Chapter 13 #2
He was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working like he was physically fighting with words that wouldn't come. She watched the battle play out across his features—want versus fear, hope versus self-protection.
Fear won.
"The video you made," he said instead, and something in Lily's chest crumbled. "It's going to do good. Real good. I hope you know that."
"Thanks," she managed.
That's not what you were going to say. That's not what I wanted you to say.
But she'd made her decision. She wasn't going to beg.
The sun sank lower, bleeding orange and crimson across the water. Lily drew her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, trying to hold herself together.
"Can I ask you something?" Alex said quietly.
“Of course.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "What would you do differently? If you could go back to that first day, when the boat dropped you off. Would you change anything?"
The question caught her off guard. She considered it seriously, turning it over in her mind.
"No," she said finally. "Even knowing how it ends, I wouldn't change a thing."
Alex turned to look at her, his blue eyes dark in the fading light. "Even the parts that hurt?"
"Especially those." She met his gaze, letting him see everything she'd been trying to hide. "The hurt means it mattered. And this—" she gestured between them, at the beach, at the blazing sky "—matters to me. You matter to me. Even if you can't say it back."
Something cracked in his expression. His hand found hers in the sand, fingers interlacing.
"Lily," he said, and her name in his mouth sounded like a prayer and an apology all at once.
Then he was kissing her.
This kiss was desperate, consuming—the kiss of a man who'd run out of words and had only this left to offer. Lily gasped against his mouth, her hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer.
They tumbled backward onto the sand, mouths still fused together. Alex's weight settled over her, his hips pressing between her thighs, and she could feel how much he wanted her—hard and insistent against her core.
She ignored the reality that she’d end up with sand in her crack for days because she so desperately wanted to feel Alex inside her as many times as she could manage until it was time to say goodbye.
Was that pathetic?
Maybe a little.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his chest heaving. The last rays of sunlight caught his face, illuminating the raw need in his expression.
"Here?" His voice was rough, strained.
“Here.”
His mouth found her neck, her collarbone, the sensitive hollow of her throat.
Lily arched into him, her fingers tangling in his hair as he worked his way down her body.
He tugged her sundress over her head, leaving her in nothing but a scrap of pink lace, and for a moment he just looked at her—spread out on the sand, skin gilded by the dying sun.
"You're so goddamn beautiful," he said, the words sounding almost angry. "Do you know that? Do you have any idea what you've done to me?"
"Show me," she challenged.
He did.
His mouth traced fire across her skin—her breasts, her stomach, the jut of her hipbones. When he hooked his fingers in her underwear and dragged it down her legs, the evening air hit her slick center and she shivered.
"Cold?" he asked.
"The opposite."
He smiled against her inner thigh, then lowered his head and that devilishly clever tongue sliced between her folds and found the pulsing center of her.
Lily cried out, her hips bucking against his mouth.
He pinned her down with one arm across her stomach, his tongue working her clit with all the knowledge he’d amassed from worshipping her body more times than she could count at this point.
The waves crashed in the background, keeping time with the pleasure building in her core.
"Alex, I'm—oh god, I'm going to—"
He doubled his efforts, sliding two fingers inside her while his tongue continued its assault. The orgasm hit her like a rogue wave, cresting and breaking and dragging her under. She came with an ugly cry, the sound swallowed by the ocean and the wind and the dying light.
Before the aftershocks had fully faded, Alex was kissing his way back up her body, his hands fumbling with his shorts. Lily helped, pushing at the fabric until he was as bare as she was, his cock hard and heavy against her thigh.
This time, she wanted him in her mouth.
Lily pushed at his shoulders, urging him onto his back in the warm sand.
He went willingly, his eyes dark and questioning as she straddled his thighs, her hands trailing down his chest. The vulnerability hit her then—the way his breath hitched, the faint tremor in his muscles, like he was holding himself together by a thread.
This man, so strong and commanding in every other part of his life, was utterly at her mercy now, and it made her heart ache even as desire pooled hot in her belly.
She leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to his sternum, tasting the salt on his skin from the ocean air. "Let me," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the waves. "Let me take care of you."
Alex's hand came up to cup her face, his thumb brushing her cheek. "Lily..." There it was again, her name like a confession, raw and exposed. He nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.
She slid lower, her breasts brushing against his abdomen, sending sparks through both of them.
Her fingers wrapped around his cock—velvet over steel, throbbing in her grip.
He groaned, low and guttural, his hips twitching upward involuntarily.
Lily met his gaze, holding it as she lowered her head, her lips parting to take him in.
The first taste of him—salty, musky, all Alex—made her moan around him.
She swirled her tongue over the tip, savoring the bead of precum there, before sinking down further, taking as much as she could.
His hand fisted in her hair, not pulling, just anchoring himself, like he needed the connection to stay grounded.
"Fuck, Lily," he rasped, his voice breaking. "You're... God, you're everything."
She worked him slowly at first, her mouth hot and wet, sliding up and down with deliberate care.
One hand stroked the base where her lips couldn't reach, the other splayed across his thigh, feeling the tension coiling in his muscles.
He was vulnerable here, naked beneath the fading sky, his breath coming in ragged pants, his eyes locked on hers with a mix of desperation and adoration that twisted something deep inside her.
Tears pricked at her eyes—not from effort, but from the intensity of it all.
This was goodbye wrapped in pleasure, a stolen moment on the edge of loss.
She hollowed her cheeks, sucking harder, her tongue pressing against the underside as she bobbed faster.
Alex's free hand clutched at the sand, knuckles white, his body arching toward her.
"Baby, I'm close," he warned, his voice strained, vulnerable in its honesty. "You don't have to—"
But she did. She wanted every part of him, this final claim.
Lily doubled down, her movements fervent now, hot and unrelenting.
He shattered with a choked cry, his release flooding her mouth in pulsing waves.
She swallowed around him, drawing out every last shudder, until he went limp beneath her, chest heaving.
She pulled back gently, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, and crawled up to nestle against his side. Alex wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, his lips pressing to her forehead in a kiss that felt like a promise he couldn't keep.
Lily could’ve remained in that moment forever but Alex was a beast, driven by feelings he couldn’t or wouldn’t name — but showed with his touch.
Rising slowly to his feet, he helped Lily to her feet and wordlessly led her back into the cabin to the bedroom. In an instant, Lily responded to the kindling heat in his gaze as he carefully, reverently removed the rest of her clothing.
Within minutes, they were both on the bed, and a heartbeat later, he was inside her.
The feeling was overwhelming—the stretch of him filling her completely. Above her, Alex's face was a mask of barely controlled restraint, every muscle in his body taut with the effort of not moving.
Lily didn’t trust herself to speak but words weren’t needed.
Alex started slow, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in. Each thrust was deliberate, devastating, like he was trying to sear the feeling of being inside her on his memories. Lily matched his rhythm, her nails raking down his back, urging him deeper.
Outside, the sky darkened around them, stars beginning to emerge as the last light faded. They moved together in the blue darkness, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the endless song of the waves.
“Harder,” Lily gasped. “I want it to hurt.”
Alex shifted his angle, hitching her leg higher over his hip, and drove into her with renewed force. The new position hit something perfect inside her, and she cried out, her inner walls clenching around him.
"That's it, baby,” he growled against her ear. "Let me feel you. Come for me, Lily."
She shattered for the second time, her whole body arching off the sand as pleasure crashed through her. Alex followed seconds later, burying himself deep and spilling inside her with a groan that sounded like it was torn from his chest.
They lay there afterward, tangled together on the cooling sand, neither willing to move. Alex's heart hammered against her chest, gradually slowing to match the rhythm of the waves.
“Ask me to stay,” Lily whispered, before she could stop herself.
Alex went still. "What?"
"Nothing." She closed her eyes, cursing herself. "Forget I said anything."
But the words hung between them, impossible to take back. The thing she'd sworn she wouldn't ask for. The thing she needed him to say first.