I’m currently lying on my stomach, facing the water, my tablet flat on the mattress, as I’m trying to draw a scene of us at the restaurant. Good thing that I applied sunscreen to my ass the second Nate was looking somewhere else.
I lift my head for the 10th time in an hour to make sure I still have a clear sight of Jack and Ikram, currently sitting on the sand, the water reaching their thighs with every wave.
Satisfied that they haven’t drowned, I focus back on the drawing taking form in front of me. The perspective when drawing such a scene, with people facing each other at a long table is always a little tricky, but I manage to capture that moment where everyone was smiling. First, Ikram and Evie, facing each other. She tastes the sauce on his plate using some bread and he tries to bat her hand away. Next to him, Jack, laughing at something Nuri is saying, holding Ikram’s hand over the table. And in the back, me, next to Nuri, looking at Jack with a smile, Nate staring at the side of my face with inscrutable eyes.
Because that’s what he did nearly for the whole meal. Just staring at me.
I jolt when I feel hands getting a hold of my foot, that was until now, just kicking in the air above my back with its twin.
“What—” I start as I fight to turn around and meet Nate’s eyes above my shoulder. “are you… doing?”
He cocks a brow, his lips tilting at the corner. “Figured I’d finish what I started at the restaurant.”
I open my mouth to object but close it without saying anything. Why would I object? It felt good. And, no matter how embarrassed I was, I wanted him to keep doing it.
I lock my tablet and put it back in my bag, freeing the space in front of me to fold my arms under my head. He lets go of my foot and I hear the lounge chair being dragged a little closer until it knocks against my own. Not two seconds later, he sits back and has my foot back in both his hands.Both of them.God, if one hand felt good then—
Good thing my face is buried in my arms and the sounds are muffled by the thick mattress, because the sound that just escaped me? It’s a sound I rarely make. Yes, even for sex. I’m almost certain that my back arches in response, and I can’t even be bothered to care that he has a full view of theunderside of my ass.
It’sthatgood.
“Hmph.”
“You okay?” He asks, stopping the delicious rotation of his thumbs against the sole of my foot and I want to slap myself in the face for allowing that sound—or whatever that was—to reach his ears.
I lift my face just enough for my words to make sense. “Yeah, I’m—Sorry, my feet just hurt so bad, and what you’re doing is…” I sigh, searching for words…Two random feelings a day.Okay… Yeah, I can do that. “It feels good. Really good.”
He resumes his careful massage then, and I’m pretty sure the whimper escapes me before my face is safely buried in the mattress.
“Look at you, sharing feelings with me… We’re already making progress.”
He presses a little harder on a sore spot on the outside of my foot and my hands turn to fist above my head.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to—ah…Make fun of each other?” I say, but the sound is a little muffled and he chuckles behind me.
“I’m not,” but I hear the smile in his voice.
“I have another feeling I can share,” I mutter dryly.
“I’m all ears.”
I try to pull on my leg when he—I’m sure, voluntarily—tickles the arch of my foot.
“Theshower,” I admit. “I’m weirdly getting more confused than embarrassed. You literally couldn’t run away from there faster, and now I’m not sure if I dreamt what you said last night and this morning. Because it felt like… Like you didn’t want to. See, I mean.”
His hands freeze on my foot and I wonder if I said the wrong thing or if I overstepped. The need to apologize is growing and the anxiety is becoming a tight knot in my stomach. He doesn’t say anything. And the silence is too heavy.
“I’m sorry, it’s—”
He lets go of my foot and I close my eyes, convinced now that maybe I shouldn’t have shared that feeling.
But I don’t even have the time to mourn his touch, since I feel the mattress dip a little on my side and the next thing I know, Nate’s warmed bodyis half laying on it and half on my back, his hand on my hip.
“You gotta stop apologizing for things that you feel,” he says softly in my ear, and I catch sight of his face, hovering over the side of mine from the corner of my eye. “You want to know what I felt that made me leave in such a hurry?” I nod. “Horny. And I didn’t want you to… notice.”
His throat bobs. I pause, turning over his words. “Horny.” I echo, and I feel the warm air of his sigh against my shoulder. “Because of the wet shirt—”
“Because of yourbreasts,” he corrects. “Yourbreasts,that were visible throughmywet tee-shirt. It got me all kinds of worked up. So if someone has to apologize here, it’s me.”
