“But you’re too busy feeling weird around me right now to stop it, so let’s go.”
Her cheeks turn crimson. “I don’t feel weird.”
“Yes, you do. You’re acting like we’re strangers, when I fell asleep with my cock inside you.”
“Fynn,” she says, grimacing. “Can we not?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” I grab her wrist and pull her against me. “Do you really think you can ignore it?”
She stares into my eyes. “Yes, for a little while at least,” she whispers.
I let her go. If that’s what she wants, then fuck it. We head out front and I snap at a couple of lazy drivers standing around the garage beneath a giant slow-moving fan. One of them brings a car around, but I wave him off. “I’ll drive. Send word to the gate ahead and tell my brother we’re headed to Lookout Park.” The driver snaps a salute, which is a little overkill, and we head out.
Mirella seems on edge, but I feel better the second we hit the main road. It’s been days since I left Villa Bruno and I’m so antsy it fucking hurts. Lookout Park isn’t far from where we live and there are rarely people there at this time of the morning. It’s early enough that it won’t be too hot out, but late enough that it won’t be crowded—so I can do the exercises without feeling like an asshole.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Mirella asks when I park and pop open the door. “I don’t want you to push it in the heat.”
“It’s barely eighty out.”
“But it’ll be like ninety soon.”
“Come on, princess. We’ve got work to do.”
She sighs, but quits arguing as I limp across the sidewalk and head toward a low-lying grassy section opposite some tennis courts. A copse of short trees casts a long shadow, and I take her right into the shade.
“See, not bad,” I say, stripping off my shirt. Her eye bulge as she stares at my chest and the tattoos that snake along my skin. I love when she looks at me like that, like she’s never seen a real man before. There’s pure lust in her eyes, and if we weren’t in public right now, I’d fuck her until she’s drenched in sweat, and I’d lick the sweat from her delicious little nipples, or the tears of joy from her eyes.
“Guess we’d better make the best of it,” she says, resigning herself, and we get to work.
After about fifteen minutes, I’m drenched and struggling. I hate to admit it, but she had a point about the heat. Working down in the gym is one thing, but doing all this stuff outside adds another degree of difficulty. I refuse to let it show though and don’t complain once as we keep moving, and soon a slight breeze picks up, making things a little more bearable.
And she looks gorgeous with her flushed cheeks and beads of sweat running down her forehead. Her lightweight white polo shirt clings to her body and I can just make out a hint of a black sports bra underneath. She looks gorgeous, and I get distracted more than once by her body, insanely tempted to grab her and pull her against me and fuck her here and now up against a tree, but unfortunately we’re in public, and I doubt the old ladies playing pickleball will be happy about me pleasuring Mirella loudly and violently.
“Ready to say this was a bad idea?” she asks when we finish and both of us are dripping sweat into the grass.
I shake my head, grinning. “Never. I liked the challenge.”
“Come on, the heat’s bad for you. You want to walk at that meeting thing in a few days, right? We can’t risk working too hard and setting you back.”
I lean up against a tree and tilt my head against the wood. She hesitates, but sits down beside me, close enough that our thighs might touch if I shift just a bit. I’m always so aware of her body. It’s like she’s the brightest thing in any room and I constantly want to be close to her.
I pick at some grass idly. “Do you know what it’s like to wake up from a coma? How disorienting and strange it feels to go from a state of constant dreaming to suddenly back in the world?”
She looks started and shakes her head. “I can only imagine it must be terrifying.”
I don’t know why I’m talking about this. I never talk about the coma, what it was like to be under, but with her I feel safe enough to try to explain why I’ve been acting this way.
“That’s one way of seeing it. The other is life is precious. Life is for living, and we’re not living sitting around in Villa Bruno. I can’t stay cooped up forever. I spent enough time cooped up inside my own head and now I want to be out here.”