Beginning to focus on the quick sketch I was trying to finish, I didn’t realize that he’d already woken up until I looked up to find his stunning eyes on me.

“You’re so beautiful.” His gaze was hooded, his voice husky.

I blushed in response, winking at him before continuing to put the finishing flourishes on my sketch.

“Come here…” He tapped the empty space on the bed beside him. “What are you doing all the way over there?”

“Creating a masterpiece…” I grinned, crossing my legs as I lifted my sketch in the air to get a better look at it.

“Show me.” He was speaking in his typical authoritarian tone, reminding me of his station and authority.

I pouted at him. “No.”

“Will you just come over here, Sofia?” As an afterthought, he grinned and spoke the magic word, “Please?”

I placed my pencil on the nearby bedside table and dragged my feet toward the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed, sketchbook still clutched in one hand. When I got close enough, he took my free hand and pulled me on the bed beside him, making me gasp at the sudden motion.

Before I could object, he grabbed the sketchbook from my hand and lay flat on his back. Mischief traced his face as he watched me for a reaction. I curled up on the bed beside him and gave him my blessing.

“Go ahead. Look.”

When Derek shifted his gaze toward the most recent sketch, I felt my stomach flutter at the reaction on his face.

“Sofia, this is … incredible. I had no idea you could draw…”

I chuckled, recalling what he told me when I first saw him play a tune on his grand piano. “There are lot of things you don’t know about me.” I rolled to my stomach and rested my arm and chin over his chest and shoulder, watching his facial reactions as he thumbed through my sketches.

I knew every sketch by heart. They contained fond memories of him. A sketched copy of the Polaroid picture Corrine sent over. The confused look on his face as he tried to figure out how to navigate through a smart phone. His fingers over a grand piano. Our hands clasping each other’s, fingers intertwined. The way he looked standing on the balcony during our first night at The Shade, breath-taken by the incredible view.

After he finished browsing through my sketches, he eyed me questioningly as if to ask what it all meant.

“I never stopped thinking of you.”

Guilt marred his countenance. My gut clenched. He set the sketchbook aside and brushed a hand over my hair. I was curious as to why his fingers trembled. I ran a hand over his bare torso. All those times Ben tried to get me in bed with him, I held out. I didn’t know it then, but now I understood. I was holding out for Derek. He was the man I wanted to share this with, yet the apprehension looming over his countenance shook me.

“What’s wrong, Derek?”

“You were constantly on my mind too, Sofia. Trust me when I say that… But while you were away, I just… I lost myself. I can’t even…”

Vivienne, Corrine, the girls… they all said that he was different apart from me, but it still meant a lot more when I heard from him. “I’m here now. I’m here for as long as you want me here.”

“You promise never to leave me again?”

I didn’t even hesitate. “I promise.”

“How could you trust me this way, Sofia? Trust me enough that you would give all that you are to me?”

Before insecurity could take a hold of me and make me question how he felt about what happened between us, his lips were on mine, his fingers tangling in my hair. I responded to his kiss wondering if I would ever fully understand him, not really caring at that moment if I ever would. He was a mystery I was willing to take time unraveling.

When our lips parted, I slapped him over the shoulder with my palm. Of course, there was more pain in my palm than on his shoulder. Still, he scowled at me and grabbed the assaulted area.

“What the hell was that for?!”

“You can’t ask questions like those and then just kiss me without waiting for me to give an answer, Derek.”

“Oh yeah?” Amusement flashed through his eyes. The boyish charm he rarely showed surfaced during our stolen moments of intimacy. “What else can’t I do? Enlighten me, will you?”

“I’m serious.” I frowned.

He tried to put on a straight face, but burst out laughing anyway, his hand running the length of my waist down to my hips. “Well, can you blame me if I can’t keep my hands off of you? After you seduced me last night?”

I blushed even as I feigned offense. “I did not seduce you.”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Sofia. You were seduction personified from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“You can’t say things like that.”

“Why can’t I?” He quirked a brow at me.

“I never how to react to it.”

To that, he chuckled. “But it’s true though. I’ve wanted you for the longest time. I don’t even think you realize how attractive you are, Sofia. Do you have any idea the kind of hell you put me through every night you spent here in my bed? The kind of self-control I needed to have not to make you mine?”

“Is that what I am? Yours?”

“That’s what you’ve always been since you stepped onto this island. I keep telling you that you belong to me, but it never seems to sink in to that stubborn mind of yours.”

I should’ve been offended by the way he was once again referring to me as if I were an object he could own, but I’d already lost count of the number of times I tried to clarify to him that I wasn’t his. Besides, at that moment, it actually felt like I was. Still, my stubborn self just had to clarify. “I don’t belong to you, Derek.”