I can see the pair of them now, in the glow of the villa lighting. The familiarity makes my heart pang.
“No,” Heath says, and wraps an arm around Josh’s shoulder. “It wasn’t fun at all, it was fucking shit, actually.”
My world feels as though it’s about to drop through the floor, but Josh leans in to kiss me.
“That was Heath’s point, though,” he tells me. “That was what it was all about. A test.”
“What test?”
I feel so confused.
“Heath wanted to seeHollyin action, with other men. And he wantedmeto see Holly in action, with other men. He wanted to know what it felt like.”
“You were a great performer, just as I knew you would be,” Heath says, taking my hand. “But the experience wasn’t the greatest. It was… interesting. Certainly interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“It made Heath jealous,” Josh tells me, landing a kiss on my shoulder.
My stomach lurches.
“Jealous? Really?!”
“Really,” Heath says, opening the terrace door for me once we get to the pool. “And it made your boyfriend jealous, too.”
I turn to Josh, my eyes searching his.
“It made you jealous? For real? What the hell?”
I can’t stop staring at him as I back my way into the kitchen. I’m transfixed by his presence. By his demeanour. By the burn in his eyes.
The two amateurs’ ferocity has nothing on the way my boyfriend takes hold of me and slams me onto the breakfast bar, positioning himself over me with a dirty scowl on his face.
“Yes, it made me jealous,” he says. “Turns out watching something in the flesh is a tad bit different to hearing about it in the aftermath, Ella. You looked like a real fucking whore out there. Fuck, how you wanted them, that was no fucking act.”
“I wantedcock, Josh, notthem.They never meant shit to me. The proposal did.”
I love the way his body feels against mine, just the way it should do.
“You’re fucking mine,” he says. “Even though you’re a hooker, you belong to me. You know that? Those pricks thought they were lords of the fucking manor, but they’re nothing. They were shit. This is the real deal, right here.”
I tip my head back and nod.
“You don’t need to tell me that, Josh. I already know. The real deal is right here, in this room. This is exactly where I belong. I belong to you.”
I look over at the fire in Heath’s eyes, so deep and brutal that it rivals Josh’s.
And I know again there is something unspoken in the room…
I can feel what Heath wants to say, because I feel it myself. It thrums through me like electric waves.
I belong to him, too.That’s the truth of it.
And not just me, either. The same applies to my boyfriend.
Yes, I belong to Josh, but I also belong to Heath Mason.
We both do.
