Page 88 of The Paradise Problem

“Let’s take the shorter path. We haven’t walked it together, but it’s through the garden cabin area and I’m pretty sure there are lights.”

She nods, sitting up fully and rubbing her eyes. I take another long, appreciative look at her back in this dress; even though the cream satin is rumpled from dancing and walking and fucking and sleeping, it still gleams in the moonlight against her smooth skin.

But there’s also something vulnerable about her that has my chest constricting. She’s hunched over, hugging her knees, and her spine presses against her skin, sharp little points all the way down her back. Her personality is so big, her confidence so solid, that until I had my hands all over her last night, I didn’t fully realize how slight she is in more tangible ways. The view of her from behind in the blue-black darkness sends something inside me emerging protectively. It’s easy to forget, while she’s here and dressed in designer clothes, overfed at every meal, and basking in sunshine, that her life back home is hard, that she’s barely scraping by. That this trip is a break from her reality, and when she returns to Los Angeles, she’ll become that other version of Anna Green, the underemployed one, the one with food insecurity and unpaid bills, the one with responsibilities she’s hinted at but never fully detailed.

She has money now, I remind myself. You’re paying her more than many people make in years. You can give her more. You can ensure she never has to worry about money again.

Leaning forward, I press my lips to her shoulder blade, and kiss halfway down her spine, feeling my desire for her rise like the tide, mixing with this unexpected vigilance wrapping steel around my veins. I send an arm around her middle, hand sliding up over her breast, pressing my palm flat over her heart.

The words slip free in my thoughts—Please be okay after this—and I squeeze my eyes closed, pressing a final kiss to her back, not sure whether I’m making the wish for her or myself.

“Should we go?” she asks, setting her hand over mine on her chest. “This feels like the start of something we don’t want Ray to see.”

Laughing, I push myself to standing, extending a hand to her. Anna stretches, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I’m sad to leave the spot of the best night ever.”

“You still feel that way after sleeping on the ground?”

“I had a comfy pillow.” She steps back, taking my hand, and we start the trek back to our bungalow.

Twenty-Seven

LIAM

I suspect the only thing that would tip my family off to our scheme more than Anna and me appearing to know nothing about each other is how we suddenly seem like newlyweds, blocking out everything else on the island.

But there’s nothing to be done. For the next two days, we rarely leave the bungalow. And when we do, I can’t keep my hands off her.

We get back that first morning, drop our clothes, and finally get in the shower together. Messy, wet kisses, soapy, roaming hands work us both into a fever. It’s not fully light out yet; we have all day. But we must forget all of that because we don’t take the time to dry off; I set my hands on her hips, walking her backward to the bed, where I coax her down and beg my way between her legs, promising to make it good, nipping at her stomach, across her hips, until I tease her with a finger, and then my tongue, watching up the length of her body as she arches and presses into my touch. It’s only the first time I’ve done this to her, but the shape of her is familiar; she tastes like something I’ve always known. With my arms around her thighs, hands clamping her knees open, I lose myself, ravenous for her silk and sounds, the scrape of her nails in my hair, and the wild, clawing stretch of eternity where she comes against my tongue.

Drunk with lust, Anna drags me up her body, flips us over, and sinks down on me, seeking, it seems, every possible way to drive me to madness: fingernails digging into my chest, teeth scraping my neck, the way she lifts her hips just as I think I might come, teasing and withholding her slick heat, giving me only the barest friction until I feel like a barbarian, rolling on top of her and pinning her wrists over her head, fucking her with a desperate fury that leaves me gasping and astounded and leaves her poured like warm honey across the sheets.

We fall asleep in a breathless stupor, waking hours later, exhausted and starving. I don’t think either of us cares for one second what we look like emerging from our bungalow, but Anna looks stunning anyway. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, her face free of any makeup, and the glow of pleasure lights her skin from beneath. She walks beside me along the beach to the café for lunch, her legs long and bare in cutoff shorts, arms supple and tanned in a simple white tank, and I slide my hand into her back pocket, relishing the way she fills my palm as she walks.

I can’t resist reaching across the table while she spears a bite of fruit, or touching her bottom lip as she chews. She laughs at me as I move to the chair beside her so I can lean closer, press my nose into her neck, and inhale the way her sweat and my sweat together mix with the soap from the shower we took earlier. She smells like sex and sugar and me.

My hand finds its way to her thigh, my food forgotten. Her skin is satin on my fingertips, and I think about kissing it not three hours ago, think about how hard I took her after, and the way the mess of her desire spread down her thighs, right where I’m touching. She turns to capture my mouth in a kiss, her sweet pineapple tongue sliding with mine. Anna reaches with one hand to dig into my hair and I don’t care who’s there, who might be watching. I don’t think about anything but her.

“I need you back in bed,” I tell her. “On your hands and knees.”

We take the rest of the food to go.

* * *

WHAT WE DON’T DO is talk out what collaborators with benefits should look like. We never stare directly at any of it, and nothing about this feels simple anymore.

Starting that first day after we make love, it might as well be just the two of us on the island. While everyone else is at a sunset game night, Anna and I hike to a secluded cove where we skinny-dip and then collapse on a blanket where she shimmies down my body, teeth dragging down my abdomen, teasing my cock with her kisses and tongue under the moonlight. The following morning, we wake slowly, lazily, making languid love with me curled behind her, my hands roaming the warm front of her body. We book a private boat to take us to a reef a few miles offshore where we snorkel and enjoy lunch on the deck, and I trace patterns on Anna’s stomach as she sunbathes topless on the bow. Later, we tumble into our bungalow, where I finally play out the fantasy that looped in my mind for hours: straddling her ribs, roughly stroking my aching length, spilling on breasts still warm from the relentless sun. We have dinner that night at Jules Verne, at the table in the most private corner, hidden by the branches of a giant mangrove, and I have no idea whether anyone looks our way; all I know is no one dares to join us.

It’s only later that second night—after we walk back to our bungalow, after Anna wraps her legs around me and I take my time feeling every inch of her, after I hold her boneless, sweaty body in my arms while she comes down—that we finally, truly talk.

Pushing up onto her elbow, she looks down at me. “Liam?”

“Mmm?” I reach up to stroke her jaw with my thumb.

“What are we really doing here?”

“What do you mean?” My voice comes out gravelly, my throat accustomed for the past several hours only to the hoarse, unfiltered noises she drags out of me.

“What’s the loophole in the trust?”

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