“Of course I know what a cannonball is. I was a twelve-year-old boy once, same as you.”
“The ability doesn’t expire, you know. You’re in good shape.” I eyed him up and down lasciviously. “Show me what you got…Jimbo.”
He rolled his eyes, then studied me for a moment, looking around at the wet splotches that reached an embarrassingly small ring around the edges of the pool. My siblings wouldn’t have let me live it down if they’d been there to see such a paltry splash zone.
“I could beat that attempt with a clean swan dive,” he muttered.
I raised an eyebrow.
He sighed and put his things down carefully on a nearby chaise before backing up a few feet from the edge of the pool. Then he took a few long steps and launched lazily into a perfect dive, graceful to the point of seeming like it was slow motion.
Fuck, he was beautiful.
When he came up, he flicked his hair and met my eyes. Water droplets in his eyelashes caught the light from the house in a way that made me suck in a breath.
“You, ah… hardly splashed at all,” I said.
The edge of his lips curled up. “Because I’m not a barbarian.”
I moved closer to him, suddenly eager to break his ridiculous poise regardless of how angry it made him. Before I could tackle him and shove his head under the water the way I used to do with my siblings, he reached out a hand for mine. When I gave it to him, he pulled me the rest of the way toward him until I couldn’t help but put my legs around his waist as I landed gently against his front.
This part of the pool was the perfect depth. Even with my arms around his neck, the warm water came up almost to my shoulders.
“You’re too serious,” I accused. “Somewhere along the way, you forgot how to have fun.”
His hand moved to cup the back of my head, and he kissed me—right there in the pool where anyone could see us from the house.
It was the first time this supposedly straight man had initiated a kiss. It was firm and overpowering. Nothing elegant and graceful like his dive had been. His large hand held me to him in a possessive way that made me dizzy with sudden need.
I arched into him, pressing myself into his lower belly, and he responded by slipping a hand down the back of my suit to grab an ass cheek.
My tongue wanted to tie itself in knots around his, taste every inch of him. Carry in its little moving boxes and unpack for good.
I pulled back with a gasp. “Why are you like this?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t like the way I kiss?”
“No. Yes. Of course I like the way you kiss. Has anyone evernotliked the way you kiss? Jesus. But I mean…”
I hesitated, trying so hard to remember that this was not my place. He’d hired a sex doll, not a whiny bitch.
“Nothing,” I said with a sudden smile. “Never mind.”
He’d moved his hand from the back of my head to my chest, and now he moved it up to hold my chin. “Don’t be an ass. Tell me what you were going to say without playing silly games.”
I felt suitably chastised. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I would have felt the same way if he’d backed away from something like that.
“You’re so fucking changeable. It reminds me of the outdoor shower at my dad’s house the year one of my dads went through a DIY phase. One minute, it was blissfully hot, and the next, it was an icy torture chamber. The unpredictability was worse than either temperature.”
“What way would you like me to be?”
From this close up, I could see his dark eyes glinting, his eyebrows still sleek with water. The warmer light from the house hit the high planes of his cheekbones.
But I could also see a sliver of uncertainty in his eyes. A few rogue eyebrow hairs traveling in the wrong direction. A few tiny sunspots near his temple.
Imperfections. Cracks in the perfect image he tried so hard to maintain in front of the world.
“I want you to stop playing games,” I said evenly. “Just when you start to be real with me, you pull away as if you’re trying to make sure I don’t read anything into it. I promise I won’t. You fucking hired me for sex so you wouldn’t have to deal with relationship expectations. I get it, okay? But can you not punish me for all the people who might have fucked you over? Can you at least let yourself have some fun? You’re paying for it, after all.”
