Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Then I do something I’ve never imagined I’d do in my life.
I follow this wild, reckless woman across the sand, my footprints melding into hers, and go tumbling into the icy waves after her.
It’s like sticking my feet into a vat of ice.
I let out a shocked gasp and almost stumble to a halt, while Elle patters a few more steps into the shallows before squealing, her laughter rising up over the night.
“Oh my God, that’s cold!” she cries.
“I could’ve told you that.” I take a few steps toward her into calf-deep water that soaks the hems of my slacks, making them cling to my legs like a frigid film. “It’s Puget Sound in February. Were you expecting a sauna?”
“Okay, smart-ass.” Visibly shivering, Elle takes a few dancing steps backward, the water swirling around her ankles. “Keep being sarcastic and I’ll dunk you.”
“You will not.” I lunge toward her and catch her waist, pulling her against me.
Our warmth collides, two opposing storm fronts swirling around us—body heat and winter waves.
“And you will not go a step more in the dark,” I say. “You know what the riptides can be like out there.”
“Yeah, I know.” Undaunted, she leans into me. She’s still holding her dress above the waves, her pretty, slender calves speckled in the dewdrop spatter of sea spray, her curves lush against me. She tilts her head up, asking for a kiss, and I want so much to answer that unspoken request. “But I got you out here, minus the stick up your butt, didn’t I?”
That insolent little mouth, pink and full.
Her tits rise in pale arcs above her bodice.
The flicker of her pulse against the thin skin of her throat.
The way I feel her hips so close to mine, our clothing not nearly thick enough to mask that raw heat.
The sound is freezing right now.
And I can’t feel a damned thing but fire.
My fingers clench convulsively against her back. The dip of her spine glides against my knuckles. She inhales, her smile fading into confusion, her eyes searching mine.
“August?”
I can’t.
But it still kills me to let her go, step back, and take a deep breath of the cutting air to clear my head.
“Apologies,” I deflect. “I was worried you’d fall.”
A lingering look tells me she doesn’t believe me. But she doesn’t press, either, letting her smile return as she steps back, spreading her arms and pretending to wobble. Her dress trails into the shallows, swirling around her gracefully and soaking up to the knees, turning almost fully transparent and offering the silhouette of her slim, enticing legs.
“I might,” she teases, her eyes wide. “Oh no, whatever would happen if I fell into the murky darkness of these treacherous inch-deep waters?”
I roll my eyes, folding my arms. “You’d be very wet, and I’d have to haul you inside before you wound up with hypothermia.”
“Oh no.” She feigns pure drama.
Brat.
She tilts a bit more, and the breeze pulls several locks of hair loose, licking the strawberry-gold strands against her neck.
“I’m losing my balance, Rhett. Whatever shall I do? Someone save me—save me! Where is my brave hero?”
This wretched child.
I’m not laughing.
I’m not.
I’m not smiling either.
That feeling pulling at my mouth is purely phantom.
Imaginary.
And I’m most definitely not uncrossing my arms to sweep my hands through the water. My fingers go numb as I splash her.
“I’m not your hero,” I say. “I’m the kraken, and you’re going under.”
Elle shrieks, bursting into laughter as she dances back. Her movements slow with the drag of her wet dress. Her extremely wet dress, the splatters of water hitting her chest and stomach in splotches that offer tempting views.
Pale skin.
Lacy underthings.
Apparently, I’m the architect of my own doom because it’s damned impossible to look away from her.
“You jerk,” she sputters, tugging where her dress sticks to her skin. “Don’t you dare do that again.”
“Miss Eleanor Lark,” I say, stalking closer, “you should know by now that I don’t take well to being ordered around.”
She freezes. “Oh shit.”
“‘Oh shit,’ indeed.”
There’s a frozen moment when we hold still like we’re hunter and prey. Then with another yelping laugh she turns and sprints along the shore, flitting in and out of the rolling waves and kicking up arcs of spray, her fingers fumbling with her dress to hike it up and free her legs.
I give her a second’s head start before I dart after her.
There’s no hope for her to outpace me. Not with my longer legs and that dress tangling her up and weighing her down.
I let her stay ahead of me anyway.
I can’t believe I’m enjoying this.
I’m fucking laughing, unrestrained, until I’m winded whenever she glances over her shoulder to see how close I am, yelps, then sprints faster with laughter trailing behind her.
The back of her dress is scooped enough for the delicate lines of her shoulder blades to entice me, the channel of her spine glittering with kicked-up spray like clear pearls. Her hair comes looser from its pins until it’s a banner, begging me to reach out and wrap that sunset gold in my fingers.