Page 75 of The Wild Card

Good. At least I’m not the only one struggling here.

I drop onto the lounge chair next to hers, grateful to be sitting because my knees have stopped working properly. “It’s hot.”

“It’s only eighty or so.”

“I run warm.”

She grins, as if she knows exactly what’s happening to me. “Sure you do.”

I need to look at something else. Anything else. I grab a magazine from her stack—some cooking thing—and pretend to read it while my pulse slowly returns to normal.

“Can you do my back?”

I look up. “What?”

She’s holding out a bottle of sunscreen. “My back. I can’t reach.”

This is a test. This has to be some kind of cosmic test designed to break me.

“I burn easily,” she adds. “And I really don’t want to be a lobster tomorrow, so…” She trails off, waiting.

I take the bottle.

She rolls onto her stomach again, and I squeeze sunscreen into my palm with hands that are definitely steady. Completely steady. No trembling whatsoever.

I start at her shoulders. Her skin is warm and soft under my palms, and she makes a small sound when I press into a knot near her neck.

“That feels good,” she murmurs.

I’m going to die right here at this pool, rubbing sunscreen on a woman in a yellow bikini. They’ll find my body and have to explain to my coworkers that I was taken out by SPF 30.

I work my way down her back, spreading the lotion in long strokes, trying to keep my touch clinical. Professional. Like I’m applying tactical gear, not touching the bare skin of a woman I’ve kissed and can’t stop thinking about kissing again.

My thumbs graze her sides, just below the bikini strap, and she shivers.

“Okay?” I manage to ask.

“No.” Her voice is muffled against her arms. “Ticklish.”

I file that information away for later—not that I should be thinking about later. I should be focusing on finishing this task and putting several feet of distance between us.

I reach her lower back. The bikini bottoms sit low on her hips, and there’s a strip of paler skin just above them where her shorts usually hit. I hesitate.

“You can go lower,” she says. “I don’t want a weird tan line.”

I’m being tested. I’m definitely being tested.

I spread sunscreen across her lower back, my fingers brushing the waistband of her bikini, and she arches into my touch just slightly—barely perceptible—but I notice.

I notice everything about her.

“Done.” My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat. “You’re good.”

She rolls over, and I’m treated to the full view again—all that glistening skin, bikini top barely containing everything, a lazy smile on her face.

“Thanks.” She takes the bottle back, and our fingers brush. “Want me to do you?”

I choke on nothing.