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He pulls his lips from my neck, leaving a whisper of cold air that tingles against the wetness he left there. “It’s something we do sometimes. It’s a twin thing. We’ve been doing it as long as I can remember.”

I pull back and look at him, narrowing my brows and letting my hair fall over my face. “Micah hates me. And I don’t like the thought of you hating me, even if you’re just pretending.”

“Micah doesn’t hate you, London. He’s testing you, finding out what you’re made of. And I won’t do that again, not with you.”

He rests his hands on my hips, placing his head down. His lips are far away from my neck now. “Why does it always seem like it pains him to look at me?” I ask him, ignoring the fact he doesn’t want to talk about his brother. “It’s like he can’t stand the sight of me, and I’m not sure what I ever did to him?”

My question triggers something, a change in him as his body heats, the pressure of his finger shifts, his breath shallows.

He reaches and pulls my hair back, grazing my skin—that wet spot—with his knuckles. “He hates everyone right now; it’s not just you. And if Micah doesn’t like you, then that just means I get to keep you for myself,” he jokes.

“Jesus, Maison.” I realize he’s kidding, but still… if there is even a margin of truth to those words. I see the way Micah is with Naomi—the way she sits on his lap and he looks at her like a piece of meat. The malice that burns from his eyes when he looks at everyone.

Maison squeezes me. “He treats you like that because you remind him of her.”

My body stills, a mix of fear and excitement pulsing through me, slithering over every pore. This is not a joke; he’s being serious. He’s not spoken about Olivia with me yet; he hasn’t even breathed her name or acknowledged her existence beyond my prodding questions earlier.

She’s the reason I’m here, stuck on this godforsaken island.

I pause for a second before answering, trying to gage the look in his eye. The light from the sky dancing within them.

Micah loved her.

Maison did, too.

“Do I look like her or something?”

I know exactly what she looks like, and I’m nothing like her. In fact, we couldn’t be any more different in our physical appearance. I’m not Micah’s type, so it’s another reason then.

He snaps back from wherever his mind just went. He dances his fingers over my stomach, up to my beating heart. “I don’t want to talk about Micah,” he whispers, placing his lips back where I want them.

I shiver as the fire begins to die out. “I am scared beyond belief, Maison. And I’m already tired of being here, and cold.”

My nipples are so chilled right now, like pebbles, rock hard against my shirt. He runs his hand down my stomach and up my sweater, touching my bare skin. I tense as he pulls it up. His heartbeat matches my own, but for different reasons. “I want to see that lace, baby,” he murmurs, his mouth still latched on the sensitive skin beneath my ear. “Please let me.”

I should… I secretly wore it for him. His voice is so desperate, like seeing this lace will make it all better and make his pain disappear.

Such a simple request.

He doesn’t take his eyes off mine until I nod. He chews on his bottom lip, and I can’t control the slickness between my thighs any longer as his fingers trace the hipbone he likes to touch so much. Then, he slips them lower so he can take a peek at the black lace below them.

He bites at his lip. “Now this,” he whispers, and I swallow as he pulls up my sweater, revealing my bare stomach. My heart is still racing as his fingers tickle and dance across my body, and I arch my back so he can pull my shirt up over my breasts. He is so smooth, and my breath becomes so uneven, I nearly choke on it. Guilt-ridden for what I want so badly for him to do.

“Fuck, London,” he murmurs, his lips hardly leaving my skin. “You’re so fucking hot. You have no idea how much you turn me on.”

He presses his fingers into my belly but doesn’t move them up.

But he looks. He can’t take his eyes off me, and I like all the attention from Maison—until I realize what the hell I’m doing, and I visualize Olivia’s cold dead eyes. Until I know for sure he wasn’t the cause of those bruises….

“Maison, I can’t… We can’t do this.”

He swallows. His body pulses before he pushes off me, giving me space I don’t really want. My pussy is so wet, I have a hard time believing he can’t smell it. My true desire is for him to keep touching me further down where the pressure is building so much, I feel like I might explode.

“Okay, London.” He moves his hands off me, removes his soft lips from my neck. “What you say goes.”

Is that what I want, though? For him to stop completely? “Maison,” I whisper.

“Yeah, baby?”