Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
IRIS
“Dinner was amazing. I am so glad we revamped the menu with the new opening. It was smart hiring the new chef. Andre was amazing, and I hated to lose him when he moved away to be with his family after the disaster, but Omari is proving to be a real asset,” I tell Max as we walk back to our villa from the restaurant.
I won’t lie. I am a bit wine drunk as I hold my arms out, enjoying the breeze from the ocean. Max wanted to take the paved path back to the villa, but I would always choose the beach.
I don’t know what has gotten into him today, but he is agreeing with anything I say.
It makes me wonder what he would say if I told him to ravish me.
I never would, of course. That would be crossing so many lines both professionally and personally that I would never recover, but I like the idea.
“Omari is young, but he is ambitious. Sending him to study under some of the best chefs was an investment. Now not only can he make good food, but he can put his own Jamaican twist on it to give the guests an authentic experience,” Max says.
“Hmm, yes. Always thinking ahead. You are so smart.” I hum.
He chuckles. “You are so drunk. How are you so drunk?”
I sigh. “I guess I was feeling a little lush. It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” I ask him.
“It is,” he mutters, but he isn’t looking at anything but me.
For a moment, I imagine what it would be like. Walking back from a dinner with a man who is barely holding himself back from ravishing me. He would run his hands down my body as he pressed kisses to my neck. We would be close to indecent exposure right here on this beach.
My skin heats.
I shouldn’t be thinking those things. Those thoughts get me in trouble. I’m overheated now with a tingling between my thighs.
I want Max. I always have. He has been the star of my fantasies for more than ten years. This is nothing new.
What is new is the look he is giving me right now. I know it’s likely the wine letting me read more into his eyes than there is, but I want so desperately to see it.
I take a deep breath. Before I can do something stupid, I throw my shoes at him and take off toward the water.
“What the fuck, Iris?” he calls after me.
I don’t wait for him. I run all the way into the water until I am waist-high. The waves are calmer tonight, the sky clear.
Lying back in the water, my clothes soaked through, I let myself float as I look up at the stars. I pray for a shooting one so I can make my only wish.
I don’t get a chance to, though.
Minutes after I’ve entered the water, I’m being pulled from it, my body flung over a very wet Max.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he hisses.
Pushing up, I look over at Max and smile.
The angry look on his face only amuses me.
I have never seen Max look this angry. Not even when a customer would try and swindle the hotel out of free stays over something so minute that no one else would have noticed.
Not even when Erica forgot to bring the correct materials to their meeting last week.
This level of angry has nothing on anything I have ever seen before.
Angry Max is pretty hot. I wonder what he would do to punish me…
I giggle. “Nope. Just enjoying nature. You didn’t have to come in after me.”
He growls as he reaches the shore, carrying me to where he dropped our shoes. He sets me on my feet long enough to grab them. Then I am back up over his shoulder.
This feels so romantic. So much like what would happen in one of my movies.
The guy would grab the girl. Angry that she waded into the dark water, but he wouldn’t stay mad for long.
No, he would see her dripping wet, looking like the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He wouldn’t be able to help himself. He would have to kiss her.
Strip her clothes from her and force her into a warm shower, where he would take out all his anger on her body.
Oh, the way her body would react. My body. With Max.
I’m horny as hell as my thoughts run rampant.
This isn’t a movie, though.
That small reminder is enough to douse some of the flames.
Max didn’t wade into the water to save me so we could have some intimate tryst in his hotel room.
No, he came after me because he is practical. All he saw was danger, and when it comes to me, he always pays attention to that. He is such a good guy.
Why can’t he like me?
Groaning, I let him carry me all the way back to the villa. He doesn’t put me down, even to unlock the door. It isn’t until we are standing in front of my bedroom door that he finally lets me down.
“You’re getting water all over the floor,” I whisper to him.
He doesn’t say anything. There is this look in his eye I have never seen. I have no idea what it means, but I think I might have gone a little too far this time.
“Go to bed, Iris.”
“Oh, but what fun is that?” I pout.
“Do you know how dangerous that was? There could have been something in the water. You could have drowned. I couldn’t see you for several seconds. What if the current had taken you out further than you realized?”
I sigh. I forgot that Max is so literal about everything.
I shake my head, not even wanting to deal with him anymore.
I pat his chest before I look up into his eyes. “Max, sometimes you have to let go of all the overanalyzing of every situation and live in the moment. You can’t let your mind hold you back forever.”
I don’t wait for him to respond. I open my door and slip into my room.
A long hot shower is calling my name. Then I think I will let myself sink into the plush bed and dream of a different outcome from my antics tonight.
One where Max didn’t see me as only his friend and instead followed me into that water for a late-night rendezvous.
Yeah. I prefer to live in the dream world. Reality sucks.
MAX
Iris is going to be the death of me.
She has always been a little reckless when she drinks, but never to this level.
Watching her run into the dark ocean, disappearing from my sight, is the single scariest thing I have ever experienced.
Even when my niece was kidnapped, I was scared, but it felt out of body.
Knowing Iris could drown in the dark water was enough to break me from my stupor and make me chase after her.
She looked so carefree before I snatched her up. I couldn’t let her stay in the water where anything might come take a chomp out of her. Not only that, but it was dark and the ocean currents are unpredictable. At least, they are to people like us who have no idea what they are about.
Hell, we didn’t grow up around the beaches like they do down here. We grew up in Boston. We had beaches, sure, but nothing like the ones down here.
My heart is still racing as I look at her closed door.
I have to admit, even though I was scared to death, feeling her wiggle against me as she was over my shoulder, her perky ass right there in my face, was enough to get my blood to start pumping in areas it shouldn’t. Not when it comes to her.
Who am I really fooling, though?
No one.
I need to get these feelings under control before they ruin everything.
Still, as I leave her door heading to my room, I can’t help myself.
It’s weird how over the years we were so focused on work that it felt like we were almost in a relationship even when we weren’t. We spent all of our time together. Neither one of us dated. When we wanted to go do something, we would go do it as a pair.
It was comfortable. I preferred it that way.
Now that she has turned my world upside down, I can’t stop thinking about the things I pretended I didn’t feel. Like the way I would stare a little longer when she smiles. Or how the skirts she sometimes wears to work cause my cock to harden.
I always explained it away.
She is a pretty woman. Of course I would react.
I haven’t dated in a long time, so my body is having a natural response.
Anyone would be attracted to someone as smart as her.
I never wanted to admit the truth. It wasn’t all those things.
It was simply because I have had a crush on her since I met her ten years ago.
Going to the bathroom, I strip out of my now wet clothes. Then I turn on the shower and wait for it to heat up. When I finally slip under the stream, I close my eyes and remember how she looked tonight.
She was wearing a flowy dress. One that drew attention to her legs every time she moved. The straps holding them up were small. They showed off her collarbone while being modest enough to hide her breasts. Perfectly professional, yet still enticing enough to drive me to distraction.
Then she ran into the water, and that material turned translucent.
I didn’t realize it right away. Not until I got her to the villa and set her down.
Her nipples were hard, poking through the fabric.
I could see the shape of her areola through the fabric.
It took everything I had not to lean down and take one in my mouth.
Remembering it now, though, alone in my bathroom, I let myself imagine what I would have done given half the chance.
The way I would have pinned her to the wall, kissing her until she was breathless.
How I would have nipped my way down her neck, soaking in her tiny moans and leaving behind a map showing exactly where I had been.
I wouldn’t have let the fabric of her dress stop me from worshipping her breasts, sucking one and then the other nipple into my mouth, giving them my undivided attention as I played her body like a well-tuned instrument.
My hand finds its way to my cock, stroking it in a fast, even pace as I imagine how she would whimper as I kissed my way down her stomach. I see myself pushing up the skirt of her dress, pushing my way between her legs until I’m there. At her dripping wet pussy.
Fuck, it’s been too long since I’ve been with a woman. Well over nine years at least. That first year I tried to fuck Iris out of my system, but it never worked. I knew then that I needed to focus on work and not anything outside of it.
Now, I want between her legs more than I want my next breath. I want to savor her taste on my tongue, knowing that there will never be anything more sweet.
I want her. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Iris has invaded my body and taken over my soul.
As I imagine taking my first taste of the forbidden fruit I have been tempted by for more than a decade, I spill my release against the wall, my breath suddenly ragged. I slap my free hand against the shower wall as I pant, stroking my cock slowly until it is fully empty.
Fuck.
If fucking my hand thinking about her is that intense, then what would having her for real be like?
It would be out of this world. It might even kill me.
It’s too late to go back now. I opened the floodgates. I’ve allowed myself to take her out of the box I so carefully placed her in all those years ago, only she has grown since then. There is no putting her back now.
No, there is only living with the knowledge that these feelings I have for her are very real.
I close my eyes, thinking about her once more.
There is no way I can tell her, though. It would ruin everything we have built.
It’s moments like this that make me wish I was a robot with no feelings.