gotten as far as a wedding if you hadn’t been on the other side, picking up his slack. He and I definitely didn’t have it. But I’m right here with you now.” I stroked my hand across the contours of his waist and lower back. “Even though I’ve wanted to kill you more than once since you landed.”
He slid his around me again, but his expression was somber. “I do think we have it,” he said. I’m gutted about Shane and his parents and I’m not giving up hope there, but if I lose my share in the business and the house... I can weather that. I don’t want to lose you .”
A fine tremble went through me, one that shifted tiny polarities in me to align with points inside him. It was recognition and connection and yes, a strange little bond that I suspected would only strengthen throughout our life together.
“That’s how I feel,” I said huskily. “I don’t care where I work or if we can only afford a crappy little flat as long as I’m coming home to you.”
“Babe.” His hazel eyes were shiny as he touched his mouth to mine.
My heart turned over.
“I mean it,” I murmured.
“I know you do. And I mean it when I tell you to expect more. It won’t be a crappy flat. Be greedy. We’re going to have it all.”
And if we didn’t, we would still have each other.
All the angst and worries churning inside me fell away. Beams of joy and gratitude and love glimmered through me, suffusing me with a radiance I could hardly contain.
We kissed again and it was better than all the ones that had come before. It was no longer stolen. This kiss was pure. Certain. It was given back and forth without reserve. Without guilt or hovering what-ifs.
It was the first of many deeply set stones that were the foundation of our future. The next was his lips pressing to the point of my shoulder. I closed my eyes and absorbed that beautiful imprint before I grazed my mouth against his Adam’s apple. He swallowed.
We pressed our cheeks and breathed in each other’s scent.
He said, “Every time I touch you, I wonder how I didn’t realize sooner...”
“I know. I keep thinking this is how it’s supposed to feel.” I smoothed my hand across the muscles of his chest. The feel of him caused sensations to swirl and swell within me. “When I touch you, I feel it inside me.”
His hands slowly shaped my lower back, igniting fires as he climbed his hands to my ribs then down to the top of my ass. He smoothed his palms over my hips and slowly brought them up to my shoulder blades, cradling me close again, but this embrace was no longer comforting and safe. I was beginning to glow. To burn .
“I didn’t know I could love anyone like this,” he confided with an emotive edge on his voice. The pulse in his throat was heavy against my palm.
“Me, either.”
It awed and overwhelmed me, but I wasn’t frightened. Not anymore. Even when he kissed me so deeply, I lost track of where we were and forgot to breathe. Even when my arousal became more than desire. More than want. Hunger. Need.
I swept my tongue into his mouth and pushed my hips into the thick pressure of his erection.
This wasn’t me. I was never the sexual aggressor, but I needed him to know how much he meant to me. How deep this craving went for us to be physically together .
He groaned and brushed the straps of my sundress down my shoulders.
I pulled back. “It has to come over my head. My ass is too?—”
His brows went up in a small warning.
“—spectacular for it to slide down over my hips.”
His teeth flashed. “Hell yes, it is.”
He shed his shirt and shorts, then helped me with the dress, lifting it off my upraised arms. I reached to unhook my bra and he caught a finger in my underwear, but only used that snag to draw me closer as I threw my bra away.
He was naked and hard and so incredibly sexy I nearly melted as my skin brushed his hot, tense frame.
I realized I was shaking when I watched my fingers tremble as I lightly traced across to the ball of his shoulder, down his biceps to his forearm.
“I want to rub myself all over you,” I whispered and licked at his dark brown nipple, beaded and tight beneath the pressure of my tongue.
He drew a shaken breath. His arms tightened around me. “Yes, please.”
I released a breathy laugh against his chest, but I wanted to sob under the massive feelings swamping me.
“I’m serious,” he whispered against my ear, making my scalp tighten. “I want you all over me.” His fingertips were tracing the line where my thong disappeared between my cheeks. The tickling caress caused a hot rush of wetness into the cotton.
“I want you in me.” I clasped my hand around the girth of him, squeezing firmly enough he pulsed in my hand and hissed a breath through his teeth.
He nipped at my mouth and backed me toward the bed, then we stood beside it, kissing deeply, tongues playing and both of us groaning at the gorgeous, lusty sexiness of it. His hands cupped my breasts and his thumbs circled my nipples. I stroked him and he pushed into my hand and I was pretty sure I was going to die from the ache in my pussy.
I released him to push the thong down and he threw himself onto the bed, then invited me with the beckon of his hands.
I straddled his hips and he said, “Babe. Up here.” His strong hands took hold of my hips and he slid down the bed, encouraging me to move up.
“Another time.” I’d never sat on a man’s face in my life. For the first time, I was more intrigued than appalled, but, “Right now I really need to feel you in me.”
I stood on my knees over him and used my fingers to part and spread my juices over and around, preparing to take him in.
“Keep doing that,” he said in a low, graveled voice, hands moving restlessly on my thighs while he watched.
I slowed and showed him what I liked, rubbing up over my clit and sliding down to penetrate, growing hotter and hornier under his intense stare. I was getting really close. I bit my lip, slowing my touch. Slowing and slowing.
When I made a helpless noise and lifted my touch away, he dragged his incandescent gaze up to mine.
“Keep going. I want to watch.”
I already felt unbearably vulnerable, but there was something in his soft command, something in this small bridge of trust we were building, that made me want to give him everything. I closed my eyes and touched myself again. I stroked my clit until I was wet and tense and arriving at the peak. Rolling over it.
A small cry tore from my throat as the climax hit. I buried two fingers deep inside me, waiting until the hardest pulses had faded before I let them slide free.
I dropped my hand away, panting, and blinked my eyes open.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to see on his face, but beneath the lust, there was joy. Triumph. Love. It was the sweetest kick in the heart.
I melted onto him.
He kissed me and stroked me as if he’d been the one to deliver that orgasm. As if we’d been linked when it happened. As though we’d shared it.
“That was really sexy,” he told me as he rolled me beneath him. He kissed along my hairline and into my neck and I feathered my fingertips down his spine and crooked one knee up, inviting him in.
“Condom?” he asked.
“I have an IUD.” And I’d had a full physical before getting it. And yes, maybe that was yet another sign I hadn’t been committed to the life I had thought I was starting with Shane. Much as I loved Fliss, she was the result of one forgotten pill. When I got pregnant, it would be because I was ready to be a mother.
“Really? I haven’t been with anyone since the last time I was checked, but I always wear condoms. I don’t know how long I’ll last without one.”
“I’ll risk it.” I smiled against his chin.
He levered himself onto one elbow, looking down between us as he guided the leaking tip of his cock to my slick, aching center. And finally, finally , he was pressing into me.
“Oh, that feels so good,” I groaned, clamping my legs around him, encouraging the steely intrusion as he withdrew slightly before sinking deeper. I gripped him hard with my inner muscles, wanting to keep him forever.
“Keep telling me that,” he said, trailing his lips across the line of my jaw. “Communication is key during sex. Or so I was told.”
After a stunned second, I remembered he was quoting Inga and burst out laughing. He had to cage me with his big body and settle his weight heavily on my hips to keep us joined. We went back to kissing, but kept chuckling, calming, then falling into a fresh fit of giggles.
“Why did you say that?” I asked, running my hands over him, still snickering.
“So I wouldn’t fucking explode. You feel really fucking great, Ash. I want to fuck you so hard.”
An earthy groan left me. I cradled his strong-boned face in my hands and met the dance of lusty amusement in his eyes. “Do it.”
Now he made a noise that was distinctly uncivilized and kissed me again, deep and filthy with lots of tongue. When he started to move, I felt it like taut violin strings that rang notes of pleasure with each measured withdrawal and return. I couldn’t believe how incredible it felt. How powerful.
“Oh, fuck,” I moaned throatily.
“Yeah,” he gasped.
“Don’t stop. It feels so good. Oh, fuck .”
He kept moving, deep and hard, like he was making me his.
It was incredible. I wanted him to hurry up and finish me yet keep me right here forever, subjecting me to this insanely gratifying, lascivious act.
His tempo picked up. Our flesh was slapping and I made noises that I hoped he realized were approval, even though I sounded pretty tortured. A wild flush of heat washed over me. The prickling tingles of climax neared. My pussy felt so swollen and overstimulated, I thought I’d burst.
“Harder.” I could hardly speak. “Please. Oh God, Fox?—”
He rose onto his knees and dragged my hips into his lap and slammed into me. The new angle and the sharp impact were enough to cause a deep contraction within me. Release hit, one that had me opening my mouth in a broken cry, unable to bear how good it was.
“I’m coming,” he bit out, swearing and pounding into me. “Ash!” His ragged noises joined mine as he pulsed hotly inside me.