“Remember Turks and Caicos?” he asked, making my brows draw together.
Of course I remembered Turks and Caicos.
The trip we went on because my parents wouldn’t let me go on the originally planned trip to South America.
The whole vacation was full of long, lazy, sun-soaked days. That we barely got to experience. Since we spent most of our time in bed. Exploring each others bodies and making plans for the future.
A future he would rip away from me pretty quickly after we got back to Navesink Bank.
“I remember what happened right after,” I said, making his shoulders slump a bit.
“Fuck, Lulu, can’t we just remember the good shit for two minutes?” he asked.
“The good shit,” I repeated, a little angry that my mind flashed from being in bed to him, to being in bed alone, crying my eyes out because he’d left me.
That was the thing, I guess.
It was impossible for me to think of the good times without the bad ones ruining it.
“Come on,” he said, shaking his head at me. “There was a lot of good shit.”
“I guess that’s the problem then,” I said, shrugging.
“What does that mean?”
“If you had always been a dick, I wouldn’t have been so hurt about you leaving like that.”
“You wish I’d been a dick to you?” he asked, lips twitching a bit. “Lulu, you’d have kicked my ass if I’d so much as looked at you wrong,” he said.
“So, what? You were nice to me because you were afraid of me?”
“I was nice to you because I lo—because I liked you. But I’m not going to deny that you’ve always had a psycho side, and I wasn’t willing to wake up to you trying to saw off my balls.”
“Trying,” I scoffed. “I’d have had them off before you even knew what was happening,” I told him, letting myself smile at the chuckle he let out. “Are you going to give me my towel or not?” I asked.
“Still debating that,” he said, smile going from amused to sultry in a second flat. “Kind of enjoying the view for the moment,” he admitted as he took a couple steps inward.
I had to admit, I was enjoying my view as well.
I usually tried to avert my eyes when he wasn’t fully dressed around me. First, because I’d be damned if he caught me looking at him. But second, because I knew that my body still reacted to him with some sort of sense memory, leaving me turned on in seconds flat. With no hopes of relief.
“Valen, please,” I said, hoping the desperation that was slowly but surely working its way through my system was not clear in my voice.
“Please what? Please give you the towel and fuck off, or please remind me of how good things could be when we happened to find each other without clothes on?” Valen asked as he stepped closer still.
Too close.
Far too close.
My body was practically humming with the need to feel his touch.
“We can’t,” I insisted, trying to hold onto that last little bit of resistance.
“Hmm,” he said, and he was almost close enough to feel that sound vibrate through his chest. “Maybe we can’t,” he agreed, and when I tell you that the disappointment inside me was strong, I mean I damn near doubled over from it. “But maybe I can,” he added.
The wicked smirk he shot me was instantly familiar, something I’d seen hundreds of times.
Before I could understand his intentions, though, he was down on his knees in front of me, and carefully reaching for the ankle of my bad leg, and coaxing it wider just a second before his face was between my thighs.