The creek bed opens up ahead. A dark seam cut through the silver landscape, banks lined with salt cedar and dried brush that rattles in the wind. She drops over the edge and vanishes.
I stop at the rim. Look down.
The creek bed is maybe eight feet deep and twenty wide, with a sandy bottom and boulders scattered like stepping stones. The brush is thick enough to hide in but thin enough to hear through.
I build a fresh loop with a grin.
"I love what you've done with the place," I say, stepping down into the creek bed. My boots hit the sand with a soft thud. "Real romantic. Should've brought candles."
Silence. But she's here. The air is different when she's close. It’s charged. Fuckin’ electric.
I walk the center of the creek bed. The sand muffles my steps now. Good for her. Bad for me. But I don't need to hear her.
I need her to hear me.
"You know what I've been thinking about all night, Harper? That moment on the dance floor. When you told me you were soaked for me. In public. In those little shorts. Looking at me like you wanted me to take you apart right there on the floor."
A branch snaps somewhere to my left.
I stop and turn toward it.
"And I've been thinking about exactly what I'm going to do about that."
I take a step toward the sound. Another. A flash of blonde. Twenty feet ahead, darting between two boulders.
I run.
Full sprint down the creek bed, boots kicking up sand, closing ground fast. She breaks from behind the boulder and takes off. I'm right on her. I can see the swing of her hair, hear each ragged breath like it's being torn out of her.
I swing the rope. Let it whistle over my head once, twice. She hears it and screams.
"Ace, don't you DARE!"
I let it fly. The loop sails over her head, drops past her shoulders, and I pull it loose before it draws tight. It falls away and hits the sand. Never meant to catch. Just meant to make her feel it. Just meant to hear that sound she makes when the fear and the want blur together into something that drives me out of my mind.
She's slowing. The sand is deeper here, the banks narrowing, the brush closing in on both sides. The dead end I knew was coming. She realizes it a second too late and skids to a stop, spinning to face me.
I'm five feet behind her. My chest heaving, blocking the only way out.
Her back hits the sandy bank. Nowhere to go. She's panting, flushed, trembling, her hands flat against the dirt behind her. Her eyes find mine in the dark, and they're wild. Scared and burning and so full of want it nearly drops me to my knees for the second time tonight.
I close the distance. My arm hooks around her waist, and I pull her off the bank and toward me so hard the air leaves both of us.
She gasps. Her hands come up to my chest. Fingers twisting in my shirt, pulling me in even as her whole body shakes against mine.
I reach up with one finger and pull the bandana down so she can see my face. So she can see exactly what's in my eyes right now. Every ounce of hunger that's been building since shestumbled back into my life. Since she ran out the back door and made me earn this.
Her breath stutters. Her lips part.
"Caught you," I murmur.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Harper
His arm is a vice around my waist. I can feel every finger pressed into my hip, every ridge of muscle in his forearm locked against my spine, and I couldn't move if I wanted to.
I don't want to.
