“Nothing.”

“Obviously something.”

“Nah.”

“Something so good you don’t want to share?”

One hand zipped around my waist, and I twisted away, but his other hand was already behind me in preparation. I held on to the tiny packages. Tightly. My sister was going to kill me with her “gifts.”

“Babe. What is it?”

I couldn’t help simultaneously melting and chortling at his use of the endearment that still reminded me of Barbie. He couldn’t have gone with “sweetie,” huh?

With that minute execution of lowering my guard, he tugged on the packages, but I clamped down until my fingers were sore.

“You’re so nosy.”

Sunny stopped. He stood in front of me, taking up all the space with his legs touching my knees. Then, while keeping this wildly intense eye contact, he nudged my knees apart with his thigh. Slowly. I felt the gentle caress of my dress shifting higher up, his leg sliding in between mine. A tantalizing shiver ran through me.

“Okay,” he said with that sensual Denzel voice.

Damn him. I wasn’t even trying to fight him.

“Could you do me a favor, though?”

I nodded, unable to form one coherent sentence.

“No wonder I don’t wear ties. This thing is getting on my damn nerves.” He slipped a finger into the knot, keeping his eyes hard on mine. Piercing. Intense. A challenge. “Seem to have trouble untying this knot.”

I swallowed. “Oh…do you…need help?”

“I think I might.” His lips twitched, like he was holding back. Like maybe he wanted to rip that tie off and that shirt and then my clothes.

“You’re just trying to get my hands busy so you can see what’s behind my back.”

“Maybe a little of a lot of things.”

I shoved the foil packages into the basket, beneath the rum cake. Sunny side-eyed the basket. A corner stuck out and his lips twitched again. He knew what those were, and by the smoldering fervor in his eyes, he intended to use them tonight.

A tiny voice sounded in the back of my thoughts of how this was a bad idea. We were taking the fantasy vacation too far, but we’d gotten pretty close to too far already.

I took hold of one end of his tie, my other hand at the knot. His fingers moved down my hand and arm, falling to his side. His touch was so light, yet burning.

I slowly pulled down the knot.

Tie off.

He tilted his head to the side, his eyes never leaving mine. “Should we stop there?”

“No.”

He edged closer to the seat. His hands slid up my legs, beneath the dress, his mouth on mine to nip and suck on my bottom lip. Then a kiss. And his tongue. His masterful, decadent tongue.

“You taste like cake,” I mumbled.

“You taste even better than cake.”

I scowled. “What’s better than cake?”

“You. The taste of you.”

My arms draped over his broad, firm shoulders as he moved one hand to cup my face, kissing my jaw, my neck, my clavicle, down my chest. His other hand went underneath my thigh, gliding back down and lifting my leg up. My other leg followed suit; my ankles crossed behind his waist in the most indecent, depraved way.

He hooked a finger beneath my panties, tugging, teasing. His hand at my neck skimmed lower, his thumb leaving a hot trail. Hot trails all over. So much sensation that I couldn’t focus on any one thing. He was doing so much, all at once, some parts slow and agonizing, some parts faster.

His palm sprawled over my chest.

Then his tongue dipped into the bodice. And I nearly jumped out of my skin. An embarrassingly high whimper came out of me.

Sunny smiled against my skin before his tongue darted back inside my bodice. My legs clenched around him. My fingers dug through his hair. I wanted his lips all over me. Everywhere, at once, fast and slow, light and hard, delicate and passionate.

My nerves were coming undone. My body unraveling. And we hadn’t even undressed.

That tiny voice in the back of my head tried to shout a demand for me to stop. We were coworkers, going after the same promotion. We bickered all the time. This wasn’t real. We were fake. This was a fantasy with a timer ticking down to our last hours and seconds. Like every project I’d ever worked on, there was a deadline, a hard end. It loomed on the horizon. The last of the kanban cards was moving into archives. No extensions permitted.

But that voice of reason was too small, deflating into an echo, overpowered by the intoxication of this man.

Somewhere in between my gasps and his groans—I mean wow—I managed to locate the packages beneath the rum cake, hoping they’d fit.

He smirked. “More cake, huh?”

“Is that what you’re looking at?” I said, fighting for air.

He took the package, read it, then handed them to me. “I don’t know how she knew my size, but hats off to your sister.”

Ah, yes. Diya won the competition guessing the size for anything. She was truly gifted.

Without another second to spare, Sunny hoisted me onto his hips, his hands firm beneath my butt underneath the dress, and sprinkled kisses across my chest and throat.

He took a step when I gasped, reaching past him to the counter.

“You’re bringing the cake, aren’t you?” He nipped my neck.

“I only came for the cake, remember?”

And with that, Sunny took me into the bedroom, closed the door behind us, and tossed me onto the bed, which smelled of him and me and us.

He looked down at me as he unbuttoned his shirt in a way no other man had ever looked at me before. If heated desire could start fires, then this entire villa would be in flames. He looked at me like I was an ethereal queen and there was no other person in existence. Like he would ride or die for me, like he would protect me and uplift me, like he would make love to me in the most euphoric ways…like he would bring me ube in the Tacoma rain.