“Not people. Well, not usually,” Harper said, and it took everything she had not to stare at Elise like she was the rarest animal she’d ever tracked in the wild. But oh, she wanted to. In fact, she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. The way the afternoon light streamed in through the gauzy curtains, hitting the slope of Elise’s naked hip, the creamy skin of her thigh… it was downright impossible not to stare.
“Just me.”
“Just you,” Harper said, reaching out to tuck back a curl that had fallen over Elise’s cheek. The curl slipped through her fingers, and she let the tip of her index finger stroke Elise’s cheek.
Elise shuddered so violently that her skin erupted in goosebumps.
Harper found her hand moving over Elise’s shoulder just to feel closer to her. “Have I ever told you how beautiful I think you are?” she asked.
Elise laughed just as a tinge of pink seeped into her cheeks. “No,” she said matter-of-factly. Which didn’t seem right. Harper could be mistaken, but didn’t she compliment Elise at least three times over the course of the last hour? But then again, the last hour had felt like a fever dream, so maybe the words had never actually made it out of her mouth.
“But I’m not beyond compliments,” Elise added. “At least not anymore.”
“Well, you’re stunning. In fact, you’re more beautiful now than you were ten years ago.”
“Can’t be,” Elise said, shaking her head until all the curls came falling back. Neither Elise nor Harper tried tucking them back in. “I was barely thirty back then. My skin still had that youthful glow. And I was tighter in the stomach.” She patted her lovely belly.
But Harper couldn’t disagree more. She was just about to stretch forward and kiss Elise’s stomach to make a point, but then Elise’s stomach roared like a lion in the bushveld.
Harper tried not to laugh. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked, then remembered she had barely touched food all day. There hadn’t been time for anything other than trying to decipher the meaning behind Elise’s reaction earlier. Fear. It meant she didn’t want to see Harper get hurt. It meant she cared. Finding Elise in that secret garden had been a risk, and so too was walking up to her and kissing her. But it was a risk that had paid off.
“Honestly, I don’t even remember,” Elise said, already slipping off the bed.
Harper caught sight of her bum as she careened across the room and counted her lucky stars. Elise’s butt was cuter than a peach. Her hips swayed as she walked. She couldn’t wait for Elise to come back to watch her from the front and wasn’t disappointed when she did.
Elise brought back a small ceramic bowl, hand-painted in yellows and blues, filled past the brim with perfectly ripe peaches. She slid onto the edge of the bed—still thankfully naked—and curled her left leg while the right dangled off the side. “Want one?” she asked, biting into the fruit. Juice dribbled down her chin, leaving golden drops on the white sheets.
Harper was hungry, but it wasn’t the fruit she wanted. She shifted her weight and reached for Elise’s hips. “I think those are the most perfect-looking peaches I’ve ever seen.”
“They’re just peaches,” Elise said.
“No,” Harper disagreed. “They’re not.” Then she took the bowl from Elise’s hands, placed it safely on the bedside table before she grabbed Elise by the waist and hauled her on top of her.
Harper settled Elise more firmly over her thighs, eyes flicking to the abandoned fruit. “Those look good, but I already know what I want seconds of,” she said, voice turning wicked. Her hands slid down to cup the curve of Elise’s ass. “You’re already juicier than anything in that bowl.” She licked a stray drop of juice from Elise’s chin, then chased the taste to her mouth, kissing her deep until the fruit was an afterthought and the only thing Harper was interested in devouring was the woman sprawled over her.
By the time Harper eased Elise onto her back, it was clear a peach wasn’t the juiciest thing she planned on devouring tonight.
Chapter Fourteen
Elise stepped onto the Marina d’Arechi and breathed fresh air into her lungs. The catamaran sat at the end of the dock, looking sleek and pristine. Its hull sparkled, and its mast stretched confidently into the sky. The trampoline netting between the boats looked so tight and clean that Elise could imagine herself bouncing on it, getting so high she’d touch the heavens.
Salerno’s tourist port was busy. But Elise hardly noticed. She was far too busy looking up at the bright blue sky. The clouds looked pillowy-soft, like someone had whipped them by hand.
She did a full three-sixty before coming to a stop. In fact, everything glowed bright and stupidly beautiful. She pressed her fingertips to her lips. Were they really tingling, or was she just imagining it? Did it even matter?
She decided it didn’t and walked toward the crew loading up the equipment.
Even they looked suspiciously radiant. Janet, the sound tech, who was mostly made of existential dread and whom Elise had seen smile on only one occasion—her birthday last year when Elise had organized a cake for her—had a soft kind of halo going around her. Even Jeremy, whose pants couldn’t fall down any lower, was looking somewhat handsome. Elise didn’t even mind that he had pastry crumbs sitting in his beard from breakfast. She didn’t mind anything at all. Or feel stressed. Or irritated.
Was this what sleeping with Harper all these years later did? Did it break the world? Did it color-correct her reality?
Ha, she thought when she noticed a skip in her step. In fact, she might even be skipping. Which she had to cut out before anyone spotted her. And then, just like that, she felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to spot Harper.
This morning, when Elise had woken up with the bed empty beside her, she had felt a deep pit of disappointment in her stomach. For a split second, the memory of Sesriem had come storming back, and Elise had felt almost physically ill, wondering if Harper had run away once again. But then she’d spotted a slip of paper sitting on the side table with Harper’s scrawly handwriting on it, and her chest had unclenched. Harper had gone for a run, and she would see Elise later at the next group date.
Elise scanned the dock. The contestants were already aboard the catamaran, as were the captain, two crew members, the camera operators, and the drone guy. Considering they would be out most of mid-morning and lunch, Ursula, the chef who had been with the production team since the very start, was lugging two stacked plastic containers with heirloom tomatoes, olive tapenade, three wheels of brie, crusty baguettes, and marinated chicken skewers aboard.
But the one person Elise couldn’t spot, however, was Harper. Elise walked up the gangplank aboard the catamaran and peeked in through a window with a view of the saloon, but all she could see were the nine contestants fawning over Megan. She then turned back to the dock and was about to head down the gangway when a voice called out.