“It gets dark early because this little island is practically sitting on the Equator,” Bly said, pulling her even closer. “The sun rises at six in the morning and sets exactly twelve hours later, every day of the year. We’re closer to the sun here, with the curve of the earth’s surface and all, and the temperature is pretty much constant. There’s only the rainy season and the dry season in Bali—either-or, no in between. It’s like my love for you: there’s my life before you, and my life since you, and only the moments and years after I met you count. The rest was too dry and barren to even think of as meaningful.”
“Bly, I remember saying I love you for the first time in Las Vegas, the night before… before Jamey Huang took me away from you. I can’t recall the details of Hong Kong. I have brief flashes of being handcuffed and Jamey hitting me. That’s all I know, the rest is just missing; do you know if I was… did he… hurt me in any other way?”
“No, you weren’t molested, he held you as a bargaining chip. Do you want hear the details?”
“No, not now. Not when I’ve only just rediscovered you. I want you to make love to me, I want you to say you love me, I want you to kiss me and never stop.”
His fingers skimmed her face, her neck, travelling downward, tracing over her flat stomach to her sex. She flinched at his touch—her flesh was tender and swollen. He shook his head sorrowfully and moved his hand away.
“We’ve been at this all day,” he said. “It’s always been obvious that we’re a little mismatched in the size department. Let’s give it a rest, and I’ll wake you in the morning with soft kisses that won’t hurt at all.”
“Alright,” she said, her lips inches from his, her hands savoring the elegantly carved planes of his body. “I’ll count on that. It seems your kiss is a powerful cure.”
*
He was true to his word. She woke in the morning to a real life wet dream, before she’d even opened her eyes. It was the most erotic feeling she’d ever known, the wet heat of his mouth, the perfect pressure of his tongue. The coil of pure pleasure tightening deliciously inside her, then the explosion, the “little death,” as mind-blowing in its ferocity as his love for her. She cried out his name and begged to have him inside her and he plunged into her, happy at last. His life made sense again. With Charlotte wild in love and wild in bed, it was all he needed to be complete.
“How about an open-air tour of Bali in a vintage Jeep?” he asked, after they’d finished breakfast and she’d slathered on plenty of sunscreen.
She was a fiend when it came to sunscreen, she’d grown up in the South and all too often she’d seen what the sun could do to perfectly good skin. Her ex was Scandinavian, with white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes, and he’d loved her ‘Southern-belle’ beauty, as he called it. Jet-black hair, deep-sapphire eyes, full pink lips and creamy white skin. She’d been accused of fearing the sun like a vampire, but it was her mother who’d instigated her compulsive addiction to sunscreen and sunhats when Charlotte was just a girl.
“Absolutely,” she said, slipping into a strappy little sundress and sandals. “Where are we going? Is there actually life outside our luxurious love nest?”
“There is,” he said, crushing her to him suddenly. “Although I’m not sure I want to share you with the rest of the world. People still recognize you from the magazine cover, and it bothers you. Can you handle it?”
“That’s right,” she said, looking past him, scenes flashing to life and fading quickly. She was a naive twenty-one year old when the photographs were taken, and they’d set her on a collision course with destiny. A course that led her to fame and to law school and away from Alexander Bly, and then back to him when he became her client. What about her best friends, did they know she was in love with Bly? No way they would approve of him—they didn’t approve of any man she went out with for more than a week. The three of them, Charlotte, Finn, and JP, met people and dated, but they were never serious about anyone. They were a threesome without the sex, they were each other’s family; no one was allowed to come between them.
“Finn and JP, do they know about us? Do they know we’re together?” she asked, her voice not much more than a whisper.
“Yes, they know. Charlotte, JP knows we’re here on this island, and Finn… I’m not sure about Finn. Maybe we should talk about that,” Bly said. His fingers drifted through his hair and he was agitated, she could see.