CHAPTER 65

I'm lying on my back, the water lapping around my ears and the sun warming my body, when a shadow falls over me. I blink my eyes open and right myself, frowning as I look back over one shoulder toward the living room.

No more heads of the lawyers poking above the sleek minimalist furniture.

I turn back to the view, the carefully designed illusion that the pool edge hangs off the Hollywood Hills and looks down on the valley of West Hollywood. But it's not the view that has me hypnotized. It's the man standing at the top of the carved steps at one end of the pool.

He's tall and strong, every part of him built with intention, from his carved torso and arms to his lean hips and the perfect ass I can't see from here but could draw from memory.

From fifteen feet away, he feels my blatant perusal.

He expects it.

"Lawyers left for nap time?" I call.

Timothy strips off his shirt in a single movement.

His body is art. A canvas of lean muscle and tattoos I know as well as I know any part of my own body.

His attention is on me, as if the view, the house, the pool, all mean nothing. He walks down the steps into the pool, the water soaking his jeans. He doesn't look down once, not when it claims his waistband, licks at his abs.

My thighs clench under the water.

I should tell him he's getting wet, that we're not cool after what went down inside, but I'm riveted by the look in his eyes.

I can't do anything but let the water ripple around me, the hairs lifting on my arms and neck as he approaches, my nipples pebbling just above the water level. My heart hammers at his closeness, my palm flattening against the heated skin of his chest.

He frowns. "Where's your ring?"

I nod toward the side of the pool. I didn't want to lose it, to have the pool chemicals affect it. It's there along with my necklace and the promise ring he got me before we split up for his tour.

Timothy wades across the pool to retrieve both.

My breath catches as he reaches for my hand beneath the water. He doesn't lift it out, just slips the diamond ring over my fingertip. The metal and his touch are whisper-light along my skin, a sexy, possessive slide that ends in firm pressure as the band slides home.

He murmurs in my ear, "You're mine."

"You think I need a ring to remember that?" I tease.

"No. You remembered it every time we hung up on a video call this past month. Every time I told you what I'd do to you if we were together. But it's not the same." He wraps the necklace around my neck and uses it to tug me forward until our lips are almost touching.

A thrill works through me.

I'm mad at him. He knows it, but it's harder when he's this close.

I force a shrug. "Your billboard in Times Square kept me company."

The crinkling at the corners of his eyes cracks my resolve. His thumb brushing my lips doesn't help either.

"Too bad." His beautiful voice breaks. "Because I fucking missed you, Emily Carlton."

His arms band around me as he crushes my body to his.

Yes.

Timothy's mouth is hard and demanding, as if everything he's owed is on the other side of my lips and he won't stop until he's claimed it all.

The broken prince I fell for, the relentless man he became, they twine together. I belong to both of them, both of him.

The dirty thoughts that been taking me over since I woke up this morning. Every part of me cries out for this, for him.

My back hits the side of the pool, and I suck in a surprised breath. I didn't know we were moving. I was focused on his cedar scent sending me reeling, the possessiveness of his mouth slanting over mine, the hard denim of his jeans abrading my stomach and thighs.

Timothy lifts me up on the edge of the pool, breaking our kiss to stare at me with wide pupils under a thick fringe of lashes.

He drags my hips to the edge, and I fall back on my hands. My core-wet from his touch, not the water-presses against his abs, separated from him only by the thin fabric of my bikini bottoms.

"I know what you're trying to do," I manage. "Make me forgive you with sex."

His slow grin could steal hearts and panties at once. "Is it working?"

I loop my arms around his neck, feathering his hair as I look down. "Timothy, I'm serious. I don't even know where to start."

"My jeans are wet. You could start with those."

I slap a hand against his shoulder. "Dammit. I wanted you. I thought I'd walk in and everything would be good and..."

His jaw works, guilt flaring behind his dark eyes. "I'm sorry, Six. I hoped it would be done by the time you got here. Now, I could spend the next hour telling my future wife I fucked up, or I could show her how much I missed her in the little time we have before your dad and Haley and the kids arrive tomorrow."

His hot, purposeful mouth travels down my neck, lingering along my collarbone, where he knows it makes me shiver, and sends a tendril of heat straight to my core.

I'm so entranced by his words I almost forget. "Half an hour."

"Hmm?"

"I promised I'd meet Jacob this afternoon. He said he had a surprise."

"Fuck Jacob."

"He's your best friend," I remind him.

Timothy eliminates every millimetre of space between us, pressing his tight abs against my heat and inviting me to rub on him as his mouth moves lower. "If he keeps you away, the man is dead to me."

He massages my breast with his hand, lifting it so his tongue skims along the edge of one cup.

He's not holding me against him anymore, but I couldn't move away if I tried. I'm already on fire when he lifts my breast out of the top and sucks on an already-peaked nipple, sending a bolt of need through me.

I yank on his hair hard enough it should hurt. He doesn't make a sound, just touches me, licks me, grazes his teeth over my sensitive skin until I'm reduced to a pile of wanting.

Out of nowhere, I remember New Year's Eve. We spent it apart but on a video call, each of us retreating to the roof so we could stare at the same sky.

"Your memory will keep me warm until you're back," I told him.

"I've never left. My heart is with you."

We talked for hours, wishing for time, for space. For this moment.

I swallow, fighting the wave of emotion in my chest. I don't want some quickie in the few minutes we have. But it's all I'm going to get.

He yanks on the string at the side of my bikini, and the fabric gives way, baring me to his view.

With a knowing look, he moves down my body. "What's that smile?" His mouth vibrates against my skin in a way that makes me tremble.

"Rica said to leave a sock on the front door."

"We're not in college anymore," he reminds me. As if I need a reminder he's not the boy I grew up with, but a man. "This is my house, and I will fuck my fiancée until she screams. I don't care who hears."

I'm breathless even before his tongue paints a line down my wet slit.

My fingers dig into his hair and the sight before me steals not only my oxygen, but my need for it.

The skyline of Hollywood, Sunset, and the surrounding streets, stretching to the ocean.

My rebel prince. His hand-the one dark with ink, with roses and swirls-traces up the inside of my thigh, higher and higher, as he devours me.

Heat rolls over me in a consuming wave. It's not the sun or the balmy air, but Tyler's relentless mouth lighting fires in every nerve.

I want to take this slowly, but I'm too overwhelmed. My heart and my body feed off each other, off him, and when he sucks right above where his fingers are playing, I break apart like a wave on the shore.

It's not enough. Nowhere near.

When I come down from the climax, I shift forward, reaching for the button on his jeans.

But Timothy bats my hand away.

"Later." His raspy voice is a promise. "We have plans after you're done with my ex-best friend."

"You want me to wait," I echo, already aware of the emptiness between my thighs now that his fingers have gone.

A smile ghosts across his face as he reaches for the strings on my bikini bottoms, fastening one side, then the other.

"This pout." His lips brush over mine, and I can taste myself on his tongue. "I forgot how much I missed it."

"You could reacquaint yourself with it now." It's shameless. I don't even care. In fact, I think I've won when he traces the outline of my mouth with a calloused fingertip.

"Don't worry," he murmurs, the eyes I love burning with arousal and cockiness. "I will fuck every inch of this. And you."

He hauls himself out of the water, leaving me gawking at his dripping body.

I'm already thinking about begging him to come back and finish what we started when the phone alarm goes off.