Page 28 of Broken Cedar

“I did not.”

“You did.” He looks completely serious. “Then you wiped your face and said, ‘Men are trash, and I’m going to be a spinster with seventeen cats.’”

I laugh despite myself. “I hate that you remember that.”

“No, you don’t.”

He’s right, I don’t.

The afternoon stretches around us, warm and quiet.

“I used to come here when I was upset,” I say softly, turning the stone over in my hands to avoid looking at him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “Always checked here first.”

“Did you ever wonder why? Why this spot?”

“Never had to wonder. It’s quiet. You like quiet when your head’s loud.”

I toss the rock into the creek, not knowing what to say. The afternoon has turned properly warm, the kind of Montana heat that makes your shirt cling to your skin.

“I’m going in,” I say suddenly.

Colt raises an eyebrow. “In your clothes?”

“In my birthday suit, actually.” I reach for the hem of my t-shirt and pull it over my head, tossing it onto a rock. My bra follows. Then my jeans, kicked off and left in a heap on the gravel. I’m standing there in nothing but my underwear, and Colt is watching me. His gaze travels up the length of my body before meeting mine.

I swallow, then hook my thumbs into the waistband, and slide my panties down. Colt watches me the entire time, his eyes darkening. “Join me or don’t. Your call.”

I turn and walk into the creek without looking back. The water is colder than I expected, but it feels good. It wraps around me, pulls me out of my own head. For a few seconds, there’s nothing. No footsteps. No splash. I don’t turn around. Because if I do, and he’s still standing there, I’m not sure what I’ll see on his face.

I finally hear splashing behind me. I don’t turn, just keep wading until the water reaches my hips, then dive under. The cold envelops me completely, and when I surface, shaking water from my hair, Colt is waist-deep ten feet away, watching me like he’s trying to memorize the exact moment before everything changes.

He closes the distance between us in three strokes, and then we’re treading water face to face, close enough that our legs brush underwater, and I can see every droplet on his skin, every line around his eyes. His hands settle on my waist beneath the water.

“Remember when we used to do this?” I ask. “Every summer. We’d be in this creek from noon till dark.”

“I remember you turning into a prune.”

“I remember you’d duck underwater and pull my legs out from under me.”

He grins. Then he dunks me. I come up sputtering, pushing wet hair out of my face, and he’s laughing. I splash him. He splashes back, swimming closer. Suddenly we’re chest to chest, his hands on my waist underwater, my arms around his neck, and the playing has shifted into something else.

His mouth finds mine, and he kisses me. My body arches into his without permission. His hands slide down to my ass, lifting me, and I wrap my legs around his hips, and we’re kissing like we’re drowning and each other’s mouths are the only air.

He walks us backward through the water until my back hits something solid—one of the old jetty pillars. The wood is rough against my skin. Colt braces his arms on either side of my head, caging me against the pillar, and his mouth moves from my lips to my jaw to my neck, and I’m gasping, my fingers in his hair, my hips rolling against the hard length of him pressed between my legs.

“Here?” I murmur against his ear. “Someone could—”

“Nobody comes down here.” His voice is rough. His hands are everywhere—my breasts, my waist, between my thighs. “It’s just us.”

The thrill of it—out in the open, the possibility of being seen—makes me reckless. I reach between us, finding his cock. I stroke him, and he groans into my neck, his hips jerking forward.

He pushes into me slowly, the water making everything tight. Colt sets a pace, and I cling to his shoulders, my legs locked around his waist, my mouth on his neck, biting to muffle the sounds I can’t seem to stop making.

It doesn’t take long before I’m coming with his name on my lips, my body clenching around him, my forehead pressed against his chest as the pleasure rolls through me in waves.

Colt doesn’t finish. He pulls out, his cock sliding from me with a gasp from both of us, and for a second I’m confused. Then his hands are on my hips, lifting me, setting me on the jetty’s wooden platform above the waterline.