Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Phoebe
P aradise Beach Club turned out to be exactly that—paradise—filled with enthusiastic music lovers who were more than ready to party.
Music blared through the warm summer air, from dance to house, to old school R’n’B, to remixes of some absolute classics from the sixties and seventies.
When we stepped out into the sand, it sank between our open-toed shoes, the sound of the ocean providing a heavenly backdrop whenever the heavy bass from the speakers died down.
If Heaven had a nightclub, this would have been it.
Had we done our research of the place properly, though, we’d have shown up wearing our bikinis like most people there had.
Instead, Bails, Rhea, and I had worn much fancier outfits, and the pale blue, strappy mini dress I’d thought had looked good now felt like a ballgown.
It clung to my skin in the heat of the night.
At least I didn’t have a curtain of blonde, humidity-ruined hair around my shoulders to contend with, thanks to the tight, high ponytail I’d wrapped it up in.
The three of us found a set of beach loungers close to the ocean, and we sank down onto them, with Bailey sitting next to Rhea, while I took the one opposite them.
They looked good, my best friends. Bailey wore her signature yellow colour against her brown skin, with her hair pulled back like mine, both of us opting to spend another hour lounging on the balcony of our apartment rather than wasting time combing and preening.
Rhea wore her signature colour, too—black, obviously—which suited her ivory pale skin that already had a lobster glow to it after only a few hours in the sun.
I’d been about to tell them how gorgeous they both looked when I saw Andy approaching, and my heart sank into my stomach. Before I could warn the girls, he crept up and made them jump, earning himself a round of laughter before Jace joined the party only seconds later.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist us!” Jace cried, holding his bottle of beer up in the air before he plonked himself down next to Rhea and threw his arm around her shoulder.
She eyed him up and down before raising a finger to the low neck of his thin, white T-shirt. “Showing a little chest for anyone special?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Not really.” She shrugged his arm off her shoulder and rolled her eyes before crossing her legs and turning her attention to Andy, who hovered over Bailey, looking down at her with a glint in his eye.
“No Cohen?” Bailey asked.
The mere mention of his name had my stomach tightening, and not in a good way.
“Nope.” Andy sighed. “He decided to stay back at the apartment. Boring fuck.”
“Is he always like that?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then, why would you bring someone like that to Mykonos with you?” Bailey scowled.
“It’s complicated, but he’s kind of like a brother to me, so I’m stuck with him whether I want him here or not.”
“Le sigh. Always such a shame when a stunner has the personality of a slug.” Rhea exhaled heavily. “It’s always the pretty ones.”
After that, the conversation seemed to move on to something else that didn’t hold my interest, when all I really wanted to do was ask more questions about Henry Cohen—figure out what lived behind those tortured eyes of his besides venom.
Work out why I seemed to irritate him so much by doing nothing more than breathing in his direction.
But then I had to give myself a silent reminder that not every arsehole had layers you could peel your way through.
Not every guy out there had the depth of those book boyfriends I loved to read about.
Not every brooding man had a cookie dough centre they didn’t want the rest of the world to know about.
In real life, pricks were just pricks—nothing more to it.
We lived in a world where it was now cooler to be colder, and Henry clearly took that to the extreme, no doubt hoping he came off as the untouchable stud everyone should want but couldn’t have.
If ever I bumped into him again, I’d make sure to let him know that that kind of ice didn’t do a thing for me.
I’d always preferred the warmth over anything that left me cold.
“Hey, Phoebe?” Jace called to me over the music. “You’re too pretty to be looking so lost inside your own head like that.”
Rhea dug a sharp elbow into his ribs, making him wince and ‘humph’ in her direction.
“Woah, what was that for?” he asked, rubbing at his side.
“You never tell a girl she’s too pretty to be anything, whether it’s smart, moody, sad, or distant. Pretty girls have a right to be anything they want to be. If she wants to daydream, let her daydream with out making her feel guilty about it. Okay?”
His eyes widened as he took her in, looking like a man ready to feast on a buffet. “Did you know a girl with fire on her tongue is my ultimate weakness?”
“I’m a woman, not a girl, fool.”
“Even better.”
Rhea groaned and shook her head. “Boys.” She sighed.
The sun had started to rise in the early hours of the next morning when the five of us finally stumbled our way back to our apartments, a little worse for wear after far too many cocktails and shots.
To Andy and Jace’s credit, they hadn’t left our side all night, making sure we were safe among the crowds.
They offered to pay for our drinks, even pretending to be Bailey’s and Rhea’s boyfriends at one point when they’d been unable to shake a very enthusiastic pair of brothers away.
There’d been flirting, of course, but other than that, neither Jace nor Andy had stepped out of line or taken things too far.
I had to admit, I hadn’t minded their company or the feeling of safety they’d provided on our first night away in a foreign land.
“What time is it?” Rhea yawned, swinging the straps of her heels in her hand as she lazily trudged through our complex’s entrance, where bright pink flowers and striking green leaves covered the walls of the white-washed buildings.
“No idea. Phone’s dead.” Bailey sighed. “But the sun is rising, and that means we gotta make like vampires for a while before we have to wake up and do it all again.”
“I’m too old for this.”
“We’re twenty-three, Rhea.”
“And a half.”
We eventually said our goodbyes to Andy and Jace, who both looked a little dejected about the fact that they weren’t going to get lucky on the first night. God loved them for trying, though, I was sure of it.
We were making our way to the staircase that led up to our room when I caught a glimpse of the sunrise hitting the infinity pool in the centre of the complex, tempting me closer.
With my feet throbbing, I suddenly couldn’t think of anything better than dipping them into that cool water before sliding myself into bed.
“You two head up. I’ll be right behind you,” I told the girls, coming to a stop and thumbing over my shoulder. “Just going to dip my feet in the pool for a minute.”
They gave each other a look before Rhea called me a weirdo, and they trudged off up to bed as if they’d just run a marathon and couldn’t take another step.
In a way, we had. I’d not danced that much in years, but I was still way off letting myself go fully.
I’d danced, but I still hadn’t danced . Not like I used to.
Before responsibilities and holding down multiple jobs back home just to be able to spend as much time away from home as possible. Before Rob.
After kicking out of my heels, I carefully lowered myself to the pool’s edge and let the tips of my throbbing toes fall into the crystal blue water, the coolness making me hitch in a breath as I climatised to the temperature.
Eventually, I let the rest of my feet, ankles and calves dip beneath the surface, and the relief it offered felt almost orgasmic.
Closing my eyes, I moaned out loud, placed my hands behind me, and leaned back, lifting my face to the rising sun that wasn’t quite high enough yet to feel any heat. For a single moment, I focused all my senses on everything around me.
The peace.
The silence.
The solitude.
Until a rough clearing of someone’s throat caught my attention, and I looked across to the other side of the pool to see a shirtless Henry Cohen sitting on the edge of a padded sun lounger, bent over, his fingers working on the laces of his trainers while he stared straight at me.
In the haze of the dawn breaking mixed with the alcohol in my bloodstream, he looked like a god. All tanned skin, moody stares, dark brows shading perfect eyes, and a mouth that looked like it wanted to insult me for no reason.
He didn’t say a word as we stared at each other, neither of us looking away or acknowledging how awkward it should have felt to hold each other’s gaze that way.
He simply tied one trainer, then switched to the other foot to do the same, never once taking his intoxicating gaze off me.
The barely-there sun framed him with the perfect backdrop, the horizon filled with the ocean behind him, making the bastard look like a work of art.
My heartrate thundered in my chest, and those traitorous butterflies began to flutter around in the very pit of my stomach, making the muscles in my thighs tighten.
How could one moody bastard do those things to me with nothing more than intense eye contact?
Were they nerves?
Did Henry make me nervous?
I hated even the thought of it.
No. It had to be the alcohol messing with my mind, misfiring all my thoughts, making me stumble over myself.
I never looked away from him, though, not even when he rose to stand, wearing nothing but a loose pair of grey running shorts and the trainers on his feet.
Henry’s entire body was made up of hard edges, the lines and curves of his every muscle making my mouth water.
When he ran a hand through his thick, black hair and held my gaze, I let my lips part as I waited for him to speak.
Hoping he would. Wanting to know why he seemed so repulsed by me when he didn’t even know a damn thing about my existence.
But I never got to hear him speak, because when he eventually looked away and glanced down at the watch on his wrist to press the screen a couple of times, Henry turned and set off jogging, leaving me to stare at nothing but his toned, beautiful back in confusion.
Part aroused.
Part mortified.
Part confused, because “What the hell kind of psycho goes jogging at this time in the morning when they’re on holiday?”