Page 12 of The Gift that Keeps On Giving

A few minutes later, I look in the mirror and barely recognize the bedroom-eyed, tangle-haired blonde staring back at me. I’m in a silver micro bikini that covers almost nothing at all. My nipples and the seam of my sex are hidden beneath the shiny fabric, but there is not a lot left to the imagination. And I like this version of me, just as much as I like the girl who hunkers down in a blanket and reads, hiding if someone rings my doorbell.

The three-day time limit is an escape hatch giving me the ultimate chance to tap into the hunger I’ve been ignoring so long. Without shame.

There’s a buzzing sound and I realize it’s my phone vibrating in the pocket of my dress. Bending down to get it, I straighten with a smile when I see a text on the screen from Molly.Send me a pic of you in that bikini, girl. Need a visual.

“Good timing,” I murmur, snapping a picture of my reflection in the mirror.

Several lines of emoji flames come back within seconds.

And so I’m smiling to myself on my way into the living room, my intention to continue straight to the pool where Cameron is waiting. But Dean steps into my path before I can make it out of the hallway, his starved eyes tracking down to my barely covered nipples, then down to the little strip running down the center of my most intimate flesh. “You trying to make me come in my pants for the second time today?”

“I didn’t pick this out. Molly did.”

“God bless Molly.” He steps closer, wrapping my hair in a fist and turning me around, the heat of his attention incinerating the curve of my butt. “Might as well wear nothing at all, huh?” Deanhisses through his teeth. “You think you’re going to walk back in here a virgin if you go out there wearing that thing?”

“I have incredible willpower,” I say, breathless from his manhandling. “Otherwise, you’d have taken it from me six years ago.”

He swats my ass hard with his free hand. “Been aching for it ever since, haven’t I?”

All I can do is whimper, moisture spreading on the string between my thighs. This is who I am, isn’t it? I’ve been repressing a lot of my wilder fantasies, but they unfurl now, refusing to be kept hidden. IlikeDean’s high-handed attitude. Ilikehis spanking.

“Remember who your Daddy is while you’re out there.”

“I will.”

Dean lets me go with a grating curse, but I can feel his eyes on me the whole way through the living room, as I step over the threshold of the sliding glass door…

Where I enter another world.

There are tiki torches lit around the edges of the pool, which glows like a blue jewel under the dark night sky. Cameron sits on the edge of a lounge chair, waiting, his hands folded loosely between his knees. But he stands slowly when I emerge, his chest shuddering up and down when he sees me.

“Holy shit,” I hear him breathe.

I go to him, carried by the magical atmosphere of the evening. The gentle coconut breeze and the rushing sound of ocean waves just below.

When I stop in front of Cameron, his arousal is already tenting the front of his swim shorts, his eyes pitch black. Blacker than the sky. He was always the darker of the two men. Mysterious, where Dean holds nothing back.

“I can’t believe this is real,” he says thickly. “I’m allowed to…touch your body, if I want to. No one is going to stop me. I’m not going to be served with divorce papers.”

“Your wife asked me for a selfie in this bathing suit,” I say, putting my arms around his neck and swaying against his body, letting the breeze stroke my hair. “She sent back fire emojis, so we’re definitely good to...”

“Play.”

“Play,” I whisper back, touching my tongue to his stubbled chin.

Taking my hand, he tugs me toward the pool, which is thankfully heated, the crystal-clear water climbing my thighs, tickling my nearly nude sex as I sink in deeper, floating into Cameron’s waiting open arms. He twirls me around and attacks my neck with a growl, both of us splashing sideways into the open water. When we surface again and I’m done laughing, I marvel again over the fairytale in front of me. A green-eyed prince with dark, dripping hair, surrounded by paradise, my body humming with arousal.

“I missed you, Ruby,” he says, playing with the strings on my hips, then ultimately pulling me into an embrace. It’s so like Cameron to be the more tender man of the two, and I smile against his wet shoulder, letting him sway me in the chest-deep water. “I’ve had weak moments where I’ve looked you up on social media, just to see if you were doing well, but nothing ever came up under your name. Were you trying to torture me?”

“Mmmm.” I nuzzle his ear with my nose. “You know I’ve always been a private person. I have social media accounts under Sip and Flip, out of necessity. But running a personal account and a professional one? That would cut into my reading time.”

“Sip and Flip?” he murmurs warmly. “That’s what you named the shop?”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it, angel.” He gathers my wet hair and turns my head to the right, skimming the barest hint of his lips along my neck. “Tell me what it looks like. I assume the ‘sip’ part of the name refers to the tea counter you always wanted in install?”

I gasp. “You remember me telling you that?”

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