Chapter 31
Lucy
This is the best vacation of my life.
For the past week, I’ve gotten to know each of the guys better than I already do. I watch Dane soften, Cole relax, and Nico finally really smile, instead of using that one he reserves for strangers.
We swim, eat, and have sex.
My only regret is that, without an internet connection, I can’t Google everything I want to. I want to start with simple tips for sex with multiple partners and eventually find myself over on the side of the internet with answers to how to take three men at once.
The idea is thrilling. Is it possible? So far, our sex is one or two men with me, the other watching and touching himself. It feels impossible that I’ve gone from never having done this in my life to trying to figure out how to juggle three of them at once.
“Is it okay not to do it all together?” I pose the question over breakfast, and it makes Cole choke on his French toast, prepared by Nico.
“What?” Dane asks, brow furrowing. “Eating breakfast?”
“No, you dope,” Nico chuckles, clapping his friends on the back and leaning in with those sparkling eyes. “She’s asking if she can sample individually, or if she has to take the full-course meal every time.”
I flush. Of course, Nico is the one to get my meaning first.
“It’s not like…” I trail off, not really knowing how to qualify the statement. It’s not like I don’t like all being together. “After the fight, I just want to make sure I’m not crossing any boundaries.”
Dane and Cole say, at the same time, “It wasn’t a fight.”
Nico raises an eyebrow at me, as if to say, ri-ght. “Well, I, for one, have no problem mixing up the dynamic. We can do solo, just two of us… whatever you want, Lucy dear.”
Cole shrugs, and Dane says, “I agree. As long as everyone is comfortable.”
A beat passes then he says, “As we’re leaving tomorrow. I think we should probably discuss what this will look like. Off the island. This is a good segue, as we probably won’t all be together like this after we leave.”
That makes my chest pang slightly, the thought of them being scattered again, like they were when I first got to Ember.
“It should look like this,” Nico says, sighing and popping a grape into his mouth. Around the bite, he says, “As much like this as we can make it.”
Dane gives him a look, and I know them enough now to recognize it. It says, life can’t always be a vacation.
“And why not?” Nico answers the look like it was spoken out loud. “At this point, in our fifties,” Dane’s brow twitches, and I flush again at the reminder of the age difference between us all. “We should be able to take a break. Enjoy this.”
By this, he might mean our budding relationship, or all their hard work, the money they’ve accrued to this point. They certainly don’t need any more, and that makes me inclined to agree with him.
But I also understand wanting purpose. Having something to do.
“What do you want, Lucy?” Dane asks, carefully, his gaze steady on me. It reminds me of the way he looked at me the first time I walked into his office. Like he could cut right through me with it, see to the deepest, most secret desires I’ve buried inside myself.
I swallow and drop his gaze, heart suddenly beating hard. Of course I’m aware of the age difference between us, and it makes me wonder if I’m too naive. If my feeling about this is going to feel like playing Trivial Pursuit with them, grasping at answers I have no chance of really knowing.
Carefully, not wanting to sound like a daft little girl, I say, “I haven’t really… let myself think that far. I didn’t know if this was going to… if you guys wanted…”
I want to spend more time with them. Of course I do.
They’re brilliant, interesting, and fun.
Cole makes me feel smarter with each conversation we have.
Dane makes everything feel steady, like he knows where to steer the ship, even in a storm.
And Nico, over the past few days, has reminded me to stay bold. To have fun.
Of course I want this. I’d want it even if it didn’t come with the money and the glitz and the ease. But with all that? It’s a dream. An impossibility that makes me pinch myself each morning I wake up.
“Of course we do,” Cole says, mirroring my own sentiment, his voice matter-of-fact like always. I wait for the other guys to contradict him, but they don’t. They all just look at me, like I get the final say in this. Like the only reason it wouldn't happen is if I didn’t want it.
It makes me flush with pleasure. With the wanting and the having and the too much of things being good. If I was someone else, I might be waiting for the other shoe to drop. As it is, I just can’t believe my luck.
“Okay. Then… I mean, yeah.” It’s a stammer matched to the overwhelming sensation of getting everything you want. Letting out a breath, I bring the back of my hand to my cheek, trying to cool my heated skin. “Yeah, of course I do. I want to… try.”
“Okay.” Dane nods, like that’s settled. Cole sits back in his seat.
“Not like three guys with a beautiful woman will be the weirdest thing a bunch of rich dudes have ever done together,” Nico jokes. Dane shakes his head and Cole punches him in the shoulder.
Together, collectively aglow in the matter we’ve just settled, we finish our breakfast and break out of the house, headed down to the beach.
“Put me down!”
“Are you sure about that?”
Dane stands waist-deep in the ocean with me cradled in his arms. His hair is flattened over his head, his fair skin rosy from a week on the island. Droplets of water dapple his shoulders, which are covered in freckles.
I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed them before, but out here in the sun, they’re more prominent.
My hair is stiff, the kind of rope-y texture it gets after swimming in salt water and drying for a few minutes. Over Dane’s head, the sun has dropped low in the sky, laden with the promise of dusk coming in just over an hour.
We’ve been out here forever, running in the sand, walking along the shore, diving into the water and letting the ocean wash over us all.
Getting his meaning, I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on tight, searching for a lie, “I don’t know how to swim.”
Dane’s laugh rumbles through his chest and into my body. “Lucy, we’ve been out here for hours.”
I bite my lip and look up at him, hoping a cute face, even if I look like a drowned rat, will keep him from tossing me back in the water. I already got a rush of salt water up my nose once today, and I’m not hoping to do it again.
“This reminds me of when I fell in the shower,” I murmur, tracing a finger over his chest, and I feel him stiffen beneath me, his eyes going dark at the mention of it. “And you picked me up, just like this.”
“Are you flirting with me just to avoid another dunk in the ocean?” Dane asks, his voice growling.
Smoke rolls over to us from the shore, and we glance over to see Nico with the grill he dragged out here.
He’d insisted on charcoal, said propane grills make the food taste weird.
Cole lays back in the sand, tuckered from the day of play and sun.
“That depends,” I try to purr, hoping that’s how it’s coming off. “Is it working?”
Dane gives me a dazzling grin, the kind that’s rare from him. I feel like I’ve walked out into the ocean and met with Poseidon himself. Like I’m being held up by a divine being of the sea.
He lowers his forehead to mine, rests it there a moment, our skin tacky from salt and sunscreen, and we breathe together. When I tilt my chin up to his, trying to steal a kiss, he grins wickedly and says, “No.”
At first, I think it’s about the kiss, but then I’m plummeting toward the sea floor, the cold slap of the ocean water rising up to meet my back.
“You ba-bastard!” I splutter, rising up out of the water, hair flinging back and smacking my back. I turn to grab him and haul him under, but he’s laughing as he moves back toward the shore.
We race through the water, like a relay in slow motion, and of course Dane beats me. We tumble out onto the beach, sand sticking to every part of us, and now I’m gaining on him.
When we get close to Nico, he calls, “No sand in the food! Hey! Not by the grill!”
“I’m going to murder you!” I call out in warning to Dane.
He shoots me another brilliant grin, and it makes my heart stop in my chest. He turns and runs in the other direction, calling back to me over his shoulder.
“Not if I can—oomph—”
I cackle gleefully as Cole takes Dane by surprise, tackling him to the ground. I get there just in time to land on Dane’s lap, pinning him to the sand.
“No fair,” he groans, gasping up at the sky. “Interference.”
I’m straddling Dane backwards, my ass to his face, but I reach over to Cole, grabbing him by the front of his sun shirt—UV light is the primary cause of skin cancer, you should all be wearing protection—and pulling him into me for a reward.
He kneels between Dane’s legs, kissing me, his head slanting to the side as my hands slide into his hair.
“Oh,” Dane says, sucking in a deep breath below me. I can feel the muscles in his body hardening, the plane of his stomach shifting. I roll my hips against him once, wondering if he’s enjoying the sand-coated view of my ass. “Fuck.”
Seems like he is.
Cole’s hands grow more frantic, his fingers slipping under the straps of my bikini, sliding it off my shoulders. My breasts feel heavy and achy, nipples already pert beneath the shining gold material of the swimsuit.
Beneath me, I can feel Dane’s hand sliding up my thigh, fingers slipping under the slick material of my swimsuit.
When he finds me, of course I’m wet. The shock of him touching me there will never really go away, I think, but this time it’s amplified by the fact that I can’t see his face, by the position, by how Cole is kissing me like he wants to swallow my throat.
“Oh, fuck, yes…” Dane growls, his free hand tightening on my hip, pulling me so I roll against him. He’s already hard, his cock growing under his swim trunks.