Page 5

Chapter Five

Ruby

W e return to the beach house a lot later than expected.

The stars are out. Waves crash beneath the purple sky down at the shore.

Dean is not ready to relinquish me yet and makes it known by kissing me up against the door of the house, his hips agitated between my thighs.

“Forget him,” Dean says, sucking on a patch beneath my ear. “Come to bed with me. I’ll make your first time so fucking good.”

“I can’t,” I gasp, the flat of his tongue licking the pulse at the base of my neck, his teeth razing me there immediately afterward. “I was brought here for a purpose, Dean. Fulfilling you in a way I wasn’t allowed to do before. But also, making sure you and Cameron leave as friends.”

“It’s never going to happen.”

“But it’s his turn, Dean,” I protest, even though…

oh yes, I really, really just want Dean to bring me to his bedroom and undress me.

I want to see him naked. Above me. I want to be his possession for the night.

His reward for being such a steadfast husband and father.

I want his larger body to take charge of mine while I call him Daddy.

I want. I want. I want.

More than I knew I was capable of wanting.

But I must remember why I was hired in the first place.

My bookstore is counting on me to remember the overall mission.

“Dean.” I twist between him and the door until he steps back with a curse, adjusting the bulk behind his fly. “Fine. I’m going to be watching from the living room, though. I don’t trust him with you, Ruby.”

I’m so confused by his distrust of Cameron, and I want to question him more about it, but the front door of the house opens behind me.

I turn to find Cameron in black, low-hanging swim trunks, loosely laced beneath his happy trail.

His stomach is tighter than a drum, his abs more natural than those achieved at the gym, as are his pecs.

Biceps. His right arm boasts a tattoo sleeve he’d only begun to ink in college.

Spiderwebs tangle with words and rough sketches depicting form, the art of the human body.

My broody sculptor, staring at me with his heavy-lidded green eyes.

So different from the corporate god at my back.

“Hi, Cameron,” I say, turning without hesitation and stepping into his heat, sighing when his thick arms close around me, dragging me up against his hard chest.

“Sorry for keeping her out so late. We got a little…carried away,” Dean says, petting my backside with familiarity. Patting it. “You understand.”

“I understand you’re as entitled as you always were.”

“Guys,” I murmur, kissing the dip between Cameron’s pecs, my palms smoothing the tension from his chest. “You know, if you could just be friends, the three of us might be able to spend time together. Like it was in the beginning. Remember those early tutoring sessions?”

“You mean, when Dean would play dumb so you’d have to lean over and explain the same concept ten times?” Cameron scoffs. “Yeah, I remember that.”

“What can I say?” Dean runs his fingers through my hair, a rusted sound turning in his throat. “It’s hard to concentrate when she’s around.”

“Good thing you don’t have to worry about that for the next couple of hours,” Cameron growls, picking me up and carrying me out of Dean’s reach.

Distracted by the taste of ocean salt on Cameron’s skin, I hook my legs around his waist and suck the flavor off his shoulder, letting him carry me to my bedroom. “I assume you brought a bathing suit.”

“Well, sort of.” Eyeing my suitcase across the room, I chew my lip. “Molly and Polly picked it out. I haven’t taken it out of the bag yet.”

“Interesting,” Cameron deadpans. “Let me take a look.”

I continue to cling to him, licking the saltiness from his tattoos and the sinew of his neck while he moves across the room.

He kneels and flips open the top of my suitcase, stopping to shudder through a moan when I bite him lightly.

“Dean is right about one thing. You’re a fucking distraction. A very beautiful, very sexy one.”

“Do you want me to get down?”

“Hell no.” I smile into his neck, listening to the crinkle of plastic behind me as Cameron unearths the bathing suit. “My God, I owe you one, Molly.”

Curious, I turn and glance behind me, finding a couple of interconnected silver strings dangling from Cameron’s long index finger. “Oh.”

“Oh yeah .”

With an impish grin, I slide off his lap, plucking the silver bathing suit up as I go. “I’ll go put this on in the bathroom and meet you outside.”

Cameron stands, the hunger stark in his gaze. “Hurry, angel.”

“I will.”

A few minutes later, I look in the mirror and barely recognize the bedroom-eyed, tangle-haired blonde staring back at me.

I’m in a silver micro bikini that covers almost nothing at all.

My nipples and the seam of my sex are hidden beneath the shiny fabric, but there is not a lot left to the imagination.

And I like this version of me, just as much as I like the girl who hunkers down in a blanket and reads, hiding if someone rings my doorbell.

The three-day time limit is an escape hatch giving me the ultimate chance to tap into the hunger I’ve been ignoring so long. Without shame.

There’s a buzzing sound and I realize it’s my phone vibrating in the pocket of my dress. Bending down to get it, I straighten with a smile when I see a text on the screen from Molly. Send me a pic of you in that bikini, girl. Need a visual.

“Good timing,” I murmur, snapping a picture of my reflection in the mirror.

Several lines of emoji flames come back within seconds.

And so I’m smiling to myself on my way into the living room, my intention to continue straight to the pool where Cameron is waiting.

But Dean steps into my path before I can make it out of the hallway, his starved eyes tracking down to my barely covered nipples, then down to the little strip running down the center of my most intimate flesh.

“You trying to make me come in my pants for the second time today?”

“I didn’t pick this out. Molly did.”

“God bless Molly.” He steps closer, wrapping my hair in a fist and turning me around, the heat of his attention incinerating the curve of my butt.

“Might as well wear nothing at all, huh?” Dean hisses through his teeth.

“You think you’re going to walk back in here a virgin if you go out there wearing that thing? ”

“I have incredible willpower,” I say, breathless from his manhandling. “Otherwise, you’d have taken it from me six years ago.”

He swats my ass hard with his free hand. “Been aching for it ever since, haven’t I?”

All I can do is whimper, moisture spreading on the string between my thighs. This is who I am, isn’t it? I’ve been repressing a lot of my wilder fantasies, but they unfurl now, refusing to be kept hidden. I like Dean’s high-handed attitude. I like his spanking.

“Remember who your Daddy is while you’re out there.”

“I will.”

Dean lets me go with a grating curse, but I can feel his eyes on me the whole way through the living room, as I step over the threshold of the sliding glass door…

Where I enter another world.

There are tiki torches lit around the edges of the pool, which glows like a blue jewel under the dark night sky. Cameron sits on the edge of a lounge chair, waiting, his hands folded loosely between his knees. But he stands slowly when I emerge, his chest shuddering up and down when he sees me.

“Holy shit,” I hear him breathe.

I go to him, carried by the magical atmosphere of the evening. The gentle coconut breeze and the rushing sound of ocean waves just below.

When I stop in front of Cameron, his arousal is already tenting the front of his swim shorts, his eyes pitch black. Blacker than the sky. He was always the darker of the two men. Mysterious, where Dean holds nothing back.

“I can’t believe this is real,” he says thickly. “I’m allowed to…touch your body, if I want to. No one is going to stop me. I’m not going to be served with divorce papers.”

“Your wife asked me for a selfie in this bathing suit,” I say, putting my arms around his neck and swaying against his body, letting the breeze stroke my hair. “She sent back fire emojis, so we’re definitely good to...”

“Play.”

“Play,” I whisper back, touching my tongue to his stubbled chin.

Taking my hand, he tugs me toward the pool, which is thankfully heated, the crystal-clear water climbing my thighs, tickling my nearly nude sex as I sink in deeper, floating into Cameron’s waiting open arms. He twirls me around and attacks my neck with a growl, both of us splashing sideways into the open water.

When we surface again and I’m done laughing, I marvel again over the fairytale in front of me.

A green-eyed prince with dark, dripping hair, surrounded by paradise, my body humming with arousal.

“I missed you, Ruby,” he says, playing with the strings on my hips, then ultimately pulling me into an embrace.

It’s so like Cameron to be the more tender man of the two, and I smile against his wet shoulder, letting him sway me in the chest-deep water.

“I’ve had weak moments where I’ve looked you up on social media, just to see if you were doing well, but nothing ever came up under your name. Were you trying to torture me?”

“Mmmm.” I nuzzle his ear with my nose. “You know I’ve always been a private person. I have social media accounts under Sip and Flip, out of necessity. But running a personal account and a professional one? That would cut into my reading time.”

“Sip and Flip?” he murmurs warmly. “That’s what you named the shop?”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it, angel.” He gathers my wet hair and turns my head to the right, skimming the barest hint of his lips along my neck. “Tell me what it looks like. I assume the ‘sip’ part of the name refers to the tea counter you always wanted in install?”

I gasp. “You remember me telling you that?”