Page 87 of The Paradise Problem

Twenty-Six

LIAM

I’m not sure whether I ever fully fall asleep, but I’m not suffering. For a few hours I’m in that syrupy, hazy place, with waves crashing nearby, cool, humid air pressing on my overheated skin, and Anna warm and asleep in my arms. Dreams flirt with the edges of my mind: mouths coming together, her soft cries, the wet sounds of our sex, the feel of her beneath me.

Even when I slowly rise to full consciousness, I stay motionless, listening to her quiet sleep noises, squeezing her when she murmurs, wondering whether I could carry her the entire way back to the bungalow. Lying for hours on a rattan mat on a wood-plank patio isn’t awful, but this very same position would be so much better in a bed.

Anna sleeps facing me, both her arms tucked against her chest and by default against my chest, too. She barely moves once her face is firmly pressed to my neck, almost like a button has been pressed in her brain that lets her fully power down. Has she slept like this with someone else? She must have, of course. The thought lands with a slice, a quick, sharp paper cut, and I have to shove it away. To me, everything with her is so raw, so candid; that transparency in both conversation and sex is new to me, almost embarrassingly so. I want to lie to myself and think it’s the same for her.

“I can hear you thinking,” she mumbles sleepily into my throat. “But if you’re going to freak out, can you do it later? You’re so comfortable.”

I laugh, kissing the top of her head. “I’m not freaking out. Just listening to the wilderness wake up.”

Insects and birds are coming to life, whirring, chirping, calling to each other from every measure of distance, and at the suggestion of creatures out in the darkness, Anna goes rigid in my arms. And then she presses forward, curling inward, like she’s trying to climb into my clothes. “Oh God, please don’t mention wilderness.”

I lift my head, scouting the immediate vicinity. “Doesn’t seem like anything out there is very close to us.”

“Not helping!”

“I do think we should head back, though. We might want to slip into the bungalow before anyone happens upon us.” Specifically, my father. Nothing would more effectively kill the vibe than hearing his voice right now.

Anna wiggles some more, but this time it seems to be less about escaping from bugs and more about finding ways to create friction between our bodies. “I don’t want to get up.” Her wiggling turns into grinding, and she sneaks a hand between us, palming my erection. Warmth bleeds into my limbs, and I press forward, dizzy with a rush of desire.

She kisses up my neck. “I like your morning boners.”

I groan, but not out of pleasure. “Green, I think I need to tell you: the word boners is…”

She pulls back to look at me. “You don’t like ‘boners’?”

“I enjoy my boners. I like the word less.”

“What’s better? ‘Hard-on’? ‘Woody’? ‘Stiffy’?”

“These are all terrible.”

A frown line forms on her forehead. “Devastating.”

“Then I may as well get it out there that ‘horny’ can also go in the bin.”

“You’ve just ensured that these words will now be staples in our marital relationship.”

“I think I can handle hearing them for another four days.” As soon as I’ve said it, we both go silent. Me, because an image has suddenly invaded my thoughts—dropping Anna off at her apartment in Los Angeles, seeing her figure shrink in the rearview mirror—and I don’t like the brief shadow it sends through me.

I’m not sure what brand of quiet she’s experiencing, but Anna tucks her face back into my neck, mumbling a “good” after what feels like an eternity. Her hand slides up to rest on my waistband, and I hate that I’ve just cooled the moment when all I want is her touching me.

The horizon has a telling glow to it, the lazy prequel to a sunrise, and I suspect it’s probably sometime just after five. Dad will be up and out soon, and what I want to do to Anna will take much, much longer than we have.

“Three hours is barely enough sleep,” I tell her, reaching to tilt her face to mine. I kiss her, resting my lips against hers. “Let’s head back and be lazy today.”

“Do we have to be lazy?” she asks.

“No…” I pull back so I can get a better look at her expression. The heat in her eyes sends fire licking across my skin. “But if you’re going to look at me like that, we do have to be alone.”

Anna stretches, kissing my chin, my jaw, my neck. Her hand slides down again, gripping me through my pants, teasing me with a tight squeeze. “We are alone.”

“For now.” I tilt my chin up so she has better access to my neck, mindlessly hoping that she’ll leave another mark. Her lips feather over my jaw, and then she bites. “My father gets up at sunrise and every morning has run along the trail that passes about fifteen feet from where we are right now.”

This has the effect I’d hoped, and Anna peeks past my shoulder at the band of light just at the horizon. With a reluctant groan, she shifts her hand from me and slowly pushes up onto her side, bracing back on a palm as she sleepily blinks out at the cornflower-blue darkness all around us. “Are we going to be able to find our way back?”

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