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Cammie stuffed her arms into the robe, courtesy of Fernsby, that Dane held out for her and belted it tightly, letting the towel fall to the decking.
He pulled on his own robe. The champagne sat forgotten by the hot tub, the bubbles gone flat. Just the way he felt.
But he couldn’t let what happened in the hot tub pass. Everything he wanted had bubbled over. He’d let loose. He couldn’t rein any of it in again.
“We need to talk,” he said with an authority he hoped she’d listen to.
She forestalled anything else he might have said, rushing her words. “What just happened in the hot tub shouldn’t have happened. We both know it would have been a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake,” he insisted, even if he feared it was. Without the rules, and despite the new project, she still might decide it was time to hit the road. Especially now that Lochlan was no longer holding her here.
She shook her head, wet tendrils of hair escaping her topknot and sticking to her cheeks. “Twelve years ago, we were right to make rules. We’re just going to have to get a handle on this. No more hot tubs.”
“What about golf games? I seem to remember a kiss during a golf game too.”
He was baiting her, he admitted it. But he wanted something more from her than a flat no.
Her nostrils flared and her lips thinned, as if there were so many thoughts whizzing around in her head that she didn’t know what to do with them. “Maybe we shouldn’t play golf either.”
Now, that was going too far.
“No,” he said, his voice emphatic. “I remember how good it was the first time. And I still want you now.” He didn’t talk about feelings. Feelings could scare her off. But the chemistry between them was undeniable.
She stepped back, putting physical distance between them as well as emotional. “We’ve always agreed that was a mistake. And we’re not going to make another.”
He wanted to grab her shoulders, get right down in her face and say, Screw that. After that kiss on the island, that sweet, sexy kiss that could have become so much more, even then he’d agreed about the rules. But no longer. Not after he’d felt how much she wanted him in that hot tub. Not after how badly he wanted her. Had always wanted her.
And now he was torn between losing her and wanting her.
His desire for her won.
“No,” he said, claiming the step she’d put between them, her scent ratcheting up his emotions, his need. “I won’t pretend it didn’t happen. I won’t say it was a mistake. On the contrary, that night was the best damned thing I’ve ever known. And I don’t know why the hell we’ve had to wait twelve long years to do it again.”
She stared at him for a long, agonizing moment while his guts twisted into a tight coil. That day at the barbecue, when he’d held her in his arms, he’d known then how much he wanted her, yet he’d still been pretending that all he could do was offer her comfort.
But he had so much more to give her. So he whispered, “I can make you feel so good.”
That’s when she ran.
* * *
Turning so fast on the deck she almost slipped, she felt him reaching out. If he touched her, she was a goner.
That day at Sebastian’s, when Dane had wrapped his arms around her and held her close to his heart, she’d wanted to kiss him. But her desire for him had been a force inside her for so much longer than that. She’d wanted another night like the first. Dreamed about it.
But that was just fantasy.
And suddenly, because he didn’t care about the ramifications, Dane wanted to change their status quo. I know how this will go down. You can want something so badly you ache with need, but when you finally get it, it never works out the way you want.
He wanted to give her pleasure, to have sex with her, and yes, it would be out of this world. But then what would happen when she wanted more than pleasure?
She tried so hard not to slam the door of her bedroom, but once inside, she couldn’t help herself. She locked it. Because Dane wanted to talk. And talking would lead to so much more. Because she simply didn’t have the willpower to resist him—and, worse, to resist herself.
She slid down the locked door until her butt hit the floor.
He wanted her. He couldn’t know what those words did to her, how much she wanted to throw herself at him and say, Yes, yes, yes, I want it all.
But he hadn’t said he loved her. He hadn’t even said he wanted a relationship. He’d said nothing of marriage, home, babies—all the things she’d realized she wanted desperately that day as she’d watched him with Savannah and Keegan, with Jorge and Noah.
