Page 36

“Did you even bother to put on sunblock? Look at your skin. You’re so fair, you’d burn in ten minutes flat, sunblock or no.”

“Of course I put on sunblock. I know my burning potential better than anyone.”

I looked at her lips, licking mine. Hers were shiny pink, glossy in a way they’d never been before. “Are you wearing makeup?” I asked her, tone disgruntled.

“Just lip gloss. Iris gave it to me. It barely has any color, but it was SPF 15, so I figured why not?”

Without asking permission, I grabbed a tissue and began to rub it off.

Instead of taking exception as I’d expected, as she damn well should have, she started giggling. She was drunk, or at least well on her way to getting there.

It did terrible things to me, head to toe. It was all I could do not to drag her by her silky, fragrant hair to the nearest bed.

Something was happening to me, and it was crazier than any damn thing I’d ever experienced.

Seeing her like this had set something off inside of me, set something fundamental askew, and I didn’t know how to put it right again, didn’t even know how to make myself want to.

I couldn’t put my finger on how it had even happened, this budding—blooming—overripe obsession. It had just creeped up on me, grown through all its stages while I’d been struggling to convince myself that it had never been planted at all.

I leaned back, eyeing up her barely covered body as she convulsed with laughter. Her magnificent tits were bouncing up and down so perfectly, they were dribbling like perky basketballs and her joke of a bikini top was hardly containing them.

It took everything I had not to outright palm them.

I felt a bit dizzy with the effort.

“Come with me,” I told her sternly. “We’ll find something more appropriate for you to wear.”

I took her gently but firmly by the hand, and she came along without protest. I lectured her all the way to her wing of the house, straight up to her room. She was being surprisingly silent for my deranged tirade. It wasn’t like her. Usually she couldn’t keep her mouth closed when I was acting halfway normal, and now that I’d lost my mind… she was shockingly amenable.

But every time I glanced back her eyes met mine, and they were telling me something, studying me curiously, like she’d just learned the answer to a very significant question.

I set her firmly on her bed, went to her closet, and started rifling through it without permission, searching until I found a long, baggy muumuu that I’d previously seen her wear when I made her go out to the pool with me. I tossed it at her.

She caught it, but made no move to put it on.

I wasn’t deterred. I threw it over her head, dragging her arms through the generous holes.

Just like that she was covered up. I wanted to sit down, I was so relieved.

“No one else out there is dressed like this,” she pointed out, one of her perfect, sassy eyebrows raised.

“Well, they’re all sinners,” I said, tone deadly earnest. “Hedonists. You aren’t like the rest of us. You’re wholesome.” That word tasted different suddenly. More dangerous. A barbed-wire fence in my path, and me with wire-cutters already in hand. “And that’s not going to change on my watch. Your meddlesome friends need to stop tampering with your clothes. They would probably think it was funny if that itty bitty top had gone askew and let a nipple slip out. They’d think it was no big deal.”

“It’s not that big of a deal. They’re just nipples, and it’s mostly women out there, as I’m sure you noticed.”

I sat down hard on her bed the moment the word nipples left her mouth, swallowing hard as I looked up at her. “Put on a hat, too. The sun is brutal out there for skin like yours. I’m warning you now, I’ll be pissed if you burn yourself. You won’t hear the end of it. I’ll turn into a total nag, worse even than you.”

“I can’t be a nag,” she told me.

I squinted at her. “Why’s that?”

“You ride a nag.” She started laughing as soon as she said it.

My mind went to filth for a few tense moments. “You’re too much,” I told her, wanting to kiss her, wanting to ride her raw. “Seriously though, please wear a hat. I worry about your skin.”

Her lips pursed, and she gazed at me out of her clear, glasses free, Bambi eyes, no barrier between us for a moment. I didn’t know if it was my imagination, but if I’d had to describe it I’d have said she was affectionately exasperated.

But for some reason she did listen to me. She grabbed a big straw hat out of her closet and moved toward the door.