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“We’re already skinny, so let’s just dip.”
He hauled her up, scooped her up in his strong arms, and before she knew it, they were walking naked straight into the ocean. “Luke, you’re crazy! I’ve never done this but I can tell you right now it’s going to be freezing!”
He laughed at her squeal and didn’t stop until they were submerged to their chests in cold water. He kissed her to heat her up, and she coiled herself around him, and before she knew it, she was drowning in his kisses. In the water. In him.
Chapter Three
The next evening found their naked bodies entangled and damp with sweat, Luke with one leg dangling from the hammock as they lazily swung to and fro. Peyton was coiled around his body, loving the heavy, muscled arm he had possessively wrapped around her as she rested her cheek on the unbandaged side of his chest.
Luke stared up at the night sky and breathed in deeply. He kept repeating her name out loud, as though in disbelief, until she finally looked up at him in puzzlement.
“Stop saying that,” she said in friendly admonishment. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Why so?” he asked. “I like the sound of it. Peyton Lane.”
“I never liked it,” she admitted, stifling the desire to pout like when she’d been a little girl and wanted her daddy’s attention. “When I was eight I begged my daddy to change it to something more feminine like Elizabeth, but Peyton was my grandmother’s name, who my father doted on, because she is his mom, after all, so he blatantly refused.”
“You’re close to your folks?”
“We’re all working people, my older sisters and my mom and dad, so it’s complicated. We try getting together once a week, though.” She walked two fingers up his chest. “You?”
He shrugged his free shoulder, then absently seized her wandering fingers and laced his fingers through them. “My first few years, I had it good. But by the time I hit eight, I ended up raised mostly by people other than my folks.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”
“Hell, I don’t know. My mother failed to get pregnant again, then got it in her head to save all the starving children in the world. She’s probably right now in Ethiopia.”
A silence descended as they stayed there, swinging to and fro, their fingers interlaced as Peyton absorbed his words somewhere deep in her chest, where something throbbed for him.
“But you know how it is when the parents aren’t around? Always a party. I did everything I wanted. Shit, I still do—I can’t complain.”
Her lips curled as she let go of his hand in order to rumple his hair. “You’re so easygoing, you’d probably make the most out of foot surgery.”
He smacked her ass in playful punishment. “Well, would you like me to moan and whine, woman?”
She laughed, and she tucked her face back into his neck and breathed in his scent. He smelled of sand today. Ocean. And underneath all that, she could distinguish him. His unique scent was an aphrodisiac. God, he made her wet all day.
“Peyton Lane,” he whispered one more time, edging his head back so he could look at her. And oh, how she loved his smile. But she also loved when he looked at her so intently. “It’s so damned beautiful—almost as beautiful as you are.”
He traced her smile with his thumb, and his gaze tracked the move.
“I imagine you must say that very often,” she teased. “To all of your lady friends.”
His expression turned bleak as he lifted one lone eyebrow. He studied her for a moment in silence, and the manner in which he did made her heart beat faster. “What if I do?”
Her smile faded under his piercing, questioning blue eyes. She shook her head. “Look, we both know this is just…I don’t really care about that, Luke. I know you have a life waiting for you, and so do I.”
Although he was a bit of a lazy boy, she realized that he moved swiftly when he wanted to, and in a flash of a second, Luke was on top of her, his body pinning hers down on the hammock. “You sound like you mean business, Miss Lane.”
She melted under the incandescence of his regard. “I always mean business.”
“Then, allow me to get this straight…” He dragged his eyes meaningfully to her bare breasts, then gradually upward again, turning every inch of skin he covered on fire. “I have thirty-six hours and forty-five minutes of your body at my complete and utter mercy…to fuck you any way I want…and make you come as many times as I please…and all this without getting a kick in the balls afterwards or a fucking knife through the base of my cock?”
His eyes danced in silent laughter, and though he made Peyton laugh, too, the thought of being so completely taken advantage of triggered a delicate shiver down her spine. “Yes! That’s what I mean.”
“Then I’d better not waste any more time.” He bent down to bury his face in her neck, and his hands threaded up to her armpits only to tickle her. When Peyton screeched in surprise and squirmed, he laughed in victory and tickled with even more force, ruthlessly, showing no mercy. “Better get down to business.”
“No, stop, Luke, please!” She kicked and flailed at him, her stomach tight in the effort as she laughed out loud.
