“Maybe.” I catch her hand and press my lips to her palm. “But this doesn’t hurt. You never hurt.”
Her breath catches.
I hold her wrist and kiss the inside of it, where her pulse hammers against my mouth. Then higher. The crook of her elbow. The curve of her shoulder where her jacket has slipped down. The base of her throat where the water has gathered in the hollow and her skin is cool and damp.
“Lance.”
“Hmm.”
“We’re behind a waterfall.”
“We are.”
“In the place you told me about months ago.”
“I remember.”
“You said people come here when they want privacy.”
I lift my head and look at her. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips are parted, and her eyes are that dark, liquid green that I’ve only ever seen when she’s looking at me like this.
“That’s what I said.”
She grips the front of my shirt and pulls me down to her mouth.
The kiss is slow at first. Soft. Her lips are cool from the winter air, and she tastes like the coffee she made me this morning, and I cup her face in both hands and tilt her head back and take my time because we have it now. Time. The thing we never had before.
But slow doesn’t last. It never does with us.
Her fingers twist in my shirt, pulling me closer, and when her tongue slides against mine, the sound I make echoes off the stone walls and disappears into the roar of the waterfall. She presses her whole body against me, and I can feel every line of her through the damp fabric, the heat of her cutting through the cold.
My hands slide down her sides, over her hips, and I grip the backs of her thighs and lift. She wraps her legs around me without hesitation, her ankles locking at the small of my back, and I press her against the smooth rock wall.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” I say against her mouth. “Since the first time I brought you here.”
“Liar. You hated me back then.”
“Thin line between love and hate, Half-Pint.”
She kisses me harder, her hips rolling against me, and the friction sends a bolt of heat straight through my core. I’m already hard. I’ve been half-hard since she stepped onto those rocks in that sports bra, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it because I’m trying to be a better man and better men don’t jump their girlfriend during training.
Except she jumped me first.
Her fingers find the hem of my shirt and pull it over myhead. The cold air hits my skin, raising goose bumps, but her hands are warm, palms flattening against my chest, tracing the lines of muscle and scar tissue. She kisses the bruise on my ribs, the one she left this morning, and then the older ones underneath. The scars from fights she didn’t see. The damage from a life she’s choosing to love anyway.
“Every time I see these,” she whispers, “I want to burn the world down.”
“The world’s already burning, Half-Pint. You’re just the one I’d let the wind drag me to hell with.”
She laughs. It bounces off the stone and mingles with the waterfall, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in this alcove or anywhere.
I unzip her jacket and push it off her shoulders. Her shirt follows. The sports bra underneath is black, and the water has made it cling to her in a way that makes my brain short-circuit. I trace the strap with one finger, dragging it down her shoulder, watching the goose bumps rise on her skin.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I’m counting.”
Her eyes soften. “It’s really not fair when you steal my quirks and use them on me like that.”
