Page 54 of Most Eligible
“Is that what you’re working on now? Good music?”
“Something like that.” He smiles.
I kick my feet up onto the opposite bench, accidentally grazing my toes against his thigh.
“Sorry,” I say, but he shakes his head.
“S’okay,” he murmurs. He reaches through the water and takes my foot between his hands, running his thumb over my arch and up to my ankle. The feeling of it pulls all the way through me.
“Can I look?” he asks, then clarifies, “At your tattoos?”
A heat more boiling than the water races up my chest. Fighting (and failing) to keep my voice from wobbling, I raise an eyebrow at him. “You’ve already seen one of them.”
He shrugs. “I’d like to see it again.”
All I can do is stare into his dark eyes. He lifts my foot out of the water to examine the constellation inked on my ankle. This one, he already knows, has already pressed his lips to, left his own muggy imprint on me. Warmth shoots up my leg, burning in my thighs as his fingers absently stroke the skin stretching across my bone.
“The other?” Rhett asks, voice hoarse.
I tug my foot from his grasp and stand so I’m looking down at him. He stares up at me, eyes wide, his arms stretched out onthe edge of the hot tub. His eyes flick down to my shirt, soaked and see-through, and my stomach tugs with want.
I pull down the waistband of my underwear to reveal the small treble clef stamped there, right below my pelvic bone. A trace of a smile flits across his lips. Slowly, he reaches out his fingers and brushes them over the tattoo. My skin erupts in goosebumps under his fingers; a range of tiny mountains all my own.
“When did you get it?” His voice rips through me, carving space for him to crawl closer. I never want him to stop.
“After,” I murmur.
He nods.
It’s a flipped universe to imagine Rhett in Nashville, walking into a tattoo parlor as I did the same in LA. Asking for a guitar as I asked for a treble clef. As the needle shot into my skin, I thought about each touch his fingers dropped on me. When the tattoo was done, the pain receded to a dull ache, and I vowed never to think of him again.
“Georgia,” he whispers. His fingers drop to the hem at my hips, leaving my skin tingling and my breath coming short and fast. He catches my wrist in his hand, and I don’t protest. I let myself fall into him, sinking through the water and straddling his lap.
He runs his fingers slowly down my back. Being this close to him is a shock to my system, an open flame devouring paper. I’m only touching him in a few places, elbows resting on his shoulders, insides of my thighs pressed against the outsides of his. Then his hands clasp over my hips, pulling me against every bit of him, and I gasp.
He breathes into my neck, his lips grazing my skin, my ear, his hands tangling in my hair.
“It’s fucking torture watching you with him,” he breathes.
I pull back sharply, hoisted into reality by his words. I can’t do this. If I give him too much, it’ll only hurt more.
“What are we doing?” I whisper.
His tongue runs feverishly across my clavicle, up my neck. “Georgia,” he murmurs. The doubts in my mind slow to a crawl, punch-drunk on his touch.
He takes my face in his hands, the fire of the ebbing sunset in his eyes. Slowly, so achingly slowly, he pulls my mouth down to his and I let myself go. I gasp him in, parting my lips as his warm tongue skims across my teeth and his fingers slide down my waist, flexing into the skin of my thighs. Just like last time, his body says more than he ever does with words.
I press down on his lap, feeling him hard beneath me. He breaks away from our kiss just long enough to grasp my waist and pull me up. Deftly, he turns us around so I’m sitting on the edge of the hot tub and he’s in front of me, hands still on my hips.
“I want you to watch the sunset,” he says. My stomach swoops, pooling all the need and want I’ve suppressed into one pulsing point between my legs. His hands rest on my thighs, his thumbs press into my skin, moving closer and closer. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and tugs it down a few centimeters.
Behind him, the Malibu sky is darker, deeper shades of candy pastel. He kisses his way down my neck, and I want it—I want him—but it’s not enough. I can’t risk everything just for this.
“No,” I gasp. “We can’t do this.”Ican’t do this. There’s too much going on in my head—Rhett knowing my secrets, everything that’s happened with Lainey and Addison, and now Rhett’s hands on my body rewinding time, coiling it back like a live wire.
He pulls away, his brow creasing. His hands still on my skin. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I mutter. I can’t meet his eyes. “I just… I don’t want this. You.” The word is out of my mouth before I can consider how it might hurt him. It kills me, treating him like this—acting like the problem is him. I want to tell him everything. But I can’t.
