Chapter 5 #5
His hand lifted, hesitated, then brushed it away with his thumb.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
“I hate when you’re right.”
“I’m almost never right. Let me have this.”
A watery laugh escaped me.
His smile was small and sad.
“I wanted to give you something,” he said. “Something that didn’t ask for anything back.”
I looked at the bracelet again.
“You did.”
The fire crackled in the distance.
Someone laughed. Amber maybe. Then Edge’s lower voice answered, and Regan said something sharp enough to make Tarak bark out a laugh.
They were close.
Too close.
Not close enough.
Dylan looked toward the sound.
“I should go.”
“Don’t.”
The word came out too fast.
He looked back at me.
The want in his face nearly knocked the breath out of me.
For one second, I thought he might kiss me.
I wanted him to.
I wanted it with an ache so clean and sharp it scared me.
Instead, he took my hand—the one with the bracelet—and lifted it to his mouth.
He kissed my knuckles.
Not my lips.
My knuckles.
A birthday kiss that felt more intimate because he had chosen restraint again.
“Happy birthday, Destiny,” he said against my skin.
My name.
Not Beautiful.
Destiny.
Like he was giving me back to myself.
Then he let go.
I stood there with diamonds in my ears, mother-of-pearl on my wrist, saltwater drying on my skin, and a heart that felt too big for my body.
Dylan stepped backward into the shadows.
“Dylan?”
He stopped.
“If I write my own story,” I whispered, “you don’t get to decide you’re not allowed in it.”
For a second, he didn’t move.
Then his mouth curved, but it was the saddest smile I had ever seen.
“No,” he said softly. “I guess I don’t.”
Then he disappeared down the beach path, quiet as a ghost.
I stood behind the palm tree until the night settled again.
Until my breathing slowed.
Until I could hear the waves instead of my own heart.
When I finally made it to the outdoor shower, I turned the water on and stepped beneath it, bracelet still on my wrist because I couldn’t make myself take it off yet.
The water ran over salt, sunscreen, and tears.
I lifted my hand and watched the mother-of-pearl catch the lantern light.
For most of my life, gifts had felt like debts.
Tonight, they felt like pieces of a future trying to find me.
Diamonds from a ring Tarak had once given my mother.
Turquoise from the hand she used to wear it on.
Mother-of-pearl from a man who had found me in the fire and was trying so hard not to burn me with the way he cared.
I pressed my wet fingers to the cuff and closed my eyes.
Eighteen.
Blank pages.
My own story.
And somewhere in the margins, whether Dylan liked it or not, his name had already been written.
I stuffed the pillows beneath the covers, shaping them into the curve of a sleeping girl, then slipped out into the warm Mexican night wearing nothing but the black bikini I’d bought on a whim and the delicate silver bracelet on my wrist. It was handmade in Mexico—simple, elegant, with one perfect pearl inlaid like a secret.
He’d fastened it there three nights ago on my birthday, his rough thumbs brushing my skin as he told me he was leaving.
I couldn’t let him go without this.
The ocean was dark silk under a fat silver moon. I waded in until the water reached my waist, then dove, letting the cool salt close over my head. When I surfaced, he was already there—standing at the edge of the surf like he’d been waiting for me all along.
“Destiny.” His voice was low, strained. “Go back inside.”
I walked toward him through the shallows instead. “It’s my last night.”
“And it’s mine too. That’s exactly why you need to turn around.”
I stopped in front of him. Water streamed down my body. His eyes followed every droplet before he forced them back to my face.
“You’ve been avoiding me since you gave me this,” I said softly, lifting my wrist so the pearl caught the moonlight.
“Because I’m trying to be the kind of man who doesn’t ruin an eighteen-year-old girl’s life before it even starts.”
I stepped closer. “What if I want to be ruined? Just a little. Just by you.”
His control snapped on a low curse.
He caught my face in both hands and kissed me.
Not rushed. Not frantic. Slow. Deep. Devastating.
His mouth moved over mine like he had all the time in the world, lips parting, tongue stroking in to taste me in long, lazy sweeps.
I melted into him with a soft sound I didn’t recognize as my own.
His teeth caught my lower lip, tugged gently, then soothed the sting with his tongue.
One of his hands slid into my wet hair, angling my head exactly how he wanted it.
The other stayed at my jaw, thumb stroking my cheek as he kissed me like he was memorizing the shape of my mouth.
I kissed him back the same way—exploring, learning.
My hands found his chest, slick with seawater, and I mapped him slowly: the hard planes of his pectorals, the ridges of his abs, the way his muscles jumped under my fingertips.
When my palms slid lower, over the flat plane of his stomach, he went very still.
“Destiny…”
I kept going.
My fingers brushed the waistband of his trunks, then lower, and I felt him.
Thick. Hard. Hot even through the wet fabric.
A shocked little gasp left me. He was so much bigger than I’d imagined, so rigid, pulsing against my palm when I curled my fingers around the shape of him.
The blunt head nudged my hand as if seeking more contact.
I stroked him once, tentative, fascinated by the way he throbbed, by the heat of him, by the low, broken sound that tore from his throat.
“Fuck,” he breathed against my lips. “You can’t—baby, you can’t touch me like that.”
But he didn’t pull away. His hips rocked forward once, helplessly, pushing his cock more firmly into my hand.
I stroked him again, bolder now, and felt the way the head flared, the way a damp spot was already forming against the fabric. He was leaking for me. The knowledge sent a fresh rush of heat between my legs.
He kissed me harder, teeth scraping my jaw, tongue soothing the spot, then moved us backward until my calves hit the wet sand. We sank down together, him following me down, never breaking the kiss. Sand clung to my damp skin. The waves lapped at our legs.
He kissed his way down my throat, slow and thorough, teeth grazing the tendon there before his tongue smoothed over it.
When he reached my breasts he paused, breathing hard, then tugged the bikini top aside with careful fingers.
Moonlight spilled over my bare skin. He stared for one long second like he was trying to burn the sight into his memory, then lowered his head.
His mouth was hot and wet and perfect. He licked first—long, slow drags of his tongue around my nipple—then sucked, gentle at first, then deeper, teeth scraping lightly before he soothed the sting with soft laps.
I arched beneath him, fingers in his hair, pulling him closer.
Every pull of his mouth sent an answering throb low in my belly, an empty ache I’d never felt this sharply before.
My hands roamed his back, his sides, then slipped between us again. I found him once more, hard and heavy and burning hot through his trunks. I rubbed the heel of my palm along his length and felt him twitch, felt the way the head nudged insistently against the fabric like it wanted inside.
He groaned into my breast and rocked his hips, grinding the thick ridge of his cock against my hand, then lower, settling fully between my thighs.
The first slow roll of his hips stole my breath.
The hard length of him pressed directly against my core through the thin layers of our swimsuits.
The blunt head nudged right over my clit, dragging deliciously, then caught lower, pressing against my entrance through the fabric like it was trying to push inside.
The heat of him, the weight, the way he throbbed against me—it was almost too much and not nearly enough.
“Oh…” The sound was barely a whisper.
He did it again. Slow. Controlled. The thick ridge parted my folds through the bikini bottom, the head catching and nudging at my opening with every pass, the fabric growing slicker between us from my arousal and the seawater.
It felt obscene. It felt incredible. It felt like sex and not sex at the same time, and the teasing friction was driving me out of my mind.
I lifted my hips to meet his next thrust, chasing the pressure. He hissed, forehead dropping to mine.
“Destiny… we can’t. I can’t take you like this. Not when I’m leaving tomorrow. Not when you’ve never?—”
“I don’t care,” I breathed, wrapping my legs around his hips, locking him closer. “Please. Just… keep doing that. It feels so good. You feel so good.”
He kissed me again—deep, messy, desperate—and started to move in earnest.
Slow, grinding rolls of his hips that dragged the hard length of his cock up and down my slit through the fabric, the head pressing and nudging and almost breaching with every pass.
The wet fabric clung, dragged, created the most maddening friction.
I could feel every inch of him—the thickness, the heat, the way the head flared and caught on my clit before sliding lower to press right where I was empty and aching.
My nails dug into his shoulders. My hips rose to meet every thrust. The pressure built fast, tight, terrifying in its intensity.
I was so wet the fabric was soaked, making everything slicker, hotter, better.
Each time the blunt head nudged against my entrance I gasped, hips jerking, wanting it to push through, wanting to feel him inside even though I knew we couldn’t.
“Dylan— I— something’s happening again?—”
“I’ve got you,” he rasped, voice wrecked. One of his hands slipped between us, fingers sliding under the edge of my bikini to find my clit while he kept rocking against me. “Come for me, princess. Let me feel it.”
The combination—his fingers circling, the relentless drag and nudge of his cock through the fabric, the hot, filthy almost-sex of it—shattered me.
Pleasure crashed over me in long, rolling waves.
I cried out, body bowing, thighs clamping around his hips as I pulsed and throbbed against him.
He worked me through it, grinding slow and steady, letting me ride every aftershock against the hard length of him until I collapsed back onto the sand, trembling and breathless.
For a long moment he stayed exactly where he was, forehead pressed to mine, breathing like he’d run miles. His cock was still rock-hard against me, twitching with every aftershock that rippled through my body.
Then, very carefully, he pulled back.
He sat up, ran both hands through his wet hair, and looked at me like I was both salvation and damnation.
“That,” he said roughly, “was the closest I’ve ever come to losing every ounce of control I have left.”
I reached for him, but he caught my hand and brought it to his lips instead, kissing my knuckles, then the inside of my wrist where the pearl bracelet rested.
“I won’t take more from you tonight,” he said quietly. “Not when I can’t stay. Not when I’d have to look your father in the eye knowing what I did to his daughter on a beach in Cabo.”
He helped me fix my bikini top with gentle hands, then stood and pulled me up with him. We walked in silence to the edge of the resort path, the waves still singing behind us.
At the shadows of the flowering trees he stopped and kissed me one last time—slow, deep, final. His thumb brushed the pearl on my bracelet.
“Keep this,” he murmured against my mouth. “And remember that for one night, I was selfish enough to almost give you everything.”
Then he stepped back into the darkness.
I slipped back into my room on shaky legs, the taste of him still on my tongue, the ache between my thighs still pulsing with the memory of his hardness nudging and dragging and almost taking what I’d never given anyone.
I was still a virgin.
But I’d never felt more thoroughly claimed.
And as I lay in the dark listening to the ocean, I knew that no matter how far he ran back to San Diego, part of me would always be lying on that moonlit beach in Cabo, legs wrapped around him, aching for the moment the fabric between us finally disappeared.