“You believe in people,” he murmurs.
I smile, my head lilting to one side.“You could try it sometime.”
“It didn’t work out.”
My fingers trace the lines on his chest.
“Then try again,” I whisper.
I didn’t mean he should try with me.
Except… I want that.I want him to trust me, to let me in, even if he’s not looking for someone to share his life with and I’m not sticking around.
His eyes darken.They’re deeper than the lake, than the entire ocean.He smells like salt and the forest that surrounds the camp, sharp and male and real.
I’m adrift in the water and his arms, living for the places his skin brushes mine.
We’re not close enough.
The sound of hollering enters my brain moments before a group of campers comes up over the rise, clad in colorful T-shirts.
“Clay…” I whisper, ready to point out the interruption.
“Take a breath.”
What…?
He drags me under the water, holding us both down.Pulls me closer, his hand threading into my hair at my nape.
His lips brush mine.
Just like that, he’s kissing me.He’s wild and insistent, hot and hard and nearly out of control.
He holds my head in place—he’s not trying to be gentle.His other hand grips my ass and makes me grind against his ridged abs.
The water buoys us up, transports us to another plane where there’s no up or down, where there’s only him.
I can’t breathe.
I don’t need oxygen.
All I need is his huge body surrounding me, the heat of his mouth, the urgency of his hands.
I’m shivering, but I’m not cold.
It’s so good.So much more than I imagined it could be.
My chest aches to fill with new air, my lungs burning with the want for him, for even more than just this.
The light splinters through the water, dancing on his tattoos, on the ink that envelopes him like a second skin and proves that he is everything I thought he was: hard and soft, dominant and gentle, powerful and vulnerable, beautiful and real…
He lets me break the surface.
“We better get out of here,” he says as he pants, “or I’m going to do something very inappropriate.”
I grin, and his eyes crinkle, too.
We get out and dry off, and it’s as if he’s lightened up since we took that swim.
