Chapter 10
CAIDEN
I heard her laughter before I saw her, sweet as honey.
It was close to noon when I drifted into the kitchen. Amelia stood there in a bikini, chatting and laughing with Sabrina.
I watched from the kitchen entryway, arms folded and jaw locked, as Amelia stood by the open fridge, the straps of her bikini biting into her shoulders.
Amelia wore a blue bikini, a shade so deep it could have been dredged up from the bottom of the sea.
The top was tight and small, the triangles of fabric pushing her breasts together in a way that made my hands curl into fists. Her skin was flushed with sun.
She looked softer than usual, less haunted.
I remembered stalking after her in the dark the other night. Filled with alcohol. Filled with rage, need, desire, confusion, and a sickly aching obsessive need to possess her.
We were both drunk, but I remembered. And fuck, I wish I hadn’t walked away.
Sabrina leaned against the counter, popping grapes into her mouth while she flicked through a phone. "You seriously have to try the new sunscreen," she said, waving a bottle at Amelia. "It smells like coconut instead of that toxic chemical stuff. Total game changer."
She laughed at something Sabrina said, and for a second, I was transported. Her cries echoing in the woods, in the cavernous dark, in the fucking pit where we'd clung to each other like animals.
My skin remembered before my mind did: the weight of her body, the tremble in her breath, the way she'd gone pliant under my hand when there were no other options left but to break or to fold.
I wanted her. I wanted to see if she would bend, just a little, for me again.
But then she turned and saw me. There was a flicker of warning in her eyes, green and cold as glacier water.
Sabrina grinned at me, the kind smile that always made me feel like I was being set up for something. “Morning, Caiden!” she said. “You want eggs? I can make you eggs.”
I shook my head. “Just coffee,” I muttered, and tried to peel my eyes off the smooth curve of Amelia’s waist, the shadow where her hip bone cut against the fabric of her suit.
Sabrina poured me a mug, her movements fast, and I took it, watching the way the steam curled up and vanished, a small, pointless miracle.
I tried to remember all the reasons I shouldn't want Amelia, but they washed away in the undertow.
Alex and Shane wandered in, their voices loud and easy.
I braced myself, jaw twitching, as Alex slid an arm around Amelia’s waist, fingers splaying over her bare skin like he owned it.
I remembered the therapist’s words: You can’t control her.
Fucking obvious. But it didn’t stop the urge, the way it pooled in my gut and demanded more.
"Yo, Caiden!" Shane grinned at me, clapping a hand to my shoulder. "You joining us on the sand?”
Amelia's gaze flicked over, then away. I shrugged and grabbed a beer from the fridge, ignoring the way Alex's hand lingered low on her back. "I'll be there," I muttered, even though the thought of sitting in the sun with all those happy assholes made my teeth ache.
Still, when Amelia started toward the door, I followed, trailing just behind her on the narrow steps down to the sand.
The day was windless and hot, the kind of heat that made every living thing wilt.
We spread our towels on the sand, and the girls arranged themselves in a loose, lazy star, their limbs overlapping, laughter spilling like wine.
Amelia stretched out on her stomach, her back a long, honeyed line, and I had to look away or risk something obvious in my swim shorts.
I sat at the edge of the group, poker-faced, watching the horizon, but every fiber of my body was tuned to the movement of hers.
The towel she lay on was thin, and the way her ass curved above the blue bikini bottom was putting filthy fucking things in my mind.
Eventually, she propped herself up and grabbed the sunscreen.
She squirted a fat ribbon of lotion into her hand and worked it over her arms, kneading it into the skin with the slow deliberation of a cat grooming its fur.
The movement was hypnotic.
I watched, jaw clenched, as she skimmed her palm over her own shoulders, the cream turning her skin to silver in the sun before it faded to nothing, leaving only a bright sheen.
She rubbed it into the long sweep of her thigh, the inside of her knee, and I swore under my breath, shifting on my towel so my hard-on didn’t show.
She caught me watching. She always did. She didn’t break eye contact, though her cheeks went pink and her hands worked faster, rougher now, as if she could polish the hunger out of her own flesh.
When her hands reached her tits, I nearly fucking folded.
Her palms were kneading the bare skin above the suit, creamy foam tracing the valley between her breasts before she worked it in with brisk circular strokes.
I thought I might actually die watching her. But I couldn’t stop watching.
Every time her fingers swept too close to the straps of her suit, a little line of white would ghost the edge of her breast, and she’d have to rub it in, slow and deliberate.
My jaw hurt from the effort of not staring.
It was grotesque, the way I needed her. Like I’d been starved of light my whole life, and she was the only sun I could look at without burning out my retinas.
Sabrina rolled over to her side, grinning up at me. “You should try the sunscreen, Caiden. You’re looking a little red already.”
I shrugged, not trusting myself to answer. The burn in my skin had nothing to do with the sun.
Amelia glanced up, flashing that same quick, cold look from the kitchen. “Don’t be an idiot, put some on. Your skin will peel.”
I grunted, squeezed a handful out, and started slapping it over my arms, not caring that I was making a mess.
I worked it into my skin, rough and quick, but my hands shook with the effort.
I wondered if she could see that. I hoped to fuck she couldn’t.
But the way she watched, sly and sidelong, told me she saw everything.
The sun crawled higher, heat and sweat making my temper simmer.
Shane and Alex tossed a frisbee by the surf, the girls lounging and talking, but it was all just motion in the periphery.
There was only her and the blood pounding in my ears.
At some point, Sabrina and Sydney wandered off, leaving Amelia alone with her phone and the slow, lazy burn of the sun.
I drifted closer, sat on the edge of her towel, every cell in my body braced for the lash of her tongue.
She didn’t speak at first, just stretched out, hair fanned over her forearm, a little smile twitching at her lips.
She was beautiful in a way that was almost hostile. Like she’d learned to weaponize every soft edge, every glint of green in her eyes.
“You’re staring again,” she said, not looking up from the phone.
“Maybe I am,” I said. My voice was rough, the words more honest than I meant.
She propped herself up. “You’re not subtle, Caiden.”
She didn’t break eye contact, didn’t try to soften the jab. She just let it hang there, the truth of it bleeding into the space between us.
I looked at her and felt myself split open. The ache was hungry and raw, all the uglier for how much I wanted it.
“You want me to stop?” I asked.
She rolled onto her back, arching her spine, and the blue triangles of her bikini dug even deeper into her skin. “Not my business what you do.” Her eyes flicked up. “Not like you ever listened to me.”
There was a dare in her tone. Or maybe it was just the old spite. I didn’t care. I was too far gone to tell the difference anymore.
I leaned over, braced on one palm, and let the shadow of me stretch out across her body. “You could tell me to fuck off. You used to.”
“Would you listen if I did?” she shot back, but her voice was soft at the edges.
I thought about that. The old days, the way she’d spit fire at me, even when I had her twisted up, arms pinned, back to the wall.
I’d laughed at her then, reveled in the way she’d fight me to the last inch.
But now, I didn’t want to fight; I just wanted to lose myself in her.
My hand hovered over her stomach, not touching, just a threat of touch, and I watched the muscles tense under her skin, the way her breath came faster.
My fingers itched. I wanted to palm her ribs, dig my thumbs into the soft flesh just above her hip bone, watch her squirm. I wanted to see if she’d bite back, or if she’d close her eyes and let me.
Her jaw ticked. “You gonna say something or just loom over me?”
“Looming is what I do,” I said, the words scraping up with a smile that felt like it belonged to someone else. “You like it that way.”
She snorted, but she didn’t move, didn’t shrink. Her wrist flicked, sending her hair back over her shoulder. “You don’t know shit about what I like, Caiden.”
I let my palm fall, flat and slow, onto the towel just beside her waist. She flinched, but her body stilled after, like she wanted to see how far I’d go.
I could feel the heat of her radiate up through the fabric, could smell the sweat and coconut and the salt crusted onto her skin from the last swim.
I burned for her, and it was a sick, red ache under my tongue.
We were a study in tension, locked in a prison of our own making, neither of us willing to call out the game for what it was.
I wanted to fuck her right there, on top of the towel, in front of everyone, but I settled for the next best thing: daring her to make the first move.
For a long moment, neither of us said a word. The beach stretched wide and empty to each side, the others too far off to see what happened in this ragged heat between us.
Her lips parted, but she didn’t say fuck off, didn’t say anything at all.
I slid my hand closer, a fraction at a time, until my knuckles grazed the bare line of her leg.
The skin was fever-hot, and I felt her shiver, just a tremor, so small anyone else would have missed it.
But I was tuned to her, hardwired to every twitch and breath, and I knew it for what it was: pure, feral want.
She closed her eyes, just a second, and when they opened again, the green there was glassier, like the surface of a pond right before a stone breaks it open.