Axel isn’t the same boy he used to be, though in some ways he is. He’s been gone for about five minutes, and I close my eyes. I’m about to drift off to sleep thinking of him when the door opens.

My eyelids flutter open, knowing exactly what I’ll see. There’s something about the athletic, graceful way that Axel moves that turns me on.

I’m a mess.

But I’m his mess.

He’s changed from his swim shorts to a loose pair of sweats. They’re navy, more loose-fitting than I expected them to be when I saw them at the bottom of his suitcase, but they look great on him.

“Axel,” I whisper. He looks over at me, and I realize I’m still lying on the bed, almost naked.

My whole body flushes.

“Olive,” he says tenderly. He was distracted today. Something was going on, but he’s okay. He has to be. Like he said, we can talk about it in the morning. But I don’t want to think about that right now.

His hand brushes over my cheek and through my hair, and I shiver in anticipation.

The place between my thighs tingles, and I know I won’t be able to control myself with him touching me. But I don’t want to control myself, and I don’t want him to stop. His hands caress my body over the sheets, and I just wish he would pull the thin piece of fabric away from me and make love to me.

Finally, after all this time, we’re together. But we’ve been so busy bonding and exploring, that we’ve only been intimate once.

My desire for him drives me insane. I crave his body more than anything. My mouth drops to his shoulder, kissing him and moving so he can slip his knee between my thighs and push them open, to get to me like he wants. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he brings his hands under my shoulders and slips them over to my back, pulling the sheet away from me like I was just wishing he would a few seconds ago.

With a sigh I wonder if he’s reading my mind.

He kisses me on the lips again, short and sweet. Not as deep as I was expecting, and I open my mouth to protest. He takes advantage of that, using my open mouth to claim me with his tongue, and I can’t get enough of the taste of him.

He pulls me out from under the blankets and turns me so I’m beneath him. He throws himself down on top of me—fully, instead of just a light touch—and I wonder if he’ll crush me, even though I know he would never hurt me.

I feel him unclasp my bra, and my face grows warm, and I wonder if it’s because of embarrassment or because of his proximity.

“Stop squirming.” He bites down on my shoulder, harder than usual but not cruelly.

I’m not sorry. I’m just desperate to get as close to him as I possibly can.

When he removes my bra, I raise a hand to help pull it away from my body.

He growls at me, taking my hand from me and bending it behind me again as he moves his mouth down to my chest. He showers the skin there in kisses, moving down to my nipple as he sucks it between his lips. I feel it harden into a little point and I groan again, my hips rising to meet his as I raise myself up from the bed.

Finally.

I’m going to have him inside me again.

But he pulls away from me, and I cry out with a begging mewl that sounds desperate even to me. But I need him. I need him to fill me, and I don’t care how embarrassing it is for him to know that, as long as he knows and takes me as his. He grabs my hair at the base of my scalp, pulling my hair so I look up at him.

“Olive,” he grins. “You don’t need to be upset. Please, baby.”

His eyes narrow with lust. He’s not sorry for me.

“I’m horny as fuck and I’m going to make you mine, don’t worry,” he says, grabbing my thighs and pulling them open so my panties draw tight over my sex making my wetness even more noticeable.

I whimper and try to close them so he can’t see just how much I want him, but he doesn’t let me. He looks up at me, his jaw tightening as he takes a hand and smacks me right there between my legs.

It’s light but my hips buck from the shock of it.

Then he grabs the undersides of both my thighs, throwing my body up and over his shoulder like he carried me down to the ice cream shop in Santorini earlier. But it’s not the same. It’s more possessive, as if he’s carrying me so people would know I’m his. But there’s no one around, except us.

I gasp in horror as we walk down the stairs, and I hope he’s not intending for us to do this on the couch. I want him more than anything and I wouldn’t say no if he did, but if Selena and Lark saw us, that would be the end for me.

But he doesn’t. He walks right past the sofa and out the door, and as soon as we’re out of sight of the house, he lays me down gently onto the sand.

I’m breathless with lust as his hand trails up to my upper thigh, spreading my legs apart again. He rubs my sex over my panties until I’m panting hard and I soak them. Then he rips them off me, and suddenly I’m naked, the cool night wind tickling every part of me.

My nipples grow harder in the cold and he smiles, kissing from one to the other one, sucking them both into his mouth as desperately as he can.

He’s on top of me again, my back against the sand as another hand moves between my thighs. He clutches my sex completely, stroking the cleft there in circles as I moan for him. I run my hands down his arms, then reach for his cock.

When I find it and wrap my fingers around it, his eyes close and it’s his turn to groan. Stroking his shaft I ask, “Can I taste you?”

His eyes widen at my boldness, but I can see he likes the idea because he positions his cock in front of my mouth. The mushroom head staring at me, I say, “Teach me.”

“Gladly.” He swallows. Then offers his dick to me. “Lick it first. Get it all wet.”

Eagerly, I use my tongue to bathe his cock, lapping up and down the underside. When I come to the place just under the head he exhales loudly and says, “There. That’s the most sensitive spot. That’s a good place to use your tongue.”

I nod my head and get back to work running the tip of my tongue over that spot.

“Mmm. Now put it in your mouth.”

Slowly I began to work his cock into my mouth. I knew enough to know I should move it in and out, so in my mind I pretend like my mouth is my pussy and I just take him in the way I would want.

His breathing slows, and I love the feeling of power that comes over me as I discover what my mouth can do to him. It makes me see why he loves to get me so worked up. It’s exhilarating getting your partner so excited.

After a few minutes, he removes his dick from my mouth.

I’m about to complain, when he says, “Don’t worry. I’m going to fuck your brains out now.”

And he slides his super hard dick, well lubed with my saliva, straight into my dripping wet pussy. His entry is swift and steals my breath away. Suddenly I’m filled with him, and my heart is just as full.

I throw my arms around his neck, kiss him, and cling to him for dear life as he pounds into me, hard and fast at first. Like he couldn’t hold back any longer.

Then, just when I thought I was going to have to let go, he slows the pace so much I want to scream with the ecstasy of it.

He works my body like he’s known me all my life. Somehow, he just knows how to wring the most exquisite orgasms from me.

I come over and over again. It’s cold out, and we’re each other’s only source of heat, so we don’t mind. We kiss and make love over and over, savoring each other’s bodies, hoping the night will never end. We stay there, entwined, together as one. It’s beautiful, perfect, and right.

So right, that we stay there until morning.