I pushed and pushed against her chest. She didn’t move, her face frozen in uncanny peace.Shit.I tilted her head back, placing my mouth against hers, and breathed.
It took three breaths and two more rounds of pumping, but then Gemma convulsed, coughing up brackish water. She turned to her side, purging the Atlantic from her lungs. After three rounds, she fell to her back on the sand.
For a moment she stared up at me without walls. Eyes wide and teary, glossed in wonder. Something passed on her face then, a look that would haunt me forever. Like she knew this would happen. Like she was waiting for me.
Then she blinked, and it shattered.
She shoved at my chest. “What the fuck are you doing?” I stood and she scrambled to lift herself up to her elbows, gaze burning with anger.
I turned from her, facing the ocean, and reached for the collar at the back of my neck. I pulled the wet shirt over myhead, dropping it to the sand. She could see the tattoo I was never supposed to show.
Twistedly, Iwantedthat.
The waves crashed in a cathartic, preordained order. Their bruised blue color was too similar to the dark rings circling Gemma’s baby blue irises. I was content to have watching her from afar be my life. Knowing her without ever revealing myself. Content with the small windows I’d carved for myself into her soul. But then she tried to end it.
And I felt something inside me snap.
I spun around. Gemma hadn’t moved. Her white dress stuck to all the illicit, mouthwatering parts of her, nipples pink beneath the fabric, a small triangle of hair visible between her thighs. I wanted to bury my face in it.
I’d imagined this for a while. I’d seen glimpses of Gemma when she changed—the blade of a tanned collarbone, the side of her naked thigh. Like the fucked-up pervert I was, that was what I get off to. I jerked it to glimpses of Gemma Crowne.
“Fuck you,” she bit out. “You had no right.” Her eyes dropped to my cock, where the bastard was hard.
The venom she spat didn’t match her fiery, hazy gaze, like morning sun caught in fog.
Hungry.
A better guy wouldn’t even consider taking her after she nearly died.
Over my jeans, I rubbed the hard outline of my cock. “Run, Rich Girl.”
“No,” she said. “This was none of your fucking business.Youleave.”
She hadn’t lifted her eyes from my cock, mouth parting, as I continued to stroke myself.
“You sure about that?” I gripped the metal zipper. “Sure you want me to leave?”
I tugged the zipper down a few inches.
“You’re a fucking pervert,” she said, but her voice was husky with desire. A fucking supermodel voice. A voice that could sink ships.
I dragged the zipper down the rest of the way, pulling myself out. She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, biting so the soft flesh turned white. I took a step forward, legs on either side of her hips. I palmed my cock, getting off at the look in her eyes, like she was in a trance.
Gemma slid to her knees, my cock eye level with her.
So close.
So fucking close she just had to move an inch. The same thought rippled across her eyes.
“Is this how you get off?” Her tongue darted out to lick me. So slight, just enough to tell me I wasn’t in control of this. “Finding fragile women to take advantage of?”
I knotted her hair in my hand, pulling her head back from my cock, using every last shred of control I had not to take her. The submissive haze in her defiant eyes almost tipped me over.
“Gemma Crowne is a lot of things.” I laughed. “She’s not fucking fragile.”
I released her hair, pushing her flat against the sand.
I wanted her beyond sex. I wanted to fuck her until she gave me her life so I could protect it and care for it in ways she couldn’t. Fuck her into submission so she wouldn’t even think about killing herself without my permission.
