Miles was always some degree of closed off to me in college. Always just out of reach emotionally because of the damage from his family dynamics. But today he was cracked open to me. His physical pain made him vulnerable, but he didn’t have to open up about anything else—yet he did.
And the sex itself? It wasn’t just good sex. It was…intimate. It was emotional. There’s something between Miles and I and there obviously has been for days, but this just turned everything on its head and made it all a lot more complicated.
Because before today, I probably could have left here and seen this as a fun vacation thing, where maybe I miss him fora little bit and then move on. But now? Now I’m in trouble, because I think I’m starting to have feelings for Miles.
And I still have zero regrets about today.
In the van on the way back, tucked into Miles’s side, a sharp buzz vibrates against my leg.
“What was that?” I ask.
“My phone,” Miles says as he digs into his pocket to check the text. “It’s Gray.”
“Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s just letting me know he got to the resort. Flew out this morning. I missed a bunch of texts from him,” he says, scrolling through their conversation.
“Oh, I didn’t know he was coming.”
There’s a pang of disappointment in my chest. Does that mean we aren’t hanging out anymore after this? I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, and I was secretly hoping we could spend some time together tomorrow.
“Yeah, I sort of forced him to,” Miles says and goes on to explain about his brother’s app and the investors’ meetings and how he needs a vacation.
“He’s lucky to have you,” I say.
“Oh, I know,” Miles says, and his smug grin has me rolling my eyes.
The van drops us off at the lobby of the resort and Miles and I walk back to our rooms. In the space between our doors, Miles snakes an arm around my waist and brings me in close, his lips inches from mine.
“Have dinner with me,” he says.
“What about your brother?”
“I can invite him or tell him to get lost. Your choice.”
Miles plants the smallest of kisses on my lips, and I consider what I really want for the next two days. I’m tempted to tell him that I just want it to be us. I want the bubble we’re living in to lasta little longer, with nothing and no one from the outside world penetrating the intimate circle of bliss we’ve created.
But it’s his brother’s first night here, and it doesn’t feel fair to demand that Miles spend that time with just me. Part of me wants to tell him that he should just go have dinner with his brother and that maybe we could do something tomorrow, but I want to spend more time with Miles—not to mention there’s this other really small part of me telling me that what I want matters and that Miles would want me to say it.
“Say it.”
He’s said it the last two times we’ve been intimate, demanding that I use my words to tell him what I want. Courage in me rises to say what I want, to be selfish for once, but my instincts to push it back down win out.
“Invite him,” I say. It’s a compromise. It’s a little bit of what I want, and a little bit of what I feel like is the right thing to do.
“But right now, I desperately need a shower,” I say.
“Is that information or an invitation?” he asks, tucking his face against my neck, brushing his lips over the sensitive skin. A shiver runs down my spine. I thought he’d wrung me dry in the lighthouse, but the way desire stirs in my low belly tells me I am not at the end of my rope yet.
“Invitation.”
His eyes darken as he swings around the backpack and holds it for me to dig through and find the keycard. I let us into my room, but before the door has even closed behind us, Miles is kissing me, hungry and desperate, as if we didn’t just devour each other less than two hours ago. We kick off our shoes as he walks us to the bathroom, both of us feeling our way there and trying not to stop kissing.
Once we’re in the bathroom, quicker than I can blink, he lifts me onto the counter. I don’t miss the wince as he lifts me, but don’t say anything because I don’t want to make a big thing of it.He turns on the shower to let the water heat up and comes back to stand between my legs.
“If I didn’t have a bad knee, I’d be on both of them in front of you right now making you scream my name loud enough that the people at the pool could hear you,” he says and then crushes my lips against his in a kiss that makes me dizzy.
He presses me against him so I can feel how hard he is through his shorts. It only makes me want him more. I’m clumsy as I take off his shirt and toss it to the floor because he’s trying to remove mine, too, and we’re trying not to stop kissing, and all the while the room is filling with steam, and I can’t tell if I’m hot because of that or because of the way Miles is touching me. I lean back on the counter as he trails his mouth down my body, not leaving one bit untouched by his mouth. Watching him worship my body like this again is devastatingly hot. As if with every kiss, every stroke of his tongue, every mark he leaves behind, he’s done it out of supplication, not a sense of entitlement or an attempt to claim.
