CHAPTER 22
BLAIRE
I should’ve gone inside. My brain screamed at me that this was a bad idea, that if I stayed a second longer, something irreversible would happen.
But somehow, I still found myself walking to the end of the dock like a fool.
I pressed my hands against the top of the ladder, balancing myself as I took a seat right in front of him with my feet dangling over the edge.
The water rippled in slow, gentle waves, dark except for where the moon caught its surface. Colt treaded water a few feet in front of me, his shoulders just visible above the surface.
“Let’s play another game,” he said quietly, his gaze lingering on my face.
“Aren’t we tired of games, Colt?” I asked, leaning back slightly on my hands.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he sank deeper into the water, the surface lapping just above his upper lip.
His expression gave nothing away, but electricity skittered across my skin as his fingers curled around the ladder rungs, drawing his body nearer to where I sat.
The smile that crept across his face promised trouble I shouldn’t want.
“Remember when we used to play truth or dare?” His voice danced with a challenge, light but dangerous.
A laugh tumbled from my lips, even as an ache started low in my belly. “I think we’re a little old for that.”
“We’re a little old for Never Have I Ever too, but you had fun.” The look on his face was pure mischief, but there was a nervousness underneath that caught me off guard. “Let’s play. It’s just for tonight. Tomorrow you can forget all about it and go right back to hating me.”
God, there wasn’t a single part of me that hated him.
“Fine. Truth or dare, cowboy?”
He grinned, and his whole damn face lit up. “Truth.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. I should have asked him something simple or something that would make us both laugh, but I didn’t do either of those things. “Where’s Ruby’s mom?”
His expression flickered, something haunted passing over it before he answered. “She left a little over two years ago. She never really wanted to be a mother, and Ruby and I weren’t enough to make her stay.”
My chest ached for the way he said it, for how simple he made it seem. I wanted to tell him he was more than enough, that Ruby would never be anything less than loved, but the words caught in my throat, too fragile and terrifying to say aloud.
“Did you love her?” I whispered, my voice thin and unsteady.
He blinked, and the muscles in his jaw worked. He looked so young, so like the Colt I’d been so in love with, and my chest ached as I waited for his answer.
“You got your truth,” he said, and the grin he gave me was so at odds with the way every other part of him had gone rigid. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” I said, bracing myself.
“Did you love him?” he asked instantly. “The guy you were going to marry?”
His question hit me hard, and I hesitated, fingers digging into the dock. I could’ve lied. I’d been lying to myself for a very long time, but sitting here, alone with him, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “No. Not really.”
He nodded once, like he’d already known my answer and only needed to hear me confirm it.
We sat there in the stillness, breathing too loudly, and I could see him running his thumb over the ladder’s pitted steel, like he needed the sensation to anchor him.
I wondered if he was remembering all the games of truth or dare we’d played as kids, if he remembered how none of those dares ever scared me half as much as these truths.
“Truth or dare?” I blurted, desperate to change the air between us.
“Truth,” he said, and there was a challenge in the word, like he was daring me to cut deeper.
I searched his eyes, drowning in the blue I had spent years searching for in everything around me, and my heart pounded recklessly. I felt reckless. “Have you ever thought about what would’ve happened if I’d never left?”
He sucked in a breath, and the water reflected pale silver across his cheekbones, sharpening the lines of his face. “Every fucking day,” he said, and there was no bravado in it this time, no careless cowboy cockiness. Just honesty, raw enough to hurt.
I swallowed hard because there was so much danger in the way he said it and in the way he was looking at me.
“My turn,” he said. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” I answered too quickly.
He dragged his hand over his mustache as he watched me, then his voice came low and rough. “When you were with him, did you ever think about me?”
His question hit like lightning through my body. Heat pooled in my body, and my fingers dug into the rough wood of the dock as an insistent need pulsed between my thighs.
“All the time,” I whispered, the confession scraping my throat raw.
His pupils dilated until his eyes were nearly black, fixed on mine with predatory focus. His chest expanded with each measured breath, the water sliding down his skin with every rise and fall.
“And earlier by the truck—” His gaze dropped to my mouth. “—were you wet for me?”
My breath stuttered. My skin burned everywhere, nipples tightening painfully against my shirt. My fingers gripped the dock’s edge until they ached.
“I thought we were playing a game,” I managed, but I felt stripped bare.
“We are.” His gaze dropped to where my thighs pressed desperately together, and I felt so exposed. His tongue traced his bottom lip, leaving it glistening. “I dare you to show me.”
“What?” The word fractured between us, though we both knew exactly what he meant.
“Show me how wet you are.” His voice was pure gravel, almost reverent, and his hands gripped the ladder on either side of my thighs like it was the only thing keeping him tethered. “Let me see what I still do to you, Blaire.”
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, to remember that this wasn’t who we were anymore, but all I could do was stare at him, lips parted, breath shallow.
Colt waited, silent except for the sound of the water around him and the steady rush of his breath through his nose.
A dare. That’s what this was meant to be, but the truth hummed under my skin. If I didn’t want to do it, I could walk away right now. We could both wake up in the morning, tired and a little hungover, and we could pretend like none of this ever happened.
But I didn’t walk away.
Instead, my knees parted, inches at first, then wider, as if they had a will separate from my own.
My skin burned everywhere his gaze touched, and the dock beneath me seemed to vibrate with each hammering beat of my heart.
The night air was electric against my feverish skin, and the dark lake surrounding us became both voyeur and accomplice to what we were about to do.
“Colt.” His name was a plea on my lips.
“It’s just you and me, Blaire.” He leaned forward, his breath scorching against my skin as he dragged his mouth along the inside of my knee.
My body jolted, a violent current shooting from that single point of contact straight to my pussy.
“Show me.”
My breath came in short, desperate bursts. I could still tell him no. I should’ve told him no, but his voice wrapped around my throat, my wrist, between my thighs. His eyes devoured me, and whatever resistance I’d clung to shattered.
I spread my knees wider, the wood rough against my skin, and the night air hit the slick heat between my thighs only covered by my bikini. Colt’s groan tore from him, the sound vibrating through my bones and pooling like liquid fire in my core.
He watched me, his eyes burning a path from my parted knees to the thin scrap of fabric between them that was already dark with want.
“Fuck,” he said. “You’re soaked for me, aren’t you?”
I should’ve been embarrassed. I should’ve been mortified by the fact that he could see exactly what he did to me, that the simple dare to show him had my body responding so instantly, so helplessly.
But I burned with need and so many memories of the way he’d once touched me.
So I nodded, my hand sliding up my body like it belonged to someone else, someone braver. My fingertips dragged across my stomach, every touch igniting a trail of fire that spread lower, making my hips twitch in anticipation.
Colt’s knuckles tightened around the ladder as he hauled himself up, water streaming off his shoulders. His breath scorched the inside of my knee, each exhale like a brand against my skin.
“Show me, baby,” he growled, voice shattered with need. “Put your fingers in that pretty pussy and let me see exactly how fucking needy you are for me.”
My hand shook as I dragged it lower, fingernails scraping over the curve of my hip, down to the aching heat between my thighs. I locked eyes with Colt and whimpered. His pupils had swallowed the blue entirely, his jaw clenched tight.
“That’s it, Blaire. It’s just you and me,” he rasped.
His words ripped through me, obliterating every last shred of hesitation. I pressed my palm down hard against my drenched bikini bottoms, a moan slipping out as the pressure sent sparks shooting through me.
“Fucking perfect,” Colt groaned, low and wrecked. His head tipped back, throat exposed, as one hand slid off the ladder and disappeared beneath the dark water. I could see his forearm flexing as he gripped himself.
“Slow,” he commanded, his eyes devouring every desperate movement. “Make it hurt the way it does when I lie awake every night thinking about you.”
I gasped, body arching against my touch. “Colt—please?—”
“That’s it. Right there,” he coaxed me. “Every night I wrap my hand around my cock until it’s throbbing, thinking about the way you used to cry out my name. Thinking about you spread out like this, begging me to let you finish.”
I ground down harder, hips bucking violently against my hand, my entire body filled with need as his words branded themselves into my skin.
“You like the thought of that, don’t you?” he hissed. “Do you want me to make you beg for it, Blaire?”
I nodded, unable to find my words, unable to control my reaction to him.