Last Kiss (28 page)

Or maybe that was from the sweetness of his talk.

“My love for you is so ferocious, so dominating that I’m possessed by it. It changes who I am. It makes me someone different and yet I’m more who I’ve always believed I am than I ever have been.”

Tears slipped out from under my lids. I’d never been loved like this. My mother hadn’t been capable of coming close in her alcohol-fed state of existence. And Amber – her love had been complex and had conditions. But it was a love I knew and understood. The rules were clear in my head and ingrained in my responses.

Reeve’s love was simpler, but heavier. It wanted me to change like he’d changed. It wanted me to belong and be free all at once. It wanted me to grow up and be brave and trust. And while I’d only felt the fringes of it, I knew it was glorious and incomparable and that it demanded more than I’d ever given before.

And I wasn’t sure I was capable of that kind of courage. The kind it took to be loved like this all the time. Which was why I was crying, and why, after the night faded into morning, I would leave Reeve’s bed and his island and his life.

“Look at me.”

I twisted my neck toward him, opened my eyes, and fastened my gaze on his. My eyes were blurry but I could see him perfectly. Could see everything he felt, the depths of his emotion. For this moment, this brief moment, while he was inside me and around me, I could hold it. I could shoulder the weight and love him and be loved.

“There you are.” His murmur tensed and then he was shooting into me, his face straining with release. I tipped over the edge after him, like I was falling off a cliff, soaring for the briefest span of time before I hit the rocks below.

I let him hold me after. I let him caress me and say things that didn’t burn so much in the dark of his room, with my eyes on his chest and not buried in his gaze.

“This isn’t the only part of you I want, Emily.” His chest rumbled under my cheek. “I want the other parts too.”

“What parts?” I asked, drunk on every word he said. I’d beg him to say the alphabet just so he’d keep talking.

“Every part. I want the part of you that smiles and teases. And the part of you that argues. The stubborn part. The sassy part. The submissive part. And the parts of you that everyone knows. The famous parts. The private parts.”

I glanced up at him, laughing softly. “You’ve had all my private parts.”

“I want them again. I want them forever. I want them to be only mine.” He brushed his lips across my brow. “Anyone else who owns a piece of you – I want to take their share. Whatever I have to do to make that happen, I’ll do it. If you’ll let me.”

It seemed inappropriate to even think her name when I was pressed up against him, naked, our bodies still sticky with sweat and sex, but I knew he was talking about Amber. It was her shares of me he wanted to own.

And he did. He owned all of me, even if he never knew. She’d relinquished her rights to possession earlier in the evening, when she’d told me I had to go. Perhaps it was paradoxical, that I could only truly be his when I was about to leave him. But this was what we had, and I’d take this one night over never belonging to him at all.

“I’ve already let you,” I hummed. “I’m yours.”

His arms tightened around me. “I know. There’s nothing that can come between us, Blue Eyes. Anything that tries, I’ll handle it. Just like I always handle it.”

I could believe him – for one night, I could believe anything. I could believe that he was the prince who would rescue me. That ours would have a fairy-tale ending. That love could be all and save all and redeem all.

So I believed and I reveled in his plans. “More,” I spurred him. “Tell me more about how it’s going to be.”

“It’s going to be like this. Always.” He kissed my forehead then the spot between my brows. “I’ll cherish you and make you beg and make you scream. I’ll be the one who breaks you, and I’ll kill anyone else who even tries.”

I closed my eyes so he could press his lips to my lids, one by one.

“I’ll dress you in my come,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose. “I’ll mark every part of your body. Your face, your breasts, your neck, your belly.”

I felt him in all those places as he mentioned them. Felt him all along my skin, even in the spots he wasn’t touching and had never touched. I felt him in the places he could never reach – in my spine and in my ribs and in my veins.

“Everywhere.” His mouth found mine, and his lips, firm and demanding and without any more words, told a thousand other tales about a future that we’d never have. He lingered and he loved. He shared dreams he’d never spoken of and showed me how they fit with mine. He rebuilt me for all the times he’d broken me before. He claimed and made me new.

And I pretended it was the kind of kiss that could make all that possible. The kind of kiss that could seal and bind and change and forgive. A kiss that couldn’t fade. A kiss that could go on forever. A kiss that could last.

Instead of what it really was – a last kiss.

I slipped out of Reeve’s room early the next morning, without a message, without good-bye. He’d assume I didn’t want Amber to see me in his room, which was true. It didn’t need to be discussed. More importantly, I’d already said good-bye to him in the way I’d wanted to say good-bye.

The sun was still low on the horizon when I’d finished packing my bags. I didn’t want to see her, but Amber hadn’t given me any details about my flight. Waking her early would at least feel satisfying.

But when I got to her room, it was empty.

What’s more, her bed, though rumpled, didn’t look really slept in. Like, maybe she’d gotten in, but hadn’t stayed there. And when I looked around the room more closely, I saw that the vanity was clear, and her makeup and toiletries were in disarray on the floor nearby.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was too soon to panic, but I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Then I remembered Tabor. He’d been on guard all night, and I hadn’t seen him as I’d gone into her room. I headed outside to look for him.

I found him relatively soon, on a deck chair at the side of the house. “You’re asleep?” I screamed, shaking him awake. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry!” He sat up abruptly. “Sorry. I must have just dozed.” He stifled a yawn.

“
Just
dozed?” I was almost too livid to speak coherently. “Are you sure? Because Amber’s not in her room.”

“You’re kidding me, right? She was there last night.” He looked worried but I wasn’t sure if it was because she was missing or because he thought I might get him in trouble.

“How long was she —” I stopped midsentence. “Jesus, I don’t have energy for you.”

I left him calling after me, heading straight for the one place I thought I’d never be again.

“Reeve. Wake up,” I said, perching on the edge of his bed. He opened his eyes immediately, and I got right to the point. “Amber’s not in her room,”

He blinked several times. “What time is it?”

“Half past six.” I forced myself to speak slowly even though my mind and heart were racing. “Her bed doesn’t look slept in. And Tabor was asleep when I went looking for him.”

“Tabor was asleep? I’ll fucking kill him.” He sat up, his body on high alert as he flung the sheets off him and opened the drawer next to his bed. From there, he pulled out a black cloth bundle and unwrapped it as we spoke. “Last night, when you talked to her…?”

“It was fine. We were…” I let the sentence fall away. I didn’t want to tell him about the conversation I’d had with her before coming to his room and right now those details seemed lengthy and irrelevant. “She wasn’t upset when I left her. Everything was good.” Good for her, anyway.

Reeve paused, his tone hedging on reproach. “Then you didn’t tell her —?”

I cut him off. “I did. I told her about us. I promise. But she and I were settled when we parted.” His expression said he knew there was something fishy in my report. “We were fine, Reeve. Just, find her. Please?”

He stood up and nodded, accepting even if not convinced.

The object in his hands, I saw now, was a handgun. I shivered at the sight of the black steel, not because I was afraid of guns necessarily, but afraid of what it might mean. Reeve, however, moved with confidence and no hesitation, like he knew what he was doing. He clicked a magazine into place and crossed to his dresser, where he grabbed a belt from the top drawer. After threading it through the loops of his jeans, he strapped on a holster.

“Was there any reason in particular you were trying to find her so early?” There was no suspicion in his tone. He was merely a man sorting out the details.

“I was up and thought I’d catch her before breakfast.” Guilt stabbed through my chest, but I wasn’t sure if I felt bad because of what I was keeping from him or because of what I’d kept from her.

He nodded again, returning to the nightstand, where he grabbed a walkie-talkie from a charging dock. He turned the volume knob and static sounded over the device until he pushed the talk button. “All security meet in the main courtyard immediately.”

He put on shoes and gestured for me to follow him as he headed toward the bedroom door.

I paused, suddenly realizing something odd. “Reeve?”

He turned back with a raised brow.

“When did you get dressed?” I’d been too distracted about Amber to notice he was already wearing jeans and a T-shirt when I woke him up. When I’d left him earlier, he’d been naked.

“What?” He seemed baffled by the question. Or he was stalling. “Oh. I woke up a while ago and got dressed. Come on. Let’s get out there.”

Gotten dressed and then fell asleep again, fully clothed?

But getting his story clear wasn’t high on my priority list at the moment. So I dropped it and followed him out to the courtyard.

“Have you looked anywhere else besides her room?” he asked as we walked toward the guards gathering outside.

The early spring morning was cool, and I wrapped my arms around myself to ward off the chill. “No. I came to you first.”

“Good girl.”

The phrase set my body to vibrate with unwitting memories of the night before, beautiful memories, and it occurred to me that if something had happened to Amber while I’d been wrapped around Reeve… well, I’d known it was a betrayal when I went into his room. But I wasn’t sure I could live with that level of betrayal.

“What’s up?” Alex asked when we were close.

“Amber’s missing.” Reeve sent Alex to search the house and another guard to search the lower grounds. With Filip and a few other guards in tow, Reeve headed to check out the master bedroom.

I trailed behind, feeling like deadweight but too invested to stay out of the way.

Reeve quickly scanned the room and the bathroom. At her vanity, he squatted down to examine the items on the floor.

Filip hovered over him. “Looks like someone got mad and swept them to the ground.”

“Agreed.” Reeve peered up at me.

“It could have been her.” She’d been angry when she’d gone to find me. Neither Reeve nor I had any way of knowing if she’d been to her room after he’d left her at the pool. She could have gone in and made the mess herself.

“It could have not been her, too,” he said, and my stomach knotted so tightly that it nearly caused me to double over. He eyed me sympathetically, like he wished he could hold me, and I wished he could hold me too. Wished that was all it would take to make this anxiety ease.

But both of us knew that whatever would erase this dread, it wouldn’t be found in each other’s arms.

Reeve rose from the floor. “Tabor,” he said, pointing at the guard cowering outside the door.

The bodyguard once assigned to protect me, stepped into the room. He didn’t say anything, his expression conveying his distress and remorse.

Reeve seemed apathetic to Tabor’s anguish. He strode up to the young man, murder in his eyes. “How long were you asleep? Tell the truth and the only thing you’ll lose today is your job.”

The message wasn’t directed to me, and it still caused me to shudder. The man in front of me was a version of Reeve Sallis he’d hinted at, but I’d never seen. It was the version of Reeve Sallis that deserved the reputation of danger. It was a version that, I imagined, had been good at the jobs that his Mafia uncle had once assigned him.

If I hadn’t been so upset about my friend, I might have been impressed.

“I don’t know,” Tabor said, his spine straight. “A while. I saw her to her room and when the light went off, I figured she was out for the night.” His bottom lip trembled slightly. “I fell asleep soon after that.” Then he broke. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Reeve looked like he might punch a hole in the wall. “She better turn up fine, you shithole, or I swear to God you’ll really understand sorry.”

Shooing Tabor aside, Reeve stepped out to the courtyard and addressed his staff. “Everyone’s on full search. Filip, call over to the resort and see if anyone there has heard from her. Talk to the housekeepers and the cook as well. Then get on the phone with the mainland and see what Anatolios can find out. Alex, check out the cameras on the outer walls of the compound starting at ten last night. The rest of us will divide up in teams to go over the grounds and then move outside from there.”

The staff immediately dispersed, everyone to their assigned tasks. Reeve started toward the stairs to the lower grounds then stopped when he caught sight of me.

I wrung my hands together. “Where do you want me?”

“Either you stay locked in the master bedroom, or, if you insist on searching with us, stay glued to me. Your choice.” It had been hard for him to give me that option; the difficulty was written all over his face.

It changes who I am.
My chest pinched as I recalled those words from the night before. He hadn’t been that man when I’d met him, a man who could offer alternatives. He’d been a man who said how things were, and I was expected to go along.

Alternatives, options – it was much more than Amber had given me.

I appreciated the choice, and to show him how much, I selected the one he wanted me to select. “I’ll stay here. I’ll look through her things and see if there’s anything unusual. And I’ll call Joe.”

“I like that plan.” His relief was palpable. “It’s a safe plan.” He turned back to the stairs.

I called after him. “Reeve?”

He paused, his expression encouraging me to go on.

Did she know?
That was the question pressing most at my thoughts. Had she realized what I’d done? That I’d spent the night with Reeve? Had she run away as punishment?

But I couldn’t ask his thoughts because then he’d wonder why it mattered if she and I had sorted everything out. And I’d have to explain the agreement we’d come to, and maybe I’d have to explain it eventually anyway, but, at the moment, I didn’t know how.

His face softened, and he closed the distance between us with two long strides. “We’re going to find her,” he said, kissing my forehead. “She’s fine. Trust me.”

And since I did trust him, I said, “Okay.”

I called Joe first, from her room – from the room that had been Reeve’s. The conversation was brief. I apprised him of the situation and told him how I’d meant to leave the island that day without sharing much of the details. “I don’t know when she disappeared or if she made the arrangements for me to leave or not. If she did, that might at least give us a time frame.”

“And you haven’t told this to Sallis because he didn’t know you were going? Are you planning to tell him?”

“I’m sure I will eventually. Right now, though…” I was too tired to explain anything, not just because I’d barely gotten any sleep but because my reasons were so fuzzy now I could barely explain them to myself let alone to someone else.

“Keep it to yourself,” Joe said. “I’ll see what I can find out. Hang in there.”

After I hung up, I looked through her belongings. All that she owned had been purchased for the trip and even though her perfume was the same brand she’d worn for years and her lipstick, the same burnt red color she’d loved since she was a teen, everything felt impersonal. I told myself I was searching for clues like a grown-up Nancy Drew, but what I was really looking for was her. I wanted to find her in her clothes, in the vanity drawers, in the items strewn across the floor – a swimsuit, her eyeliner, a manicure set, a bottle of aspirin.

None of it felt like her or smelled like her or vibrated of her except the near empty pack of cigarettes I found tucked in the back of her dresser and a half empty container of methadone. Those items I clutched to my chest and curled up on her bed where I could smell the faint scent of her shampoo on the pillow, and I prayed – to God, maybe. Or her. Or to the universe. To whoever or whatever might be out there listening to the prayers of desperate and despondent souls like me. “Please, let her be found. Please, please, please, let her be found.”

“You weren’t slated to be on that flight,” Joe said when he called back later. “I talked to the manager at the resort – discreetly, don’t worry – and he said he hadn’t heard from her.”

I let out a long, heavy breath. “So either she changed her mind or she didn’t get a chance.”

“What is your gut telling you, Emily?” Joe was like my conscience, saying out loud the questions I was asking myself silently.

“She didn’t change her mind.” When I’d last seen her, she’d been firmly decided. There had been no swaying her.

“Then you think something happened with Vilanakis?”

“Yes.” I paced out into the courtyard, smiling at Filip, who’d stayed behind to watch after me along with the housekeeper and cook. “Unless it was someone else.”

“Like who? Like Reeve?”

“I don’t know. I’m being paranoid.” I spun around, retracing my steps back inside.

“Be paranoid. It’s a good investigative technique.”

“It’s silly. Just.” There was a boulder of worry on my shoulders. A boulder so weighted that I couldn’t be in my right mind, and, really, it couldn’t be expected that I would be.

So I spit out the idea that had tossed around inside my head all day. “He told me last night that he’d… well, he said he wouldn’t let anything come between us. He said he’d handle anything or anyone who did. Amber wanted me to go home and that was going to come between us.”

Again, he asked, “What’s your gut telling you, Em?”

“My gut says that something fucking happened to her. I’m scared out of my goddamn mind.”

“About Reeve. Do you trust him?”

I rubbed my fingers across my forehead, remembering that he’d been dressed when I’d come to him that morning, remembering how he’d dismissed me when I’d asked about it.

Remembering the night I’d spent with him and the things he’d said and the things I’d felt.

I’d been in this quandary once before – torn between loving him and the things Reeve was capable of. I didn’t need to examine the conclusions I’d come to again.

“I do trust him,” I admitted honestly. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t do something to her.”

I didn’t eat or sleep all day. Filip was on and off the phone speaking in Greek so I was only able to catch bits of information. I gathered he was talking to Anatolios most of the time, and that Anatolios was attempting to reach the Vilanakis clan, but Filip didn’t share anything with me voluntarily.