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It’s the stress,I think, even as I reach for the front of the surfer’s shirt, my hand wrapping in the front of it and yanking him up off of the couch.It’s the pressure I’m under—as I haul him forward, slamming a punch into his jaw that I dimly register, has noise erupting all around us, Amalie coming up off of the couch too to lunge towards me.It’s too much for any one person to handle,is my last thought before Amalie shoves herself in between us, knocking the surfer back as he clutches his bruising jaw, her green eyes spitting fire as she glares up at me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demands, her voice high and loud enough to be heard over the music. “What thefuck, David?”
“I—” I have no excuse. Nothing I can say that would make my reaction seem more reasonable. The fact that my name on her lips makes me hard isn’t good enough. The fact that I feel my pulse beating hard in my veins, my throbbing cock demanding that I back her up against that couch, lay her down, and fuck her senseless, is absolutely not a reason.
“You don’t own me after one night,” she hisses, her eyes gleaming with a fury that nearly matches mine. And god help me, but it only turns me on more, seeing her like that. I want to grab her and kiss her, drag her mouth against mine, and I nearly reach for her before she slaps my hand away from her waist, glaring at me. “Youtoldme to leave last night. You wanted to be done. So we’re done. Who do you think you are—”
I glare at her, a flare of annoyance rising up to meet her anger. “Staying the night isn’t a prerequisite to fucking again, Amalie. Or don’t you know that?” I narrow my eyes, and I see the brief flicker of an odd expression cross her face, one that I don’t entirely understand.
“You wererudeabout it,” she spits. “You made it very clear that since you’d gotten off, you were done. So don’t fucking follow me around afterward, and—”
This time, when I reach for her, she doesn’t react in time to stop me. I grab her waist with one hand before I can think better of it, dragging her up against me as my other hand cups her jaw, my fingers aching to sink into her silky hair. I pull her closer, tilting her chin up, and my mouth crashes down onto hers.
She still tastes so fucking sweet, like sugar and apples, and I slip my tongue into her mouth, groaning at the hot slide of it against hers. I feel her freeze and then shudder, her body arching into mine for one blissful, aching moment before she suddenly twists away from me, shoving my chest hard as she backpedals towards the couch.
There are eyes on us—I can feel them. But all I can look at is her, even as she throws me one last hateful glare and turns on her heel to stalk away without another word. For a moment, I nearly follow her for the second time tonight, but I see the girl with the short blonde hair take after her, and I have a distinct feeling that I won’t be welcomed.
Which still leaves me with the question that’s been rattling in my head since the moment I met her—
What in thehellhas come over me?
5
AMALIE
Ican barely breathe as I dart away from David, pushing my way through the crowd towards the ladies’ room. I’m almost certain Claire will follow me, and I’m grateful to have my suspicions confirmed when I push open the door and catch a glimpse of her in the mirror, just behind me.
“Whatwasthat?” she asks, eyes wide as I sink down onto the pink velvet couch along one wall. The lounge side of the ladies’ room is papered in palm-leaf print, a long quartz countertop, and an equally long mirror along one wall. There’s a handful of girls in front of it, touching up their makeup and giggling. I barely look at them before I turn back to Claire, who has perched herself on the edge of the couch arm. “Was he—”
“The man I slept with last night? Yeah.” I resist the urge to rub my hands over my face—my makeup is impeccable tonight, thanks to my and Claire’s combined efforts. I don’t feel as if David deserves to be the reason it gets messed up. It occurs to me that I probably should have stopped to find out if Brad was alright, after David’s punch to his jaw, but I’m not entirely sure I care. The truth is that I didn’t particularly love having his hand up my skirt, but I also wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to just go ahead and try sleeping with him, to see how it stacked up. What pisses me off is thatIdidn’t get to make the decision.
I have a feeling that Brad isn’t going to be quite as interested after this.
“God, I don’t even know how to feel about it.” Claire’s eyes are lit up—it’s clear that she’s loving every bit of the drama. “On the one hand, having a man fight over you like that is kind of hot. But at the same time—”
“At the same time, who the fuck does he think he is, acting like I’m his wife because we fucked once?” Even I can hear the bitterness in my tone. “It’s ridiculous. He can’t just drag some other guy off of me whenhe’sthe one who toldmeto leave last night. I think he made it pretty clear that it was just a one-night thing.”
“I’m not so sure he made it clear to himself.” Claire laughs, and then slides down to sit next to me. “He’s gorgeous, seriously. You definitely picked a good one for your first time. But he does seem a little—clingy.”
“He didn’t seem that way last night,” I mutter, looking down at my clutch and picking at the tiny embroidered beads on one section. I hate feeling like this—like I’m upset that I didn’t spend the night, when I really shouldn’t care. I’m notsupposedto care. And it just led to this, which is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to avoid.
I’m going to leave here at the end of the week. Whatever happens here, stays here. There’s no point in someone getting jealous of other men when we’ll never talk to each other again after this.
“I’m just going to try to avoid him,” I tell Claire decisively. “He’ll get over it in a day or two. He’ll find some other girl—orgirls, based on what I saw when I first met him—and none of this will matter. And you’re right, I should probably go check on Brad.”
“Probably—oh.” Claire looks at her phone, frowning. “Jean took him back to the hotel—I guess his jaw hurt pretty badly. Should we go back and meet them there?”
A part of me wants to say no, that we should stay out and party until the sun comes up along with everyone else. I feel bad, too, bringing Claire’s night to an abrupt halt. But suddenly, most of me very much wants to be in bed. I’d thought I would end the night in bed withsomeone, but right now, I think I just want to sleep.
“I’m going to go back,” I tell her, getting up and feeling a little unsteady on my heels. “But you don’t have to. I can just call an Uber back to the resort. I think Mandy and Blythe are still here—”
“I’ll let them know we’re going back.” Claire loops her arm through mine, leading me back towards the door. “I’m not letting you leave alone.”
There’s no sign of David when we leave, not even at the bar, which I can’t help but glance at as we go. I don’t see the brunette in the gold dress that was with him earlier, either. I feel a twist in the pit of my stomach at the idea of him back in his penthouse with her, sliding that dress up over her body the way he did with me before taking her back to the bedroom.
This is exactly why I need to avoid him, I tell myself firmly as we pile into an Uber and head back to the resort. Those kinds of complicated feelings are precisely what I don’t need.
Jean and Brad have already gone up by the time Claire and I get back, and as much as I know I probably should check on Brad, I don’t have the energy to. I barely manage to get a makeup wipe across my face and my dress unzipped before I stumble towards my bed, fishing out a tank top to sleep in before collapsing on the mattress as a wave of exhaustion from the sunshine, day-drinking, and adrenaline hits me.
