Page 6 of Hot Summer

We’ve got a really exciting mix this summer—even with a few older cast members than we’ve had in previous series. Maybe the producers are finally hearing our cries?? (Though, next summer, get us at least two older men!) Fingers crossed everyone on this summer’s cast manages to find their perfect One... and that they bring us all the drama along the way!

Hot Summer premieres on RealTV on June 10 at 9 p.m.

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Cas’s arse was going to be stuck to this leather seat. Probably permanently.

It was (arguably) her fault for deciding to wear bikini bottoms that covered absolutely nothing, but she’d also been asked to take off her shorts the moment she’d gotten into the car.

As though her denim shorts were going to be visible to the audience while she was sitting in the back seat.

The driver currently navigating along the steep, gravel-strewn road that wound up to the Cypriot villa where Cas and at least nine other strangers would be living this summer had spent the last ten minutes ignoring Cas’s pointed questions about the decision to have her half-naked in the back of the Jeep (unprotected, as she’d last put it, from the stray pebbles flying in through the open top). She was starting to think he was hoping she would just stop asking.

“My arse is going to be so red,” Cas said, the words almost a threat. She tipped her hips to one side, the sticky sound of her skin separating from the hot leather filling the silence.

The driver sighed, his hands skimming over the wheel as he guided them into another turn. Cas waited for a minute, two, but the driver remained silent.

He should consider a job for MI6. He was probably very good at keeping secrets.

The car began to slow as it crested the hill, a few hundred meters away from the enormous modern villa that was Cas’s new home. The front of the villa was lined with windows that reflected bright blue sky, and the winding tan gravel path gave way to a low-lying wooden walkway lined with fairy lights. Cas had just opened her mouth to ask why they were stopping when the front passenger door opened and Chloe, the show’s main producer, climbed in.

Chloe’s long blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail that rivaled Ariana Grande’s. She was wearing a slightly too dark shock of blush across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and her lips were shiny and plump with gloss. She reminded Cas of the girls she’d picked up off the floor of the Spoons bathroom at her final Friday event last week before jetting off.

“Okay.” Chloe popped her gum, eyes scanning her clipboard. “Cassandra, right?”

“Cas,” Cas said automatically.

“Right.” Chloe scratched out Cassandra on her clipboard and wrote Cas in large loopy letters. “In a few minutes, we’re going to film the first few shots—you’ll be walking in with Ada”—Chloe pointed with her pen out the back window—“in the Jeep behind us.”

Cas turned quickly in her seat, eyes straining as though she would reasonably get a glimpse of this “Ada” in the Jeep still trundling up the road.

“Are we first in?”

She hadn’t seen any cars ahead of them, but it was always a good few minutes between the arrivals. Though, if Cas’s memory was correct, only the first two lovers walked in together.

“First in,” Chloe confirmed.

Cas barely held back her celebration—this was exactly what she’d been hoping for when she’d gotten into the car this morning, the only thought that kept her going at half past five, jet-lagged, eyes barely open.

She’d spent the better part of the last few weeks thinking through every possible step of her strategy to meet Robert’s demand of making the finals, but she’d known that so much of her actual experience once she got to the villa would be out of her hands, down to luck. Cas could have made it work no matter what order she came in—if she was coming in last, she’d have to command more attention, make sure she got a few good comments in—but this made everything significantly easier.

The girls in first, on average, had a much deeper connection with the audience, especially early in the summer.

Even with her attempts to suppress her joy, the smile was evident in Cas’s voice. “Great.”

Chloe looked at Cas for a long moment, her expression shrewd, before her gaze flicked down to scan over Cas’s outfit. Cas had gone a bit over the top with the bikini she’d chosen for today, but if she wanted to make an impression, this bikini was the one.

The bottoms were nothing to write home about—simple, tie-waist bottoms that weren’t quite a thong but still left most of her arse exposed—but the top?

The top was the stuff of Cas’s dreams.

It followed the same shape of a typical triangle bikini, but the fabric itself was barely large enough to cover her. There was a thin line of black that ran underneath her breasts and tied behind her back, and there were more thin black strips of fabric straining up across her chest and tying behind her neck. It almost looked like a harness, but an incredibly fragile one, like the tiniest slip of the finger could send the entire thing tumbling to the floor. The top also left every single one of her tattoos visible, which she loved. The full sleeve, to be fair, was hard to hide, but she even got to show off the words on her ribs—prophet of lies in serif font—and those almost never saw the light of day.

She’d spent a long time looking at herself in the bathroom mirror that morning before she left the holding hotel, partially to come to terms with what she was about to experience, but largely because she couldn’t get over her reflection. Her short brown hair, sleek and skimming her shoulders that shimmered with body highlighter, the shock of her tattoos and bikini against her pale skin, and fuck. Cas was turning herself on so much, she didn’t think any of the people in this villa stood a goddamn chance. She’d spent weeks spiraling out, coming up with a plan to meet Robert’s ridiculous expectations, but maybe this summer wouldn’t be as tough as she thought.

Chloe briefly met Cas’s gaze again before returning to her clipboard.

“Once you’re inside the villa, you and Ada are to go straight through the house and immediately out into the back garden. The other women are going to arrive and then our host, Mila, will be there to start the matching process.”

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