Page 46 of Break Away
“That you want me.”
The demand should have made me laugh, sharpened me, or made me meaner and less affected. Instead, it slipped beneath every piece of armor I had glued to myself and pulled.
I wet my bottom lip, and his eyes followed the movement like he was trying to stay civilized through a personal crisis.
“I want you,” I said. “But I don’t want this to turn into anything.”
His jaw tightened. For one second, something moved across his face that looked too close to disappointment, but he buried it before I could decide what to do with it.
“Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight.”
“No tomorrow.”
“No tomorrow.”
“No questions.”
He smiled. “No questions.”
His hand lifted slowly, giving me time to move away. I didn’t. His fingers brushed the side of my neck first, barely there, and my whole body betrayed me with a shiver.
His eyes changed. “You’re cold.”
“Don’t start nurturing me. I bite.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Heat punched through me.
I grabbed his wrist before I could lose my nerve and pulled his hand fully against my throat, not hard, only enough for him to feel my pulse jumping beneath his palm. His fingers flexed once, and I watched the moment he understood I was giving him control without giving him permission to take more than I allowed.
That knowledge darkened his face, and it fucking got me.
It wasn’t the body, the mouth, or the way he looked in the firelight like a dangerous thing trying to be decent. It was that he understood.
His thumb moved once beneath my jaw. “Where?”
I looked toward the darker stretch of shoreline behind the old dock. “There.”
Easton followed my gaze before looking back at me. “You sure?”
I laughed softly because if I didn’t, the tenderness of the question might make me stupid. “Ask me that again and I’ll change my mind on principle.”
His mouth curved. “A ‘sure’ would’ve worked.”
“Cocky.”
“Certain.”
“Worse.”
He took my hand only long enough to guide me around a patch of broken shells half-buried in the sand, then let go like he knew holding on too long would make me bolt. The little courtesy pissed me off by being exactly right.
We walked away from the fire together, leaving the party behind by degrees. The music faded first, then the laughter, then the glow. The sand grew cooler beneath my feet as we moved along the curve of the shoreline, past the old dock and the reeds whispering in the lake wind. Moonlight silvered the water beyond the shadows, but the space beneath the dock was dark enough to make my breathing easier.
Dark had rules and gave me edges. It meant nobody got to look unless I let them.
