Chapter 8: The Permission Slip
The walk back to the villa was a silent, three-person parade under a barrage of stars. Julie, buoyed by wine and the evening’s supposed success, looped her arms through both of theirs, humming a tune Ava didn’t recognize. Her body swayed against Chris’s side, trusting.His arm was rigid, a scaffold holding her up.
Ava watched the cobblestones, each step an echo of the feeling of cool stone against her knees. Her mouth still held the phantom memory of him, a secret she carried in the hollow of her cheeks. Every time Julie’s laugh bubbled up, bright and untainted, a shard of ice lodged deeper in Ava’s chest.
Inside the villa, the air was still and warm, scented with the cleaned-up remnants of their earlier room service. “I’m wiped,” Julie announced, kicking off her heels.They clattered against the terracotta tile. “But let’s have a nightcap in our room.One more. For the three of us.”
Chris’s eyes flicked to Ava, a silent question.A warning. “Julie, you’ve had plenty,” he said, his voice carefully neutral.
“Don’t be a bore.” Julie pouted, already pulling a bottle of amber rum from the cabinet. She grabbed three cut-crystal glasses.“It’s a vacation.Ava’s finally coming out of her shell. I want to celebrate.”
In the master bedroom, Julie curled into the center of the enormous bed, the glasses clustered on the nightstand.She patted the expanse of white linen on either side of her. “Come on.Plenty of room.”
Ava hesitated at the foot of the bed. The scene was too intimate, too loaded. The memory of Chris’s hands in her hair felt like a spotlight on her skin.Chris, however, moved with a resigned efficiency. He poured two fingers of rum into each glass, handed one to Julie, one to Ava.His fingers brushed hers. A spark, a transfer of guilt. He kept his own glass, sitting on the edge of the bed, a foot of space between him and Julie.
“To my favorite people,” Julie slurred, taking a sip and then draining the glass.She sighed, leaning back against the pillows. “God, I love this. Family.”
“You’re drunk, Jules,” Chris said softly, not unkindly.“A little.” She grinned, her eyes half-mast.“A happy drunk. Safe with my husband and my niece.” She reached out and found Ava’s hand, squeezing it. “I’m so glad you’re here, sweetie.Ready to conquer the world. And all the boys in it.”
Ava forced a smile, the rum burning a path down her throat that did nothing to warm the cold knot inside her.Julie’s chatter drifted, became less coherent. She talked about Ava’s college applications, about Chris’s business, about the damn vow renewal.Her sentences began to trail off into soft mumbles. Her glass tipped precariously in her loose grip.Chris gently took it from her.
“She’s out,” he murmured, more to himself than to Ava. He looked across Julie’s sleeping form, her blonde hair fanned out on the pillow. The quiet of the room was immense, broken only by the rhythmic crash of waves below and Julie’s deep, wine-heavy breaths.
Ava made to get up, to flee to the safety of her own room.“Don’t go,” Chris said, the words quiet but stark.
She froze.He was staring at Julie’s peaceful face. “She was talking about your first time earlier.At dinner.Before…”
Ava remembered. The comment about wanting her to have the best first time.A drunken, affectionate throwaway line.It felt like a century ago.
Chris’s gaze lifted, finding Ava’s in the dim lamplight. His eyes were dark pools, unreadable.“She wants you to be ready. To know what you’re doing.” He spoke slowly, each word chosen with a terrifying care. “She said so.”
Ava’s heart stuttered. “Chris…”
“I could,” he continued, his voice a low thread of sound meant only for her.“I could teach you.Show you.Right here. Where it’s safe. Where she is.”
The proposal hung in the perfumed air, monstrous and seductive. It was a distortion of Julie’s earlier sentiment, warped in the gulf between their secret and her innocence. It was also an answer to the desperate, curious heat that had been churning in Ava since the restaurant corridor.A way to go further, to make the secret complete.
He was giving her a choice.A horrible, breathtaking choice.
Julie murmured in her sleep, turning onto her side, facing Chris, her back to Ava.Her breathing deepened.
Chris didn’t look away from Ava.He waited.Ava’s mind screamed a dozen protests.This was her aunt. This was her uncle.This was a line that, once crossed, would vaporize everything. But the other voice, the one that had tasted power on her knees, was louder. It whispered that the line was already ash.That Julie, in her own way, had given a benediction. That this was the ultimate confidence, the final step into the woman she was both terrified and desperate to become.Slowly, so slowly, Ava nodded.Something shifted in Chris’s face. A hardening.A surrender. He moved with a predatory grace, rising from the bed and coming around to her side.He didn’t touch her at first. He just looked down at her, his shadow enveloping her.
“She’s right here,” he whispered, a final, twisted anchor to reality. “She’s part of this, too, even if she doesn’t know.”
Then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her to face him. His thumbs traced her collarbones through the thin silk of her dress.The touch was clinical and incendiary. His eyes were on hers as his fingers found the first button at the nape of her neck.He undid it. The sound was explosively loud in the quiet room.The second button.The third. Each tiny release was a hammer blow. The dress gaped open, exposing the plain white lace of her bra, the gentle swell of her breasts. The sea air from the balcony washed over her newly exposed skin, raising goosebumps.Julie sighed in her sleep, a contented sound.
Chris’s hands slid inside the open dress, pushing the fabric from her shoulders. It slithered down her arms, catching at her elbows, a silken bind.He didn’t help it along. He left her there, half-undone, vulnerable, his gaze drinking in the sight. His control was absolute, a teacher establishing the terms of the lesson.“This is about you,” he said, his voice rough. “About what you feel.Every touch.Every sound. Remember it.”
He leaned in then, and his mouth found the pulse point at the base of her throat. It was not a kiss, but a claiming.A press of heat that sent a shockwave straight through her core. She gasped, a sharp intake that sounded deafening.From the bed, Julie stirred. “Mmm… Chris?”
They both froze, a statue of guilt and desire.Chris didn’t pull away. His lips still against Ava’s skin, he turned his head slightly toward the bed. “I’m here, Jules,” he murmured, his voice thick. “Go back to sleep.”
“Love you…” Julie mumbled, and her breathing slipped back into its deep, steady rhythm.
In the space of that suspended moment, with Julie’s sleepy affirmation hanging in the air, the last vestige of Ava’s resistance evaporated.This was the world they were making now. One built on her aunt’s trust and her uncle’s betrayal and her own consuming want.
Chris straightened, looking from his sleeping wife to his niece, trapped between them in every way. His jaw was tight, a muscle flickering. The lesson, the pretense, was falling away, revealing the raw, dangerous thing beneath.
He cupped Ava’s face, his thumb stroking her lower lip, the one that had been around him hours before.His eyes were no longer those of a teacher.
They were those of a man who had passed the point of no return.