When we climbed back onto the boards, first side by side and then awkwardly trying to share one, we laughed so hard it hurt. The summer heat wrapped around us, the ocean breeze cutting through it, and everything felt bright and unreal in the best way.
That was when he really started to open up. Longer stories. Small jokes. Touches that weren’t prompted, just natural. He told me he loved the island. Loved surfing. How he used to come out every morning when he first moved here, before work took over. How he was planning to get back to it now.
I wished this shoot had been at the start of summer. I would have followed him out here every dawn just to hear him talk about the things he loved.
By the time Sadie called us back for the last part of the shoot, people had started to trickle onto the beach, but it still felt like we had our own little pocket of the world. We lay on the sand near the water, facing each other, skin still humming from the cold water and sun, everything painted bright around us.
Jessie’s wetsuit was half down again, grains of sand clinging to his skin, the tattoos on his body dark against the glow of the morning. We’d ended up half tangled in each other, laughing and shoving and slipping in the sand as Sadie kept snapping pictures, until the motion finally slowed and we were left facing each other, chests rising and falling.
He looked wild. Like something out of a movie. Or a fantasy. All I could think about was how every detail of him felt like something I wanted to keep. Part of me knew it was irrational, this level of connection so early in the game, but it didn’tfeellike it. It felt real.
“Do you want to try for a kiss?” Sadie asked, and my stomach flipped.
Jessie’s hazel eyes didn’t leave mine. His lips parted, just a little. “Yeah.”
My gaze dropped to his mouth, my hand already sliding to his waist… but then I shook my head.
His face fell instantly, confusion and hurt flashing there.
I moved closer, my hand rising to his neck. “I don’t want to kiss youyet,” I said softly. “But I want to get as close as I possibly can without doing it.”
His shoulders relaxed, eyes still searching mine, looking for discomfort or repulsion he wasn’t ever going to find there.
We were both propped on our elbows on our sides, facing each other. The air felt charged around us, more so with every inch of space we closed. Sadie was standing nearby, not too close, but close enough that she could get the right composition. I wondered what we looked like through her lens.
My lips curved into a smile as I moved in, showing him what I wanted. Until I could feel the puff of his breath against my lips, sending tingles over my skin and lighting fireworks behind my ribs.
“Like that?” he whispered.
“Yeah…”
His eyes were on my lips, almost magnetized to them, and as the shutter continued to click, I melted more and more into this. Intohim. Then he tilted his head, and my breath caught in my chest.
He didn’t kiss me—just brushed his nose over my cheek, lips soft against my jaw, the barely there scratch of his stubble making it real. My eyelids fluttered closed. One hand came up to my neck to keep me there as his nose trailed close to my ear, his lips sliding along the column of my throat. Goosebumps erupted over my skin.
“Can I kiss you here?” his rough, low voice rumbled, his thumb brushing over a spot that suddenly felt unbearably sensitive.
I nodded.
His hand tightened as he pulled me in, still gentle, and his lips closed over my neck.
God—
That feltamazing.
At first, his kisses were light, barely there, before growing slower, deeper, until I felt the warm brush of his tongue.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “The salt on your skin…”
The words hit me like a spark to dry kindling. The intimacy of them.
I squeezed my eyes shut, the sensation washing over me, my body humming with it, and I was a second away from begging him to take more of me, to let me know exactly how I tasted.
Then the shutter clicked again.
Reality came rushing back. I was painfully aware that the erection I’d been fighting every time he touched my bare skin was now fully there. On the beach. While we were still being photographed.
My eyes flew open, searching for Sadie.
