Page 26 of Marrying the Enemy

They shouldn’t. It wasn’t just the risk of pregnancy. It was who they were. This was supposed to be an inoculation against wanting each other, but she feared it was only going to make this incessant pull between them stronger.

“Unless there’s something more to worry about?” He shifted his hand to her stomach. “I get checked regularly.”

She couldn’t bring herself to admit that she had never been tested because she’d never been with anyone before last night. She hadn’t told him that and doubted she ever would. She wouldn’t have the opportunity. They were never going to see each other again. Not if they could help it.

She turned her face into the crooked arm that was her pillow.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I don’t have anything to worry about. I can take a pill once we’re back in civilization, to be safe.”

“Sure?” he asked in a gratified growl even as he drew his hips back and guided himself between her thighs, seeking.

“Yes,” she breathed, arching to accept the press and penetration that sealed them together one final time.

He swore and clutched his arm hard around her a moment, sounding breathless as he said, “You feel incredible.”

The lack of latex made it more intense. It wasn’t just the heightened sensations, though. It was the intimacy. The naked danger. The morning light that took away the fever dream aspect and made it real.

How would she bear never feeling like this again? She would suffer an emptiness for the rest of her life, yearning for him.

She had him now, though. In this moment, she felt divine.

He moved lazily, fingertip stroking through her folds again. She braced a hand on the cupboard in front of her, holding herself still for his easy thrusts.

She was glad he was behind her. This was so good, tears were pressing against her closed eyelids, wetting her lashes. Her longing for this to last forever rose along with her arousal until both were acute. Before she realized it was happening, she broke with a cry.

“Greedy little Evie,” he said against her ear, teeth catching at her earlobe while he pumped. “You just can’t get enough, can you?”

Her sheath was still fluttering around his intrusion. Her nipples felt bruised under his caress. Her whole body ached from the nonstop lovemaking and the abbreviated sleep on a cold, hard floor. Her ankle throbbed like a migraine and she was tender where he penetrated her.

But he wasn’t wrong. None of that mattered. All she wanted was for him to skim his touch down again and reawaken her desire. She pushed back, inviting deeper, harder thrusts, behaving lewdly because she couldn’t help herself.

“Me, either,” he said, pulling out long enough to bring her onto her hands and knees before him. “This really is the last time.” He returned and she pushed back with a groan of welcome.

The surf was at their doorstep when Eve rose and put on her bathing suit and went for a cool, cleansing swim. Dom joined her, also wearing his shorts, as though there were any eyes here to see them beyond each other’s.

As though they hadn’t seen and touched and tasted every inch of the other’s naked body last night.

They barely spoke, barely looked at each other as the glare of midmorning light forced an end to the madness. A reckoning.

A wreckoning, Eve thought with irony, as she lowered to sit on the overturned milk crate that had been washed up to the sand a small distance from the shack.

She drank in the paradise of powdered sand and sunlight glinting off turquoise waters and rip curls of foam edging ever closer to her feet, as inexorable as reality. She was stranded with the last man on earth she should want and she half hoped they wouldn’t be rescued. She would rather live out their life as castaways.

Dom waded around to join her. He carried two bags of potato chips, her protein bar, and offered her a cup of—

“Coffee?” She sniffed, then sipped. It was terrible. He’d made it with cold, bottled water and it was black, but it was better than none. “Thank you.”

“You cooked last night,” he said drily.

It was such a domestic thing to say, as though they were a couple who took turns cooking for each other, it brought a hot scald of wistfulness to the back of her throat.

What are we going to do? she wanted to ask, but she already knew. Nothing.

His profile was rugged and remote, his jaw shadowed by stubble and his eyes hidden behind his mirrored lenses. It was not the face of someone who thought their upcoming separation was a problem.

“There he is,” he said.

She shot her gaze to the water and saw the flash of a tin boat reflecting the sun. The last thing she felt was relief.

---