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She trots back and throws her arms around me, giving me a fierce hug. ‘Thank you.’ Tears come from nowhere and fill my eyes as Ryan’s daughter clings to me like she never plans on letting go. I quickly sniffle back my emotion when I feel her hug ease up, and she pulls away. ‘Do you know how cool it is watching my dad fall in love?’
My recoil isn’t preventable. ‘What?’ I all but whisper, feeling the ground disappear from under my feet. ‘Alex, that’s crazy talk.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ She doesn’t say another word. She disappears, and I stand on the spot, motionless, staring at the empty, darkening pathway.
My palms come to my cheeks, holding my face, as the magnitude of Alex’s words rains down on me. Love? It’s too soon. But . . . never would be too soon. I look over my shoulder and slowly turn, feeling the pull of something magnetic commanding me. I take careful steps, one by one, measured and tentative, as if going back this way could be the end of me. The question is, will it be a happy end? Or a tragic one? Can I live with myself not knowing?
My walk back to the lake feels like a walk of redemption. Like for the first time since Ryan Willis ran me off the road, I know what I’m doing. I’ve been shocked into reality, brought around from my dreams by his daughter with the delivery of one sentence. Snapped from a beautiful place of escapism, where I’m not a lost, vulnerable woman living in the shadows of this world but a vivacious, wild, courageous woman with the bravery to take a leap of faith. Ryan found that woman. Doesn’t he deserve to keep her?
When I breach the overgrowth into the clearing on the lake’s shore, I come to a stop, my situation slamming into me from every direction when I see him. I have to fight to maintain my ability to breathe, appreciation and devastation at war inside me. Ryan deserves everything a woman can give, but this woman only has secrets and lies.
The moonlight hits the still water, ripples of light travelling across the surface. It’s beautiful. But more beautiful than that is Ryan standing in the lake, the water up to his waist, the moon casting reflections across his naked back, making it sparkle like he’s some kind of magical creature. He’s motionless, staring out to the glimmering darkness.
Oh God.
Letting my instinct guide me, I reach for the bottom of my dress and pull it up over my head. I drop it to the ground at my feet before slipping out of my bra and knickers, then walk into the water quietly, my breath hitching when the cold hits my skin. Ryan’s head moves, just a fraction, now alert to my presence. But he doesn’t turn to find me. He wants me to find him.
I wade through the calm water, and by the time I make it to Ryan, the water is halfway up my back. I move in close behind him, my attention dancing across the beads of water on his skin that are sparkling like crystals when the fading light hits them. And still, he remains motionless, waiting for me, patient. Quiet. He calls to me without a word. And I admit to myself for the first time, I’m desperate to stay here. With him. For ever.
I lift one hand from the water and rest my palm on his shoulder gently as I drop a kiss to the middle of his back. His skin is fire, and so is the blood in my veins. Pure, uncontrollable fire. Ryan started the inferno that’s been blazing within me since meeting him, and not even he can put it out.
I drag my mouth across his skin to the edge of his back, and he hisses, his head dropping, the water disturbed by his twitching hands.
I like seeing his fight for control. I like the idea that I can do this to him, send him to the edge of insanity. I want to keep him there.
Taking my hand from his shoulder, I replace it on his hip, flexing my fingers a little, holding on to him, and then I kiss my way down the side of his back until the water stops me from kissing farther. So I work my way across his lower back, and then up the other side, all the time slow, all the time soft, and all the time feeling how tense he is.
The sounds he makes are a mixture of pain and indulgence as he endures me worshipping every inch of his broad back with my mouth, sliding my hands across his skin, feeling every piece of him. I have to reach on my tippy-toes when I get to his nape, using his shoulders to help lift me a little, my boobs pushing into his back as a result. And there I bite at his neck gently, working my way around to his throat. His chin lifts to give me space, but that is his only movement. That and his out-of-control pumping chest.
