After kicking out of my heels, I carefully lowered myself to the pool’s edge and let the tips of my throbbing toes fall into the crystal blue water, the coolness making me hitch in a breath as I climatised to the temperature. Eventually, I let the rest of my feet, ankles and calves dip beneath the surface, and the relief it offered felt almost orgasmic.
Closing my eyes, I moaned out loud, placed my hands behind me, and leaned back, lifting my face to the rising sun that wasn’t quite high enough yet to feel any heat. For a single moment, I focused all my senses on everything around me.
The peace.
The silence.
The solitude.
Until a rough clearing of someone’s throat caught my attention, and I looked across to the other side of the pool to see a shirtless Henry Cohen sitting on the edge of a padded sun lounger, bent over, his fingers working on the laces of his trainers while he stared straight at me.
In the haze of the dawn breaking mixed with the alcohol in my bloodstream, he looked like a god. All tanned skin, moody stares, dark brows shading perfect eyes, and a mouth that looked like it wanted to insult me for no reason.
He didn’t say a word as we stared at each other, neither of us looking away or acknowledging how awkward it should have felt to hold each other’s gaze that way. He simply tied one trainer, then switched to the other foot to do the same, never once taking his intoxicating gaze off me. The barely-there sun framed him with the perfect backdrop, the horizon filled with the ocean behind him, making the bastard look like a work of art.
My heartrate thundered in my chest, and those traitorous butterflies began to flutter around in the very pit of my stomach, making the muscles in my thighs tighten.
How could one moody bastard do those things to me with nothing more than intense eye contact?
Were they nerves?
Did Henry make me nervous?
I hated even the thought of it.
No. It had to be the alcohol messing with my mind, misfiring all my thoughts, making me stumble over myself.
I never looked away from him, though, not even when he rose to stand, wearing nothing but a loose pair of grey running shorts and the trainers on his feet. Henry’s entire body was made up of hard edges, the lines and curves of his every muscle making my mouth water. When he ran a hand through his thick, blackhair and held my gaze, I let my lips part as I waited for him to speak. Hoping he would. Wanting to know why he seemed so repulsed by me when he didn’t even know a damn thing about my existence.
But I never got to hear him speak, because when he eventually looked away and glanced down at the watch on his wrist to press the screen a couple of times, Henry turned and set off jogging, leaving me to stare at nothing but his toned, beautiful back in confusion.
Part aroused.
Part mortified.
Part confused, because “What the hell kind of psycho goes jogging at this time in the morning when they’re on holiday?”
Chapter Three
Phoebe
The thing about being on holiday is that you never seem to need as much sleep as you do back home. After making my way to my bed not long after Henry had gone on his oddly timed run, I crashed hard, dreaming of nothing, grateful for the silence of my mind. I was the first to wake sometime later, the sting of the night before quickly reminding me that I was not, in fact, a big drinker, even though I’d tried like hell to act like one in front of the others.
Eventually, Bailey and Rhea surfaced and dragged me out of our apartment and back around the pool. Today, we were a lot less enthusiastic than the day before, but it didn’t take long for our talk to turn to the previous night. I kept my eyes closed, in my usual position on the sun loungers between the girls while they discussed Jace and Andy with each other.
“Just admit that you like him,” Rhea said with a sigh. “You don’t play hard to get, Bailey. You never have.”
“All I’m saying is we’re on day two. I’m not putting all my eggs into one basket just yet,” Bailey responded.
“I don’t think it’s your eggs he’s after,” Rhea said with a chuckle. “Just the thing that leads to them.”
“Ew, Rhea.”
“So gross,” I muttered quietly.
“And what about you, Rhea?” Bailey asked. “Jace would have held your hand and pissed circles around you all night if you’d let him.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jace said from somewhere above me, and when I slowly peeled my eyes open behind my sunglasses, I saw him standing over Bailey’s bed. “Pissing in public isn’t really my go to move when I’m trying to seduce a woman.”
