“Looming is what I do,” I said, the words scraping up with a smile that felt like it belonged to someone else. “You like it that way.”
She snorted, but she didn’t move, didn’t shrink. Her wrist flicked, sending her hair back over her shoulder. “You don’t know shit about what I like, Caiden.”
I let my palm fall, flat and slow, onto the towel just beside her waist. She flinched, but her body stilled after, like she wanted to see how far I’d go.
I could feel the heat of her radiate up through the fabric, could smell the sweat and coconut and the salt crusted onto her skin from the last swim.
I burned for her, and it was a sick, red ache under my tongue.
We were a study in tension, locked in a prison of our own making, neither of us willing to call out the game for what it was.
I wanted to fuck her right there, on top of the towel, in front of everyone, but I settled for the next best thing: daring her to make the first move.
For a long moment, neither of us said a word. The beach stretched wide and empty to each side, the others too far off to see what happened in this ragged heat between us.
Her lips parted, but she didn’t say fuck off, didn’t say anything at all.
I slid my hand closer, a fraction at a time, until my knuckles grazed the bare line of her leg.
The skin was fever-hot, and I felt her shiver, just a tremor, so small anyone else would have missed it.
But I was tuned to her, hardwired to every twitch and breath, and I knew it for what it was: pure, feral want.
She closed her eyes, just a second, and when they opened again, the green there was glassier, like the surface of a pond right before a stone breaks it open.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” she said, voice so low I doubt anyone else on the beach could have heard it.
“I always do.”
A silence pulsed between us.
Then, fuck it, I let myself touch her. Just the tip of my finger, grazing the inside of her thigh, and I watched her eyelids flutter.
She angled her hips just a little, inviting it.
I traced a lazy circle over her skin. The sweat beaded there. I could have spent all day mapping the nerves just under her surface.
Maybe she would have let me, if the others weren’t a hundred yards away.
She swallowed, throat working. “You’re not supposed to touch me.”
“Why not?” I didn’t move my hand.
“Because it’s not fair,” she said, her voice hot and crumbling.
I snorted, fingers pressing down, just a shade firmer. “Nothing about this is fair.”
Her eyes snapped to mine, and for a second I saw the old Amelia, the one who would claw your eyes out before she’d let you win. “You don’t get to be the victim, Caiden.”
I grinned, couldn’t help it. “Maybe I just want to see if you’ll stop me.”
She didn’t. We both knew she wouldn’t.
The heat between us swelled.
I let my hand drift up, skating under the edge of her suit, just a millimeter, just enough for her to know I could.
I could have gone further, could have slipped my fingers under the suit and tasted her right then and there.
