Instantly, all my irritation with him disappeared, and I was so excited that I started to hiccup.
“What! You’re ser-*hiccup* serious!?” I squealed, literally bouncing in place.
He wiped his hands off on the rough towel he used specifically for waxing and gave me an amused but quizzical look.
“Yeah. We’re going to study the wave patterns, and then I’ll coach you through some visualization techniques.”
“Fuck YES!” *hiccup*Omg, omg, omg, I can’t*hiccup*WAIT!”
Though he was smirking, he gave me a ‘you’re weird’ look.
“Calm down, don’t hurt yourself,” he muttered, grabbing a water bottle and handing it to me – I assumed to help with the spontaneous bout of hiccups that seemed to have consumed me.
I chased after him as he made his way to my property line. He disappeared into the brush, and I hiccuped a few more times as I struggled to push through the thick palms and shrubs that he seemed to effortlessly be cutting through.
“Hey! Why are we going this way? It’s like a four-minute walk down the street!” He shot an amused look over his shoulder, and before I knew it, the brush cleared away, and we were on a narrow dirt path, wide enough for a single person.
“Thisway is faster.”
“Faster than *hiccup*fourminutes?”
We walked for maybe a minute and a half, and suddenly, the palm trees opened up, and we were on the edge of a cliff, looking down at Leviathans.
On the opposite side of the coastline, I could see the precipice that Blake had taken Turtle and me when we first arrived in Stars Cove.
“Woah… it’s beenright herethis whole time?”
Riddick’s mouth tilted up, and he nodded.
“Leviathans is inside your property line. You technically own it.”
My mouth dropped open, and my eyes grew so wide that my eyeballs were at risk of popping out of my skull.
“Fuck, *hiccup*OFF!!”I exclaimed.
He frowned at me and reached out, cuffing the back of my neck and applying pressure to each side of my spine.
I froze, my entire body lighting up at his touch.
He hadn’t put his hands on me inweeks,and the casual, possessive way he’d just grabbed the back of my neck made my mind suddenly go blank with lust.
“Take a sip of your water,” he said softly as he massaged the muscles on either side of my spine. I did as he said, too afraid to make a comment about how happy I was to have him touching me again. I didn’t want him to stop.
I swallowed the cold water as he gently pinched my neck, and I felt a lump of air dislodge from deep in my chest and rise up as the water slid down. I let out a tiny burp, and his mouth tilted up in the corner.
“There… that’s better.” He hummed, and the way he said it felt like he should have been whispering those words to me in a dark bedroom instead of on the edge of a cliff.
I peered up at him with wide eyes, and he stared right back, the corner of his lips still lifted and his warm hand still cupping my neck.
“Are they gone now?” he asked softly, and I opened my mouth to respond, waiting for a hiccup to interrupt me, but it never came.
“Uhm. Yeah. I think so…” I replied, though I was whispering for some reason. He was no longer pinching my flesh but stroking it. His thumb brushed gently up and down the side of my throat. I leaned into his hand, wishing he would always touch me like this.
The moment I leaned into it, he ripped his hand away and cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his own neck instead.
“Let’s get down there,” he said abruptly, and my cheeks flushed with irritation.
I was gettingsosick of all these mixed signals.
