The Paradise Problem (76)

He smiles, kissing me again. “Yeah?”

I nod, and for a few perfect seconds, we share the same breath, kissing like we’ve done it for centuries.

Pulling back, I reach up, pushing his sweaty hair off his forehead. “Definitely worth burning the shit out of the pizza.”



* * *



I’M STILL A LITTLE shaky and jelly-limbed, so even though he just did the bulk of the work, West handles the task of tossing the first pizza and getting a second one started. I tiptoe into the banquet room and feel around the dark walls for an entrance to a ladies’ room where I can clean up a little.

The entire thing feels like a sexy Scooby-Doo episode, and I continually expect to be busted by the mysterious owner of the island walking in with a group of goons brought to arrest us for the crime of Countertop Fornication. But in reality, it’s all fine. I find a bathroom. I use it. I make my way back to the kitchen where West is still in there, alone, and his smile is more relaxed than I’ve ever seen it.

I laugh down at our now-clean sex counter. “You’re the best guest. I swear that didn’t occur to me.” Apparently while I was gone, he graciously went digging for cleaning supplies and found a clean rag and a bottle of Lysol.

“Stealing a couple pizzas is one thing,” he says, turning with an oven mitt and pulling the pizza out. “Leaving your gorgeous ass print on the counter is another.”

We slip out to the covered patio, where we find a rolled-up rattan mat, set ourselves down, and eat pizza off paper plates, staring out into the darkness at the wild surf crashing on black sand in the distance.

I have no idea what time it is; West’s phone is dead and mine is back at the bungalow, but we guess it’s a little after one in the morning. It’s warm and humid, the perfect temperature for a walk across a quiet island, but I’m tired enough that the trek all the way back to our bed feels impossible.

“It’s maybe twenty minutes,” West says, pushing our plates away and lying on his side facing me, propped on an elbow. He reaches with his free hand, walking two fingers up my back as I hug my knees.

“I want to stay here a little longer.”

“Think of how comfortable the bed will be.”

“Think of all the snakes in the grass between here and there.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“But who will protect you?” I ask, looking at him over my shoulder. “That’s what I worry about.”

“I can see that,” West says softly, with a meaning that’s not so hidden anymore. He reaches up, brushing my hair off my shoulder. “Come here,” he says, coaxing me down beside him, pulling me into his arms. With a shift of our bodies, he rolls me to my back.

He hovers over me, sending a hand over my hip and up to my breast, kissing me with the kind of command and tenderness that had me digging into his pants the first time. But when I reach for him, he shifts his hips away.

“Don’t tempt me again, Green. I barely pulled out in time back there.”

I laugh, cupping the back of his head. “You know that doesn’t work anyway.”

“It felt like an important compromise.” He pulls me into his chest, letting me have one firm arm for a pillow, the other as a blanket.

“Liam?”

He goes still. “Yeah?”

“I had the best night of my life tonight.”

He’s silent in response for a few seconds, and then I feel the lingering press of his lips to the crown of my head. “Me, too.”

The chorus of nighttime rises around us: waves and insects, wind rustling through trees.

“Anna?”

Goose bumps spread down my arm at the quiet intimacy in his voice. “Yeah?”

“You called me Liam.”

“I did.”

“I liked it.”

“Good.” I tilt my face to his, silently asking for one more kiss. He delivers it and then some, before tucking my head beneath his chin.

And outside, in the warm circle of Liam Weston’s arms, I fall asleep.





Twenty-Six


LIAM


I’m not sure whether I ever fully fall asleep, but I’m not suffering. For a few hours I’m in that syrupy, hazy place, with waves crashing nearby, cool, humid air pressing on my overheated skin, and Anna warm and asleep in my arms. Dreams flirt with the edges of my mind: mouths coming together, her soft cries, the wet sounds of our sex, the feel of her beneath me.

Even when I slowly rise to full consciousness, I stay motionless, listening to her quiet sleep noises, squeezing her when she murmurs, wondering whether I could carry her the entire way back to the bungalow. Lying for hours on a rattan mat on a wood-plank patio isn’t awful, but this very same position would be so much better in a bed.

Anna sleeps facing me, both her arms tucked against her chest and by default against my chest, too. She barely moves once her face is firmly pressed to my neck, almost like a button has been pressed in her brain that lets her fully power down. Has she slept like this with someone else? She must have, of course. The thought lands with a slice, a quick, sharp paper cut, and I have to shove it away. To me, everything with her is so raw, so candid; that transparency in both conversation and sex is new to me, almost embarrassingly so. I want to lie to myself and think it’s the same for her.