Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
I don’t want to be someone else. This is the only feeling that makes sense, the only certainty. I reach for him, shivering as my hands find skin, the slope of his back, the hard muscle at his shoulder, the heat between us. I push my thigh between his legs, and he grinds against me, his cock hard against me, aching with a need I know he feels just as much as I do.
His hand slides down, finds the hem of my shorts, pushes—he wants them off, I know, but we’re tangled in the blankets so he just tears them to the side instead, rough and fast. I gasp and his mouth closes over mine, swallowing it. “Quiet, baby. We don’t want anyone to hear.”
Baby.
My entire body jerks with a need I don’t even try to understand.
He shifts on top of me, knee between my thighs. I can feel the rocks and sand through the blanket, but I don’t care, I only care about him, the heat, the way we fit together like we have done this a hundred times already.
“Please,” I whisper, hating how desperate it sounds. I want him. I need him.
“You sure?”
I answer by grinding against him.
He shoves down his own shorts, balancing on his elbows, his body so much bigger than mine it should scare me, but it doesn’t. I close my eyes and let him in, let him fill the empty ache, the loss, the fear, everything. He slides inside me, slow, his cock thick and rigid. The stretch burns, but I grab him harder, pulling him even closer.
We don’t make a sound, not a word, just these little gasps and shudders, our bodies rocking together. He kisses me again and again, moves inside me until the world tunnels down to the band of his arm and the breath on my lips. I don’t know if I’m shaking from the cold or from him. Maybe both. Who knows.
All I know is it feels incredible, the kind of sensation I have never experienced before.
“Cum for me, sweetpea,” he whispers into my ear.
I do.
Oh god, I do.
My nails rake down his back as I shudder against him, my entire body convulsing.
His growl is a low, ragged sound as he pulls his body from mine, releasing onto the sand beside us.
His body jerks and his muscles are tense as his breathing becomes ragged. It’s a delicious sound, and when he rolls back to me, I press my face into his chest and breathe him in. The warm scent of him. He curls an arm around me, pulling me close again, and I fall asleep in the way I have become way too familiar with.
It is quickly becoming my safe place.
That should scare me, but it doesn’t.
Morning comes suddenly, as if the night never happened. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m woken up to Aggie shaking my shoulders. My eyes snap open and it takes me a moment to gather my bearings. I see Aggie leaning over me, whispering my name. Ace is curled around me, and she’s desperately trying not to wake him. She fails, because his eyes slowly flicker open, too.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“We can’t find Rachel.”
I frown, sitting up. “What do you mean?”
“We woke up, and she wasn’t in her bed. We figured she just needed time, but then she didn’t come back so we went looking, and we can’t find her.”
I glance at Ace, who is sitting up now, too, his bare chest catching Aggie’s eye. She turns away, cheeks flushing.
“Did you check Iris’s grave?” I whisper.
“Zeke did. She’s not there,” Aggie says, twisting at the string around her wrist.
I push to my feet. “She’s grieving. Maybe she just needed space. I’ll help look.”
“She hates us,” Aggie mutters, her voice low. “She blames us for Iris.”
“We all blame ourselves,” I tell her, “but we can’t give up on each other now, so let’s go find her and sort this out.”
Ace pulls his shirt on and tells Kellen they will go search the jungle. Aggie and Tati agree they will go in the opposite direction, so they’re covering more area. Adrian tells us he will climb a tree to get a better view, nobody even tries to stop him as he rushes over to a coconut tree and actually begins climbing it like a fucking monkey.
“That man is fucking nuts,” Ace mutters.
“Yes, yes he is,” I agree.
With one more horrified stare in Adrian’s direction, he turns and disappears with Kellen. I try to think about a place I think Rachel might go, and I know for certain where I’d go. The cliff. It’s a hike, sure, but it’s so peaceful up there. Like a whole different world.
I make my way towards it.
My instincts were right, because the second I get to the top, huffing and puffing, I see her. Rachel is sitting cross-legged at the edge, staring out to sea, her ponytail swishing in the breeze. Her back is stiff, her hands in her lap. She hates me, that much is apparent, but I know that she is suffering right now. In a way none of us can understand. Iris was her best friend.