I pushed up on my elbows. “I don’t want to stop.”
His face changed. The restraint came back, but now it had heat under it, a rougher edge. “Tell me what you want.”
I reached for the hem of his shirt. “This off.”
Zane let me pull it up. He took over halfway and dragged it over his head, dropping it beside my clothes.
I stopped breathing like a person with survival instincts.
I’d known he was built. Obviously. The man’s shirts had been fighting for their lives since the first morning of my personal consequences. But seeing him bare from the waist up in full afternoon sun was different. Muscle packed his chest and shoulders. Tattoos spread across his arms and over his skin, dark ink over sun-browned strength. A trail of hair disappeared below the wet waistband of his jeans.
I reached for him.
Zane let me touch.
My palms moved over his chest, his ribs, the hard ridges of his stomach. His skin was hot from the sun. His muscles shifted under my hands, and when my fingers found the button of his jeans, his breath caught.
That sound gave me courage.
I opened his jeans.
He watched me, jaw tight, while I dragged the zipper down. His cock pressed hard behind wet denim and boxer briefs, thick and unmistakable. My mouth went dry.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I know.”
I pushed at his jeans, and he helped, shoving them and his briefs down enough to free himself.
The thought had no wit, polish, or useful commentary. It only had oh.
Zane’s cock was big and hard in my hand, heavy enough that my fingers barely closed around him. A bead of moisture slickedthe head. When I stroked him once, his hand caught the edge of the dock.
“Daphne.”
I loved the way he said my name when I touched him. Like a warning. Like a plea. Like he was trying to stay in control and I was making that beautifully difficult.
I stroked him again.
His eyes half-closed. “Careful.”
I smiled, slow and wicked enough to surprise myself. “With the tomato?”
A laugh ripped out of him, low and helpless.
Then I bent and took him into my mouth.
Zane swore.
His hand went to the back of my head, not pushing, just holding. I took what I could, using my hand for the rest, learning the weight and heat of him while he stood in the shallows with his boots planted in lake water and his control fraying under my tongue.
“Fuck,” he said. “You’re good at that.”
The praise rolled through me. I took him deeper, and his fingers tightened in my hair.
“Daphne, stop.”
I pulled back immediately. “Did I hurt you?”
