Chapter 17
ALEC
Ella has turned the bed into a breakfast table.
Room service tray between us on the mattress.
Fruit, avocado toast, a smoothie bowl so purple it looks medicinal, and a black coffee she poured for me without asking because she already knows I don’t take it with all the sugar and cream she prefers.
She’s cross-legged against the headboard with the sheet at her waist and nothing above it, eating a strawberry, and I’m propped on one elbow in a position that gives me an unobstructed sightline to everything the sheet has given up trying to cover.
Six days ago I was running beach sprints at dawn and choking down steamed fish for every meal.
Now I’m in bed at half past eight with a naked woman and a breakfast spread to feed an army, and I can’t find it in me to care about the schedule I’m not keeping.
The absence of a plan should bother me. It doesn’t. That’s new.
“I fully expected to wake up alone, you know,” Ella says, biting into another strawberry. “I figured you’d be out there at the crack of dawn doing something aggressive. Running. Swimming. Intimidating the sunrise.”
“I considered it.”
“But?”
I grin at her. “There was a naked woman in my bed. The cost-benefit analysis was short.”
She smiles. “Cost-benefit analysis. That might be the least romantic way anyone has ever told me I’m better than exercise.”
“Last night was a great workout. Earlier this morning, too.”
“Good point.”
My cock, which has been running a low-grade campaign for more ever since I woke up with her back pressed against my chest twenty minutes ago, takes this as a sign to remind me it’s still very much in the game.
Semi-hard for most of breakfast. Her bare skin six inches away isn’t helping.
Neither is the fact that every time she reaches for the fruit, the sheet shifts and I get a view of the soft curve of her breasts that sends a signal straight past my brain and into territory my cardiologist would flag.
“Eat your smoothie bowl,” she tells me.
I look at it. “What’s in it?”
“Acai. Blueberries. Chia seeds. The menu said it supports cardiovascular health.” She points her piece of fruit at me. “You’re eating it.”
“You ordered me a bowl of purple paste because a resort menu told you it’s heart-healthy?”
“I ordered you a bowl of purple paste because your heart needs the help, and because left to your own devices you’d eat plain grilled chicken until you died of boredom.” She nudges the bowl closer. “Try it.”
I’m skeptical, but I try it. It’s not bad. I take another spoonful before I can stop myself.
“Not bad, right?”
“It’s not great.”
“Oh, really? Then why did your face just do a thing?”
“My face did nothing.”
She eyes me in challenge. “Your face absolutely did a thing. Your eyebrows relaxed and that little crease that lives on your forehead disappeared. That’s your version of a standing ovation.”
She’s been studying my face enough to read me that plainly? I almost smile. “Don’t talk about standing ovations in front of him,” I say, glancing pointedly to the tent my erection is forming under the sheets. “Unless you want to give me ideas.”
My hand finds her bare thigh under the edge of the sheet and I trace a slow line along the inside of her knee. She doesn’t react except to shift a fraction closer.
“What kind of ideas did you have in mind?”
I’m about to show her when her phone chimes on the nightstand next to the bed.
She holds up a finger before pivoting to reach for the device.
She picks up her phone, glances at the screen, and her expression shifts into something between amusement and alarm.
“Oh, God. It’s a text from Lisa. Multiple texts. ”
I nod, torn between annoyance at the interruption and glad for the opportunity to ogle Ella’s gorgeous body. The sheets have sagged down around her waist now, leaving her beautiful breasts bobbing with her every movement. “What’s going on with Lisa?”
“She wants a vacation update. She’s been texting every day and I’ve been getting increasingly evasive.” Ella scrolls, wincing. “My last message said ‘resort is beautiful, weather is great, suitemate situation has improved.’ That was two days ago. She has follow-up questions.”
“How many follow-up questions?”
“Um, eleven. And a row of emojis I’m choosing not to decode in front of you.” She angles the screen away from me, which means whatever Lisa said is either obscene or accurate or both. Ella glances up at me. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not going to tell her about... this.”
“What does she know?”
“That you were grumpy on the plane. That I spilled coffee on you.” Ella has the grace to look sheepish. “That you were, quote, ‘ruining my vacation.’”
“You still feel that way?”
She sets the phone face-down on the bed. “I’ve since revised my assessment.”
I arch a brow. “And what’s your revised assessment?”
She looks at me. The humor’s still there, but underneath it is something unguarded. Warmer than banter. Riskier. “I haven’t figured out how to word it yet.”
She doesn’t push it. Neither do I. What she left unsaid sits between us alongside the fruit plate.
I leave it alone because I’m not sure what this is either.
Six days ago we were strangers fighting over a hotel room.
Now we’re naked and eating breakfast in the same bed we’d divided up like battle lines.
Neither of us has mentioned what happens when this vacation ends.
I suspect we’ve both noticed the omission and silently agreed to leave it there.
I don’t do undefined. I build systems designed to eliminate it.
Whatever is happening between me and this woman has no label and no stress-test, and I’m lying here in it anyway.
Eating a purple smoothie bowl and enjoying it.
Enjoying her. The part of my brain that should be sounding alarms about the exposure has gone oddly quiet.
Ella’s suddenly nervous, chatty. She starts telling me about Lisa, how they met working the morning shift at the diner.
How they became best friends. “For two years, we’ve been dreaming of a big trip to somewhere amazing,” Ella says, pulling apart a piece of avocado toast. “We have a Pinterest board. We bought matching beach bags. Then her sister’s pregnancy went sideways and Lisa dropped everything to be with her, because that’s who she is.
She remembers birthdays. She keeps plants alive.
She always has a first-aid kit in her purse. ”
“And you?”
The sheet gave up entirely at some point during this story and she hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.
She’s sitting there bare and animated and completely unselfconscious, and my hand moves to her breast without any input from my higher brain.
My thumb traces the soft underside, grazes her nipple.
She inhales mid-sentence but doesn’t stop talking, just leans into my palm, and the casual acceptance of my hands on her body, the way she folds it into the conversation like it’s already normal, sends a low pulse of heat through my groin.
“I’m the one who killed a cactus. A cactus, Alec.
The plant literally designed to survive neglect.
” Her mouth curves at her own expense. “Lisa would’ve loved this place, though.
She’d have befriended the entire kitchen staff by noon and organized some kind of group activity nobody asked for but everyone secretly enjoyed. ”
She says this like Lisa’s the remarkable one. Like she can’t see that she just described herself, that she’s the woman who befriends kitchen staff and organizes group activities and lights up every room she walks into. Her blind spot floors me.
I lean across the tray, take the avocado toast out of her hand, and kiss her.
Not a quick morning kiss. I hold the back of her neck and take my time.
The small, startled sound she makes when my tongue brushes her lower lip vibrates through my chest and arrows straight to the base of my cock.
Her palm slides up my sternum. Her thumb finds the hollow of my throat.
When I pull back her eyes are heavy, her lips flushed, and I nearly forget about the rest of breakfast entirely.
“Eat,” she says, but her voice has dropped half an octave.
“I was eating. You interrupted me.”
“And now you’re interrupting my central nervous system.” Her blue eyes glimmer with a playful spark that’s also sexy as hell. “We should finish breakfast so we can get the tray off the bed.”
I nod. “Sounds like a plan.”
I reach for the bacon. There’s a small plate of it near the edge of the tray.
Crispy strips, golden-brown, glistening with salt.
The one concession to real indulgence she conceded to on a spread that otherwise reads like a prescription.
I’ve been working through it steadily. My third piece.
Good crunch. Good smoke. The only item here that doesn’t require a nutritional justification.
Ella watches me chew. Her lips press together like she’s biting back a secret.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Too controlled. Too innocent. I’ve run penetration tests on corporate systems with better poker faces than this woman.
I look at the half-eaten strip. Then back at her. “What is this?”
“Bacon.”
“Ella.”
The giggle ruptures through her composure. She claps a hand over her mouth, but the damage is done. “It’s vegan.”
I stare at the strip in my hand. Three pieces. I have eaten three pieces of plant-based imitation and enjoyed every one.
“You’ve been feeding me fake bacon?”
“You insisted, so I asked the kitchen about heart-healthy alternatives.” She’s grinning like she just breached a Pentagon firewall. “Apparently it fools everyone.”
I scoff, but there’s no heat in it. “You didn’t fool me. I was just being generous.”
She snorts a laugh. “Oh, please! You’re on your third strip. Eating it with your eyes closed.” She leans forward, delighted. “That’s not generosity, Alec. That’s commitment.”