“Summer,” he breathed against my mouth. “Dammit, I fucking want you.”
“Me too. You. I want you.”
He chuckled. “You drive me wild.”
His mouth crashed back onto mine with a hunger that matched my own. I felt ravenous. If I could devour the man, I would—one bite at a time. One hand slid up my bare back while the other stayed at my hip, his fingers digging into my flesh. I wanted him to leave marks. I wanted proof tomorrow morning that this had actually happened and wasn’t just another one of my dreams.
I pulled back just enough to catch my breath. His eyes were dark in the moonlight, pupils blown wide with desire. His lips were swollen from kissing me. His hair was a mess from my fingers. He looked absolutely wrecked and I loved it.
And I couldn’t do it.
I pressed my hand against his chest, feeling his heart hammering beneath my palm. “Colt.” He stopped, clearly understanding what I hadn’t said. “I need to slow down.”
He didn’t pull away, but his hands stopped moving. His forehead dropped to mine and he nodded, his breathing as ragged as my own.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay.”
I didn’t want to stop. That was the problem. My body was screaming at me to let him keep going. I wanted him to drag me back to one of our houses and finish what we’d started. But my brain was waving red flags.
It would be too easy. Too fast. We’d fall right back into the pattern we’d always had, and when summer ended, I’d be left picking up the pieces again. I needed to protect myself. At least a little bit.
He seemed to be thinking the same thing. He wiped his thumb across his bottom lip, his eyes still dark with want. God,even that simple gesture was sexy. The way his thumb dragged across his mouth. The way his jaw worked. The way he was looking at me like he was memorizing every detail of my face.
Everything he did was sexy to me. Him breathing turned me on.
I was in so much trouble.
I assumed the night was over. That we’d walk back to the car in awkward silence and he’d drop me off at home. I had killed the mood. We’d go home and we’d both spend the rest of the night replaying what just happened.
He took my hand and we started walking again, but he clearly wasn’t in a rush. Good. I wasn’t either. He surprised me by sitting down in the sand, right there at the water’s edge. He looked up at me and patted the sand beside him. That beautiful grin was my undoing. How was a girl supposed to turn him down?
I sat down and leaned my head against his shoulder. We both stared out at the dark water. The waves rolled in calm and easy. The moon was doing its thing, turning the water a silvery color. I could have sat there forever.
“I’ve missed this place more than I realized,” he said quietly. “I lost sight of what made it so special.”
I didn’t say anything. I just listened.
“I’ve been here for weeks,” he continued. “And I’ve only surfed twice. I haven’t been in the ocean other than tonight. This was my first real swim.” He laughed softly.
“That wasn’t a swim,” I teased.
“I used to live in the water when I came here. The bonfires. The late nights. The fun. It’s been so long since I had any fun.”
I lifted my head to look at him. “Then that’s your assignment.”
“My assignment?”
“For the rest of the summer,” I said. “To balance out the not-fun job of stopping Judd Mathers, you have to do one fun thing every day until you go back to Texas.”
He turned to look at me, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “One fun thing.”
“One fun thing,” I confirmed. “Every single day.”
“What qualifies as fun?”
“You’ll figure it out,” I said. “I have faith in you. Anything that doesn’t involve you scowling. If you’re scowling, you’re not having fun.”
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes searching mine. “Will you help me?”