The cigarette passes between us. I shouldn’t enjoy it as much as I do. I shouldgo. Get in my car and make the two-hour drive to Falfield. But I keep smoking. Keep watchinghimsmoke, transfixed by the flex of his forearm as he brings the cigarette to his mouth. By the curve of his lips as he exhales.
His gaze drops to my mouth too, and I wonder if he’s strayed from the welfare check this started as. If he’s thinking about pressing me up against these rocks.
If he’d let me do it to him.
Like he hears my unchecked thoughts, the man shifts. Not closer, but it feels that way and I contemplate why he was in that bar when he’s no more drunk than I am. It’s a hook-up joint, in rural fucking Cornwall. A hook-up joint formen. That’s why it’s open all night. And why I’ve been there before, but I barely recall any of it while I stare at him and he stares at me. It’s as though nothing else has ever existed, and I like that.
I need it.
He ashes the cigarette. An invisible string seems to reel him in and I feel the heat of his tanned skin against mine even thoughhe stops a foot away from where I slouch against the rocks, green eyes heavier than before, a faint smirk building on his lips.
I feel a pull in my gut and it’s enough to hitch the breath in my lungs. I straighten, weak for the craving seeping into my blood. He sees and takes another small step, the question dancing in his eyes—like he knows there are a dozen places in this fucked-up town we can go to make this happen. Likehe’sbeen here before too.
But it’s me who closes the distance between us.
Me who takes that slow breath, scenting more than the smoke we’ve shared.
He smells of cedar-wood and the cleanest air. He smells like the earth—he smells like a man, and I can’t stop the tremor of heat that licks through me. I don’t want to. Because Ineedmy head to spin for a better reason than the ones that followed me here.
His fingers brush my wrist, grazing the narrow strip of bare skin he finds there, the space between us razor-thin now. “You seem like you’re thinking a lot.”
We’re so close his breath feathers my ear, but somehow his voice feels distant. As though I’m not ready for it, and I never will be, becausethisis all we’ll have.
But still I answer him. “I’m not thinking at all.”
“That good or bad?”
I shrug and tilt my head—he’s taller than me. And it shouldn’t matter. I don’t kiss random hook-ups. I haven’t kissed anyone since I broke my ex’s sweet heart, and a stranger on the beach isn’t a good place to change that.
And yet…
His mouth calls to me, and it sends another spark sizzling through my veins. We press together, his hard body against mine, his hand rough and warm as it slides along my jaw, his worn t-shirt soft to my fingers as I tug himcloser.
It’s a bad idea, the worst. I feel the rocks grind my spine before it happens, his breath hot on my lips, and I know it’s a mistake. These faceless hook-ups, they always are. But I let it happen and heady anticipation drives the air from my lungs, my blood rushing south to where his pooled the moment we collided. He braces a hand on the rock by my head, searching my face for consent, and I’m half a second from claiming his mouth. From taking him by the hand and yanking him headlong into reckless oblivion?—
A phone buzzes.
His, not mine. It buzzes twice, three times, and frustration growls low in his throat as he rips the device from his pocket. “Fucking thing. Fucking Jack.”
Jack.
I startle, as if I’m hearing his voice for the first time. The accent—the stretched vowels and rolled consonants. The subtle lilt belying a timbre deep enough that it belongs in another world, another life.
It’s different to what I know. And yet it’s the same, and his green eyes are suddenly so familiar to me I rear back, my skull hitting the rock behind me, a bang to the head I clearly need.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I duck beneath the golden-brown arm caging me, putting space between us so fast the man—you know his name—forgets his phone and his face folds into concern again. “What’s wrong?”
“Who’s Jack?”
He arches a brow. “Not my fucking boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I laugh, reality biting hard now I’m not in the thrall of his sinful mouth. “Who is he?”
His gaze flickers, slowly, assessing me like I’m an unexploded bomb. “Why do you need to know?”