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I smush the pads of my feet into a sea of bushy, clover-like greenery that blankets the area, smirking when Sparrow snags a mouthful of them on her way into the water with a gleeful whinny.
“Are you sure about this, slayer?” he asks while I help remove our towels and a quilt from his bag, then fluff each one out not far from the shore. “You don’t have anything to prove. To me, or anyone else for that matter.”
The nickname that once irked me now tickles my insides. But it’s nothing compared to the fleet of shivers rocking my core when he reaches one arm behind his neck and tugs his shirt clean off.
Christ on a cracker.My silly heart thuds the same way it had this morning when I walked into the barn with all the confidence of an Olympic swimmer.
I expected him to talk me out of it, maybe flat-out object to my plan to finally face my fear of the water. But what I hadn’t anticipated was him setting down the wood carving he’d been in the middle of working on to harness Sparrow, and then giving me thatwhat are we waiting forgrin.
“I’m sure,” I say, hoping he doesn’t notice me ogling the dips, ridges, and slopes of his beautiful body, or how the afternoon sun highlights his tapered waist and broad shoulders.
Marcus’s muscles bunch, flexing beneath my stare.
Yeah, he definitely notices.
“Quit showing off, vamp.”
He arches an arrogant brow. “I much prefer my name coming from those lips.”
The last inflected word becomes a naughty, needy reminder of every moan he’d coaxed from my throat.
“And I would prefer to get this over with, if you don’t mind.” My hand circles toward the water, but already, my skin is twitching, my insides bubbly and unsettled.
T’slastamay have left unanswered questions between us, but my final report on our night together comes to this—we kissed, he gave me a couple of soul-shattering orgasms, end of story.
Yet, here he is, stalking toward me with those sultry bedroom eyes full of devil-may-care promises.
“Arms up,” he instructs in the same tone he used with Sparrow.
Unlike my previous will to obey, I cross them instead, which only makes his cheek dimple with humor. Marcus sighs, prying my forearms apart and forcing them into the air to remove my shirt.
“Have you always been so…” Words fail him as he rakes his burning blue gaze from the top of my head to the apex of my thighs. The man’s seen me naked, but somehow, he loses his nerve at the sight of me in a thin black bikini. Go figure.
Tossing my shirt on the ground, he finishes with, “Perfect.”
A stream of sunlight peeking through the trees hits me square across the chest, warming me from the outside-in as he carefully hooks his fingers in the sides of my shorts and slides them down my legs.
“I believe you meantstubborn.”
His smiles come a little easier now, and this one is annoyingly attractive from where he kneels in front of me. His gaze flits from where his mouth previously marked me to my heating face. “Ah, yes, lest I forget your most endearing quality.”
I yank him to standing before I do something stupid—like popping the tie loose on my bikini bottoms and giving him a second course.
“I’m not doing this because I have anything to prove, you know.” Bringing us back to his earlier question, I say, “It’s just that maybe I don’t want to wake up one day, years from now, to find that I’m the same person I’ve always been. A woman who lived the same year over and over until she died. Lonely, cold, and bitter.”
“I suppose that is depressing,” he teases. “If not a touch dramatic.”
I put a hefty amount of space between us before scoffing, “Says the actor.”
Jango pads out of the water, shaking his fur after dropping a long stick at our feet. His paws do a tippy-tap when we turn our attention to him.
“Are you suggestingI’mthe dramatic one?” Marcus bends to pick up Jango’s prize.
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
After chucking the stick toward the trees, he gives me a smirk that’s way too flirty for my liking. “Now is that any way to speak to your friends?”
My eyes go wide. “I would hardly say you and I are friends.”
