18. Rhys on the Beach #2
“Nothing.” I turn my face away. “Did you wash your hands?”
He pauses chewing. “I’m not an animal.”
“Well, I didn’t hear any water running,” I say, ready to pick a fight to throw Angie off the scent. “That’s why my face is red. I’m horrified.”
Rhys is unfazed. “The water ran. You just couldn’t hear it because you were talking about me behind my back, as per usual.”
My lips curl despite my resolution to act belligerent. “Was not.”
“Was.”
“By now,” I add, “you should be used to being talked about like you weren’t there.”
Rhys shrugs. “Fair enough,” he says, holding up his breadstick. “Want some?”
I wrinkle my nose in mock disgust. “I’ll get my own, thanks.”
“No, here. Get ready…” He breaks off a piece of the tip and tosses it at me. Not to be outdone, I catch it in my mouth like a trained seal, and we both break into hysterics.
Angie watches our back and forth with a stoic expression until she leans into my ear and, like Iago to Othello, plants a seed of doubt in my head, “You just want to jump his bones.”
* * *
I’m lounging on a white-sand beach, palm trees swaying above me, my sun-kissed legs wrapped around the trim torso of my dream lover.
My dream lover is making slow but passionate love to me, his fine ass pumping in rhythm to a strangely vivid soundtrack of smooth jazz.
His face is buried in my hair, which is styled really cute, by the way.
My hair never holds a curl in real life.
I’m writhing underneath him, lewdly lifting my hip to meet his thrusts, my hand twisted around my discarded bikini bottom.
“Right there.” I wrap my legs tighter around his naked hips, driving my heels into his backside, urging him to go harder, faster.
He’s kissing my neck, my chin, muffling my groans with his lips.
His torso is slick with coconut suntan lotion and sweat, pebbles of sand coating his hip dips in patches.
“I love you,” he whispers in my ear, his words drowned out by the sax solo. “Carina, I love you...”
“I’m almost... almost... almost... there.”
And then my dream lover props himself up on his elbows, gazing down at me with adoration. Through my lust-filled haze, his face slowly comes into focus.
I peer up at him, confused. Realization hasn’t sunk in yet, or maybe I’m in denial. My dream lover bears a striking resemblance to Rhys. But it can’t be him. Can it?
“Rhys?” I squeak. “What are you doing?”
“Making love to you,” says he, surprisingly composed for someone who’s drilling into me like he’s determined to strike oil. If he maintains this rhythm, he’s bound to find it. In fact, if he swirls his hips like that, I guarantee an earthquaking event of the utmost magnitude. “See?”
And I look down to the place where we’re joined and take a gander. It’s an eyeful. “Oh my God… that should be blurred out.” But I can’t stop looking.
“Except it’s your dream,” he says. “And you like it dirty —” The beach towel underneath us bunches as my bottom bounces against the sand, scraping my flesh raw. “—you want to see every. Last. Detail.”
“Yes… I mean, no! This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Except you wanted it to happen,” he says, his tone no different from when we’re in the office conference room. “You yearned for it to happen. You know about yearning, don’t you? In your wildest dreams, did you imagine it to feel this good?”
“No!”
He does something with his pelvic bone that makes my vision go fuzzy. “Did it?”
“Yes... yes. I mean, no.” I’m writhing and moaning, gasping and mewing (I never mew in real life. That’s how I know this dream is deranged), but Rhys is as stoic as can be for someone who’s buck naked and balls deep inside of me.
I’m propped on my elbows now, still looking at the uncensored action. It’s graphic. It’s upsetting my genteel sensibilities. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
He presses a kiss to my temple and mumbles against my fevered skin, “You manifested this.”
I shake my head, clinging to my last shred of dignity. I need to tell him to stop this nonsense at once and pull out. We’ll pretend it never happened and go back to the way things were. We’ll pretend he never touched me here or there or, oh God… right there.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, watching my face. “Carina? Do you want me to stop fucking you so we can get back to your ASSET lessons?”
“We were working on the ASSET?” I ask, surprised.
“Always.” He nods to my work laptop, half buried in sand, my red string bikini hooked over a corner of the monitor.
Well, that’s weird. Even in a wet dream, I can’t get away from work.
“But you would rather do anything else. One thing led to another, and now this…” Rhys glances down at the tangled web we’ve woven, all because I can’t stop procrastinating.
“If you’d rather get back to work, I’ll—”
“We’ll talk about that later.” I draw him down to me, biting his shoulder as I—
“AHHHHHHHH!”
I sit bolt upright in a tangle of sweaty sheets, a pillow clamped between my legs. My skin is flushed and fevered by my dream...
I glance down at the pillow I’d been humping in place of a firm male body.
“Ahhhhh!” It’s just a dream. No, not a dream. A sick, twisted nightmare.
Even now, my body is still pulsing from the sensation of having sex on the beach with...
I shiver.
“Ahhhh!” My primal scream rips through the night. All of a sudden, my door is kicked open, the light switched on, and Angie dashes over the threshold, clutching a baseball bat. She’s a terrifying sight, her hair bound in a satin nightcap, her face caked in a matcha clay mask.
“Back off, motherfu—” Her body deflates when she sees that I’m alone. “Where’s the perp?” She peers at my traumatized expression, my face patched with scarlet, my skin slick with sweat. “Bad dream?”
I glance up and, with a growl, chuck my pillow at her.
Angie dodges it easily. “What was that for?”
“This is all your fault!”