Chapter 7 The Lagoon Edge #2
"I flagged them. The report went to my supervisor's queue, as every report does, and it should have triggered an escalation—at minimum a formal inquiry, at maximum a recommendation that Adler's regional partners stop referring guests to them entirely.
" He slowly exhales. "Nothing happened. No escalation.
No inquiry. The report just... stopped. Sat in a queue.
I assumed it had been deprioritized in favor of more urgent concerns, which happens, and I moved on to the next audit because that's what the job is.
You file, you flag, you trust the system to do its thing. "
I mull this over for a moment. "And then we ended up six hundred feet from the exact thing you flagged."
"And then I watched a guide disappear in exactly the pattern my own report predicted, and I realized I had personally walked a group of people I care about into the middle of the very scenario I'd warned my own company about eight months ago, and nobody acted on.
" His voice has gone tight, controlled. "I'm not being distant with you, Nora.
Not you. But it feels like the floor is dropping out from under me, knowing I might have led you somewhere dangerous while I was busy feeling things for you and watching you, and finally...
and I don't know how to hold both of those at once without one of them breaking. "
I sit with that for a moment, watching the light move on the water.
"I thought you were retreating," I say finally.
If he can be this honest with me, I owe him the same.
"I know that's not fair, given what you've just told me, but that's what it felt like from the outside.
You went from—from everything that happened by the fire, to a man reading a map like I was a coordinate.
And I've had that happen in the past. Men who are very warm in the dark and very far away in the daylight, like the warmth was a discrete event with a start and end time, and I just hadn't been told the schedule. "
He meets my gaze with an intensity that steals my breath. "That's not what this is."
I nudge him with my shoulder. "Well, I know that now."
He swallows and takes my hand in his, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. "I need you to know it always."
The space between us has narrowed, and even the crashing waterfall feels distant and quiet now.
"Can I tell you something embarrassing?" I say.
He squeezes my hand. "Always."
"When I thought you were retreating—some old, stupid part of me actually felt almost relieved.
Like, see, this is exactly why you don't do this.
Why do you keep all those desires folded up in a notebook instead of out loud where they can actually disappoint you?
" I look at the water instead of him, my face burning. "I was afraid today was a mistake."
"It wasn't a mistake." I've never heard anyone sound so sure about anything.
"I said I was afraid it was a mistake," I reassure him. "Not that it's true."
"What's true," he says, low and certain, "is what I've been thinking since the second meeting we were ever in together.
Not the first—the first, I was too busy being intimidated by how thoroughly you dismantled my margin assumptions to notice anything else.
At the second meeting, you made a joke at your own expense to take the heat off a junior analyst who'd made an error, and nobody in that room even registered you'd done it except me.
I remember thinking: That's a person who spends currency on other people without expecting credit for it.
And then I remember thinking, with considerably less professionalism, that I wanted to know everything else about her too.
" He laces his fingers through mine. "I have been thinking that, in one form or another, in every meeting since. "
I shake my head. "You hid it well."
His forehead leans in until it rests against mine.
"If you tell me now that you don't want this," he says, voice barely above the water's roar, "I will hear you. I will pull back. I will find a way to sit across from you in conference rooms and only talk about projections. It will not be easy. But I’ll do it."
Silence surges up, thick and full. My heart stammers. The inside of my chest hurts with how much want it’s holding.
"I don't know what this looks like back home," I admit. "I don't know how we navigate HR or gossip. I only know that when I thought you might be done with me, it felt like the ground dropped out from under my feet."
His hands tighten a fraction, like he wants to pull me closer and is restraining himself.
"I am not interested in going back to pretending we are two useful brains in a room," I finish, voice low. "So if you’re asking me if I want this? If I want you?"
My hands finally move, sliding up his chest, fingers curling in the thin cotton of his shirt.
"Yes," comes out on a breath. "I do."
Relief cracks through the restraint on his face, and he takes a deep, shuddering inhale. His other hand traces my jaw, sliding into my hair at the nape of my neck.
He doesn’t lunge. Doesn’t pounce. He closes the last half-inch and presses his mouth to mine with a care that is almost worse than urgency.
Care means intention. Care means he is fully here.
His lips are warm, the pressure firm but not demanding. For a moment, my brain goes completely blank. No scenarios, no projections, no variables. Just this point of contact and the way his breath mixes with mine.
Then whatever I've been holding onto loosens with a sound I don’t recognize until I realize it came from my own throat.
My fingers clutch harder at his shirt, pulling him in. The kiss deepens. His mouth parts slightly. His tongue brushes mine, teasing, and heat surges through me so fast my knees go weak, and I'm glad I'm sitting down.
His hand finds my lower back, pulling our bodies flush.
The other slides deeper into my hair. He makes a low sound that reverberates in my chest. "Come inside," he says, voice gravelly.
"As much as I want to fuck you in the lagoon, I've seen the water clarity reports Ryan put together.
I'm not sure I want us to end up as a parasitology case study. "
I laugh, surprised, the sound carrying out over the dark water. "Romantic."
"I have my moments." He stands, pulling me up with him, his hand staying laced through mine. "Let me love you somewhere with four solid walls and a door that locks."
Let me love you. There's a rushing in my head that has nothing to do with the waterfalls. "Lead the way, Santiago."
He does, leading me up the lantern-lit path, past the churuata to his caba?a. The door clicks shut behind us with a finality that feels the opposite of an ending.
The room is simple—mosquito netting drawn back from a bed wide enough for two, a ceiling fan turning slow, lazy circles, the sound of the falls coming muted through the screened windows instead of roaring close the way it did at the overhang.
No rain. No fire to tend. No four-hour countdown ticking somewhere in the back of either of our minds.
Only him, in the dim lamplight, looking at me like he has all the time in the world to do this properly.
I'm terrified.
In the jungle, I could pretend I was the heroine in one of my novels. I could pretend we were simply acting out a story and fulfilling some deep-seated fantasy. Here... in his room... in his bed... this is no longer a story I'm telling myself.
When he meets my gaze, I see the same vulnerability mirrored there. He gives me a nervous smile and takes my hand, pulling me toward the bed, where we sit, side-by-side like two awkward teens.
Then he hooks his finger and tips my chin up so he can kiss me, and the awkwardness melts away with the touch of his lips. The scent of him washes over me, and I feel my whole body relax into him, into this.
His mouth drags down my jaw to the corner of my throat. Breath skims the sensitive skin there, the place where I felt his teeth in the cave. Memory and present overlay, doubling the sensation. My head tips back on instinct, offering him more.
"Nora," he whispers against the hollow under my ear, my name half-prayer, half-warning.
"Don't ever stop doing that," I gasp as he nibbles my earlobe.
His answering huff is almost a laugh, hot against my neck. "Stopping is not on the cards right now."
His teeth graze the spot where my pulse hammers and pleasure zings straight down my spine. My fingers splay over his back, feeling muscle shift under the thin fabric as he presses closer.
The night is warm, but his body heat is a separate blaze. His hands roam, one fanning wide over my waist, thumb sliding under the hem of my shirt to find bare skin. The contact there sends a pulse through me. My insides lurch. His thumb strokes once, tentative, as if asking a question.
"Yes," I breathe, answering all of them.
He doesn’t rush. He explores me thoroughly, fingers tracing the line of my ribs, the dip at my waist, the slope of my hip. The slow, reverent exploration makes my throat go tight.
When his hand finally curves up, palm cupping my breast through my bra, a ragged sound tears free, escaping before I have the chance to swallow it. He freezes, eyes snapping up to mine, checking.
"Okay?" he asks, voice rough.
Instead of answering, my hands slide down between us, lower, finding the heat straining against his shorts. The sharp inhale he makes is exquisite.
"Very okay," I say, meeting his gaze head-on.
Raw hunger flickers across his face. His mouth crashes back to mine, control fracturing further.
His hand squeezes, thumb brushing over my nipple now, the friction through thin fabric enough to send sharp spikes of pleasure up my spine. My hips jerk forward involuntarily, seeking friction.
I keep teasing the outline of him through his shorts. Even through two layers of fabric, I can feel how hard he is. The realization sends a dark thrill curling low in my belly.
"Fuck," he mutters against my lips. "You have no idea how many times I have pictured you like this."