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“We’ll go inside,” he pressed even harder against her back, “in a little bit.”

Her eyes widened and he smiled in grim satisfaction.

“Before that, I want to keep feeling this…”

He moved his hands down her sides and hooked his fingers into the waist of her leggings.

“I want to feel… alive with you.”

His voice sounded odd in his ears. Rougher.

Harder.

He pulled the waist of her leggings down from her waist to her hips.

He felt her body tense and wondered if it was because of the way her leggings felt plastered to her skin or the idea that he planned to take her right there, almost hidden from prying eyes.

“Heath…”

“No one will see. I promise.”

He felt a shiver roll through her body at his words.

“Are you… are you cold?”

She shook her head and leaned back against him, tipping her head back so she could just meet his gaze over her shoulder. “I think… I think I need it, too.”

He’d lost one life in the dark waters of the bay, but today…

Today, he’d saved two lives in the flood.

He’d saved Mari… and he’d saved his own life, too.

If he’d lost hold of her or hadn’t been able to save her, he would have been lost right alongside her.

Mari relaxed against him and he was able to slip the waist of her leggings down over her hips stopping somewhere along her thighs.

Reaching between them, he put a hand on her back.

“Trust me?”

She nodded her head as he pushed her forward. He felt it the instant that her body made contact with the side of his SUV.

There was a sudden stop and a soft gasp from her lips.

Both of them were wet from the rain, their clothes sticking to their bodies. Even with the heater on during their drive, the fabric against their skin was like a magnet.

Buck moved his hands along her bare skin, stopping when he had his hands on her hips. “To say I love you,” he breathed out the words as he moved a hand over her skin, warming her with his touch, “isn’t enough. It will never be enough.”

He reached for the front of his slacks and opened the button at the waist before pulling down the zipper beneath it.

“It’ll never be enough to tell you how I feel.”

He heard the sound of her palms sliding along the metal of the SUV’s body, the strange catch of sound as her skin caught and then continued across the wet surface.

“I’ll just have to show you.”

Mari made a soft, breathy sound as her cheek pressed against the cool metal of the car. “Please,” she begged him, another breath catching in her throat, “do it.”