Harlowe
thirteen
Five Years Ago
Something shifted between us in the bathtub.
It was seismic, and we both felt it, but didn’t talk about it.
Not last night when he scooped my still trembling body out of the water, plumeria flowers clinging to my skin, wrapped me in a fluffy towel, and carried me to bed.
He dried us both off before we crawled naked between the covers, into each other's arms, legs entwined like we couldn’t stand to have even an inch of our bodies apart.
Not this morning when he woke me up with his head between my legs, eating me out with a slow and deliberate sweetness that brought me to awareness, then had my back bowing, fingers clawing at his hair as I came against his mouth.
We don’t say anything at all as we tentatively feel out the other in this new space we entered when I asked him to touch me like he owned me and he responded that he already did.
We’re not talking about it now as we feed each other pieces of fruit with our fingers for breakfast on the deck with the ocean breeze ruffling our hair and cooling the heat in his searing gray gaze.
We probably won’t talk about it at all, because what changed was what we both want from this trip, no matter what he said about it going into the vacation.
The bridge to casual, no attachments, no repeats, was absolutely scorched last night, with no hopes of returning that way.
“Do you like lobster?” Zander finally asks, pulling my attention away from this new connection—this attachment—between us, and back to him in the flesh. God, he’s beautiful.
I smile, knowing he wants me to go on pretending that everything is back to the way it was before, and I can do that. I can play this role, no matter what it means, or even if it breaks a little bit of me to do it.
“Of course. I’m sure it’s incredible, caught fresh here, just like all the fish and seafood we’ve had.”
“We can catch it, if you want. You up for a little adventure, Lowe?”
And my challenging Zander is back, here to see if I’m willing to meet him on his latest quest for adventure.
I scoff. “Like I would turn down the opportunity to catch my own dinner? Show me where and how and I’ll catch enough for the both of us.
Give me a kitchen and I could cook it, too, and your mouth would water.
” Confident. Brazen. I’m the Wildcat he has taken to calling me who taunts him, challenges him, and is his equal in all his playful pursuits.
Right back into the role I will play for him.
Zander’s storm cloud gray eyes are more than interested, relief flitting through those fathomless depths that I’m willing to play along. “You like to cook?”
“That’s like saying you like to make money when you mention you’re in business. I’m brilliant in the kitchen. If I wasn't modeling, I would absolutely make a run at being a chef.”
“I’m intrigued. I have always been told not to trust a skinny chef. It seems like a model would be the last person I would think of as a good cook.”
I keep the fun smile fixed on my face. He absolutely does not want to hear about the last six years of disordered eating, of hating my body for not being what casting directors were looking for on shoots or campaigns or catwalks.
He doesn’t want to hear that I cooked wonderful meals and only let myself eat a bite of each dish and threw the rest away for fear of the caloric density and what it would do to my figure.
“Just because I’m a model, and I can’t eat as much as I’d like, doesn’t mean I can’t cook.
Let me sweet talk the chef at the restaurant.
I’ll make my way into that kitchen and we’ll see what he has to say about my skills, and you can see for yourself, Zander, that I can blow your mind with another taste of my remarkable talents. ”
“Well, consider this challenge fucking accepted. I’m ready for you to blow my mind yet again, little Wildcat.”
Before I can do that, we have to catch the damn lobster.
Zander and I take a boat out to a reef and he gives me the briefest crash course in spotting lobster among the rocks and reefs, how to use a tickle stick to herd them out of their hiding spots, to grab them with my hands.
Then it’s just putting on a mask, snorkel, and gloves, and we’re in the water on our hunt.
It takes no time at all for my competitive streak to get going and of course, I’m looking for the juiciest creature to win some imaginary contest against Zander.
Once I figure out what I’m looking for, the task becomes fun as I push the spiny lobsters out of hiding, hunting for a perfectly sized catch in between breaths. Finally, I make my selection, grabbing the lobster and swimming for the boat just as Zander comes up with his own catch.
“Look at you, a natural, as usual,” he says, tossing his tickle stick and lobster into the back of the boat. He fluidly hauls his beautiful body up onto the small deck at the rear of the boat and turns to help me in next.
I push my mask and snorkel off and wipe water out of my face. “That was fun. I got an extra lobster for something I have planned.”
He looks over his shoulder and spots the second lobster I found on an earlier dive and whistles. “Overachiever,” he laughs.
“Shall we go back to the island and I’ll really wow you with my overachiever abilities?
We have hours before dinner. I’m sure we can figure out a way to fill them.
” I walk my fingers up Zander’s bare chest until my hand is flat against it and I’m looking up at his lips, saltwater still clinging to his skin, reflecting the sunlight like jewels.
He closes the distance and captures my lips, his tongue slipping into my mouth and twisting with mine.
He tastes like salt and heat and storms and I’m pulled right back into the feeling of belonging to him, of being his, that I forget to play.
I just am. My arms wrap around his shoulders, fingers winding up into his wet hair and digging in, keeping him close, here, mine.
He answers in kind, fingers threading into my own salt-slicked waves and pulling tight, making me moan into his mouth.
I feel him harden against my thighs and my core clenches in need, wanting to have him inside of me right now.
His chest rumbles against me, an answering groan of longing, and I know neither of us wants to stop whatever we’ve started, though a small boat full of lobster isn’t the easiest place to act on our desires.
“Back to the villa?” I ask, barely pulling my mouth from his.
“Back to the villa,” he agrees.
We return to the island and drop the lobster off at the restaurant with a promise from the chef that I can use his kitchen, and he’s quite intrigued by my challenge of a wok off.
We walk hand-in-hand to our side of the island, shoulders bumping, talking about the rainbows of fish, the coral, and current from our dive.
I offer to stow the snorkel gear while Zander heads inside.
When I walk up the stairs into the villa, I hear the shower and wander into the bathroom, where I let out a sigh of appreciation at the sight that greets me of Zander’s powerful body under the spray of the showerheads.
I don't even stop to take off my bikini.
I just open the glass door and join him under the spray of warm water, untying the strings as I go and letting the skimpy pieces fall to the floor at our feet.
“I hoped you’d find me in here.”
He pulls me to him immediately, his lips on mine, his hands on my skin feeling hotter than the water that sluices over our bodies. He drags his teeth along my neck and I shiver, feeling my body going molten, heavy. This is exactly where I need to be.
I wrap my arms around his toned shoulders, my hands finding his back, anchoring myself against him and let out a sigh of pleasure as something clicks into place. I blink in brilliant awareness, then the shock subsides to the feel of Zander around me, his lips on mine, our bodies together.
This moment in Zander’s arms, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, feels more like home than anything has since I left my mom’s house in Atlanta at eighteen to start my career in modeling.
I’ve led a nomadic life since then, traveling the world for jobs, and not feeling settled in any one place.
This place, specifically, isn't home, but this person, this man, feels like he is.
And I had missed him in the moments that we were apart.
I pull away from his lips and stare at his face in wonder, and he gives me a questioning look.
“I missed you. Isn’t that stupid?” I say, a little embarrassed to speak the vulnerable, errant thought out loud. It had been minutes. That’s all it took for me to feel needy for him, to want his touch and crave his eyes on me. To feel this sense of homecoming now.
“No. I missed you, too.”
His admission, whispered against the shell of my ear as he palms my breast, is unexpected, so unlike his rules and no attachments mentality I wonder if I misheard him, but I couldn’t have.
His fingers between my legs thankfully stop the thoughts I know will only get me into trouble and instead, I’m focused on the feel of him slipping two thick fingers inside.
“That’s my girl, nice and wet for me already. I’m going to fuck you with my fingers until your legs are shaking. Will you be a good girl and come for me?”