Page 47 of Café Diablo

“Says the man who’s currently making excuses for why he needs to be to workon timein the morning.”

“Touché!”

“Nope,” I unwrap his arms from me. “No more touching my tushy.”

“That’s not what touché means.”

“Oh, but it does at Olivia’s island tou-shay shack of love.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Youlovethat I’m ridiculous.”

“Yes.” He nods, stepping away from me and taking in the sight of my night-soaked body. “Put some clothes on, Reese,” he chides. “You’re going to give the neighbors the wrong idea.”

“Am I? Oh, but orgasmically yelling out the name of you and your maker gave them the right idea, did it?”

He shakes his head, smiling widely at me as he walks backwards toward his car.

“It’s my house,” I tease, moving to the hammock and lying back in it lazily, my moonlit limbs on full display. “Maybe I’ll sleep in my hammock all night!” I run a hand over my naked breast and hip for emphasis.

“You’re a devil,” he disparages, unlocking his car and tossing his shoes and coat inside.

“Anakeddevil,” I call out to him. “That you miraculously seem to have the willpower to walk away from!”

“Discipline,” he throws back, a deep smile etched onto his face.

“Just think, you could have PopTartsand naked devils and orgasms in the morning, but instead, you’re choosing to work.”

“Good-night, Olivia,” he says, sitting down in the driver’s seat of his car, his button-up shirt still open and the ink of his gaze still looking at me through the windshield.

“All work and no play makes Edwin a very dull boy!” I toss at him as he turns the ignition and his engine roars to life. My porch and hammock are suddenly flooded from the flash of his headlights, brightness blasting over me as light covers all the dark and intimate corners of my world where we just—I don’t even know what word to use. Fucked? Had sex? Made love?

Honestly, none of those feel right.

The searing light is suddenly harsh and too intense for the quiet intimacy of what we just shared, drowning out all the sweetness and subtlety between us.

What exactly did we do tonight?

I mean, yes, it was sex—hot fucking sex—but was that all?

Probably, yes, that’s all it was.

And probably, that’s all it needs to be, and I shouldn’t overanalyze it. It was something wicked and fun and deliriously hot, until Edwin decides to go back to his fancy lawyer life and forget the fact that he just surf-shack-slummed-it with a nobody like me.

I can’t make him out in his car because I’m showered in blinding light, but despite all the unsettling thoughts running through my head, I force myself to lounge erotically in the hammock, showing off my body. This way, I get the last word. This way he can take that last hot glimpse of my body as he pulls away and drives back to the city.

Just in case.

Just to sear me into his memory.

Because, honestly, for all I know, those two bright headlights receding into the trees might be the last of Edwin Voss that I see.

19

Ned

“Where’s your head at? Huh? I need you to focus!”

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