Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
TAKIRA
The beach club isn’t that large, but it’s spectacular.
Decorated entirely in white and gold, it’s somehow pristine and decadent.
The supple leather couches and seats, the crystal chandeliers sparkling with diamond brilliance overhead, the mirrored bars—all of it should scream excess but somehow merely whispers opulence.
The dance floor juts out onto the water, creating the illusion that it’s floating.
Boats of various sizes are moored at the edges like a watery parking lot.
Our yacht is a little farther out but looms as a grim reminder that it and the end of this idyllic trip are waiting for me.
“Having fun?” Iris asks over the music. She looks beautiful, her dark hair piled atop her head and a slinky dress molded to her curves.
Nothing about her says “mother of two,” but I’ve seen her texting and talking on the phone with August’s mom, who has their kids—seen her FaceTiming with them. She’s a devoted mom. A hot one, too.
“The party’s great,” I reply. “That dress is gorgeous, by the way.”
“Yours!” Her eyes sweep over me. “You look so good, but you always do. So confident.”
“Confident or don’t care what nobody thinks. I’m a little of both, I guess.”
“You’re exactly what Naz needs. He’s kind of reserved, and a bold woman like you to shake things up is good for him.”
“He’s good for me, too.”
“Well, I’m glad he tricked you into coming,” Iris says, her lips quirking.
“It wasn’t much of a trick,” I say wryly. “My eyes were pretty wide open.”
I survey the party, packed with people I’ve seen on E! and TMZ and occasionally around town back in LA.
“Kenan has a lot of friends,” I tell Iris with a smile.
“He’s a good guy to have in your corner, so everyone wants him in theirs. He’s pretty discriminating about who he lets in, though, so if they’re here, they’re good people.”
“Where are the guys?” I ask, realizing I haven’t seen any of them for a while.
“Believe it or not, there’s a wall-sized television on the other side of the club. They’re all watching some soccer match. Jared’s client’s playing.” She grabs a drink from a tray as it passes. “But I’m going to retrieve my husband right now.”
“I need to find Naz, too.” I search the floor of gyrating bodies and check the room’s perimeter lined with couches where partygoers are eating, drinking, lounging. No sign of Naz.
“Oh, isn’t that him?” Iris points across the room to a far corner.
My eyes find him easily, his height and shoulders making him a mountain in a roomful of trees.
He, like everyone else, wears white, and the open collar shirt paired with tailored white slacks shows stark against his dark skin.
His proud head is tilted down to a blonde woman, a server holding a tray and speaking into his ear.
“Yup,” I say, a small smile on my lips. “You go find your man while I go get mine.”
Iris smirks sweetly. “Go easy on her.”
“No, ma’am.”
He sees me first, meeting my eyes over her shoulder and smiling that slow smile that says I woke up this morning with my dick in your mouth.
“Hello,” I say, pulling up beside him and staring pointedly at the beautiful platinum blonde with the dark eyes. “Naz, honey, introduce me to your friend.”
“Of course.” He slips an arm around my waist and drops a kiss on top of my head. “This is Giovanna. She works here. Giovanna, this is my girl, Takira.”
Giovanna’s smile freezes and then shrivels, her panicked eyes flitting between Naz and me.
“Oh, I…” Her Italian accent is thick, and her Italian features are striking. “It’s nice to meet you. I was just saying…I was asking—”
“Apparently there’s a room in the back where couples sometimes…” Naz waggles his brows. “You know.”
“Oh.” I clap my hands under my chin. “I wanna see.”
There’s a dense silence following my words. Giovanna’s expression goes from awkward to interested in half a second flat.
“Si.” She nods enthusiastically and grabs my hand, heading for a corridor at the rear of the club.
“Kira.” Naz grabs my other hand, pulling us all to a halt. “We don’t need to—”
“Come on,” I coax.
Our eyes hold for a few seconds before he concedes and inclines his head for Giovanna to lead us.
We weave our way down the long passageway lined with doors.
Giovanna holds one of my hands, and Naz holds the other.
When we reach the last door, he tugs me to his side and eyes Giovanna, his expression impassive.
The door swings open to reveal a room with a plush couch against the wall and the same marble floor that runs the length of the hallway.
“See?” Giovanna sings, eyeing us both, her smile growing wider when she closes and locks the door. “Private.”
She takes a step toward Naz and presses her hand to his chest, and I clasp her wrist, carefully lifting her hand away.
“That’s as far as you go,” I say. “I’ll take it from here.”
Giovanna freezes, confusion on her pretty face and in her luminous, dark eyes.
She pouts and looks between the two of us like we stole her toys before she leaves.
In the quiet that follows, I step up to Naz, subtly inching him back until we reach the couch.
I push his shoulder, and he sits, looking up at me with ravenous eyes.
I bend to place my knees on either side of his spread thighs, straddling him, my dress fanning out over his lap in a flurry of silk.
He strokes the exposed skin of my back. “I don’t want anyone but you.”
“And I don’t want anyone but you.” I dip my head, taking his mouth in a kiss so carnal, it burns my lips and sets fire to my blood.
With tomorrow taunting me, closing in on our Utopia, I clutch his strong arms, clasp his face between trembling hands, rock my hips over his erection.
The friction through the thin lace of my thong arrows desire in me and steals the breath from my lungs and every thought but him from my mind.
His hand slips into the side cut-out of my dress to palm my breast beneath the silk, pinching my nipple.
“You want to choke me, I’m down,” I breathe in his ear. “You want to fuck me in the ass, you can. You want Giovanna to come back and eat me out while you watch, you can have that, too. I love making you feel good. Just tell me what you want.”
I seal the offer with a kiss that gives him everything I promised and more.
It lifts every barrier between us. Even still clothed, my words and the greedy, compulsive need winding between us strip us naked.
I’m putty in his hands, and he’s putty in mine, and with every touch, we mold each other into exactly what the other needs, while never losing ourselves.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he whispers into our kiss, his voice raw, his hands desperate, clenching on my thighs, urging the flowing skirt higher to expose my thong.
“I just did.” I laugh against his lips.
“I’m serious, Kira.” He leans his head away when I move to kiss him again. “We fly back tomorrow.”
“I know.” I take the collar of his shirt between my fingers and raise my eyes no higher than his Adam’s apple. “You’ll go back to San Diego?”
“In the off-season, I live in LA. Not far from Kenan and Lotus.” He cups my face and presses his forehead to mine. “Come stay with me.”
A startled gasp slips past my lips. “It’s only been two weeks.”
“I’m not saying move in, but just keep doing what we’ve been doing.” He trails kisses down my throat and peels the dress back, kneading my breast. “Eating together, sleeping together, learning each other.”
I can barely focus on his words with his hand at my breast and his eyes so intent on my face. Suspecting that’s what he’s counting on, I force myself to pull back until his hand drops away.
“I know this whole trip put the cart before the horse,” I say, pulling my dress and my sanity back into place. “But I’d rather take our time.”
“You want to stop sleeping together?” he asks, his expression unchanging. “We can do that.”
“Oh, hell no.” I reach between us to palm him through his pants. “Give this up when I just learned to ride it?”
He smiles and caresses the cleft in my chin, his eyes softening. “Then tell me what you want.”
I shrug, feeling self-conscious for some reason. Maybe because it exposes the girl who through the years stopped believing in fairy tales but now finds herself in the arms of a prince.
“I want us to make plans and to feel anticipation as I get dressed, knowing the doorbell will ring and it’s you. I want to kiss you goodnight and get the chance to miss you when you’re gone. I want to wonder when I’ll see you again.” I run a hand over the back of my neck. “It’s silly, I—”
“I’d like that, too.” He kisses my nose, smiling. “I want to spoil you.”
I tip back on his lap and laugh. “I hope you don’t expect me to stop you.”
A knock on the door interrupts whatever we would have said next. It creaks open to show Yari with her hand over her eyes.
“I’m not looking.” She peers through the crack of her fingers. “I mean, maybe a little.”
I swing my legs over and off Naz’s lap and straighten out my dress. “Nothing to see here.”
“If you say so.” She turns back toward the door. “I came to find you because they’re about to cut the cake.”
“Oh, yay.” I move to follow her, but Naz pulls me up short.
“Hey, about what you asked for,” he says, his smile as dazzling as the chandeliers out front. “I’m going to court you like you deserve.”
“You old school.” I laugh. “And old-fashioned.”
“You like it.” He pulls me toward the door. I dig my heels in, stopping so that he turns a querying look to me. I look straight into his eyes. No teasing. No humor. No confusion or even guilt.
“I like you,” I say, squeezing his hand for emphasis.
“I know,” he says, stepping out into the hall and leading me toward the music drifting from the dance floor. “I mean, I got to third base with you the night we met, so I figured.”
“Oh, my god!” My cheeks go hot, despite the fact that we’ve done much freakier things since that night on the roof senior year. “Mama would have plucked me like a chicken if she’d caught us.”
“Cliff caught us instead.”
I’m silent, letting the prickly situation with Cliff still ahead nick my happy bubble for a second.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make it work with Cliff.” He lifts my chin and searches my eyes. “You trust me?”
The confidence and earnestness in his eyes settle the unease gripping my heart, even if only for the next few minutes.
How could I not trust him? I nod and lean into him for our last few steps into the main room.
We melt into the crowd that’s waiting and watching the stage.
He pulls me close, my back to his front and his arms linked over my middle.
“Good evening, everyone,’” Lotus says from the stage positioned in the middle of the room. She wears a white floor-length cape dress that bares one shoulder. “Thank you for traveling to celebrate Kenan’s birthday with us.”
Kenan stands beside her, watching her with so much adoration, I feel like a voyeur. Like an interloper observing something so intimate between them, even though it’s just a glance. I wonder how long it will take for me to look at Naz that way.
Unless I already do?
Two servers wheel a huge, multi-tiered white cake onto the stage.
“Before we cut this masterpiece of a cake,” Lotus says, “I want to make a toast to my husband, my best friend, my soul mate.”
Lotus closes her eyes briefly, pressing her lips tight as if fighting for control of her emotions.
“Kenan,” she says. “You’re the pushiest patient man I’ve ever met.”
A light ripple of amusement flows through the crowd.
“You were determined to get your shot with me,” Lotus says, “and you did.”
Kenan only nods, his expression sober, his attention completely on Lotus, who grips her hands in front of her waist, the richness of her sun-browned skin a startling contrast to the snowfall of her dress. I’m not sure if they even need any of us in this moment, they’re so intent on each other.
“When we met,” Lotus continues, “I wasn’t looking. I was deliberately not looking, actually, and had sworn off dating altogether.”
She holds his stare while servers distribute glasses of champagne to the crowd.
“But to quote one of my favorite pieces, the Song of Songs, ‘I have found the one whom my soul loves.’ I always tease you about the difference in our ages, but I want you to know I relish every year we’ve had so far and covet every year ahead.”
He cups her face with one huge hand and kisses her forehead, leaning to whisper in her ear. Whatever he says, he doesn’t care that we can’t hear. It elicits a trembling smile from his beautiful wife.
“Sorry, y’all,” she laughs, turning tear-bright eyes back to the crowd. “That was just for me.”
“I told her that when I get her home,” Kenan says with a shameless grin, “I’mma—”
Lotus goes up on her toes to reach him, slamming her hand over his wide smile.
“Like I was saying,” she laughs, holding up a champagne glass undoubtedly filled with something non-alcoholic. “Happy birthday to the finest man I know.”
“Happy birthday!” we shout, sipping our champagne and oohing when balloons fall from the ceiling and confetti explodes from every direction.
Amid the celebratory chaos, a sobering thread of realization runs through me like a fraying ribbon.
Seeing Kenan and Lotus on stage, witnessing their devotion to each other, gives me a picture of what I could have—what I thought I maybe never would after all the app date disasters and failed attempts at relationships.
Kenan and Lotus, Banner and Jared, August and Iris—all the couples we sailed with for the last few weeks have extraordinary marriages.
Within a few minutes of being around them, you recognize a rare bond that most people never find.
But what if I’ve found it?
Naz and I have only been together two weeks, and it’s amazing. Beyond anything I’ve ever had. And it’s not just the outstanding, once-in-a-lifetime sex—though that’s worth mentioning. It’s how I feel when I’m with him. Who I am with him and who he is with me.
I have found the one whom my soul loves.
Lotus quoted that in her toast. What if I have found the one? Or he found me? Or I fell into his arms? Whatever. Fate, the universe—something threw us together again, and I have to believe it’s for a reason.
With Cliff’s judgment and his fragile recovery at stake, the question becomes Is the possibility of what this thing between Naz and me could be…worth it?
Kenan bends to kiss Lotus’s baby bump, and the blatant love on his face when he looks down at her, when she returns the look a hundredfold…I can’t help but think it is.