The wave lifts me. I catch it and ride it in without turning around because I can’t right now. My whole body is flushed, stomach tight. There’s heat low between my thighs. By the time I hit the shallows and step off, the water feels too warm against my ankles.
Ace glides in beside me twenty seconds later, board under his arm, and doesn’t say another word. I’m grateful for that. Barely.
We stroll up the beach together, side by side, wet sand giving way to dry, and I keep my eyes ahead because every time I glance at him, I remember that tone and feel my body buzz all over again. Everything is burning up, which shouldn’t be happening this intensely, this fast.
I need normal. Immediately.
“So,” I say, clearing my throat. “Tournament training. Distract me.”
His mouth curves. He knows exactly what I’m doing. “Need more practice,” he says anyway. “All of us. The North Shore breaks faster than this. Meaner too, so less room for mistakes.”
I nod, grateful for the subject change even while I’m still burning. “You all compete together?”
“Most of the time.”
I chance a look over at him. Mistake. Sun’s on his chest, hair damp, board tucked against his hip, so many muscles, and still too sexy.
“You should come watch the tournament,” he says.
“I’d like that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I mean it.
His expression changes a little at that, warmer, more satisfied, and I have to look forward again before I do something stupid like tell him he could ask me for almost anything right now and I’d probably say yes.
Past the fence line, I prop my board against the metal railing, and he does the same beside it. The morning is full and golden, and I’m aware of being in a red bikini with about six inches of space between us.
His arm comes around my waist instantly and draws me against him. Not fast, not surprising, just inevitable, like the tide. Like something that was always going to happen and had simply been waiting for the right moment to stop.
“It feels right,” he says, low, near my ear. “Having you here. Like I’ve been walking around with a gap in me and now I’m not.”
I tip my face up before I can stop myself.
His mouth finds mine, and for one suspended second, everything else falls away. The beach house. The morning. The fact that this is dangerous in at least six different ways. None of it matters once he kisses me.
Ace kisses the way he surfs, steady and sure, as if he already knows where this is going and isn’t in any hurry to get there. One hand settles at my waist, broad and warm, and the other cups my jaw. Heat spills through me fast, from my mouth, down my throat, and across my chest, and I make the smallest sound against him before I can swallow it back.
He deepens the kiss slowly, giving me time to stop him.
I don’t.
I lean in further instead, tasting salt and him, and when his tongue brushes mine, my whole body answers. A low, aching heat opens in my belly and spreads, my skin suddenly too tight, every nerve awake. I press closer without meaning to, and he lets out a rough sound against my mouth that nearly takes my knees out from under me.
His hand tightens at my rear, pulling me in against him even more so that I feel the full length of him, and that sends my thoughts scattering.
God.
This is bad.
Not because I don’t want it. That’s the problem. I want it too much, more of him, of that careful mouth turning reckless on mine. And underneath that craving is the harder truth, the one that makes me pull back before I drown in it.
It isn’t just him—that’s what makes this risky. So I break the kiss. We’re both breathing harder now, my lips tingling, his eyes darker than they were thirty seconds ago.
“We shouldn’t,” I say, and the words come out thin with want.
Ace’s mouth curves, but there’s strain in it now too. “Strongly disagree.”
