Page 198 of The Fall

I bounce my eyebrows twice. “Race you back?”

We try to beat each other to the dock, mostly splashing instead of swimming, and then climb the ladder together. We’re laughing when we clamber onto our dock.

Blair collapses onto his lounge chair and throws his arms wide, as if he could claim the entire horizon-to-horizon sky. I follow him down, settling onto his lap and linking my arms behind his neck. “Hi.”

His broad palms start a slow glide up my sides. “Hi,” he whispers.

I lean in and taste him. He holds me close, kissing from my ear down. My head falls back, and his hands slide down my back to my ass.

He gets his feet under him and stands, lifting me as if I weigh nothing. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me through the open doors of our villa. He lays me on the bed, his hand cradling the back of my head, one knee sinking into the mattress beside my hip.

His eyes hold mine, as blue and deep as the water we just left. “I want you,” he confesses. “All the time.”

Salt water drips from his hair to my chest. “You have me,” I tell him. “All of me.”

Thirty-Nine

We are wrecked,my throat and my thighs stippled in beard burn, my fingernail scratches woven across his shoulders. We skipped dinner; or rather, dinner was him and I was dessert. We both had seconds.

Blair rises onto his elbow. “Ready to skinny dip?”

I could melt into this bed and never move again, but he is unguarded and boyish, and how can I resist him? “Of course.”

He untangles himself from the sheets and rises, and I follow him with the sheet wrapped loosely around my waist. The night air washes over me, cooler than I expect after our sun-soaked day. Crushed hibiscus hangs in the air, mixing with salt and a scent that belongs to the dark. Our dock stretches into darkness, marked only by the faint glow of solar lamps. Beyond that, the world runs velvet-blue and endless.

Blair cannonballs into the sea with a clean leap, and the splash scatters mercury droplets across the dark waves.

I throw myself after him, and the water swallows me, cool for that first shocking second, then transforming into silk. Bubbles draw feather-light paths along my skin as I push toward the surface.

Blair pops up nearby, his hair slicked back, arms moving in slow, steady circles as he treads water. “Careful,” he says, his voice serious. “Sharks really like number-two-overall draft picks.”

I flick water at his face.

He swims toward me. “I’ll protect you, though.”

“From the sharks?”

He treads closer until our knees brush underwater, and he steadies me with one arm around my waist. “From everything.”

Above us, the night sky is a bruised indigo with stars scattered across its vastness. They look close enough to touch if we reached for them together. Below, gentle tides tug at our bodies, smoothing us together. The dock has become a shadow behind us, and the lights from our room ripple in golden ribbons over the sea.

Blair is nothing but shoulders and jawline and those eyes fixed steadily on me. “Torey…” he breathes. “Torey, Iloveyou,” he whispers, so quietly that only the ocean and bone carry his words into me. “I am in love with you.”

My lips find his, underwater-wet and salt-sweet. His mouth opens against mine, warm despite the cool water surrounding us. We are weightless, suspended in the dark water. Starlight catches in his eyes, and he doesn’t let me go. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long,” he says.

The stars wheel overhead, but I keep my eyes on Blair’s face. My fingers follow the strong line of his jaw, memorizing this moment, burning it into me forever. “Tell me again.”

“I love you, Torey Kendrick.” His words flow into me, rich as honey. He kisses the corner of my mouth, then my chin, then returns to my lips.

This is how forever starts.

“Come inside with me,” I whisper.

His gaze never leaves mine as we swim the short distance back, hands brushing, shoulders bumping. Our clamber up the ladder is clumsy and graceless, but I reach for his hand once we’re back on land. Night breathes around us as we cross the planks, bare feet leaving wet prints side by side.

He opens the door and I pull him through, tugging until we’re inside, and we move naked through the darkness and back into our bed.

I drown in him, wide open, taking him in, my tongue mapping out every edge and hollow. I wrap my legs around him and pull him down until there’s nothing but Blair everywhere: his scent, his taste, his voice vibrating against my ear.