Honeymooning With the Enemy, page 14
“Oh yeah? Like faking an injury on national television?” He raises his eyebrows.
“Like pretending you have a husband in front of your entire office when you actually don’t.”
He laughs, and I can’t help but join in.
“Wow… we really are a pair of conspirators, aren’t we?” he says.
“I prefer the term masterminds,” I reply, taking a sip.
He laughs again before craning his neck to look at me. “I know I probably don’t have to say it, but please don’t—”
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I say. “Your secret is safe with me.”
We share a weak smile, before falling into another comfortable silence.
As I stare at the flecks of light glistening on the ocean’s surface, I can’t help feeling sad for Tanner. All this time… all those years since he first confided in me, he’s been doing something his heart wasn’t in. Dedicating his life to a passion that didn’t belong to him. For a moment, my mind wanders back to my promotion…
“Hey Storm.”
I look down at Tanner and he removes the sunglasses from his face. “Yeah?”
“Thanks for always being such a good listener,” he says, his eyes crinkling with a soft smile. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this but… I’ve really missed you.”
I try to keep my face neutral as my heart kicks up a notch.
Swallowing hard, I nod. “You’re allowed to say it.”
Our eyes linger there, glued to each other’s, and my mind practically screams the rest of the sentence.
I’ve missed you too.
There are so many unspoken words… I can feel them in the air floating between us. Feel the chemistry between us. I want to ask if it was always in my head, if it’s still in my head. I want to know what he’s thinking…
And then my phone vibrating tears through the moment, a serrated knife through a tent wall.
Bianca: What’s going on over there?? I haven’t heard from you since yesterday! Text me back, bitch!
18
Tanner
I reach my hand out toward the aquamarine water, wondering if I can touch it from the deck.
It seemed stupid to go on another boat for our second last day on land, but we were told the best way to see St. Maarten was from a luxury catamaran tour around the island. As soon as we boarded, they served up French pastries and fresh fruit for breakfast, fueling us up for our first stop at the tiny Tintamarre Island, where we drank freshly brewed coffee right there on the sand.
Next stop is Creole Rock, said to look like the head of an American Indian man lying face up in the ocean. The field of sea grass and boulders surrounding the rock make it perfect for snorkeling and scuba diving, so we take masks from the catamaran and hit the water. If it’s possible, the sights are even more beautiful than the ones we saw yesterday. Colorful coral, fish, sea turtles and stingrays swim around us, embellishing this underwater oasis for us to explore. As I watch Storm’s body ripple through the water, I almost have to pinch myself.
This must be a dream, being in a tropical paradise with her.
When I eventually struck up the nerve to confess the truth about my football injury, I thought it would be followed by crippling shame, disgrace. But coming clean to Storm was liberating more than anything. I don’t know why this surprised me. It’s always been liberating confiding in Storm.
I’m glad I told her the truth about the photo, if not everything else. Now we feel like genuine friends again, friends who share secrets. But there’s still something off about her behavior. She’s not cold with me anymore, it’s more of a cautious vibe I’m getting. Like she’s still holding me at arm’s length. I guess I can’t blame her for that.
We eat lunch on board, a delicious spread of salads, seafood, and freshly baked French baguettes with an array of dips and cheeses. We have to stop ourselves from going too crazy on the feast, because there’s still a stop at the Long Beach floating bar and another snorkel stop to get through before the day is over.
“I shouldn’t have had that second passionfruit daiquiri,” Storm says, holding onto a rock. “I’m too sloshy for swimming. And if I’m being honest, a tiny bit tipsy.”
I laugh, pulling the snorkel mask off my head. “Lightweight.”
She splashes water at me and it showers my face, some of it falling into my mouth. I spit it out, rubbing the drops from my eyes. “Now, now, Stormy. Don’t start something you don’t know how to finish.”
She raises her eyebrow at me, positioning her hand above the water.
“Don’t…”
Bringing her middle finger and thumb together, she flicks at the surface, an obnoxious splattering of water hitting me on the forehead.
“Right. You asked for it.”
Storm squeals as I lunge at her, but she darts away just out of reach. I toss my snorkel mask onto the rocks beside us so I can move more freely and swim after her, the sounds of her giggles propelling me forward.
“You can’t outswim me, I’m a professional athlete,” I say, throwing my arms overhead in freestyle. She abandons her snorkel mask too, diving underwater like a duck to escape me.
I follow her around to the back of the main rock, out of sight from the other tourists.
“You’re pretty slow for a professional athlete,” she calls, duck diving again and coming up ten feet away. “Are you sure you didn’t tear your ACL?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “You’re on dangerous grounds, girl.”
Diving underwater, I open my eyes and swim in breaststroke until her legs are just in front of me. She kicks and thrashes away, her laugh audible from underwater. Damn, her ass looks good from this angle, too. I keep coming for her until she’s trapped by the huge rock and I have her cornered. Coming up for air, I face her with a broad grin.
“What were you saying about me being too slow?”
“Truce?” she says, tilting her head innocently.
“Ha, not a chance.”
I lunge forward and tickle her stomach as she squeals, and I wonder if everyone else can hear the sound traveling along the water.
“Tanner, stop, I’m so ticklish!” She shrieks.
“That’s Nigel to you, ma’am.”
She explodes with laughter as I keep going, easing off when I decide she’s had enough tickle torture. It’s only now that she’s stopped waving her limbs around like a mad woman that I realize how close we are. I can see the saltwater dripping from the tip of her nose… the smattering of freckles over the tops of her cheeks…
Her giggles taper off as we bob in the water, her back almost pressed against the rock behind her. It’s like our own little cavern, rock walls shielding us on three sides from prying eyes. A sudden fire flickers to life in my stomach… and I watch as the ocean ripples in the reflection of her eyes.
The smile fades from her lips, and I wonder if she could be feeling what I’m feeling… wanting to do what I want to do.
What I’ve been dreaming about doing for the last ten years.
I float in closer until our faces are only inches apart and her eyes lock on mine.
I’m too scared to speak, terrified of breaking the moment. As my heart tries to break free from my ribcage, my breath all but stops. God… I’ve never wanted something so bad in my life.
I hold on to the rock beside her, reaching out with my other hand and cupping her face. A tiny gasp escapes her lips as our skin connects, her breath warm against my face.
Her eyes drop to my lips, and she lets out the faintest moan I’ve ever heard.
But it’s enough to drive me wild.
I press my lips onto hers, wet and cool with ocean water. The second we kiss, her hands find my chest, pulling me closer as my fingers weave into her hair. It’s desperate, sensual… fueled with desire that has laid dormant, but ever present, for the last decade.
She tastes salty but also sweet from daiquiris, and I need more. I slip my tongue against hers and another of those quiet moans graces my ears.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” I say into her mouth, the fabric of my shorts getting tight.
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to make me explode.”
She leans back far enough to meet my eyes, and something flashes in hers. She loops her legs around my waist, and the sensation against my cock sends me dizzy.
“You’re going to kill me,” I growl, clutching her ass and pressing her against the rock. Her mouth finds mine again, her tongue desperate, her body rippling.
I kiss her like it’s the last time I’m ever going to see her, like I’m a man destined for the trenches. It’s frantic and primal and narrated by our groans and gasps.
Fuck me.
When did kissing become so hot?
As I grind against her, her legs tighten around me, and I pull back.
“We have to stop.”
“What?” She looks at me, wide-eyed.
“We should… stop,” I pant.
What I mean is, if we don’t stop now, I’m going to come in my shorts. Maybe kissing Storm is a teenage fantasy of mine, but creaming my shorts from dry humping like a seventeen-year-old is not part of the fantasy.
“I think I hear them calling,” I clarify. “Don’t want them to leave us here.”
“Oh.” She unwraps her legs from my waist. “Yeah.”
We bob in front of each other for a few more seconds before I give her some space. Then I collect my mask from the rock and head back to the catamaran.
Storm is quiet for the entire ride back to Philipsburg and barely looks at me while we board the cruise ship. I’m dying to get her alone again so we can pick up where we left off, so I can pull her from whatever mental rabbit hole she’s going down right now. But even when we get to the door of our room, she tells me she’s going straight to the bar.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ll shower later.”
“You don’t want to get changed first?” I ask. Man, she really doesn’t want to be alone with me.
Did I read that kiss all wrong?
“I’m just really hungry,” she says, shrugging in her summer dress, the top tight against her breasts from her wet bikini underneath. “I didn’t eat much at lunch.”
“Ok… well, I’ll come with you.”
A look I can’t read flashes across her face.
“I mean… if that’s… okay?” I clarify.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” She gives me a tight smile and turns on her heel. I leave our door locked, following her like a sad puppy dog.
We end up at the same casual bar I went to alone on night one, but instead of sitting at the bar, we pick a table in the center. Or should I say, she picks a table at the center. No chance for privacy; a subtle hint to keep my distance, perhaps? I sigh, falling into the chair across from her and picking up the menu.
I can sense her gaze, but every time I look up, her eyes have flicked back down to the menu held in front of her face.
“The cheeseburgers are good,” I say, not even remotely interested in eating right now. “I had one on the first night.”
“Cool.” She nods.
When the server comes over, we order two cheeseburgers and Storm gets a Pina Colada. I’m going to stick with beer tonight.
Without the cover of our menus, it’s painfully awkward. We don’t even have our phones to keep us distracted because we agreed to leave them in our room this morning—a day off the grid and all that. But now more than ever I wish I had a newsfeed to scroll through.
Storm leans back in her chair, pretending to be fascinated by her nail cuticles, even though I know she’s just searching for any reason not to look at me.
“Listen, if I crossed a line when we were swimming before…” I start, lost for where to go with the rest of the sentence.
Storm looks up a me, a crease between her brows.
“Anyway, we can just pretend it never happened.”
“Oh,” she says, looking back at her nails. “Fine.”
“I didn’t mean to make it awkward between us.”
“Honestly Tanner, it’s fine,” she says again. “You don’t need to spell it out for me. You made it perfectly clear the other night when we had drinks.”
Now it’s my turn to push creases into my forehead. “What?”
Storm sighs. “Look, I don’t know what happened today, but you don’t have to worry about it. I was just a stupid girl back in high school with my wires crossed. We really just…” She breaks off, looking out the window to the ocean. “We don’t need to talk about it.”
“What do you mean you got your wires crossed?” I say, nodding at the server as they drop off our drinks. But the beer will have to wait. “What are you talking about?”
“Sending that stupid photo,” she says, talking through tight lips and avoiding my eyes. “I know we didn’t have that kind of relationship.”
I stare down at the table, wondering why the words sound so familiar. And then it clicks. Oh.
Oh.
“Wait, you didn’t think I meant…” My brain replays our conversation from the other night, after we got back from Puerto Plata. “You thought I meant I didn’t think of you that way?”
I try to meet her gaze, but she’s still looking anywhere but my eyes.
“Storm, I didn’t mean I didn’t have feelings for you. I just meant we weren’t up to sending photos like that yet… that I would never ask that of you… not that I wasn’t…” I break off again, rubbing my eyes. How did my stupid mouth betray me so bad the other night?
She stops darting her eyes around, letting them remain still before she slowly lifts them to me. “What are you saying?”
I take a deep breath, fixing her with a gaze she can’t turn away from. “I’m saying that I always had feelings for you. Before we even started talking, I had feelings for you.”
Her chest rises under her dress. “Oh.”
“Actually, that’s not entirely true.”
Caution sets her mouth into a line. “It’s not?”
“No…” I lean back in my seat, the moans she made earlier playing on repeat in my memory. “I have feelings for you. And the only reason I pulled my lips away from yours earlier was because my hard-on was making my shorts so tight, they were cutting off the circulation to my brain.”
Her eyes go wide, her lips repressing a smile.
“Yeah.”
I lean forward, extending my hand out toward her. She bites her lip and considers my gesture, before sliding her fingers through mine.
“Only now I have another problem,” I continue.
“What’s that?”
“My problem now is that I’m going to need to skip these burgers. Because there’s about a hundred other things I want to do with you, and each one would be a criminal offense to do in public.”
I bring her hand to my lips, kissing her knuckles. “So… if you’d like to accompany me to the honeymoon suite…”
She pushes out her seat, pulling me up with her hand still in mine. “Lead the way, Mr. Thorn.”
19
Storm
I always wondered if it would be like this. When I really wanted to have sex with someone.
Tumbling through the door, slamming it closed behind us with the weight of my body pressed against it. Frantically pulling at buttons, stumbling out of shoes, yanking down zippers in a way that could result in injury—it’s a good thing there’s no fly on his shorts.
It all plays out like a movie, except this time, I’m the leading lady. And Tanner is the handsome suitor.
Why does it feel like it was always meant to be this way?
I push Tanner’s shirt over his bronzed shoulders until it falls onto the floor behind him, leaving him in nothing but his boxer briefs. Jesus, is it legal for someone to look so good? I mean, I’ve seen him shirtless more than once this week, but there’s something about the sight of his chest now, heaving in the fading warm light that comes through our window. He may be retired from football, but he still has the body of an athlete.
And I need this body on top of mine, like, yesterday.
I clamp my hands around the sides of his head as our mouths come together again and we walk backwards while we kiss, stopping when we reach the end of the bed.
Tucking a finger under each strap over my shoulders, he pulls them down to release my sundress. It crumples to the floor around my ankles, and even though Tanner has already seen me in my bikini, it feels different now. I feel naked. My heart races as we climb onto the bed, my hips inching backwards as he follows, his body over mine.
Desperate hands trail his chest, running over each toned abdominal muscle until they reach the band of his briefs. Tucking my fingers underneath, I pull him downward.
The weight on top of me takes my breath away, but not because he’s too heavy. It’s a feeling of complete overwhelm, like realizing I’m getting something I’ve always wanted. Because even though I fought it, even though I spent years hating him, deep down, the fact remained.
This was always supposed to happen with Tanner.
Lowering down, his lips find mine and we kiss, deep and passionate. His tongue flicks over mine and I can still taste his beer from earlier, but I don’t mind. I want to taste all of him.
He moves his body up and down, and I can feel him hard against me. Heart racing, a sharp intake of breath fills my lungs. Oh my God. This is actually happening. I’m going to make love to Tanner Jonas.
The more he grinds against me, the more pronounced the tingling between my legs becomes. I’ve never felt this needy, this desperate. I want to tell him. I need him inside me.
But as he rubs his hand over my bikini bottoms, I freeze.
The second I become still, Tanner lifts his head, a crease forming between his brows. “Are you okay?”
I look into his rich brown eyes, dark like burned caramel. “I… I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
