How to Honeymoon Alone

“Yeah.” I drop the towel a bit, giving it a cowl neck in the back. The outlines of the straps from the sundress I’d worn today are clearly visible across my shoulder blades. They’re white lines in the surrounding redness.Property © 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.

“There’s after-sun lotion on the counter,” he says.

“Oh, awesome! You don’t mind?”

“No,” he says. There’s silence for a long moment “Need any help?”

I meet my own dark-brown gaze in the mirror. My hair is wet around me, and I look rosy from the hot shower steam. My eyes are wide and excited.

“Yes,” I say and walk across the sandy-colored tiles toward the bathroom door. I crack it open a few inches. “Come on in.”

Phillip’s eyes are cautious as if he’s expecting me to be naked. But then they drop to my shoulders and widen. “Fuck, Eden.”

“Yeah, it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Your poor skin.”

“I must have missed this whole area this morning when I put on sunscreen.” I turn and let the towel drop further along my back, holding it tight against my front. “Remember when we ate lunch today?”

“Yes,” he murmurs and grabs the lotion.

“I was sitting with my back to the sun, and it was hot, so I put up my hair.”

“Yeah. This’ll feel cold.”

“It’s okay. I’m-oh, damn.”

He runs a steady hand with cool after-sun over my back, and I let my head fall forward. My skin feels taut and too hot beneath his palm.

“Mmm. At least I had fun today.”

His hand continues its smooth sweeping motion over my shoulder blades. “I didn’t know today would be the day I finally learned how many pigs were cast in Babe.”

I smile down at my toes. “I’m glad to have enlightened you,” I say. “You’re finally an educated man. How do you feel?”

“Nervous,” he says. “There’s so much pressure to use this knowledge responsibly.”

“With great power, you know,” I say. Our conversations are banal. Sometimes serious, often not, and never predictable.

“Mm-hmm.” His hand glides down the small of my back, his fingers trace along the edge of the towel. I’m not burned there, but I feel hot all the same.

“Your shower was really nice.”

“Oh? Good,” he says. Then he tuts and bends, and I feel the touch of a cool hand along the back of my knee. “You’re burned here, too.”

“I burn easily,” I say and reach out to grab a hold of the marble counter for support. His hand strokes up my leg, along my calf, the back of my thigh, until he reaches the edge of my towel.

“Maybe,” he mutters, “but you have beautiful skin.”

“Oh.”

His hand moves up, just a few inches, along my inner thigh, and my breath whooshes out of me in a sharp exhale. Anticipation tightens in my stomach.

“Eden,” he says and stands up. “I want to make sure-”

I turn around and meet his gaze, and his words falter. We look at each other, and the large bathroom suddenly feels very small, and very warm thanks to the steam from the shower.

Maybe my old self wouldn’t say this now. Wouldn’t be so open with it. But my vacation self doesn’t have the same restraints.

“I am sure,” I whisper. “It’s just, I’ve only slept with one person.”

His mouth parts. “Ah.”

“We started dating when I was in college, you know.”

“Makes sense.” Phillip’s eyebrows draw into two dark lines over his eyes. I can see unasked questions swimming in them. “The last thing I want is to pressure-”

I drop the towel before I lose my nerve.

It falls to the floor, a heap between our feet, leaving me in nothing but an uneven tan.

Phillip’s words die for the second time. His eyes drink me in, and it’s not the comforting darkness of the night that surrounds us now, but the spotlights in this exclusive bathroom.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” he mutters, almost like he hates that it’s true, like it pains him. He lifts a hand and traces his fingertips down my collarbone, down to where the tan disappears and the white outline of my bikini top starts. He traces the line across my skin, following the curve around my breast. “It’s like these are no-go zones.”

His hand brushes down, over my tanned stomach and to the pale white triangle where my bottoms have shielded me for the past week and a half. “So pretty,” he says.

He’s still fully clothed, and this might be the most turned-on I’ve ever been in my life, in this moment, having him watch me with burning eyes.

Words rise to my lips. “I don’t want you to compare me to… anyone. Compare this. I want us to leave the past behind, both of us, with this.”

His eyes return to mine. They blaze. “Eden, I can’t think about anyone else right now. I can’t even think about tomorrow.”

I laugh, half-embarrassed and half-pleased.

He must think I don’t believe him because he pulls my hand tight against his body. His erection is a hard length beneath my palm, and even through the fabric, he’s hot. “It’s true,” he says and kisses me.

The kiss is hungry yet slow at the same time, like he’s savoring it, savoring me.

And I get what he means. Because I can’t think of tomorrow, either, never mind our exes. There’s no room for anything but this.

He fills his hands with my ass and pulls me tight against him-me naked and him fully clothed. I’m about to protest that fact when he spins me around.

We stand in front of the mirror, him at my back. In the reflection, his eyes are heated. “Look,” he mutters, and wraps an arm around my bare waist. “You’re so unbelievably hot.”

I look.

And I don’t laugh it off, not as his hands skim the indent at my waist and the flare of my hips, or as he traces the outsides of my thighs. There’s nothing funny at all about the intensity in his eyes or his hand pushing my legs apart so he can reach between them, just like he did in the pool, touching me like he already knows all of my secrets.