77. Across The Horizon
Across The Horizon
Natalia
Dusk settles over the Pitons in shades of pink and orange I would have sworn were impossible without a filter.
The sky looks edited. Saturated beyond reality, the clouds lit from beneath as the sun lowers toward the water.
Even the pool seems to steal its colors, gold and rose rippling across the surface around us.
Kiri pulls me closer. His hands move over my skin so gently it barely feels like he’s touching me at all.
The tips of his fingers drift along my arm, raising goosebumps despite the warmth.
When I exhale, my breath hits his chest and comes back to me.
He looks down at my face while one fingertip traces over my shoulder, up the side of my neck, beneath my chin.
Then down. Across my collarbone. Between my breasts. Close enough to make my nipples tighten beneath the thin black fabric, but not close enough to give me what I want.
I remain perfectly still on the outside.
Inside, I’m begging him to grab me. To stop treating me like something delicate and take hold of me properly.
I want his fingers digging into my hips.
His hands claiming every part of me. I want him rough enough that I can feel the shape of his touch tomorrow.
But this softness makes me feel just as much his.
He watches every flicker of desire cross my face, every pass of disappointment when his hand almost reaches somewhere that needs him and drifts away again. His mouth curves.
“Did you want something, Kroppy?”
Oh, he is infuriating. I should smack him. Strangle him. Throttle him to death beneath me. The thought of being on top of him wipes out the murderous part of that fantasy almost instantly. His finger makes another lazy pass along my body. He leans down until his lips brush my ear.
“Ask for it.”
I can feel him pressed against me beneath the water, growing harder between us. Naked, unashamed, and determined to torment me until I lose what remains of my mind.
I furrow my brows. “Don’t you want it?”
“Want what?” his eyes widen with exaggerated innocence. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m just enjoying the sunset.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
Fine.
My fingers dance across the surface of the pool as though I’ve lost interest. I trail them through the water, watching the ripples spread, imitating careless innocence.
Kiri’s smirk deepens. He thinks he’s winning.
I let my hand disappear beneath the surface and close it around him.
The sound that leaves him is deep and startled.
The power changes hands, literally. I grin up at him and stroke him slowly, feeling the hard jump of him in my palm.
“Ask for it.”
His jaw flexes. Heat gathers between my thighs, demanding release. I want him inside me so badly that every stroke of him in my hand seems to echo through my own body.
“You really want to play this game?” he asks.
“I think I’m already winning.”
His hands clamp around my waist. I barely have time to inhale before he hauls me up against him.
My legs wrap around his hips on instinct, and he spreads his palms over the backs of my thighs, holding me open.
I whimper when the hard length of him presses against me through the narrow strip of my bikini bottoms. He slides himself along me, pressure dragging across every place already aching for him.
The thin fabric does almost nothing to dull the sensation. My head falls back.
“Kiri.”
“What?” he asks, far too calmly.
He does it again. My fingers dig into his shoulders.
He carries me through the pool until we reach the edge, then turns so his back rests against it.
The Pitons rise behind him, darkening against the burning sky, while Kiri makes sure only I fill everything in front of him.
His mouth finds my neck. He kisses beneath my ear as he keeps teasing me with the hard press of himself, sliding through the water against the soaked fabric separating us.
“There,” he murmurs against my skin. “Now we both have the best view.”
It’s too much. The warmth of the pool. The heat building inside me. His skin against mine. His mouth moving along my throat. The flex of his muscles beneath my hands every time he lifts me against him.
The sky deepens from pink into purple behind us. My heart pounds so violently it feels desperate to escape my chest and burst across the horizon, painting the whole gorgeous sky with how much I love Kiri Chhim.
I want to scream.
Cry.
Come.
All of it at once, over and over, until there's nothing left of me but this feeling. One narrow piece of fabric and one forceful movement are all that separate us. Suddenly, I can’t stand it.
I reach between us, pull the bikini aside, and position him against me.
His breath catches. I lower myself onto him.
The first stretch tears a gasp from my throat.
My body opens around him inch by inch, taking all that heat and hardness until he is buried completely inside me.
Kiri’s head tips back.
“That’s it,” he groans. “Fuck.”
His hands grip my ass, holding me down against him as his eyes drag over my face.
“I want to watch you take all of it.” His voice turns rough. “It’s yours.”
Mine. Him. This. Us.
I lift myself and sink down again. His fingers find the ties of my top. One pull loosens the knot, and the wet fabric falls away between us. His mouth closes over my breast, teeth catching lightly around my nipple.
My eyes fly to the sky. A bird crosses the last strip of orange near the horizon.
Purple begins swallowing everything else, dusk taking the mountains and sea piece by piece while Kiri’s mouth works over me and pleasure tightens in my body.
I move faster. He meets each roll of my hips, driving up into me as I come down.
Water breaks around us in soft, frantic waves.
I pull his face back to mine. He’s close.
I see it in his half-lidded eyes and the strain cutting across his features.
Feel it in the way his hands sink into me and his movements lose their teasing control.
I roll my hips harder, grinding against him at the base of every thrust. His mouth opens against mine.
“Natalia.”
My name sounds wrecked. His hands spread over my ass, pulling me down as he drives deeper, filling me so completely that the pressure becomes almost unbearable.
Then my body gives in. The orgasm tears through me with such force that the whole world seems to fracture around it.
My muscles lock around him and light flashes behind my closed eyes, more brilliant than the sunset, more beautiful than anything I knew a body could feel.
Kiri groans into my mouth and thrusts into me once more, deep and shaking, as he comes with me. I cling to him, trembling, as his arms close around me, no longer demanding, only holding. The last light disappears behind the Pitons.
When I pull back far enough to find his eyes, his smile, all the things that steady me, he’s already looking right back at me.
And somehow, after the mountains, the sunset, the perfect sanctuary and everything my body has just survived, he's still the most beautiful thing here.
Afterward, we lie tangled beneath the sheet, watching the ceiling fan turn above us.
Neither of us speaks for a while. There's too much to take in. The open wall outlined in the dark shape of the Pitons beyond the sanctuary. The night air moving along our overheated skin. His hand resting against my stomach.
Kiri turns his head toward me.
“I want a picture of us.”
I blink. “Now?”
“Now.”
I look down at myself. “I’m naked.”
“I noticed.”
He grins while I drag the sheet around my chest and tuck it beneath my arms. Kiri shifts closer, still entirely unconcerned with his own lack of clothing, and holds his phone above us.
Our faces fill the screen. My hair is a disaster.
His is falling into his eyes as usual, maybe one day he'll get that hair cut he keeps talking about. We both look flushed, exhausted, and so stupidly happy that I almost don’t recognize us.
“Smile,” he says.
“I am smiling.”
“That’s your influencer smile.”
I turn and bite his shoulder just before he takes the picture. The camera catches me laughing against him and Kiri looking at me instead of the lens.
It’s perfect.
He lowers the phone and starts tapping at the screen. At first, I’m still floating too high to care. Then he keeps tapping.
And typing.
And scrolling.
An irritated knot forms in the middle of my chest. Of course, in the middle of the most romantic night of my life, Kiri Chhim has decided to become fascinated by his phone.
I lean closer. “Are you answering Ronan's unhinged texts right now?”
“No.”
“Because I will throw that fucking phone into the pool.”
“I believe you.”
He keeps typing.
“Kiri.”
“Almost done.”
My annoyance grows. “This is a very strange time to start caring about social media.”
He turns the screen toward me and the thought disappears instantly.
It’s the photograph we just took. Attached is the Polish song I sent him when we first started talking, back when he was still a name glowing on my screen and every message felt dangerous enough to change my life. Then I see the caption.
I’d like to introduce you all to the love of my life, Natalia Sawadzka.
My name is tagged. My account is linked. No careful crop or vague hand in the corner of a photograph. No shadow, no hidden face, no caption designed to give him room to deny what I am to him.
It’s me.
Us.
Declared from every social rooftop he has. I stare at the screen.
“Are you serious?”
“If you are.”
I look at him. He isn’t smiling now. There’s something raw in his expression, something almost nervous beneath all that practiced calm.
“I mean, yes,” I say. “Yes. Obviously, yes.”
His mouth twitches. “So that’s a yes?”
I smack his arm and he laughs.
“You can take time to think about it,” he says. “It’s a big deal. All the pressure of being with someone like me.”
“You mean old?”
He gives me a level stare, the kind that promises I’ll pay for that remark with my body later, before he answers.
“Famous.”
“I preferred my answer.”
His gaze remains fixed on mine.
“That’s why I’m asking,” he says quietly. “Is this really what you want?”
For one moment, I let myself feel the full weight of it.
The attention. The comments. People dissecting our ages, our faces, our history.
Strangers deciding whether I’m using him or he’s corrupting me.
Every private thing becoming something the world thinks it owns.
Then I look at the picture again. At the way he’s looking at me. I nod.
“I want to be with you in the open, whatever that means.” I curl my fingers around his. “Besides, it can’t be harder than fighting with your mom over the last piece of candy.”
His laugh bursts out of him before he leans in and kisses me. While his mouth is still against mine, his thumb presses the screen.
Post.
My heart jumps. There it is, out in the world. Kiri places the phone facedown on the nightstand before the notifications can begin.
“All right,” he says. “That’s enough phones for tonight.”
He pulls me beneath him, the sheet tangling around our legs.
“Come here, love of my life.”