“Damn it, woman. You about gave me a goddamn heart attack!”
“S-sorry,” she barely sputtered out the insincere apology before losing it. With a near-hysterical laugh, she managed to say, “You should…have seen…your face.”
“Oh, you think that was funny?”
She laughed even harder. “A little bit, yeah.”
Anger gone—Because, how the hell could he stay mad when she seemed so happy?—Nate stared to swim toward her. “I’ll show you funny.”
Knowing what was coming, Gracie’s eyes widened, and she screamed. Turning with lightening-like speed, she laughed as she fought hard to swim away.
Nate was on her before she ever had the chance to escape.
She squealed and laughed even harder when his fingers found her ribs. Tickling her mercilessly, he continued the torture until Gracie begged for him to stop.
“Please,” she pleaded breathlessly. “Oh, God. Please stop!”
Talking loudly enough she could hear him over her own laughter, Nate asked, “You gonna scare me like that again?”
“No!” She shook her head emphatically.
“Promise?”
“I promise! I promise!”
Nate stilled his hands. “Okay, then.”
“Oh, my God,” Gracie’s words escaped with an exhale of relief. With her hands on his shoulders, she steadied herself. “I can barely breathe right now.”
“Speaking of breathing…” Nate kept hold of her, his legs kicking to the sides to help keep them both afloat. “Where’d you learn to hold your breath like that?”
“Impressed?”
Nate parroted her words from before. “A little bit, yeah.”
With a smug grin, she told him, “I was on my high school swim team. Then, in college, I made extra money working as a lifeguard at the campus rec center.”
“So, that whole scene up there.” Nate lifted his chin toward the cliff. “Acting all scared and nervous. That was just an act?”
Gracie gave him an unapologetic smirk. “A girl can’t reveal all her secrets at one time, now, can she?”
Narrowing his eyes, Nate squeezed her ribs a bit tighter and playfully growled. This caused her to laugh again, making his already half-hard dick rise to full mast.
Something Gracie felt the instant she moved in to give him a hug.
Chapter 11
“Oh,” Gracie pushed herself away from Nate. “Sorry.” She was both surprised and embarrassed by his body’s reaction to her.
“Sorry,” he said at the exact same time. Then, he gave her that damn-sexy, lopsided grin. “That tends to happen a lot around you. Just ignore it.”
Not likely.With butterflies dancing around in her lower belly, she continued to tread water and brought her eyes to his.
With a slightly pinker tint to his cheeks, Nate swallowed hard. Though, a part of her—a throbbing, aching part—enjoyed the hell out of the fact he’d basically just admitted to having had multiple erections because of her, she also didn’t want to make things harder on him than they already were.
Pun intended.
“After this craziness is over, right?” Gracie tried her best to sound perfectly fine with waiting for anything more.
