Chapter 35
T he shower was a luxury, rainfall cascading across my skin, soap that smelled like peppermint and tingled on my sunburnt limbs. I took my time in there, basking in what it felt like to be wanted, to want someone so much just the anticipation sent floods of pleasure all through my body.
It was Wednesday, late afternoon, and back in San Francisco—back in the life I used to have—I’d be working, mindless and insatiable, not letting myself stop for even a coffee.
It wasn’t strange there, because back in that world, everyone was like me.
Everyone was trying to outpace each other.
Everyone was waiting for work to be the thing that saves them.
It wasn’t forty-hour weeks. It was sixty.
Eighty. Burning the midnight oil. If you weren’t grinding, you weren’t getting anywhere.
And if you ever stopped, someone else was going to take your place.
I was like a bullet train that hit the emergency brake.
My body felt heavy and slow and inert, but I didn’t mind it.
Maybe my boss had been right—I’d needed a break.
Didn’t people always say that? “Take your vacations!” But what nobody ever really said was that the people who took vacations didn’t get the promotions.
They lost momentum. You were looked down on if you took too much time off, or any at all.
It was like a hamster wheel, and you knew it, but then you’d think—if I get off this wheel, what’s left? Who will I be? What will I do?
Work becomes an all-consuming obsession in that way.
Work doesn’t want you home for dinner. Work doesn’t leave you.
Work doesn’t break your heart. All work wants is your time, and if you have a lot to avoid—work is a savior.
Work is the perfect distraction. There is always another achievement to feed the insatiable beast within that says you aren’t good enough or lovable.
You can prove that feeling wrong with another promotion, another external hit of value.
See? I’m worth something . Work and productivity can be addicting, because you never ever have to stop.
You can keep filling yourself up with titles, money, accolades until, one day, maybe, you’ll be full.
Funny, though, that when I stopped, all I felt was hunger.
I was off the wheel. Out of the train. And frankly, I didn’t know where I was going to go or what I was going to do now, but I felt like I was seeing the world for the first time, blinking against the blinding sun.
After I wrapped myself in a pillowy robe, I found Alex on the terrace. Clouds had moved in and the breeze had a bite to it. He was staring at his phone, bewildered. He didn’t notice me until I sat down next to him and he jumped a bit.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
He looked over at me, eyes glassy. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I think so. Yeah.”
“What’s going on? Something with the restaurant?”
“They want me to come earlier. Like now. There’s some event in Chicago and they want to move up the soft opening.”
It felt like my stomach rushed to my throat.
“Oh,” I managed to say.
“Should I say yes?” he asked, voice quiet and muffled since he’d covered his face with his hands, elbows on his knees. He looked tortured. Like maybe he thought I was going to tell him to go, like he was bracing for something bad.
I felt like I was on the precipice of a vital and important moment, my heart racing.
The old me would have said, Yes, say yes, go, bye .
But I wanted the next ten days with him.
It was impractical and ridiculous and maybe even selfish, but I didn’t want him to go yet.
By the end of October, he’d be across the country, but for now, if I could have him until then, I was going to ask for it.
“I want you to stay,” I whispered. “If you can. If they’ll allow it.”
He looked up at me through those thick lashes. He looked somehow vulnerable, like this mattered so much to him.
“You do?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, low. “I do.”
“Me, too,” he said, exhaling. “I’ll tell them I’m not coming until the agreed-upon date. They’ll have to make it work.”
He sat back, typed on his phone, and then placed it next to him. When he looked over at me this time, his face was bright. His eyes seemed to drink me in from top to bottom.
With the side of his finger, he brushed my smooth sun-kissed cheek.
“You’re so beautiful it kind of hurts my heart to look at you,” he said.
My skin broke out in sensitive goose bumps.
I stood up and straddled his lap, let the robe cascade open, and his warm hands plunged inside, cupping my skin, his palm on my breastbone, moving down my stomach. Arching toward him and closing my eyes, the feel of his hands roving across my skin made the past and the future seem irrelevant.
There was only right now, with Alex Perry, touching my body, breathing hard, telling me his heart hurts when he looks at me.
His eyes were blazing when I finally caught them in mine. I softly grasped the side of his neck, and then lifted my hands into his hair. His head fell back, his mouth supple and open. When I kissed the tender skin of his neck, he gasped.
Finding his ear, I practically purred into it, “Let’s go to bed and never leave.”
There was only a murmur of assent and then he hitched his arms under my legs and heaved me up. Now it was my turn to gasp and when I did, he shot me a sinful smile. He threw me on the bed on my back and the robe fell to my sides, the belt limp across my stomach.
He kneeled on the edge of the bed and said, “Just lie back, Quinn. I need to get my mouth on you.”
“Yes, Chef,” I whispered and heard him groan.
I was shivering with anticipation, felt the heat of his hands on my thighs as if they were branded into me.
There was nothing else in the world I wanted to do but spread my legs and give in.
So, that’s what I did.
* * *
For the next two days, there was no beach, no books, no anything.
There was no leaving the hotel room. There was only the bed with its immaculate white sheets and pliant duvet, imprinted with our bodies.
The shower, Alex’s fingertips running across my scalp to get the shampoo out, the feel of him hard against me.
The room service, us both scrambling to get fully clothed, knowing the room smelled of sex and insatiability, neither of us ashamed of it.
The incessant giggling, a sort of heightened hysteria from the complete departure from both our normal lives.
Movies running on TV that we hadn’t seen in years, kisses during commercials, forgetting to watch until the end because we were busy exploring each other’s bodies again.
The sheer amount of orgasms I had no idea I was capable of, proof that Alex had earned my body’s trust.
By the time we checked out, I was confident I had traversed every inch of his skin, that he’d done the same.
If I were a hopeless romantic, I’d believe this was the beginning of an incredible love story.
Thankfully, I wasn’t.
Knowing I could control myself—it was the only reason I didn’t run.