Yasmin

“We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.”
― S.J. Watson, Before I Go to Sleep

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything.”
― Ella Frank, Veiled Innocence

“First I need to do something.’ He pulled me closer towards him until our lips were almost touching.
‘What might that be?’ I managed to stutter, closing my eyes, anticipating the warmth of his lips against mine. But the kiss didn’t come. I opened my eyes. Alex had jumped to his feet.
‘Swim,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Come on.’
‘Swim?’ I pouted, unable to hide my disappointment that he wanted to swim rather than make out with me.
Alex pulled his T-shirt off in one swift move. My eyes fell straightaway to his chest – which was tanned, smooth and ripped with muscle, and which, when you studied it as I had done, in detail, you discovered wasn’t a six-pack but actually a twelve-pack.
My eyes flitted to the shadowed hollows where his hips disappeared into his shorts, causing a flutter in parts of my body that up until three weeks ago had been flutter-dormant. Alex’s hands dropped to his shorts and he started undoing his belt.
I reassessed the swimming option. I could definitely do swimming.
He shrugged off his shorts, but before I could catch an eyeful of anything, he was off, jogging towards the water. I paused for a nanosecond, weighing up my embarrassment at stripping naked over my desire to follow him. With a deep breath, I tore off my dress then kicked off my underwear and started running towards the sea, praying Nate wasn’t doing a fly-by.
The water was warm and flat as a bath. I could see Alex in the distance, his skin gleaming in the now inky moonlight. When I got close to him, his hand snaked under the water, wrapped round my waist and pulled me towards him. I didn’t resist because I’d forgotten in that instant how to swim. And then he kissed me and I prayed silently and fervently that he took my shudder to be the effect of the water.
I tried sticking myself onto him like a barnacle, but eventually Alex managed to pull himself free, holding my wrists in his hand so I couldn’t reattach. His resolve was as solid as a nuclear bunker’s walls. Alex had said there were always chinks. But I couldn’t seem to find the one in his armour. He swam two long strokes away from me. I trod water and stayed where I was, feeling confused, glad that the night was dark enough to hide my expression.
‘I’m just trying to protect your honour,’ he said, guessing it anyway.
I groaned and rolled my eyes. When was he going to understand that I was happy for him to protect every other part of me, just not my honour?”
― Sarah Alderson, Losing Lila

“When I make love to you,’ he said in a low whisper right by my ear, ‘I want to be able to give you one hundred percent of my attention. Right now, with the Unit on our tail, I’m going to be giving you less than fifty percent. I’ve got one eye on the door and one on you, not to mention a gun under the pillow. Not exactly the accessory I imagined.”
― Sarah Alderson, The Lila Collection