Page 86 of The Forgotten Queen
Marx glanced over his shoulder at her and raised his brows. “Are you finger painting?”
“No!”
“At this rate, it’s going to take you all day. How about you use more than one finger?”
Sydria knit her lips together, holding in her smile. She was being ridiculous. She’d given herself the pep talk. She could do this. She smeared the lotion on her right hand and began smoothing it into his skin. Marx’s body relaxed as she ran her hand over every contour of his back. She started at his neck, working her way down to his defined shoulder blades and the perfect V shape his muscles created in the center of his back. Then her fingers slid around his lats—the muscles that she’d become acquainted with the first day they’d met. Her hand glided to his waist, and he dropped his neck, breathing easy.
“That’s more like it,” he said.
Sydria smacked his lower back. “All done!”
He turned around, his cocky smile encouraging the flame inside of her to burn out of control. He peeked at the pile of lotion still in the palm of her left hand. “I don’t think you’re all done. You better do the front too.”
“You can reach your chest on your own.”
“Yeah, but it’s more fun when you do it,” Marx said as he leaned in, sending a shiver down her body.
Was it fun?
The butterflies in her stomach said it might be.
“Fine, but only because I have extra lotion on my hands.”
By the look on his face, Marx didn’t believe her excuse.
Neither did she.
She rubbed her palms together, spreading the rest of the lotion out between her fingers. Slowly she raised both of her hands up to him, placing them on the top of his shoulders. Sydria felt his eyes on her, felt his breathing go ragged, but she refused to look him in the eye. Her hands slowly slid to his chest, and his pectoral muscles tightened as she massaged over them. Her fingers ran over the ridges of his abs and around to his sides, smoothing over the top of his skin. Applying sun blocking lotion felt more intimate than anything Sydria had ever done before. The thought of Cheney doing it popped into her mind, and she instinctively stepped closer to him. She was glad she was the one caressing his chest, not her.
After all, Sydria was married to the man.
Kind of.
Her hands rested on his hips, and she looked up. “All done,” she whispered.
Marx’s eyes blazed. “That might have been the best twenty seconds of my life.”
Hers too.
* * *
That night, Sydria lay in bed thinking back through the day. The lines between real and fake were blurry. Feelings were real on her part, but probably not his. Except that they had shared some very real moments together. Maybe his feelings for her were changing and growing too. She hoped they were, but she couldn’t plan on it. She had to tell herself Marx was pretending. That’s who he was. That’s the deal they’d made. He was living up to his end of the bargain. If she didn’t think that way, she’d end up getting hurt.
Sydria understood now what Dannyn had said.
Some heartbreaks were worth it.
She understood, but did she really believe it? Part of her still wanted to protect herself from the pain and embarrassment, almost like she’d been there before—been hurt before. From now on, she’d hold up her end of the agreement and keep everything between them professional—as professional as fake-falling in love could be. She could enjoy Marx, but she couldn’t let herselflovehim.
Marx
Marx lay in his bed, letting thoughts of Sydria creep into his mind. Actually, the thoughts of her weren’tcreeping. They were more like a pre-Desolation freight train, crashing through, shattering everything that was there before, filling up every inch of his brain with her.
He smiled and hopped out of bed, walking to the door between their two rooms. He unlocked the latch and opened the door—hers was still shut.
Was he going to knock?
If he did, what would he say to her when she opened it?
