AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Or would he flip back the covers and shift over, making room by his side?
Do his sheets smell like peppermint? His skin does sometimes. I think it’s his soap.
“I’m, uh.” Mac clears his throat, watching me from the corner of his eye as he goes back to coiling the rope. A line of sweat trickles down his throat, and god, what I’d give to lick it off. “I’m nearly done here.”
Alrighty. It’s not like I came to hurry him along—Mac can work for hours more for all I care. So long as I can be near him, it’s all good. Kicking off my flip flops, I stroll across the bleached wooden boards and sit on the jetty’s edge.
“Careful,” Mac says. He doesn’t like seeing me near the water. Something about finding me half-drowned, I guess.
Weird that he’s more freaked out by that than I am. Am I in denial? Or is Mac a worry wart?
The cool water rushes around my toes, heels and ankles, until I’m dangling mid-calf in the marina, peering at the green puffs of seaweed far below. My left knee is stiff, same as most days.
How did I injure it? What did I do for a job before?
“Cocoa,” Mac warns.
I shift closer to the edge, grinning.
“Cocoa.”
What? I can swim—we tested that theory last week, with Mac hovering so near me in the waves that every surge knocked me against his bare chest. The whole time, he couldn’t speak for anxiety; meanwhile, I was so turned on, every time I squeezed my thighs together, I whimpered. It was awesome.
Besides, the water’s stiller than a painting today. Tiny, silvery fish flash past the nearest boat. I kick my feet slowly, trying not to spook them.
“This,” two big hands grip my waist, lifting me away from the edge and setting my ass back down, “is bullshit. Stop freaking me out.”
The water sloshes around my ankles. My heart hammers against my ribs long after his hands leave my body, and two warm patches burn through my vest top.
Jeez.
I’m breathless, lightheaded on the dock, and all Mac did was drag my ass back a few inches. The wood creaks behind me as he goes back to work, coiling that damn rope. I’d stretch out long and let him coil me too if it meant he touched me again.
“I can swim,” I say.
Can I? I’m so winded, I can barely breathe.
His hands were so big, so rough, so perfect.
“Still,” Mac says, like that’s the whole argument. Like that explains everything. Like we never need to acknowledge how protective he is, how growly and possessive whenever we walk into town, or the hungry way he watches me sometimes—late at night in his cottage, a movie playing on the TV screen, both our eyes’ fixed on each other, chests heaving in the blue light.
We’ve been dancing around this for weeks now. And it’s always me pushing, always me sitting on his lap or scratching his beard or bumping him with my hip as we walk side by side. Always me initiating the quick bursts of contact, even if he’s greedy for them once they happen.
He’s interested. Iknowhe is, because Mac might be a big, repressed statue, but that bulge he gets in his jeans does not lie. Damn nobility.
Will he ever kiss me? Will he ever make a move?
Or will I die of longing before then?
I push to my feet, droplets speckling the boards.
“What are you doing?” The rope is still in Mac’s hands as I peel my vest top off—purple cotton, bought from one of the only clothing stores in town. Mr Grumpy here said it brought out my eyes.
“Cooling off.”
My denim shorts are next to go, the button popped, the zip crackling down. They pool around my ankles, and I kick them off.
To strip or not to strip? If it were night time, or if this were a private cove, I’d peel my underwear off too and be damned. Anything to tempt the harbor master. But since this is a public marina and Mac already looks ready to burst a vein, I shake out my arms and step to the edge in nothing but my white cotton bra and panties.
