Page 24 of Faking Ever After

It took me a moment to force my arms to move. I accepted the bottle, poured a good amount of cream on my fingers, and told myself that it was just sunscreen. We were on a beach and I was twenty-six goddamn years old. I wasn’t a teenager anymore. Such things shouldn’t have excited me the way they did.

Percy shifted away from me and leaned forward.

I rubbed the sunscreen between my hands and neared him, holding my breath. My hands hovered over his back for a few heartbeats before I dared myself to touch him. And when I did, it was like my stomach was hollowed.

I’m doing fine,I told myself as I freely touched all of his back at his request. It took effort to hold in the symphony of sounds that welled in my chest and the thunderous shudders that threatened to rock my body.

“Why am I different?” Percy asked in a strange voice. “From the others you know, I mean.”

I needed a moment to remember I was on Earth and then another to remember what he was talking about. “Oh, um, you just are,” I said, my hands reaching his lower back. The devil himself made Percy produce a satisfied sigh that sent shivers up my arms. I cleared my throat and hoped to God I wouldn’t spontaneously combust. What I needed was to dunk myself in the sea as soon as I could. “The way you eat food with your staff and pick the most public beach to blend in. It’s not what I expect from a billionaire, that’s all.”

Percy let out an amused laugh. “You know, being a billionaire isn’t a personal trait.”

“Oh yeah? Tell that to all the billionaires out there. It’s almost as if the weight of all that money leaves no room for any brains.” The words tripped over my lips before I could stop them. But Percy only laughed and asked me to tell him more. “I mean, have you seen the news? Two billionaires challenged each other to a cage fight on Twitter. Another freaking imploded. One was shooting money into Earth’s orbit and another wanted to dismantle a whole bridge cos his yacht was too big to pass under it. I know of three that eat nothing but McDonald’s burgers. Should I go on?”

“Oh, please, don’t ever stop,” Percy said, laughing harder. The boom of his voice vibrated through his body and I felt it under my hands. His shoulders shook and I watched the back of his head like it was the most intriguing place on the planet. His hair was cut neatly and the back of his neck was shaved to smooth perfection. I wondered if it would be a little salty if I licked it.

Stop that, I snapped at myself and realized I was rubbing his back long after I ran out of cream. My arms shot back to my sides.

“Some call it eccentricity, but I think it’s more serious than that,” I admitted.

“How so?” Percy asked, intrigued. He turned to look at me and I almost wished he hadn’t. Touching him so intimately left me all flustered and I worried he would see that. How the hell would I keep playing the part if I made things awkward between us? The single most important rule to pull this ruse off was to make sure he was comfortable.So, don’t be a creep, I reminded myself.

Sighing, I shook my head. “When you get to be so rich, it’s isolating. You’re not like everyone else any longer, right? Butthat doesn’t mean you don’t want connections. It’s just so much harder to find it when your life looks nothing like everyone else’s. The circle narrows. You become too powerful, and people who enter the circle are scared to voice their opinions, so they form an echo chamber around you just so that they don’t lose their access.”

“That’s a fairly dire way to look at it,” Percy mused.

“It’s not far off the mark, though,” I said. What I didn’t tell him was that the perversion of desires that came with the limitless power was something I very nearly experienced in my own skin.

Percy mulled over it. “It feels like it, yes.”

We shared a moment of silence, facing one another. He turned his head slightly away from me as if gazing into the distance behind those concealing sunglasses. “But you’re nothing like that. Or you haven’t been in the days since I met you.” Percy pressed his lips tightly together and stretched a smile. I had a feeling he wasn’t comfortable with compliments. Even so, I continued because when had I ever stopped talking if it felt like the wise choice? “You know everyone’s names, you’re not bossing people around, and the last I checked, your yacht was actually just a personal sailboat.”

“And my jet?” Percy asked with a dose of irony.

“Ah, well, you hate that tin can,” I said. “So if the revolution comes and we eat the rich, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

“You promise you won’t eat me?” Percy asked. A beat of deafening silence made my heart stop and then Percy buried his face in his hands and cried out. “Ohmygod.”

“Oh. My. God,” I said simultaneously.

“That’s not…that’s not what I meant,” he moaned.

My cheeks were on fire as I turned away from him. I absolutely wouldn’t mind eatinghim, but that had nothing to do with the revolution. “You can rest assured,” I said in a voicethat sounded nothing like my own, “I won’t eat you.”Unless you ask me to, I added internally. A beat passed as the waves came to shore and washed away the awkwardness of the previous moment.

“Should we flip?” Percy asked in a light, casual tone.

“Um, what?” I blinked at him, my heart lurching. It wasn’t like I wouldn’t consider it.

Percy lifted the sunscreen.

“Oh.” A frown crossed my brow briefly. “Right.”

“What did you think I said?” The innocence in his tone infuriated me.

“Aren’t you a little nosy?” I growled tightly, or whatever it was that my voice did that was close to a growl.

He opened the bottle and began pouring the thick, white cream over his fingers. It was completely non-erotic, yet I fought hard not to wheeze. “It’s just that your face is gonna give me sunburns.”

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