Chapter 1

The air conditioner in the main room of the cabin rattled with the steady, protesting rhythm of a dying man’s last breaths. It was a sound I’d known every summer for the last decade, the soundtrack to our family’s annual escape to Sol Perdido. The resort’s name was a joke, The Lost Sun, in a place where the sun was a relentless, oppressive entity, beating down on the Costa Rican coastline. From my cool, dim perch on the worn rattan sofa, the world outside the sliding glass door was a bleached-out panorama of white sun, green jungle, and the impossibly blue Pacific.

I was supposed to be reading about post-colonial economic theory, a summer assignment that felt especially absurd in a place that seemed to exist outside of time. The textbook lay open in my lap, its pages dense and impenetrable. My father, Richard, would have quizzed me on it. But he wasn’t here. A last-minute merger, a conference in Singapore—the reasons were always different, but the result was the same. It was just me and my mother, Elle, rattling around in this oversized cabin that smelled of old wood, salt, and the faint, floral scent of her expensive perfume that lingered in every room.

Sol Perdido was our habit. We could have afforded the sleek, modern resorts further up the coast, the ones with infinity pools and Michelin-starred chefs. But we came here, to the slightly peeling paint and the tiki bar with the leaky thatched roof, because it was familiar. It was our comfortable, respectable version of slumming it. And today, like most days, the stale familiarity and the drone of the air conditioner were losing their battle against the magnetic pull of the scene just beyond the glass.

And then there was my mother.

She was lying on her stomach on one of the sun-bleached lounge chairs on the deck, a still life of meticulously crafted nonchalance. She was a vision rendered in shades of gold and green. The green was her bikini, a slash of vibrant emerald against her deeply tanned skin. It was an impossible piece of clothing, a testament to the power of string and wishful thinking. The top was two small, sharp triangles of fabric, the strings tied so tight across her back they pressed into her oiled skin. The bottom was even more audacious, a thong that did little more than bisect the perfect, heavy globes of her ass, a thin green line disappearing into the shadowed valley between them.

Her skin, already golden from the first week of our stay, glistened with a sheen of the coconut and tiare flower oil she favored. I could practically smell it from inside, a cloyingly sweet and luxurious scent that was purely her. It highlighted the elegant musculature of her back, the taut lines of a body honed by five-day-a-week pilates sessions and the quiet determination to defy age. Her legs were long and powerful, ending in perfectly pedicured feet, the nails painted a demure, pearly white that seemed almost laughably innocent in contrast to the rest of the display.

But my eyes, as always, were drawn to her ass. It was her masterpiece, the undeniable focal point of her physique. It was large, high, and flawlessly round—a perfect, shelf-like creation that seemed to defy the very laws of gravity and anatomy. Even as she lay on her stomach, it retained its incredible shape, two perfect, heavy hemispheres of taut flesh barely restrained by that disappearing emerald string. It was the kind of ass that made men stupid, that stopped conversations, that you saw in pornography but rarely encountered in the wild. And it belonged to my mother.

Even from here, I could picture her face, probably tilted down toward a magazine, framed by the medium length straight dark brunette hair she kept meticulously colored and styled. I knew the subtle, tasteful work she’d had done had erased the lines a forty-five-year-old woman should have, leaving her with high, sculpted cheekbones and skin that looked perpetually smooth and rested. I knew the startling, intelligent green of her eyes, eyes that could be warm and maternal one moment and hold a sharp, mischievous glint the next. And I knew that if she were on her back, the emerald top would be fighting a losing battle against the twin masterpieces of her breasts—large, flawlessly round, and sitting high on her chest with a defiance of gravity that only the best plastic surgeon in Miami could provide. It was that combination—the perfect ass, the perfect breasts, the ageless face—that made men lose their minds. I’d seen it my whole life: my father’s business partners staring a little too long at her cleavage over dinner, my own high school friends suddenly becoming stammering idiots when she’d answer the door, the way waiters and valets fawned over her. It was a constant, a toxic cocktail of pride, embarrassment, and a deep, churning arousal I had spent years trying to ignore.

A familiar, hot flush crept up my neck, a wave of heat that had nothing to do with the tropical sun. It was the deep, shameful throb of arousal, an unwanted and insistent pulse in my groin. And just as quickly, it was followed by its shadow twin: a cold, gripping shame that twisted my stomach into a knot. I was twenty-five years old, a college student, a man by any definition. And I was sitting in the dark, getting a hard-on while staring at my own mother’s ass.

The thought was vile. It made me want to slam my textbook shut and retreat to my room, to punish myself with economic theory until the feeling went away. But I couldn’t move. My gaze was fixed, locked on the scene. A part of me, a dark and possessive part, became consumed with a different kind of heat: anger. The deck wasn’t private. Our cabin was one of a hundred, arranged in terraced rows slanting down to the beach. From my window, I could see the decks of at least three other cabins. I could see the path where the resort’s groundskeepers—local guys my age, or younger—pushed their wheelbarrows of mulch and dead leaves. Anyone could look over and see her.

And she had to know that. There was no way she didn’t. This wasn’t the innocent sunbathing of a woman lost in a book. This was a performance. She was presenting herself, an offering to the sun, to the sky, to any pair of eyes that happened to drift her way. Was she just oblivious, wrapped up in her own world of luxury and comfort? Or was it deliberate? Was there a quiet thrill she got from it, from knowing that men were watching, that their wives or girlfriends were watching, that the whole damn resort could be captivated by the sheer, unapologetic spectacle of her body?

The question was a special kind of poison. I didn’t know which answer was worse. The idea of her being so naive seemed impossible for a woman so sharp, so socially aware. But the idea of her doing it on purpose, of my respectable, upper-class mother consciously curating this pornographic display for an unseen audience ... that was a thought both monstrous and intoxicating. It made my possessive anger burn hotter, even as the traitorous pulse in my groin grew stronger, more demanding. I remained frozen at the window, a prisoner in the cool dark, watching my mother bake in the lost sun.

The sound came first, a crunch of sandals on the gravel path that led to our cabin, followed by the low murmur of familiar voices. Then they emerged from the treeline, walking into the punishing afternoon sun: Marco and Javier. They were a study in contrasts, my two local friends, the anchors of my summer life here. Marco was lean and wiry, his body a corded bundle of muscle from surfing and working maintenance at the resort. He moved with a slick, predatory confidence. Javier was softer, a little chubby around the middle, his energy eager and boyish, his movements less calculated. They were both shirtless, their skin baked to a deep, permanent brown that made my own carefully managed tan look pale and academic.

They were laughing about something, Javier slapping Marco on the back, when they rounded the corner of the deck. And then they saw her. The laughter died in their throats, cut off as if by a switch. Their entire posture changed. They straightened up, puffing out their chests, their casual slouch replaced by a slow, masculine swagger. It was a primal, unconscious display, two young bucks stumbling upon the territory of a lioness. I watched from my cool, dark observation post, my fingers tightening on the edge of my textbook.

“Señora Elle!” Javier’s voice was too loud, booming into the quiet afternoon air with a false cheerfulness that was almost comical. He had a wide, dopey grin on his face, but his eyes weren’t looking at her face. They were locked on the glistening, oiled expanse of her body, wide and hungry.

Marco was smoother, as always. He let Javier’s loud greeting break the ice, then followed up with a cool, charming smile. “We were just heading to the beach. Thought we would see if Liam wanted to come.” His excuse was plausible, but his gaze was just as ravenous as Javier’s, though he was better at masking it, letting his eyes sweep over her in a slow, appreciative appraisal rather than a fixed stare.