Page 16 of Taste

I reined myself in with a deep breath.

“How the hell will I get this dry? How the fuck do you expect me to explain this?” I tried to wave my soggy jacket arm in demonstration. My tie was strangling me, twisted back around my neck, and my shirt was riding up as I attempted to manoeuvre back to the ladder. I wasn’t even going to try jumping up onto the side, not in front of him. The indignity of losing my trousers as I clambered out of this cesspit of a pool was playing on loop in my head—a constant reminder that I was not, and never would be, someone as effortlessly cool as him.

“Just say you fell into the water while I was retrieving a lost earring from the pool. Doing a good deed, utilising your time well by organising a small rescue mission or something? Mrs Khalifa is forever losing her jewellery up here, and of course, I kindly offered to help you attempt to retrieve it when you accidentally slipped. How very inconvenient. No biggie.” He shrugged like his ridiculous fairy tale of a lie would ever find its way out of my mouth.

“Oh, put a sock in it,” I snarled as I got my shoe on the bottom step of the pool ladder and heaved myself upwards, then, predictably, slipped, arms flailing, and hit the water with an almighty splash. Next thing, he wrapped his arms around me, hauling me close like he was saving my stupid life. He wasn’t, and I was falling for his stunts again, letting his reel me in with his ridiculous non-happening plans.

I forced my arms down, but like the cowards they were, they floated up again, coming to a rest against his naked shoulders.

“Just let me go,” I hissed.

“No,” he hissed back.

“Fuck this.”

“No.” He was looking straight at me, his face a little too close.

“You promised,” I whispered. “You promised we wouldn’t do this again.”

“So did you.”

I pushed at his arms, wriggled clumsily in my suit as he pulled me tighter to his chest. His shoulder muscles flexed with the effort of keeping me still, which wasn’t difficult when I was weighed down by wet clothes and he had his feet on that little ledge on the side of the pool. I suddenly wished I was naked, which should’ve been a sobering thought, but it wasn’t, and I hated myself. So, so much.

“We need to stop this,” he murmured.

“No shit!” I shot back.

I tried to turn away, but his forehead fell against mine, and I had no choice. I looked at him. Looked him straight in the eyes, and my body let out an embarrassingly loud sigh.

“I don’t know what it is that’s going on between us, but it’s… It’s eating at me on the inside, and we need to put an end to it.” His voice was calm, a million miles calmer than the stuttered syllables that came out of mine.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”Bad lie, Christensen. You coward,my inner demons heckled at me.

“Arsehole.”

“Wanker,” I retaliated.

“You uptight twatface.”

“Cunt.”

“Dickhead.”

“You lying bastard.”

“You imbecilic piece of shit.”

Show-off. I scrambled to think of something else to cut him down with. I couldn’t. My mind swam, as his eyes were firmly set on mine, his nose nudging the tip of my own, just soft little touches that had me shivering although the water was warm and my suit was clinging to every inch of my over-sensitised body.

Then he kissed me. Angled his head and leant right in. His lips were as perfect as I remembered, soothing my worries with just the right amount of touch, the tang of salt and perfumed water.

I may have whimpered, because this wasn’t right, and it was nothing to do with the exceptionally clear cameras down here and the strong probability that Higgins was sitting up in the security booth filming it all on his mobile. Nor was it because this was so way-out-there wrong that we could both end up in Mr Klutz’s office before daylight being asked to explain what the hell we were thinking.

I whimpered because, under all the heady scents of the water and the spa and the candles that burned down here all day, I couldn’t taste him or smell him. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I knew what Mark Quinton tasted like, and this wasn’t it. It wasn’t enough. I needed more, and I hated myself for how little self-preservation I had left and how easily he’d manipulated me.

“Finn.” He stroked a finger over my temple, lifting a wet curl from my face. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“It does,” I whispered back, trembling with shame at my own words. I had nothing to add to this conversation, apart from my arms around his neck, my lips on his and that gut-punch feeling of being whole, of knowing you are half of something wondrous. Because having someone desire you the way Mark Quinton seemed to desire mewaswondrous.

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