10. Raif
“Ready.”
I set down my glass and take Lavender in as she stands at the threshold. I almost expect her to tip up onto her toes as she seems to brim with a nervous kind of energy.
My eyes slide over her because, fuck, she is gorgeous. She has her shorts on again, the hems folded higher, exposing more of her tan, toned legs. The laces of her boots are messily open, and her socks rucked. These are the same clothes she traveled in mostly, but for her tank, which is a one-shouldered Grecian-style thing.
But she looks different. Maybe it’s the top of her hair, which she’s piled messily on the top of her head in a sexy bedhead style.
Sunlounger head, my mind whispers.
Well, I certainly gave her that. And took nothing in return.
What the fuck is with that?
Blissed out and melted across the lounger, she would’ve been down for more. Yet I’d pulled back despite wanting her so badly I’d ached. I’m still aching for her now.
But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. I’d planned on purely transactional.
“Well?” She seems almost hesitant, like she’s looking for approval. I notice her makeup is dark and kind of dramatic. She looks older than her twenty-four years.
“You look gorgeous,” I say. Why would she think otherwise? The woman would look good in a rice sack, which is partly why we’re going out tonight.
Got to try to keep my hands to myself somehow.
Her smile is instant, and she dips her head and kind of bounds two more steps deeper into the room.
“I guess I better behave myself,” I add, sorry she had to prompt me to a compliment. “You look kind of kick-ass. A Lara Croft-Barbarella mashup.”
“I can cope with that!”
Her husky laughter ties my stomach in knots. I’m beginning to think she can cope with just about anything. Make the best out of anything.
“Drink?” I turn to the bar rather than keep on staring at her.
She nods. “Vodka and soda. Ice and lime, if you have it.”
I turn to the built-in bar and pull her drink together. “You’ll have to explain the intricacies of your packing to me sometime.”
“You gave me, like, five minutes!” she protests, beginning to count out her points with the fingers of her right hand. “You said sunshine, one night, and…”
Our gazes catch, and heat pulses through me.
One night. My purchase. Her promise.
Her gaze slides away. I turn back to the bar and feel the heat of her eyes on me instantly. I turn back, passing her a glass. She murmurs her thanks and we both pretend that moment didn’t just rock us both.
She lifts it to sip at her drink. “What else would you expect to find in my tiny backpack? I mean, apart from a wedding dress.”
“I see you managed a spare shirt.” I lift my own glass, admiring the garment a little more than is polite. Nothing to do with the cut unless we’re talking about how it’s so tight it clings to the fullness of her breasts. Or how it offers a peep show of skin at the dip of her waist and clavicles, leaving her finely molded and sun-kissed shoulders bare.
“No, this is the same one as earlier,” she offers happily, spinning around to show her mostly bare back. “It’s a viral hack where you use the sleeves to sort of tie yourself in.”
“Viral hack sounds like the effects of a common cold.”
“Dad joke,” she mutters. I frown, not that she notices as she puts her glass down. She begins to undo the knot at her almost bare back.
Fuck.I bite my fist as she messes with the ties at her back.
“Nearly… almost.” It’s her own little pep talk. “Got it!”
The fabric slips, inadvertently flashing me the round of her right breast. Not that she even notices. She’s just so damned pleased at her own ingenuity.
She makes me feel like Methuselah. Ancient and gray in the face of her gleeful demonstration. He must’ve been a horny piece of work because I want to bite my way down her rib cage. Then bury my face in her ass.
I’m not old, and I’m not a green boy. I do not get a hard-on at the flash of a tit. Though present circumstances (almost) point otherwise.
“See?” She tugs the ties that turn out to be sleeves of her T-shirt. The fabric is just pressed to her chest, kept there by the knotted sleeves.
There’d be nothing to stop me from sliding my hand in there.
Apart from willpower.
And the pretty solid punch to the head she might deliver. Deservedly so.
But, fuck me, if she doesn’t stop playing with it, I’m gonna need to sit down and slide a throw pillow over my lap as my body recalls viscerally how perfect her skin feels. How delicious she tastes.
“Clever, right?” Lavender’s smile is wide and quite lovely as she begins to tie it again.
The echo of her playful words curls around my ear and slides like temptation down my spine. “I’m sorry I didn’t think.” I give my head an actual shake. “We could’ve called out and gotten you something to wear from one of the local boutiques.” Not that the shopping is anything like London. Gibraltar is, in many ways, like a small town.
“What’s wrong with what I have on?” Her expression seems shuttered as she looks up from tucking the sleeves in.
“Nothing.” Again, I’m an idiot. “You look great. Really great.”
She eyes me with mistrust.
“Really. I even like the boots.”
“You are such a liar.” Her mouth tips provocatively.
“Everyone bends the truth. But not right now.”
“Really?”
“Here’s a little more honesty for you. I’d like them better if they were under my bed.”
“Hilarious.” She stretches the word out as she rolls her pretty blue eyes. Eyes like sapphires. Then she props her hand to her cocked hip and demands, “What?”
“What?”
She cants her head to the side, studying me like I’m studying her. “You’re staring at me.”
Because I want to eat you until I’ve quenched this thirst. “I’m not allowed to stare?”
“It’s a free country. Gibraltar is a British protectorate.” Her delivery renders her statement a question.
“It is.”
“There you go, then. Free country. But I still don’t have to like it.”
“You don’t like me looking at you?”
“It’s a general dislike,” she says, slightly antagonistically.
“Tough. I want to look.” She says nothing as I close the space between us. My gaze slides over her hair before I reach out and twirl an artful, dangling lock around my index finger. “Your skin isn’t the only thing that caught the sun today.” My voice is low as I rub the silky strands between my fingertips.
“I don’t have my straightening irons. I thought for a wild minute I would have to wear it in plaits. You know, like pigtails?”
“I know pigtails.” My knowledge of girl’s hairstyles has increased dramatically, but that’s a topic for another day. “You’d look good in pigtails.” As I release the curl, it bounces back into place.
“Pervert.” She grins. “I can’t believe you fell for that.”
“Hook, line, and sinker.” As long as it’s only her jokes I fall for. “Shall we?” I say, offering her my arm.
“Paint the town red?”
“You’ve obviously never been to Gibraltar before.”
“I haven’t had this fun in ages!” Lavender slides into the seat opposite me, her genuinely happy expression flashing alternately blue and pink, thanks to the club’s lighting.
It’s been years since I’ve been in a club I don’t own. Definitely not a club like this. Floors sticky with cheap liquor and watered-down drinks. Though, in Lavender’s case, that might not be a bad thing. She seems pretty buzzed, which wasn’t my intention. Not that I seem to have any authority as far as my wife is concerned.
My wife. The woman determined to make me crazy. The woman who makes me feel unhinged. She wants me, that much is clear, but she also wants the upper hand. To challenge me at every turn.
Well, princess, top dog is my position. I won’t surrender that to anyone.
“You look like you were having fun.” My gaze strays to the bar where Lavender’s most recent dance partner is throwing back a beer.
“You don’t mind, do you?” She blinks as I hook my finger around a curl stuck to her glistening cheek.
“Mind you dancing? Why would I?” Why the fuck would I mind my wife dancing with another man—on my wedding night of all nights? I guess the more pertinent question is, why am I pretending it doesn’t piss me off?
Because of this endless game of one-upmanship.
“I wouldn’t want you to feel threatened,” she says, sounding like the opposite would be a delight.
“Princess,” I murmur disparagingly as I reach out and turn my glass ninety degrees.
“You don’t think he’s a match for you?” She casually glances over her shoulder. The asshole at the bar spots her, then smiles and waves.
“I don’t feel threatened by a man whose facial hair hasn’t yet come in.”
“Mean,” she says before setting her lips around the straw, though it sounds more like approval.
I watch as Scooby Doo’s sidekick says something to his friend. They laugh, and something ugly bubbles inside me.
“You should’ve picked someone else if your intention was to make me jealous.”
“Why would I want to make you jealous?” Her tone is breezy as she sets her glass down. She leans back in the booth, shoulders back, tits out.
Yeah, why would you do that, princess?
For the same reason I find myself wanting to choke some fucker out, I expect. Because there’s something between us. Something inexplicable yet real. She’s not even my type—and I’m sure as shit not hers, I decide as my attention returns to the bar and the beer bros. But here we find ourselves, desire dancing between us like iron filings on a magnet.
How in the name of God did I find myself here? Was it when I kissed her mouth? Her pussy? Or was it the satisfaction that washed through me when the registrar announced us as man and wife?
As powerful as that felt, I think I can trace this need, this demand, to way before then. Back in the Chelsea house as I’d pulled her body against mine, her dress moving between us like a bedsheet, her tiny gasp sounding in my ear.
My intention had been to unsettle her, to knock her from her uppity perch.
My actions should’ve frightened her, not encouraged her.
But her body molded to mine like she was built for that purpose. As she’d lifted the glass from my hand, I think I was done for. Yep, it was then.
Lavender Whittington-Deveraux, what the fuck have you done to me?
“Yes! God, I love this song!” she says, jumping up, only stopping as I curl my hand around her wrist. She glances down, her lashes fluttering rapidly.
The moment passes in several long, loaded beats.
“Don’t be long.” My fingers unfurl as I let her go.