They’d decided to have their fancy drinks in the rooftop bar at the hotel. It was swanky enough, wasn’t too crowded, and boasted a killer view of the coast line.

After a round of naps and showers all around, the boys lounged on the balcony of their suite. They’d each changed into khakis and button-ups, dressing up just the way Mari had asked them to. When she knocked on the door of their hotel room, it was Marcus who sprang up to get it.

Jay wasn’t ready for the moment Mari stepped out onto the balcony. She wore red. And it was all that Jay could see for a minute. The only color in the world was red. He’d gone blind to everything else. It took a few more seconds for him to realize that the dress she wore was made of lace. It was high across her neck and was angular and trim. The dress hugged her body and complemented her graceful lines.

Jay damn near swallowed his tongue.

“You guys look handsome,” Mari said lightly, kissing Eli on the cheek and hesitating only slightly before she did the same to Jay.

“You look—” Eli started.

“Perfecto,” Jay cut him off.

He could have sworn that Mari blushed, just a little. But he couldn’t be certain. Rising, Jay swallowed hard. He bit back everything inside him that told him to reach for her. Take her.

He was in a daze as they made their way up to the restaurant, his eyes glued to her tumbling black hair. To the red of her dress, the line of her golden legs that peeked out.

“Dude,” Marcus grabbed the back of Jay’s shirt as they filed off the elevator, holding him back for a second. “Breathe.” Marcus clapped him on the back.

Jay nodded and followed all of them out to the bar. But the night didn’t ease for him. If anything it merely blurred. Mari laughing and toasting. Mari bringing a drink to her lips. Mari leaning one elbow onto the bar to ask the bartender for another napkin. Mari responding to something a smarmy stranger leaned over his bar stool to say to her.

Mari placing her hand in Marcus’s, letting him lead her out onto the dance floor.

Wait…

Hell no.

Jay snapped himself out of the Mari-induced haze he was currently drowning in. Hell no. Absolutely not. There was no way on this earth he was going to stand by and let Marcus seduce her on the dance floor.

He strode across the dim dance floor, the tea lights lighting up the lines on his face, and shouldered Marcus aside. He missed the grin that Marcus shot at the back of his head. But he didn’t miss the eyebrow that Mari raised.

“You really don’t want me to sample the goods, huh? I thought I was finally gonna get to see what all the fuss was about with Marcus’s dance moves.”

Jay frowned down at her as he pressed his hand to the small of her back, brought her in close. “I don’t care if you’re engaged, I’m serious, Marcus makes women fall to his feet on the dance floor.”

Mari rolled her eyes and laughed. “Someday I’ll get to see the master at work.”

Jay, not too shabby on the dance floor himself, didn’t let her think too hard on it, he swept her along, the music slow and dreamy.

Neither of them thought of it as a mistake. Not even when her head went to his shoulder. Jay kept a requisite inch between their bodies and it almost killed him.

All of it almost killed him. Her scent, her heat. He thought of the way she’d sliced a wave in half earlier today and he had to keep his hand from fisting in the fabric of her dress.

The evening drew out, got longer and blurrier. Neither Mari or Jay had had more to drink than the one glass of champagne. But still, each moment bled into the next. There was a hyper awareness between the two of them that made time move strangely in some places, sluggish and soupy, and ultra fast in others.

Before they knew it, the celebratory evening had come to a close and they were heading back down to the boys’ suite, all tired from their day on the ocean.

“I think you should sleep here, doll,” Eli said as he let them all into the big living room area that connected all three of their bedrooms. “I don’t want you to have to trek back to that lonely AirBnB all alone. And I’m way too tired to take you.”

“That’s okay,” Mari yawned. “I’ll grab a cab.”

“Nah,” Marcus said, deceptively nonchalant. “Stay here.”

“I’ll take the couch,” Jay agreed, flopping down onto it and stretching his long body out like a jungle cat. “You can stay in my room.”

It wasn’t the exact way he’d been hoping to get Mari into his bed, but he supposed it would do.

Mari’s phone beeped and she frowned as she slid it out of her little purse. “Who the hell is calling me right now?” she muttered.

Jay did the quick time difference calculation between Hawaii and London, realizing it was a perfectly acceptable time for her fiancé to be calling her. “Probably Linc,” he muttered, closing his eyes and ignoring the chalky feel of the words in his mouth.

Mari frowned at the phone, typing something in. “No, it’s my boss. He’s always texting me about work at the weirdest times.” Mari’s eyes flicked toward Marcus’s for half a second and that’s all the warning she gave. “Besides, Linc isn’t the type to text this soon after a break-up.”

She felt the room go still even though she kept her eyes on her phone, stubbornly finishing her text back to her boss.

“What did you just say?” Jay’s voice was quiet and deep. It wasn’t a question.

“I said Linc and I broke up.” She still kept her eyes on the phone.

“Hey Marcus, want to get another drink?” Eli’s voice rang out, a little too loud.

“Ah. Yeah. Like yesterday.” The two big men hustled out of the hotel room, the door clicking shut behind them. And then, and only then, did Mari, standing in the middle of the living room, allow her eyes to drift up to Jay’s. He was still laying on the couch, his posture deceptively casual as his eyes burned into hers.

She stayed where she was, didn’t move an inch, as Jay unfolded himself from the couch, came to stand with the intensity of a shark.

“You. And Linc. Broke up.” Each word was punctuated with a predatory step towards her.

Mari nodded, her chin coming up, she felt that old steel line her spine as she stared him in the face. “Yeah.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you now.” She spoke to him as if it were obvious.

He was standing in front of her, dismissing those words as if they were nothing. “This whole time we’ve been in Hawaii? When you came to my house last week?”

She paused for a second, but held his eyes, nodding gravely.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because,” she said with eyes as bright as a firefly. “I knew you were gonna,” she waved one hand toward his stance, “pounce.”

A feral smile raced across Jay’s face only to be extinguished a second later. “Mari, when have I ever pounced on you?”

“Well,” she stroked a hand through her hair, shoving it back off her shoulders. “You don’t exactly pounce, you, you… you lure me in. So that I pounce.”

His eyes searched hers, his heart racing. He stood a mere two feet in front of her, not close enough to feel the heat of her.

“And you don’t want to sleep with me?” he asked quietly, trying to get any sort of read on her. All he knew was that she was practically vibrating with energy. Nerves and whatever else had her breaths ragged and her color high and bright on her cheeks.

Mari scoffed, dragged an unsteady hand through her hair. “Are you kidding me? I only want to sleep with you.”

Jay couldn’t help the brutal smile her words tore from him. He took a step toward her. There were other reasons for her confusion and Jay could guess them. He didn’t like them, but he could guess them. “You’re not over Linc, then.”

Mari seemed to deflate slightly at his words. Like a flower two days past its prime. “No, I, no.” She took a deep breath when Jay continued to wait for her to elaborate. “I’ll miss him, yes. But I’m not…” She cleared her throat. “It’s a good thing we’re not together anymore.”

Jay forced his arms to uncross. He jammed his hands in his pocket and took another step toward her. He opened himself. Not physically, but he consciously changed what he was putting out toward her. This predatory thing was making her wind up tighter than a spool of wire. He wanted her loose. He wanted her reaching for him. He knew she was right. He wanted her to be the one to pounce. So he did to himself what surfing had done for him earlier. He took a deep, washing breath and let the sharp parts of his energy slide out of him. When she brought her eyes back to him, he had a light, desirous smile on his face.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered suddenly.

“What?”

“You’re doing it! That thing you did on the island. You know you’re doing it.”

“Mari,” he merely smiled at her, his eyes devouring her face, her hair, the red of her dress. “What exactly is it that I’m doing?”

“You’re luring me in!” She barely restrained herself from stamping her foot on the floor.

“And what happens if I lure you in? What are you so resistant to?”

Mari broke then, she paced a quick line away from him and then right back. Jay admired the angry switch in her walk as her dress stretched over her backside. “I don’t know. I- I came here to be alone, Jay. I came here to be independent. To get over all this.”

“You came here to get over me?”

Mari charged forward. She fisted her hands in his button-up shirt, yanked him toward her hard. His face was an inch from hers. Her eyes were furious and helpless at the same time. Both flashing with anger and already surrendered.

“Apparently I am NEVER getting over you!” she couldn’t help but yell the words. Her eyes dropped to his lips but Jay held in place, refusing to push forward into her, even if her fingernails were digging into his skin. Even if his heart cried out at the pain in her voice. “Apparently I can’t get over you.”

Her voice was quieter now, a pained whisper. She unhanded him all at once. Stumbling back. “I had a good thing with Linc. He’s solid. Always there. He was the only good thing about my life after I lost you. And you came back and my stupid…” she smacked a hand over her chest, her heart. “Just up and decided that my life needed to get destroyed all over again. That I needed to lose somebody else who I’ve loved.”

“Mari,” Jay’s voice was deep and rough with emotion. She’d never seen him stand so still. His shirt was pulled and wrinkled from where she’d yanked it. His skin was golden, even in the dimly lit suite. His hair was practically glowing and his eyes held hers. For once, they didn’t look blue. They looked almost black from underneath his brow. “You didn’t lose me.”

He still didn’t step forward and Mari cursed him for it. Damn it. He really was going to make her come to him.

“You didn’t lose me,” he repeated. “I’m here. And I’m here forever.” His expression changed all at once but that’s the only thing about him that moved. “The only difference between me and you is that I never even tried to get over you. I knew it was useless. There’s nothing after you, Mari. You’re it for me.”

He did take a step forward now. Just one. And it had Mari taking two towards him. How did he do that?

“Mari, you’re not the only one who’s gotten torn to pieces over this.” He gestured from his chest to hers. “Medevastas,” he said in a gruff whisper. You devastate me.

Mari’s brow crumpled and she took another step toward him. She raised her hands and let them drop. “What was I supposed to do? I was engaged when you came back. I was just supposed to leave him the second I saw your dumb beautiful face again?”             

“I don’t mean that, Mari. I don’t mean that you devastated me by being with him. I mean that you, right here, right now standing in front of me, devastates me.” He took another step forward, just the smallest shifting of weight. “Your scent, the sound of your voice. Just like you did on the island. You call to me. Stop everything inside me. Even then, you were just this fierce little woman in a bathing suit, sweaty and suspicious. And even then I would have laid down my life for you. I’d never felt anything like that before. It was…” he searched for the right words to describe what he meant. “Pounding. It was need, for you, right from the beginning. And that hasn’t changed for me. Not in the five years we were separated. Not when I saw you for the first time. Not when I saw you on the arm of another man. It’s never going to change.”

She was walking toward him now. Her hands landed on his forearms, keeping a circle of space between them like she couldn’t control herself if she touched him now. “This isn’t magic, Jay. You’re talking about this like it’s mystical.”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s not. It’s real.”

Mari folded then. What was she fighting? And why? She stepped fully into the circle of his arms and laid her cheek on his chest. Her fingers dug into his back as she gasped, emotion clogging her throat. Suddenly, she was furious with the fabric that was between them. This was too sweet of a hug. Something was rushing toward her, unstoppable. And she knew that she couldn’t be near Jay and avoid it. She knew that the only thing she could do was race it. Try to beat it. And so she did.

Mari furiously untucked his shirt from the back of his pants, raced her hands up under his undershirt onto the smooth, hot expanse of his back.

“Mari,” he said.

But she didn’t listen. She opened her mouth over the triangle of exposed skin at his throat. She felt his voice rumble there as she scraped her teeth against his collar bone. She wasn’t going to let him hold her. She wasn’t crying into his dress shirt. She was going to destroy this tentative friendship they’d been cultivating while she had been with Linc. She was going to show Jay that this thing they had was passion, pure and raw and high. But it wasn’t what families were made of.

They were never supposed to make it off that island and come morning, Jay was going to know exactly why.

His hands were warm and soothing on her back, he drew circles that she knew she could fall into if she held still for long enough. So she didn’t. She burst backwards, out of his arms, her eyes hot and unforgiving on his. She took the bottom of her dress in her fingers and revealed an inch of her thighs.

“Mari,” he said again, still not stepping toward her.

But he was going to come toward her if it was the last thing she did. “Jay,” she said to him in the same tone.

She took another step back and raised her dress up another inch. Mari licked her lips and lowered her chin, letting her eyes devour him. She smiled, a sexy threatening grin, when she noticed his pulse in his throat. She was getting to him. Good. She felt a thrumming rage pulse through her. He thought that she devastated him? She was about to show him exactly how much he’d devastated her. She’d had a good thing going and he’d destroyed it. Well, she was about to destroy him. He thought this was real? She was going to show him how bright and fast and temporary this could burn. He’d be lucky if he got out alive.

With that, she lifted her dress the rest of the way. It was still passing across her face when she felt his hands on her. Mari smiled that brutal smile again to herself and tossed her dress away.

She was shocked at the expression she saw on Jay’s face when she got her eyes to focus again. It was the look of an animal. Territorial, possessed, on a mission. His eyes were blue again, bright and glowing and swallowing her alive.

“Jesus,” he growled, staring at the white mesh underwear she wore. They weren’t feminine. But they were sexy as hell. Her tan skin showed through them, making the fabric seem to disappear in places. Jay couldn’t help but slide his fingers underneath her underwear to her ass. He picked her up effortlessly and anchored her to him.

She was provoking him, tempting him, punishing him, he knew. And he allowed it to happen. She needed to savage him for a minute. He’d let himself sweep along this current for her. He had no problem bowing at her feet. Honestly he’d take her any fucking way he could get her.

So he dropped his mouth to her gorgeously mauve nipple that speared out of the see-through white material of her bra. He wasn’t gentle. He raked his teeth over her there, barely getting a taste of her as she stiffened in his arms and ripped her fingers through his hair.

They both winced at the pain while leaning into it. Needing it. He strode into his room and kicked the door closed behind him. Muscles bunching, he pried her loose from him, tossed her viciously down onto the bed. Her underwear caught on his hand and skewed down her leg. Her small body bounced on the mattress and he allowed himself the smallest, tenderest pleasure of watching her breasts rise and fall with gravity. But then her eyes were on him again and he knew his role. She wasn’t ready for tender.

She was standing then, on the bed, fierce and furious again. The second he got within arm’s length, she was grabbing him toward her. Her fingers dug into the skin at his shoulders and her mouth dropped to his neck. She clamped her teeth onto his pulse point and trembled when it didn’t make her feel vicious. It made her feel soft. Like even her mouth needed to hug him close. She released his skin and he grunted, his fingers kneading into her ass,  sliding her underwear an inch or two down.

Mari, off kilter at the tender feelings racing through her, shoved him an inch away from her. She dropped down to her ass on the bed, her legs hanging off the mattress on either side of where he stood. Quick as a flash, she clamped her hands around the backs of his thighs and drew him close to her. Her hands tugged at his belt, shoving his pants to his knees.

Oh hell no. Jay was willing to let her hijack the tenor of this encounter, but he wasn’t going to let her suck his soul out of his body. He had things to do before he let that happen.

So, kicking his pants off and tugging his undershirt and button-up off and to the ground, Jay tangled his hand into her hair and pressed her back onto the bed. She ripped her mouth away from him. Scrambling back, attempting everything she knew how in order to keep the upper hand.

She was wild and vibrating and gasping. And she was seconds away from breaking. Jay could feel it within her. She needed soothing and fast, but he also knew that surrendering to him would burst her into a million pieces.

Jay let her flip him onto his back and rise up over him. She was shoving his underwear to one side, taking him out and for a second, Jay saw nothing and everything all at once. It took him a blinding breath to get back on track and at that point she was already aligning them, tearing her panties off and trying to sink down on him.

In a move that deserved a medal of honor, Jay knocked her hands away from himself and replaced it with his hand. Mari found herself sinking down onto his hand.

She growled in dual frustration and satisfaction.

“Shit,” he groaned between clenched teeth. “Five years.”

She blinked her eyes and looked down at him, tightening around his hand.

“Five years,” he repeated. “I’ve been waiting to feel you like this. Five years I’ve been locked out of paradise.”

He rolled them and was over top of her. She fought him for a second, trying to get back on top, but he twisted the fingers he had inside of her and her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth dropping open.

“I never tried to replace you,” he said, unable to do anything but speak the truth in a moment this raw, this honest. “Every other woman was pale, half of you. Less than nothing. You’re my everything. Even when I thought I’d never see you again. You were my everything.”

She was tensing around him, rippling, her head whipping from side to side.

Jay was on one elbow, leaning over her. He wanted everything at once. He couldn’t let his dumb ass hand have all the joy. So he slid down her body, anchored one of her thighs over his shoulder and rolled them so that she straddled his shoulders.

She trembled at the position. On top of him but still vulnerable as hell. Her eyes fell to his as he lifted his head underneath her, staring into her. He opened his mouth over her and tasted her for the very first time. And then his vision blurred as he tasted the most addictive flavor of his life. He’d never tasted anything more necessary, more vital. She was like water in the desert. Air at the bottom of the ocean. How he’d gotten through this much of his life without tasting her, he’d never know.

“Everything,” he growled into her body and they were both rocketed back to five years ago, on the roof of the hotel when he’d said the same words to her. “Everything.”

Mari’s breath ripped out of her. She wanted to pull away from it. From him. It was too much. Too soft. Too familiar. Too Jay. But his tongue was petting her into the most epic release of her life and she found she simply couldn’t pull away.

He rolled them again, so that she was on her back, and he gave her everything he had. He swallowed every taste of her, every second of that moment.

Light and breath and time failed her. She imploded in a moment of blinding clarity. She saw and understood everything. Jay was everything. A miracle beyond all miracles. The only person who could put her back together after everything had been taken from her over and over. Jay was everything. Her body destroyed itself over him. Rewarding her and punishing her all at once. The pleasure she felt was so sharp, so full, that she no longer felt human, she no longer had a body. All she had was fury, passion, arcing pleasure, as strong and constant as the sun.

When she finally fell limp, there were tears of exhaustion, acceptance, brutal understanding at her eyes.

And of course he was there, smoothing those tears away with his stubble roughened cheeks. Of course he knew that she was destroyed. She’d tried to destroy him and she’d destroyed herself in the process. Of course there was no taking from Jay when all he ever seemed to do was give her everything. She’d touched him, wanting to steal and take and peel him layer by layer. And instead he’d given her everything. Over and over. No question or hesitation. She hadn’t even known she’d wanted it and he’d given it to her.

“You’re everything,” he whispered again into the crook of her neck and she couldn’t help but clasp her thighs around his waist.

The position had him sliding against her wetness and he lifted himself up to catch her eyes with his. Blue into green. All the colors of the ocean. The waters washing over both of them at once. As inevitable and unstoppable as the tide. They were helpless to the endlessness of it. Never ending and the largest thing there was.

“Jay,” she whispered, reaching up for him. She tipped her hips up at the same second their lips touched. He pressed into her between her legs and between her lips all at once. They screamed into one another, their tongues pressing and sliding, as his hips bottomed out against hers.

“Jay,” she whispered again, her fingers clawing into his beautiful back. But this time it wasn’t punishment. It was just need. It was just desire. Passion.

He relished in the sharp bite of pain her hands awoke from him. He hadn’t asked for this to be easy. He hadn’t asked for this to be gentle. All he wanted was her. And she was fierce and wild and tough. She would hurt him, he knew. And he wanted it. She would tear him apart. And he needed it.

Jay rode her, one hand gripping her backside, and one hand clutching her shoulder, the back of her neck. His face tore away from hers and he buried his lips against her throat. Her hair was everywhere, tangled and fragrant. She gripped him so tightly that she hung from him, barely touching the bed.

With every thrust he took and he gave. And do did she. They took and gave and pressed and gripped.

When she went over the edge again, his lips were on hers and his eyes were open. He never wanted to miss another second of her. Never again. And when he went over the edge, into her, Mari’s eyes were open. And she saw him. She saw everything.