He chuckled. “I don’t think that’s it...” His hips slipped into the valley between my legs, and his erection was shockingly warm in the water. I was unable to stop my legs from winding around his.
That’swhen he bit my neck.
Not hard. Just enough that my hips rose against him in answer. I couldn’t control my body. It was doing its own thing, and not listening to the panicky thoughts in my head about being caught. We shouldn’t have been doing this out in the open, in front of all the mansions lining the riverbanks and the occasional boat. It was lewd. Obscenity laws were probably being broken. I was hot all over, molten between my legs...
Jesus.He hadn’t even kissed me.
I wrapped him in my arms. Water rose around us as we both fully sank into the hammock. He pulled back from my neck and lifted his face out of the water, droplets falling over my face. I wanted him. Badly. I don’t think I’d ever been so turned on. Not in public, that’s for sure.
“What are we doing, Paige?” he whispered. “You think we can really be... just roommates?”
Just roommates?Whose dumb idea was that? I didn’t even know if I could make it off this hammock without tearing off my swimsuit and begging him to give me those twenty orgasms.
I glanced up one last time at the dock. Lulu was standing on the top deck, peering down over the rail at us with the strangest look on her face...
“Oh shit!” I said, shoving Seb off me.
Lulu’s face disappeared. I had no idea how long she was up there, but shedefinitelysaw us messing around—I mean, if that’s what we were even doing. Much like Seb, I had no idea.
I had less of an idea after we scrambled off the hammock and swam to the dock ladder. But it felt like I was the only one freaking out when Seb held the ladder and encouraged me to go first.
“Gonna need a second,” he said.
I was too freaked out to even respond to that. I just whispered, “I don’t trust Lulu! She’s going to tell everyone.”
“It’s fine. I’ll take care of it,” he assured me.
How?
Dread awaited me at the top of the ladder. Music thumped as I crested the top and wrung out my wet hair, glancing around. Punkin was asleep on a chaise longue. The guy from down the block who was visiting was gone. Benny and Jazmine were playing paper football on a lounge table, flicking a triangle of folded paper through a series of empty beer bottles. Lulu was trying to get their attention.
Dammit!
Seb emerged from behind me, shaking himself off like a dog. Before I could think of what to do—what to say—he grabbed a beach towel off a table and began drying his hair as he walked toward the other Wags.
“Hey,” he called out.
Lulu froze. Jazmine and Benny both looked up from their tabletop game.
“There you are,” Jazmine said. “We were about to go looking for you. Benny and I have news...”
“Me first,” Seb said, scrubbing his hair with the towel. “Just so everyone knows, I’m going to be moving in with Paige for a while. She’s got an extra room, and there was that break-in when she first got back in town. You know. Safety in numbers.”
“And you’re offering... what? Your protection services... ?” Benny asked, skeptical.
I honestly wouldn’t mind another person in the cottage for that very reason, but Seb and I had never discussed it. Obviously he’d been thinking about it.
Seb shrugged. “Besides, I’m a third wheel here. It will give you guys more space.”
Holy shit. I couldn’t believe he’d just announced that, like we’d been considering it for weeks and finally come to a decision. We hadn’t agreed on anything! We were just joking around down there in the hammock.Weren’t we?
“Paige?” Jazmine said, face concerned. “Is this for real? You’re moving in together?”
“Just roommates!” I added a little too quickly. “Totally platonic.”
Everyone squinted at us like they didn’t believe a word out of our mouths.
That was fair. I wasn’t sure if I believed us, either.
