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If I’m honest with myself, it’s not just sex I’m longing for, although with as busy as I’ve been managing the resort in the aftermath of the storm, I haven’t made time for that in far too long. What I really crave, though, is what I see right in front of me; an intangible chemistry, a rightness.
Sophia found it with Victor, and the couple on the dance floor clearly has it, too. It’s clear even from here that the two of them just fit, in a way that I’ve never been able to find with any of my past partners, male or female.
“Henry?” Sophia touches my arm, a look of concern on her face.
“Hm?” I say, pulling my attention off the beautiful couple with an effort. “I’m sorry, I missed that, my dear. You were saying?”
“Nothing important,” she says, still giving me a quizzical look. “Are you okay?”
“Of course.” I’m not one to burden others with the pointless pining of my heart, and when it suddenly occurs to me where I’ve seen the enticing couple on the dance floor before, I’m not above using my interest in them to deflect Sophia’s concern. “Isn’t that woman your cousin?”
I tilt my head toward the dance floor, and Sophia’s eyes follow my subtle gesture. Then she grins.
“Yasmin,” she says with a nod and a devilish sparkle in her eyes as we watch Yasmin’s partner dip her in a playful spin, then steal another kiss. “And I’m glad to see that the island is working its magic for her and Cade.”
“Oh?” I’m more curious than I have a right to be. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m not one to gossip,” she murmurs, lifting her champagne glass to her lips to hide the smile still dancing across them.
I snort, shaking my head as I chuckle. “If I recall correctly, it’s actually one of your favorite pastimes, my dear.”
“Okay, fine, if you insist,” she says gleefully. “Yaz and Cade are actually the ones who introduced me to Victor, did you know that? Victor is Cade’s uncle, so as long as they stay together, too, it’s like we’ll all be family from both sides.”
“How… incestuous,” I tease her, earning myself a well-deserved smack on the shoulder.
“I’m ignoring that,” she says with a dramatically haughty sniff, after blatantly doing the opposite. “But anyway, Yasmin and Cade are great together. Well, mostly. They met in college and have been together for, I think six years or so? But they’re both in a bit of a transition period right now—you know, job hunting now that they’ve both completed their degrees, figuring out long-term housing and where they’re going to settle down, that sort of thing—and I think the stress of it all has been getting to them.”
“Hm,” I say, a non-committal sound that hopefully hides how inordinately invested I am in hearing these details, even though they’ve got nothing to do with me.
Why, I can’t say… but I also can’t seem to keep my eyes off the lovely couple.
Sophia nibbles her lip for a moment, then blurts out. “You’re on their List, you know. For both of them.”
I blink, turning my attention to her. “I’m on their what?”
“Their List,” she repeats with an impish grin. “You’ve heard of that, right? When couples agree that there are certain people they’d each get a free pass to fuck if they ever had the chance, without it messing up their relationship? Usually, it’s celebrities, but they both started calling you Hot Henry when you and I were dating, and Yasmin confirmed just the other day that you’re still right up there with Javier Bardem and Idris Elba, for both her and Cade.”
My cock stirs again, but I do my best to ignore it even though it doesn’t escape my notice that even the Yasmin and Cade are young—they look to be in their mid-twenties, which checks out with the transitional life events Sophia mentioned—both of the actors she named are closer to my age.
Sophia always did like to goad me.
“Let me guess, you and Yasmin were enjoying cocktails during this conversation,” I murmur, trying to deny to myself that, this time, it’s working a little. At least enough to keep stoking my interest.
She waves my comment off. “That had nothing to do with it, Henry.” She pauses, then, “Well, maybe a little bit to do with it. But despite the reasons you and I didn’t work out—”
She’d considered me heavy-handed and my desire to look after her far too overbearing. Which, fair enough. Both things are true of what I need in a relationship. And while Sophia had enjoyed playing at the submission I crave at times, it’s not genuinely her nature, which, if I’m being honest, doomed us from the start.
“—I’ve never denied how eminently fuckable you are,” she goes on impishly. “And since I know Victor is totally secure in our relationship, I have no problem admitting that you just keep getting better with age.”
I shook my head, grinning despite myself. “Secure or not, please don’t make it a habit of telling other men they’re fuckable now that you’re about to commit yourself to Victor. If I were him, I’d consider that a spankable offense.”
“Believe me,” she says, aiming a lustful grin at her fiancé, “if anyone’s getting spanked on our wedding night, it’s not going to be me.”
I snort back another laugh, her comment just cementing the fact that she and I were never well-suited.
While she’s busy making eyes at her soon-to-be-husband, mine are drawn back to Yasmin and Cade, and it’s entirely Sophia’s fault that my thoughts are now veering in a distinctly kinky direction. But instead of finding them locked in a lover’s embrace and lost in each other’s eyes, this time, their body language has shifted to something decidedly unhappy.
I frown. They’re quite obviously arguing now, and my instinct to jump in and both dominate and nurture—to fix whatever is happening here and get them back to that beautiful, blissful state I saw them in a moment ago—is almost overpowering.
