Bait(73)

“Not tonight.”

My heart falls.

He has to.

The pool has no barrier on the far side, just a smooth ledge onto nothing. I imagine swimming up to the drop, staring down at the moonlit world.

“Come on,” I protest, and he smirks.

“Get your pretty ass in the water before I throw you in myself.”

“Is that a threat?”

“A promise.”

An electric moment, me bared to the whole world, naked in his back garden while he stares on from the shadows. And then he moves. Quickly.

He hoists me up before I can run. His hand clamps over my mouth, just as always, but this time I don’t go easy. I kick my heels off in a beat, my arms snaking back around his shoulders to grab hold of him.

I pick the perfect moment as he reaches the edge of the pool. My feet hook his legs and hold. I don’t let go as he drops me.

Don’t let go as he fights for balance, teetering over the side.

Please, God.

It works.

My soul air-punches as I topple the monster. Surprise was my only real advantage. I doubt I’ll have it on my side ever again.

But that’s ok.

It’s ok, because as I splash hard into that beautiful water, he’s falling right behind me.

He recovers at the last second, manages to catch himself on the ledge before he goes under. He’d haul himself right back out if it wasn’t for an impulsive moment of bravery that sees me throw my wet body at his and wrap my arms around his neck.

“Please,” I whisper. “Be with me.”

My tits flatten to his chest and soak his shirt clean through. He’s ridiculously ripped, muscles taught as he supports my weight as well as his.

He lowers himself slowly. Carefully. My mouth is on his before he can protest.

He kisses me back as his feet touch the bottom.

This time I won’t be thwarted. My bravery knows no limits. My fingers are lightning on his shirt buttons, hunting out his bare skin. I tug his bow tie loose and my hands slide up his bare chest in victory.

I break the kiss with a smile. Push away just enough to look at him.

He’s inked from pecs to throat. A monochrome display of pure brilliance. My jaw drops.

I’ve never seen anyone so sculpted. Never seen ridges of hard flesh as perfect as they look on him.

“You are incredible…” I whisper, but his expression is grim.

He pushes himself across the pool to the ledge that leads to nowhere, and there’s something very wrong here. Wrong enough to hitch my breath.

I’m staring at the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen. The most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, pale in the moonlight, in the most glorious state of undress as the water glitters. There’s a whole universe of stars behind him as the world falls away.

But it all feels wrong.

He feels so wrong.

I stay back, dropping myself down into the water until my hair fans all around me. I wait for him to wrestle whatever demons he’s up against, praying he’ll come out the other side and still want to know me.

Right now I’m not so sure.

I’m not so sure of anything.

He looks tortured. Broken.

Haunted by demons worse than any I’ve seen in my nightmares.

I remember our initial conversation online. It feels so long ago.

I loved hard. I lost harder.

Him the same as me.

The question is in the air, just as it was back then. The same question that landed in my inbox amongst the idiots out for a cheap lay.

The one that I asked him right back.

The one he never really answered.

Secrets.

I can hear them twitching.

I take a breath. Summoning every last scrap of bravery I have left.

And then I ask him, my breath barely more than a whisper in the moonlight.

“What happened to you?”





Phoenix



“I loved hard. I lost harder.”

My words are instant. My reply vague as shit.

I’m cranking open the trapdoor and staring the secrets right in their twisted faces, not knowing which one to pull out first.

I hate the way she feels so far away, her eyes so sad as she stares at me.

My breath feels tight. I feel like I’m on the edge of a confession, for sins I’m not sure are even mine.

“Me and Jake, my brother, we had a haulage company.” I begin, then correct myself. “Have a haulage company. Mariana appeared out of nowhere. Backpacking through the countryside. Wild. Looking for something she wasn’t sure she was searching for. She found us.”

I meet her eyes.

“She found me.”

Abigail nods. The water ripples as she kicks her way over. She rests against the ledge just a short way away. It feels like miles.

“She’s the one you lost?” she asks.

“I lost her long before she left,” I admit. “We were enemies sharing a bed as lovers. In the end, I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to fuck me or kill me. Probably both.”