He kicks free of his boots and pants, then hesitates a beat before losing his briefs, too. The sight of him naked nearly knocks the breath out of me, as it always has. The formidable structure of him, the muscles shifting under warm golden skin with every move…the intimidating swing of weight between his legs…
I lift my eyes and lock them on his face.Don’t look at the scar. Don’t look…down.
The air is warm, much more like September than October, but the first step into the water has him sucking in breath. I laugh at his hesitation and he rubs his hands together, takes adeep breath, and dives. When he comes up he’s grinning from ear to ear, eyes bright.
“Damn, you’re tough,” he gasps, breathless, and I grin, whoop, and dive under the water again.
Every cell sings with exhilaration. If the clubhouse was hell, this, here, heart racing in a lake with Ryder, is heaven.
When I come up, he ducks under again and comes up slicking both hands back through his hair. Dark blond gone almost brown with the water, hanging in wet strands past his shoulder blades. Water streams down over his chest, breaking around the puckered pink scar. It’s his hands that snag my attention, though. Big, strong hands, capable of anything. Hands that have held me, gripped me, pinned me down. Hands that have killed for me…
But I don’t want to look at that memory. Not now.
So I tip onto my back and let myself float—throat and breasts bare to the sky, hair splaying out around me—slipping out of my thoughts.
It’s a well-practiced dissociation. Closing the door on the past is second nature to me. Only, with Ryder, that was a miscalculation. I never accounted for my past reaching into my present and dragging me back.
But I push that thought underwater too. Just for now. I seal all of it away and float.
When I come back upright, the air actually feels warm on my back. There’s heat in my cheeks, a glow of wellbeing temporarily overlaying the fatigue.
“Feel better?” Ryder asks me, like he can see it on me.
“Just what I needed.”
We drift together for a little while, getting closer, hands and knees brushing. He grins and moves in, close enough that I can see the droplets on his lashes. I study his face, how beautiful hisskin actually is. Zero pores. The bony definition of his straight nose, the rough cover of his short beard.
I have loved this man with everything in me that can love. His beauty makes me ache with longing. It feels impossible after everything I’ve gone through, but all I want is to be as close to him as I possibly can be. To fuse with him, somehow.
My hands settle on his huge shoulders and the familiarity burns through me. God, there is something so comforting about the unbelievable strength of him, the power. I could lose myself completely in his arms. I want to exhaust my body against his until the crawling under my skin is finally satisfied.
“Tell me what you need,” he says gruffly, dark eyes scanning my face like he’s trying to read my thoughts.
“This.” I lift hands to his face, cupping his cheeks, and gently kiss his brow. “And this.” Then I kiss his mouth softly, just a brush of lips, and the shock of theRyderof him pulses through me. A taste of lake and breath and the bitter shadow of last night, and underneath it everything I have missed and grieved. He’s here and he’s real.
A soft exhale escapes me, and when I look at him, it’s like the resolve that’s been gripping him finally breaks.
He lifts a hand to my head and kisses me back. His lips are strong and firm but soft, giving way to the gentle heat of his tongue, and the contact makes my heart rate soar, suppressed desire rising like a tide. I pull myself flush against him, the feel of his body making heat bloom through my center, months of missing him collapsing into a single breath as we kiss.
My fingers trail down his chest, nails grazing lightly, and he mirrors my touch, tracing the line of my spine down to the water. I find his wrist and drag his palm up my stomach. We move together with the soft lap of the waves, adjustment and breath, push and pull. My fingers dig into his shoulders as our kiss deepens, and then I wrap my arms around his neck and pullmyself up against him until my thighs catch around his hips. He pulls me in, hands cupping my ass, running his lips along my jaw and down my throat.
“I missed you so much,” I murmur. “I thought I would die without you.”
He looks directly into my eyes. “I would have searched for you until my last breath,” he says.
I bite my lip, struck with sadness at everything we’ve missed, and then shiver. Between us, heat traps in a humid bubble, but my back begins to register the cold.
“Come on,” he says. “You’re freezing.”
He turns, my legs still locked around him, and wades for the shallows. The lake lets us go reluctantly. On the sand, he sets me on my feet and I sway, momentarily dizzy, my breath fogging in the warming air. He scoops up the blanket and wraps it around both of us, pulling me in until our wet skin traps its own heat, the clean bite of lake still clinging to our lips and fingers.
“Better?” he asks.
“Better.”
I tilt my face up to him. His dark eyes twinkle down at me, he lowers his forehead to mine, and I exhale, murmuring his name before his mouth finds mine again—first tender, lingering, soft, and then slowly growing more urgent.
He cradles the back of my head, fingers slipping through my wet hair, and then pulls back.
