Page 33 of You Know You Wanna

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m great.”

Raindrops ran down his handsome features, sliding across his strong forehead and jaw and clinging like tears to his lashes, but he hardly seemed aware of any of it. His shirt was plastered to his skin, his hair pushed back flat against his head and appearing completely black.

“Did you really come out here just to check on me?” I asked, my head tilting. “I’m okay. Really. This is far from the worst storm I’ve seen out here. It’s fine unless you’re crazy enough to walk around in it.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I know, but I figured we should talk about what happened.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Now? Are you serious?”

He nodded, the expression in his eyes guarded again as they held mine. I frowned, waving a hand at the sky. “You should come inside.”

“It’s probably better that I don’t,” he replied gruffly, pushing his fingers through his hair again and lifting his chin to look right at me instead of giving off that concerned glower from before. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. I’m sorry.”

My heart threatened to cave in on itself. “Do you regret it?”

“Nope, but I still shouldn’t have done it and I owed you an apology.”

My mind raced as I stood there staring at him, tripping over all the conflicting thoughts that I was trying to work my way through. But as I looked at that face, his tense muscles and the worry shining from his eyes, I realized that this wasn’t about regret.

It was about respect, and that was pretty darn sweet for such a grumpy guy. Ignoring the rain, I walked off the porch and wrapped my arms around his neck, smiling as I looked up into his eyes. “In that case, I’m not sorry.”

“You’re not?” He frowned, gaze intent on mine even as his arms wrapped around my hips. “Are you sure?”

“If that was a mistake, let’s make it again.” I wasn’t a bold and brazen girl, but I pushed up on my tiptoes and smiled against his lips before I kissed him this time, flattening my chest against his.

Remington groaned into my mouth, holding me tighter as his tongue slid between my lips and tangled with my own. The guy kissed like he’d been born from the union between a human and whoever the god of lust and romance was.

Which would, ironically, also explain his size.

His lips were as soft as pillows but they moved with such firm confidence against mine that he had to have some kind of supernatural insight into what made a good kiss. A great kiss, even. A mind-blowing, toe-curling kiss that made me wonder if I would even survive taking it any further with him.

I felt his hard torso pressing into my softness. His arms were strong and unyielding as he gathered me in them and backed me up. A soft clatter drifted to my ears when we hit the edge of the porch. One of my potted plants must’ve fallen over, but I leaned back and hooked my elbows around his neck, kissing him harder and not caring enough about any of the plants in that moment to put a stop to this.

As he pushed me up against the low wall, I moaned, tempted to lift one of my legs and wrap it around his hips. Water slid down my spine and flattened my hair against my head, but the kiss was too hot to worry about anything else.

Pressed against me as he was, I felt a bulge grow harder against my stomach, and I trembled with need at the feel of it, hot and eager between us. He made low, pleasured noises at the back of his throat, and my hips started rocking of their own accord.

If Alan or any of the other staff members happened to see this, they would never let me forget it and I knew it, but again, I couldn’t care. Not when our kisses were growing more frantic by the second and things were definitely getting steamy.

An ache built between my legs. My panties were as wet as my hair and my nipples were hard enough to cut steel. I was dangerously close to leaving my inhibitions behind and asking him to come inside when he suddenly broke the kiss.

Still holding me, his breathing was labored, his pupils were dilated, and that bulge was as hard as a redwood in his pants. His fingers flexed on my hips. Then he suddenly let go of me and took a step back. “I have to go make sure Laurene is alright. She was sleeping, but if she wakes up tonight and I’m not there, there will be hell to pay for me tomorrow.”

So turned on that I couldn’t think straight, I nodded and swallowed the lust, blinking hard in an attempt to clear the haze from my brain. “Yeah. Yes. I mean, of course. Sure. Yes.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He nodded back at me, those eyes on mine for another moment before he spun and walked back into the pouring rain, heading down the path to the resort.

Gasping for air, I brought my hand up to my chest and tried to catch my breath, feeling like I’d been holding it this whole time. Very specific parts of me wished he’d stayed, but the more that lustful haze lifted, the more I realized it was for the best that he hadn’t.

I absolutely had not been expecting anything like this to happen this summer, and I needed a damn minute to process that it was, in fact, happening. Remington Ford was a tourist. A guest who would be gone at the end of the summer, yet I’d already developed a soft spot for him.

The very last thing I needed was to jump into bed with a man I couldn’t have. Or at least, I couldn’t do it until I was sure that I would be okay when he eventually left. Right now, I didn’t know that.

I headed into my cabin and grabbed a shower before I got back into bed. I hoped that, so many hours after I’d tried the first time, sleep would finally come for me.

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