Free Sleep With Me (Be With Me) by Jamie DeBree Page B

later, she got up and washed her face, looking at herself in the mirror. The woman staring back at her was foreign with tanned skin and loose, tousled hair. Very different from her normal put-together professional self. The dark circles she recognized, but that haunted, lost look in her eyes was another new, unwelcome change.
    David had done that. Or rather, she’d let him, which was worse. Candace was wrong. Opening herself up had just made it worse, and for what? A couple nights of sleep? Memories that would take too long to fade?
    With a heavy sigh, she turned away and grabbed the last of her cash and key card. No sense in wasting the night sitting alone with her depressing thoughts. She’d find something to eat, and then watch the sun go down on the beach. A fitting end to a disastrous vacation.
    Especially if it involved a Mai Tai. Or two.
     
    ***
     
    The sun was just beginning to set as David walked up the beach. He’d tried to stay away, but he needed to see Kat once more before she left. Needed to apologize again for...everything. Having just interrupted what appeared to be an intimate moment involving whipped cream and chocolate syrup at what used to be her hut, he was on his way to the hotel in hopes she hadn’t found a flight out yet.
    Glancing to the right, he saw the dark profile of a beautiful woman in the distance. Sitting in the sand, she held a hurricane glass in one hand while the other wrapped around one knee. Her hair drifted gently around her shoulders with the breeze, and though he couldn’t see her features, he knew her.
    Switching course, he went to her side. Lowering himself to the sand, he sat beside her and watched quietly as the huge orange ball slid down under the horizon. The fact that she let him was encouraging, he supposed.
    When the last vestiges of light were gone, she finally spoke.
    “I fly out tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Okay.” His stomach flipped over, his chest tightened. There were so many things to be said, and he didn’t know how to say any of them. Didn’t even know where to start. But it couldn’t end, not yet. Not like this.
    “Kat, I--”
    A gentle touch on his arm stilled him, drew his gaze up. He could just make out the haunted look in her eyes, the sad smile on her lips. She got to her feet, holding a hand out to him.
    “Shhh. Let’s just go.”
    He took her hand and she helped him up, lacing her fingers with his as they walked up the beach to the hotel. She led him down a long hall in the older part of the building and into a small room with a double bed and not much else. After she locked the door, she turned and leaned against the door as he watched.
    “I know I’m just another island fling,” she said, holding a hand up when he would have protested. “It’s okay. I get it. And you can say no if you want to. But I was hoping...”
    She pushed off the door and moved in close, sliding her hands up over his shoulders to play with the hair at the back of his neck.
    “I was hoping you would stay. Just for tonight.”
    He grasped her hips, pulling her tight against his body and wrapping his arms around her. His lips found hers, teasing.
    “So you can sleep?” he murmured against her delectable lips. He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it did.
    She moaned low in her throat as he kissed her, slow and gentle.
    “No,” she breathed when he finally let her up for air. “Because I want you.”
    He captured her mouth again, feasting on her as he spun her around. Her hands worked between them, undoing buttons and zippers and pulling off his clothes and he happily returned the favor. Finally down to skin-on-skin they ended up on the bed, somehow. He settled between her legs, the tip of his cock probing gently at the entrance between her thighs, but no further. Not yet.
    He worshiped her neck with his lips, traced her collarbone with his tongue, laved and suckled at her nipples while she arched off the bed into his mouth, her soft whimpers driving him crazy with