Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
ISLA
Morning light filters through curtains I forgot to close, painting stripes across Kit’s bare chest. He’s still asleep, one arm flung above his head, the other curled possessively around my waist. His breathing is deep and even, face softer in sleep than I’ve seen it since returning to Sea Salt Bay.
I should move. I should slip away, make coffee, pretend we’re civilised adults who can handle the morning after a night that changed … everything? Nothing? I’m not sure yet.
But I can’t bring myself to leave the warmth of his body, the weight of his arm anchoring me to this moment. So I stay, studying him with the greediness of someone who’s been given unexpected access to a long-locked room.
The Kit Harding beside me is both familiar and foreign.
The slope of his shoulder, the curve of his jaw – these I remember, though time has carved new lines, added definition, hardened boyish features into something more substantial.
I was sixteen when we crossed from friends into the tentative uneven ground of teenage lovers.
Kit was eighteen, already tall and broad, a shelter I loved to cling to as the summer nights grew cooler and I knew our time was running out as August slipped away.
I can still see him in the slopes and lines of his body.
The feel of his skin is surprisingly familiar, like it’s just been waiting for me to come back and touch it again.
I remember our first night together, all those years ago, the breathlessness, the heat of our skin where it touched, how I felt like I’d never touched anything so warm, so perfect.
I wanted more and more. He was gentle, tender, but also bold and so very Kit.
The flash of his smile, the challenge in his gaze.
The scar on his collarbone is new, a jagged white line against tanned skin. His beard – that delicious, surprising beard that left burns in places I’ll feel all day – is definitely new.
The sheets tangle around our legs, and memories of last night flood my senses.
His hands, calloused and sure, mapping my body like territory both remembered and rediscovered.
His mouth, hungry and determined, drawing sounds from me I’d forgotten I could make.
The weight of him, the heat, the way he said my name – half prayer, half demand – against my throat.
‘Stop thinking so loud,’ Kit murmurs, eyes still closed. ‘I can hear the gears turning from here.’
My cheeks heat. ‘Sorry. Overthinking is my fatal flaw.’
He opens one eye, regarding me with a sleepy smirk. ‘What exactly are you overthinking at’—he glances at the bedside clock—‘six thirty-seven in the morning?’
Everything. Us. Last night. What happens next.
‘Nothing important,’ I say.
Both eyes open now, his gaze sharpening. ‘Liar.’
I’ve forgotten this – how easily he reads me, how readily he calls me on my bullshit. It’s both comforting and terrifying.
‘I was thinking,’ I admit, tracing a finger along the scar on his collarbone, ‘that I don’t know how you got this.’
He catches my hand, presses it flat against his chest where I can feel his heartbeat, steady and strong. ‘Fishing accident. Four years ago. Hook caught, line snapped under tension. Could’ve been worse.’
‘What about this one?’ I touch a small, puckered mark near his ribs.
‘RNLI rescue. Got slammed against rocks pulling out a stupid tourist who’d ignored the warning flags.’
I wince. ‘Hazards of heroism.’
‘Not heroism,’ he corrects. ‘Just the job.’
There’s no false modesty in his tone, just matter-of-fact acceptance of risk as part of life. It’s so quintessentially Kit that my heart squeezes painfully in my chest.
His hand slides up my arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. ‘Your turn,’ he says, fingers finding the thin white line on my shoulder. ‘This one’s new.’
‘I smashed into some shatterproof Perspex during a scene. Turns out it wasn’t shatterproof. Prop master’s nightmare. Twenty stitches and a production delay that cost the studio half a million.’
His eyebrows rise. ‘Just another day at the office?’
‘Something like that.’ I try for nonchalance, but it’s hard to maintain when his touch is trailing lower, across my collarbone, along the curve of my breast, flitting over my belly button and setting off butterfly wings that flame heat along my insides.
‘And this?’ His thumb brushes over a small mark above my hip.
My breath catches. ‘Appendix scar. Two years ago. Emergency surgery in the middle of a press tour.’
‘Who was with you?’ he asks, voice casual, eyes anything but.
‘My assistant. Piper.’ I swallow, remembering the sterile hospital room, the flowers from cast and crew, the distinct absence of anyone who loved me simply for being me. ‘She’s good in a crisis. Although she’s been suspiciously quiet the last couple of days, which doesn’t bode well.’
Something shadows his expression, gone before I can identify it. His hand continues its exploration, sliding over my stomach, across my hip.
‘And these?’ His fingers trace the silvery stretch marks on my lower abdomen, barely visible in the morning light.
‘Weight fluctuation for a role,’ I answer, surprised he noticed them. ‘I gained twenty pounds, then lost thirty.’
‘That sounds unhealthy.’
I laugh, but the sound is brittle. ‘Welcome to Hollywood.’
He frowns, and I brace for judgement. Instead, he leans down and presses his lips to the marks, the gesture so tender it steals my breath.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmurs against my skin. ‘All of you. The marks. The scars. The history.’
Something breaks open inside me – a dam of emotion I’ve held back since the moment I returned to Sea Salt Bay. Since before that, maybe – since the day I left, since I learned to package my feelings into soundbites and camera-ready expressions.
Since I knew that I could never come back because I’d have hated for Kit to see what I’d become. Since I stopped calling my grandmother because I knew she could hear the lies in my voice.
And I couldn’t come back, because I was trapped. Trapped in a gilded cage that wouldn’t set me free until too much time had passed and it was too late.
‘Kit,’ I whisper, not sure what I’m asking for. Forgiveness? Reassurance? More?
He answers without words, moving up my body to claim my mouth.
The kiss is different from last night’s desperate collision – slower, deeper, deliberate.
His tongue slides against mine, and I open for him, hands coming up to frame his face, to feel the surprising softness of his beard against my palms.
When we break apart, his eyes are serious, searching. ‘We should talk.’
‘I know,’ I agree, though I’d rather keep kissing, keep touching, stay in this bubble where the outside world can’t reach us.
But the outside world is already intruding. Sunlight strengthening by the minute. The distant sound of fishing boats heading out for the early catch. The knowledge that Maisie will be wondering where her father is, waiting for him back at their house just down the lane.
He sighs, propping himself on one elbow. ‘Last night—’
‘Was amazing,’ I finish quickly, needing him to know that much at least.
A smile tugs at his lips that’s boyish and rueful. ‘It was.’
‘I thought you were going to say you regretted this. Me.’
His eyes darken. ‘Do I look like I have regrets about that?’
Before I can say a word, he shifts over me, the delicious weight of him pressing me deeper into the mattress. His mouth finds the spot just below my ear, tongue dragging over sensitive skin, teeth grazing until I gasp.
‘The only thing I regret,’ he murmurs, voice still rough with sleep and sex, ‘is that we waited so fucking long for round two.’
Heat pulses low in my belly – sharp and immediate. I arch into him instinctively, drunk on his body.
‘We could make up for lost time,’ I whisper, lips brushing his shoulder.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he growls, dragging his mouth down my neck, biting softly at my collarbone. His teeth catch hard enough to sting, and I moan into it. ‘Actually, fuck that. Tempt me.’
His hands are already moving over my body with that firm, sure touch that turns my spine liquid.
He palms me like he owns every inch, like he’s never letting go again.
I reach for him and find him hard, heavy, ready, pressing against my thigh like he’s been waiting for this since he opened his eyes.
‘We still need to talk,’ I whisper – though we both know I don’t mean it. Not now. Not when my body’s already begging.
‘Later,’ he growls. ‘Right now, I need to taste you.’
He’s there in seconds, mouth hot and greedy, tongue ruthless. Like he’s starving and I’m the only thing that’s ever fed him. His stubble scrapes my inner thigh, rough and perfect, a burn that only makes the pleasure sharper.
My fingers dive into his hair. My thighs tremble. The pleasure builds sharp and fast, and he holds me steady, like he knows I’m seconds from breaking.
‘Eyes on me,’ he says, rough, demanding. ‘I want to see you when you fall apart.’
I look – and it’s too much. The sight of him between my legs, owning me with just his mouth and that goddamn look … it undoes me.
I fall apart with a cry, all nerve endings and heat, his name on my lips like a prayer and a curse.
He’s crawling up my body before I can catch my breath, mouth dragging along my skin, hands gripping my thighs. He bites my hip, then kisses the mark like an apology. His body slots between mine, and I can feel the heat of him – every hard inch – pressing exactly where I need him most.
‘Okay?’ he asks, forehead resting against mine, eyes blown wide with hunger and something else. Something quieter. Raw.
‘Don’t stop,’ I breathe.
He doesn’t.
He pushes inside with one slow, deep thrust that knocks the air from my lungs. The stretch, the burn, the fullness. My body arches, welcoming him, and he groans low in his throat like the sound is being pulled from somewhere deep.
He stills, just for a beat. Just long enough to feel it. Us.