“I figured.”
“How?”
“The state of your face.”
I splash him and swim away, diving down to expel a long breath, gliding through stillness until I touch the rock of the other side.
Mal is where I left him, head thrown back again, catching the sun as it filters through the canopy of weeping willow. Up close, I bet his eyes are like dappled leaves. Bet I could get lost in them too, and I feel a pull to him I haven’t felt before, not with such a visceral wrench in my heart.
Go back to him.
I don’t need to. The lagoon ripples as Mal swims and he’s in front of me before I can take another breath, both fists braced to the rocks, caging me in ways I’ve never let anyone else.
“If you’re trying to get away from me, you’ll need to swim a hell of a lot further.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’ll never stop chasing you.”
Mal grins as he spits that rubbish, and it’s infectious.
I smile too. “Since when are you chasing me?”
“Since you threw a bag in my face and ran off.”
“I didn’t run that fast.”
“You could’ve run faster,” he agrees, searching my face. “Why didn’t you?”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying to escape.”
“Hmm.”
There it is. The hum. Thathmmsound easing under my skin like melted honey. I give in and let my hands go where they want—to his hips to edge himcloser.
Our thighs collide, and I remember the hand he clamped on me at the dinner table the other night. How much I needed it.
This, though…the savage urge that has me curling a leg around his, it’s a different kind of need. Like the one that had me arching from my bed and tumbling us headlong into a furnace.
Yeah.
This is just like that.
Only this time, Mal kisses me first.
15SKYLAR
His kiss crashes into me like a storm-fuelled wave, his tongue in my mouth, my teeth at his lips, the slap of the roughed-up water echoing around us.
It’s wet and wild, and burns with the same frenetic need it did the first time, but sharper now, like an unsheathed blade. And it’s dangerous that I know how it’s going to feel when we have to stop, and yet I still wantmore.
My hands roam his bare skin. His claw at mine with bruising fingers, and the rocks behind me dig into my spine—like the first time we came together.
Back then, it was by chance.
Now, it’s a choice, and I have no regrets.
Not yet.