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Nine
Connie
“Areyou sure you don’t want any help cleaning up?” Grandma asks Lola after we finish up our pudding of nuts, berries and honey laid on top of the sweetest, lightest meringue. Lola really is an amazing cook.
“No, not at all. You get off home now. I’ll sort it out in the morning. Plus, I need to head to The Shack and get set up for the evening. Customers start arriving in about twenty minutes. I should really get going,” she replies, waving Grandma’s offer of help away.
“Well, okay. Thank you for having us. Dinner was delicious.” Grandma looks over at me and for the first time all night I manage a smile too.
“Yes, thanks Lola,” I say, dabbing at my lips with a napkin.
Across the table from me Malakai is scowling, as usual. He’s looking down at Baxter who seems to have taken a shine to him. The sweet puppy is looking up at him, waiting for scraps. Not that he’s got any given Malakai wolfed down every morsel as though he’s the one who’s starving…
“Good, I’m starving…”
I can’t believe I said that. I mean the words were innocent enough, but the meaning… I meant something entirely different and heknewit. That flash of desire. I didn’t imagine that. It was there, right there in the swirl of his emerald eyes.
Jesus, that one look had my clit throbbing.
My clit has never throbbed. Even when I touch myself, it’s never throbbed likethat.
This feeling… it’s dangerous.
And just for a moment back in the lounge I was convinced he felt it too.
But when I look at Lola, at the happiness I see oozing from her in his presence, I know that I must be mistaken. I see how she looks at Malakai, the gentle smiles she gives him, and I feel guilt slice through my stomach. He’s not mine. He’s hers.
“Mine,” I murmur, only realising I’ve said that out loud when Malakai’s head snaps around to face me.
“What?” he demands.
I shake my head. “Nothing. It was nothing.”
Yet why do I feel like it’s everything? Why do I feel like this is exactly as it was meant to be? Why do I feel like he knows that too even though he’s distant, caustic, cold?
Because when he allows himself to look at you the way he did, he feels the connection too,a little deluded voice in my head taunts me.
“Connie…?” My grandma’s gentle tone draws me out of those dangerous thoughts.
“Yes, sorry. Are we going now?” I blurt out.
That sounded really ungrateful, like I’m desperate to get out of here. Truth be known, I’m scared to stand up and join Grandma who is currently hugging Lola, readying to leave. I’ve never felt more turned on. The ache between my legs has been building all evening.
In the lounge he had stared at my thighs, at the space between my legs. At my lacy, flimsy, knickers that I’d chosen just for him.
And I let him.
Those knickers are wet with my desire.
“Ah, yes, I’m keeping you. Your friends returned from their trip to the mainland today, didn’t they?” Lola asks me.
“Yes. Alice texted me just before we got here. They’re desperate to tell me about all the fun they had,” I explain. Though, I’m not sure I’m ready to face their enthusiasm about a world I’ve no desire to see or be a part of. I’m not sure I have the energy to pretend I’m interested in anything beyond this island I adore.
“Kids and theirfun,” Malakai snorts flippantly, glaring at me.
Back to that I see. Not that he was very amenable during dinner. He chatted well enough with Lola and Grandma, but he ignored me the majority of the time.
“They want me to meet them at The Shack tonight, actually,” I respond, bristling because I know he’s lumping me in with that term too.
