Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
With her pulse rioting in her throat, she threw her gaze to the other side of the room. “I thought there’d be more people in here.”
“We can leave if you want,” he said immediately, a frown in his voice. “We don’t—”
Before he could finish, she shoved off her shorts, peeled off her shirt, and turned to him. “I’m good.”
Ren didn’t miss the way his mouth went slack and his eyes dropped to her feet before slowly climbing up her bare legs. When his attention moved to drag up over her stomach and across her chest, her skin felt like it was covered in sweet, licking flames. Turning to keep him from looking any further, Ren cannonballed into the pool.
She was still underwater, arms and legs flexing out and back as she kicked to the surface, when there was a smooth missile under the water, and Fitz’s hand came around her foot, playfully tugging.
Ren emerged at the surface, screaming out a laugh, and he broke through right after her, hair slicked back and lashes heavy with glimmering water droplets. With his eyes full of mischief, Fitz dove back under, wrapping his arms around her waist and hoisting her up, hurling her screaming in delight across the water. Ren ducked under, minnowing past him, dodging his grasp, and coming up behind him. With a laugh, she dunked his head underwater as he let out a laughing shout.
She’d spent countless hours swimming, but none in an actual pool, and rarely with anyone to play with like this. For what felt like hours they chased each other, wrestling, grabbing, tugging limbs and hands and toes. He practiced launching her with one foot in his joined hands until she’d made a perfect dive into the deep end. They raced—his strokes clean and practiced, hers unpolished and instinctive, but Ren won half the time anyway. They did handstands and underwater somersaults and competed to see who could stay under the water longer until they gave up nearly at the same time and pushed together, breathless, to the side, arms bent and chests heaving.
“You’re strong,” Fitz managed between labored breaths.
“You bet I am.”
He leaned his cheek on his arm, gazing at her with a glimmer that she didn’t want to believe was interest. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. She wanted to believe, a little too much. Ren blinked away, feeling a shiver pass through her.
“Cold?” he asked and surprised her by sending a gentle hand down her bare arm.
Ren was anything but cold after he did that, but nodded anyway, and Fitz pushed his upper body out of the water, hopping a leg up like he weighed nothing. He bent, dripping, and extended a hand to help her climb out. “Here.”
Ren hesitated, but not for any reason that made sense in her head. She simply didn’t know what to do with herself—with her hands and face and legs and thoughts that still seemed to be tripping over the feeling of his slippery skin against hers underwater, the size of his hands and how they slid up her legs to take hold or tickle her, the hard planes of his back and chest and arms.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, and it unlocked something in her brain, releasing her arm from its weird, infatuated paralysis and reaching so he could pull her up. Ren scrabbled the rest of the way out of the pool on her own.
When she straightened, it was the first time they really saw each other in their suits, stealing glances as they trailed wet footprints across the concrete.
Fitz tiptoed over to the control panel on the wall to turn on the Jacuzzi jets, and when his back was to her, Ren measured the width of his shoulders with her eyes, mapping the shape of his back, and mentally painted the way water sluiced down the center of his spine. His suit was wet, plastered to his backside, and the deepest ocean blue. It made his tanned torso look golden. When he turned around, her eyes landed directly on his toned stomach, smooth and defined. Her own stomach took a screaming nosedive.
If Fitz’s smirk told her anything, it was that he knew exactly what she’d been doing.
With the hot tub now gurgling between them, Ren walked to the edge and stuck her toes in the water, testing. It was so hot, it took her breath away.
“Go slow,” he said quietly. “This isn’t a jump-in kind of pool.”
Ren nodded, looking up to find his gaze trained on her outstretched leg, eyes glazed. A rush hit her, something new and untamed, and it took her a few seconds to register what it was. For the first time since they’d been together, she experienced a tiny surge of power over him. She stepped one foot in, and then another, and couldn’t help the groan that escaped. At the sound, her cheeks went instantly hot in mortification, but she didn’t look at his face, couldn’t log his expression. Instead, she slowly lowered herself to one of the tiled steps, watching Fitz as he followed her in.