Chapter Twenty-Four #4
We’re still pressed together on one chaise, listening to the lapping ocean water. In the distance, we hear the violent caw of the kraken. I shiver against the dropping sea breeze, and Riven’s response is to pull me in and rub a gentle swirling pattern across my hand with his thumb.
I shift closer without meaning to. My thigh brushes his. His hand, still holding mine, drifts away, stopping at my hip, right where my skin meets the band of my pants. Heat licks up my core, and a soft sigh slips from between my lips when I push my hip into his hand.
Poppy, what are you doing?
But it’s like I can’t help myself.
Riven freezes. Every muscle in him seeming to lock.
His voice drops, controlled but strained. “Careful. I’m trying very hard to be good, but a beautiful woman telling me that she wants me is about as much testing as my self-control can take.”
My eyes close.
There it is. He thinks it’s only physical. That I want him only carnally and not in every way possible and then some.
Despite his verbal warning, he pulls me tight against him and lets his other hand dip to the small of my back.
My lips curve.
No.
I can’t take this. Can’t do this. If I do, I will combust.
He just got done telling me why he never falls in love. Why he never takes things seriously.
But maybe I can enjoy it while it lasts.
“You’re never good.” My teasing words are like fuel, and I feel him move nearer, if that is even possible.
His breath ghosts over my neck.
His lips not touching, but almost.
“With you in my arms,” he murmurs, voice rougher now, “I don’t want to be.”
My stomach flips, heat pooling low and sharp.
My brain scrambles for safety, reminding myself of the truth I have grappled with since we were brought to this love-forsaken island.
Lust.
It’s just lust.
That’s all he does.
I snort softly when his rough palm tickles the bare skin of my hip, trying to puncture the intensity. Trying to make it playful.
He flinches. “Your laugh does something to me I don’t trust.” Silence follows. Heart racing as the heavy, charged silence wraps as tightly around me as he is.
My body is humming, and in the silence, I take notice of the things I am acutely aware of.
The rapidly shrinking space between our mouths.
The swift rise and fall of his chest and the knowledge that the heart rate monitor would surely betray me right now.
The way his fingers are flexing deliciously into the skin of my hip like he is physically holding himself back from devouring me.
And while my body is humming and coming to life at the weight of these truths, my mind is conflicted. If he wanted me too, wouldn’t he have said it? Plus, he doesn’t do love, and that’s all I want.
His thumb strokes once against my hip, sending a shiver through my entire body.
Goosebumps pebble across my neck where his warm breath brushes me.
It’s so undeniably intimate that it causes my breath to catch in my chest. I want this.
I want him. But can I live knowing I’d only ever have him like this?
A small piece of physical intimacy when I want it all.
He rests his forehead on mine. His control, or the thinning of it, is visible. In the tightness of his jaw. In the way his hand doesn’t move higher.
He is restraining himself.
For me.
“One more truth,” I breathe, barely audible. I feel a shadow press into my back, caressing the spot his hand left now that he is using it to tuck a rogue lock of hair behind my ear. “What are you afraid of right now?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “That if I kiss you, I won’t stop.”
My heart slams against the cage of my chest. Fear floods me. If I let this happen, there is no going back. I can’t leave the island and go back to working at his bar and acting as if my heart wasn’t on display for him and all he wanted was a tryst. It will break me.
My breath halts, the weight of his words settling somewhere deep in my chest. For a second—just a second—I imagine it.
What it would feel like if he did.
Too good to have only once.
Too world-shattering to allow.
My voice comes out softer than I mean it to.
“Riven…” I shake my head, a small, helpless laugh leaving me as I drag a hand over my face, trying to steady the storm he just stirred within me.
“That’s exactly the problem.” My gaze lifts to his again, finding it bright with something that looks a little too dangerously close to desire.
“If you kiss me,” I say quietly, “I won’t stop you, and that’s not a thing friends do. ” Because that’s all we will ever be.
The truth hangs there.
I swallow hard, forcing myself to press my forehead lightly to his shoulder before I lose the nerve to pull away from his lips. “So we’re not doing that,” I murmur. My arms slide around his waist, clinging to him in a way that feels safer than looking at his face right now.
We stay like that, the ocean moving below us, the lantern flickering between gusts of wind. Riven lets out a slow breath above my head, arms encircling me. Then, after a beat, his voice drops into that familiar teasing warmth.
“Right,” he says lightly. “No kissing.” A pause. His arms tighten. “Very responsible of us.” Another beat. “Shame, though,” he adds with a crooked smile I can hear in his voice. “I’m excellent at it.”
I sigh.
I know you are.