“Maybe you should turn off your brain more often.”
She pulled back to look at him. He clocked her interest with a raised eyebrow. How was it possible to still want to jump his bones when she was colder than a well digger’s butt in January? That had been another of her father’s little gems. “And th-that’s thesametune you were singing earlier. If memory serves.”
“What can I say?” He shrugged his shoulders, still powering through the water. The float bag dragged behind him, bobbing lazily in the surf. “I figure if I say it enough, one of these times it’ll sink in.”
And then he smiled, his teeth flashing brightly.
Once again, she felt his smile in some deeply fundamental place inside her. A place she dared not name. Following the impact was a hard fist of regret and shame. There was safety in his strong arms, but she suddenly remembered she had no right to claim it.
“Put me down, Z.” She wriggled in his embrace. “I g-got it.”
“And I’ve gotyou,” he insisted, clomping through the waves that now circled his knees.
“Hey.” She swatted at his chest, doing her bestnotto get distracted by the dark hair there. The hair that seemed to beckon the stroke of her fingers. Or her lips.“I might be short,” she told him, “b-but I’m far from small. Put me down before you get a herniated disk.”
The pilings loomed around them like giant, limbless trees. “Every single inch of you is…” He stopped and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing below his beard. She waited with breathless anticipation for him to finish. When he did, her heart grew so huge she feared it might exceed the limits of her chest cavity. “You’re perfect, Chels.”
H-h-holy wow.
His admission felt enormous.Tooenormous. “Perfect, huh? Even when I’m volunteering for jobs I’m not qualified for?”
“Especially then,” he whispered, trudging onto the pebbled shore. “Especially when you’re brave and self-sacrificing and throwing caution to the wind. It makes me insane, but…that doesn’t mean I’d change a damn thing.”
She couldn’t answer. She was too overcome.
Everything felt so right and so wrong as he slowly lowered her to the ground. He didn’t take his hands from her waist, and she became mesmerized by the droplets of water that clung to the sleek, dark strands of his beard, by the way his wet hair curled over his forehead and around his temples.
Her breath hitched at the fierceness in his stormy eyes when she sucked a drop of water from her bottom lip. The world shrank around them. Suddenly, the whole planet was reduced to the inches separating them, to the air they shared when he breathed out and she breathed in.
“Dagan.” His name tumbled from her lips unbidden.
His nostrils flared. He leaned forward and she found herself going up on tiptoe, anticipation tightening her belly into a fist. Then Emily’s voice broke the spell.
“Ah, Christian, I knew you muscle-bound meatheads were g-good for s-something!”
When Chelsea ripped her gaze away from Dagan, it was to find the others already gathered on shore. Emily and Ace looked like drowned rats—frozendrowned rats—with their arms wrapped around themselves for warmth. Christian was squatted among the multicolored pebbles, tearing open the float bag and handing them their dry things.
“R-right,” Christian said. “I’m your b-bloke if you ever need help opening a s-stingy lid, have a burning desire to engage in a s-spitting contest, or need someone to haul your g-gear through thirty meters of s-surf.”
Chelsea felt Dagan’s hands leave her waist. The spots where his big, rough palms had been instantly cooled in the icy breath of the breeze.
Dagan wasted no time untying the cord around his chest and hauling in the waterproof bag hand over fist. Once it was on shore, he dragged it over the pebbles and out of the reach of the waves. After unrolling the top few inches of fabric, he ripped open the Velcro fitting and lifted out her dry backpack. Once he’d handed it to her, she fumbled to swing it over her shoulder without disturbing her wound any more than was necessary.
“Girls to the left.” He waved a hand toward a piling in that direction. “Boys to the right.”
On her way to the appointed spot, Emily stopped beside Dagan and teased, “Next time, it’smyturn to be carried ashore.”
“If there’s going to be a n-next time, just shoot me now,” Ace grumbled, shouldering his pack and traipsing toward another piling.
Dagan handed up Chelsea’s socks and boots. Next came her soft, downy coat. The urge to shrug into its promised warmth was only overrun by the desire for it to still be dry once she peeled off her sopping clothes. Of course, just like always, her body temperature jumped ten degrees when Dagan’s fingers accidentally brushed hers.
Or was it an accident?
When she glanced at him, there was a definite twinkle in his eye.
It was insane, this effect he had on her body. And now that he was in full-on seduction mode? It wasn’t an exaggeration to say it was insanity raised to the power of ten.
How was she supposed to keep resisting him? How was she supposed to—
