19. AVERY #2
Although I don’t want to stop, I need to come up for air. With my lungs burning and my heart thundering, I touch my forehead to his. The tips of our noses press to one another, our bodies completely flush.
The feel of his hardening cock pressed to my belly makes me squirm.
I did that. My kiss did that.
Gleeful pride spreads through me. I’m enthralled by the feeling, completely thrilled.
“You are not ugly,” I rasp, opening my eyes to find him already watching me.
Rhett chuckles, nudging the tip of his nose over mine playfully even as his arms tighten around me right before he presses a lingering, chaste kiss to my semi-gaping mouth.
I am on cloud nine as he walks backward, keeping me as snug to him as possible while at the same time he doesn’t deviate his sparkling eyes from me.
“This is pretty,” I tell him even though I don’t turn away.
And he is gorgeous.
My internal swoon elicits a muted sigh from deep down inside me. It’s got to be impossible for him not to hear the drumming of my heart as I take in his long lashes, dark blond and thick like his hair.
The sky is beginning to purple as he guides me to the front of the boat. A small picnic hamper sits to the side of a cushion-scattered blanket. To the side of that is a wine cooler with a bottle of the same sparkling grape juice from our picnic last weekend.
“I was going to take you to one of the nice restaurants in town, but I wanted you all to myself with no distractions. I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?” I take a sharp breath to steady the giddiness inside me. It doesn’t work, though.
“Don’t worry, it’s not cheese.” Chuckling, he presses a kiss to my hair.
I’m completely overwhelmed as I swallow down the staggering emotions stirring inside me and hug him as tight as I can.
It’s not hot and heavy—it’s the only way I can thank him for his thoughtfulness without bursting into tears.
Happy tears, of course, but even so, I don’t want to complicate the moment with them.
Rhett lowers to the blanket slowly, hands skimming down my hips to my thighs and tracing down my legs to my ankles where he slips off my sandals.
My hand clutches to his shoulder to stop myself from falling, and when our eyes catch—mine lowered and his raised—he touches a kiss to the side of my hip.
Even over my dress, the contact singes my skin.
He does it again and again as his hands creep higher to the backs of my thighs before he pulls me down between his. They’re hard beneath my hands, his chino shorts straining around the muscled flesh.
Rhett rests a hand on my waist as I lean into his chest. We sit for a while as the sky takes on a peachy hue and the sun lowers into the horizon, painting the edges of the clouds a deep gold.
“So, I know you’ve swam with sharks, and you have a weird appreciation for terrible movies. You don’t mix your food on your plate, and mucking out isn’t your thing.”
“Oh God, don’t!” I laugh, and as if it is contagious, he joins in. “It was a disaster. All my time working with aquariums and managing all the super-technical stuff, none of it prepared me to scoop up horse shit.”
Automatically, my hand smacks my lips. It’s the first time I’ve cursed in front of him. It slipped out, aided by the distracting excitement coursing through me.
“It’s okay, you can say shit. Shit is pretty standard around here, closely followed by fuck.”
My face heats with the flush creeping up from my chest.
“Come on, sunshine. It’s sexy as hell when you curse. You can say shit…”
“Stop it!”
Shaking his head, Rhett frees my bottom lip from my teeth. Eyes focused on my mouth, he teases, “Say shit again, Avery.”
“No.”
“Okay then, try fuck instead.”
The sound of the curse has my eyes flashing to his as heat twists low in my belly. I can barely breathe as his hand closes lightly around my neck and strokes up my throat to cup the side of my face to his shoulder as we continue, caught in each other’s stare.
“Fuck, Avery, say it…” I shake my head, and Rhett repeats, slow and deliberate, “Fuck.”
“You’re such a child.”
“There’s nothing childish about what that innocent-looking flush is doing to me.
Or those trembling breaths of yours.” I almost choke on my pooling spit when his hand traces down my throat to the low neckline of my dress, his fingertips ghosting over the thick lace covering my breasts. “Nothing childish at all, sweetheart.”
“Fuck…” The breathless sigh escapes me.
“You have no idea how much I want to,” he purrs with a sexy rasp to his voice that makes gooseflesh prickle my skin…all over.
With my heart going berserk in my chest, I close my eyes as Rhett kisses me slow and measured. His hand roves down to my waist and squeezes, bringing me flush to him so that his erection presses to the base of my back.
“You have no idea of all the ways I want to taste you,” he murmurs over my lips, licking across the seam with a guttural groan when I squirm between his thighs. “You’re driving me insane.”
I can’t think coherently enough to retort. All I can do is swallow down the butterflies that flutter up from my belly at the thought that Rhett Reynolds is crazy over me. And while I’m rendered speechless, he pulls away with a grin.
That gorgeous, cocky smirk that makes me breathless. I watch as he pulls the hamper closer to us and opens it up.
“So.” He clears his throat. “Date.”
“Mmhmm.” I nod as he cocks his head to the side, studying me. “What?”
“It’s been a long, shit day, but it doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve made it better.”
There he goes with the corny line that totally gets me; however, I don’t want to make light of it right now.
Rhett’s been there for me since the night he walked into Rowan’s office and I was battered and bruised.
Literally and figuratively. From the inside out.
Right now, I want him to know that I’m here, and I want to be what he needs, and not only in a physical way.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No way.” Rhett bites my shoulder softly, making my head loll back onto his shoulder as a moan pushes from the pit of my stomach.
“How about you tell me about your crappy day,” I suggest, spinning to face him. “And I’ll tell you about my good day and we can level it out?”
“It’s nothing new for me—it just sucks when I lose a patient. Even if it was a gamble to begin with, I always go into the OR with the expectation of leaving it with a live patient and successful procedure.”
“But you’re still a great doctor, and tomorrow you’ll fix someone else up and the day after. You can’t fix something that’s beyond repair.”
“No, you can’t.”
“And yet, you still tried. How many other surgeons would do that? It says a lot about you and the care you have for your patients that one would be willing to risk what little they had of their life for a chance that you might give them more.”
“Are you going to tell me about your good day? I like it when you tell me about the things that make you happy. The joy shines right out of you, and it’s fucking precious.”
Inching forward, he brushes through the tendrils framing my face, making my chest threaten to burst with tangible affection.
“Can I ask you something?” I venture when he pulls back to offer me a Tupperware with grapes.
“Sure.”
“You don’t have to answer. I’m only curious because—”
“Ask, Avery. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Biting my lip, I gather the courage to pry into his life.
I feel like we know each other, but at the same time there’s still so much under the surface that I haven’t explored.
And I know I said I was going to tell him about my day, like I’ve been dying to since this afternoon, but I want something to put an upper on the conversation in case it nosedives.
“Avery.” Rhett grits out my name in a way that pulls me out of my thoughts. “It’s okay to ask questions. It’s what dates are for…to get to know each other. Better.”
“Well…” I hesitate but push forward anyway. “When we were out by the stream, you said that you didn’t tell Rowan about the lead-up to your divorce, but today when I was at their house, Callie said that he gives you a lot of crap over what happened.”
Rhett swallows as though I’ve asked something that makes him uncomfortable. I don’t like that I’ve made him feel that way. Not around me. Not when he’s constantly gone out of his way to make sure I’m all right.
“Rowan is straight down the line—it wouldn’t matter if I told him everything or not. He would probably dig me out more if he knew the entire story, and besides, it was too personal…for me and for Sarah.”
“Makes sense, about it being too personal, but I don’t think he would’ve thought any less of you because of the circumstances.
” Tucking my legs beneath me so that I’m kneeling between his thighs, I pop a grape in my mouth before offering him one too.
Rhett eats it straight from my fingers with a waggle of his brows.
It’s obvious he’s trying really hard not to let my question sully the moment.
I feel lousy for blindsiding him with my question, but it’s something that I’ve wondered about.
“I heard back from my boss in DC,” I tell him, grabbing his undivided attention like I knew it would. “He’s allowing me to finish the project we’re currently working on from here with only a couple of on-site meetings in the next couple of months.”
“That’s great.”
“It gets better.”
“Yeah?” Rhett blows out a half-chuckled breath that fades into the lapping of the foaming waves against the boat.
“He’s a close acquaintance of the chair of the board for the Virginia aquarium, and apparently they’re looking to expand their touch tank.”
“What does that mean?”