3 #3
I should have hated that he caught the change. I did hate it, mostly. There was something about the way he said it, low and steady, that felt less like he was proud of himself and more like he had just watched me step behind glass.
I folded my arms beneath my chest. “Do you ever get tired of pretending you’re quiet because you’re deep and not because you’re just emotionally constipated?”
His mouth twitched. “That one took effort.”
“I’m gifted.”
“I’m starting to see that.”
“No, you’re starting to think you see things, which is worse.”
He faced me fully, firelight catching one side of his face and leaving the other in shadow. “I don’t need to know everything to know when someone’s lying.”
My pulse kicked.
“Careful,” I said again, softer this time.
He stepped closer, and the space between us changed so fast my body noticed before my brain gave permission. “You say that like you want me to stop.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
My laugh came out breathless enough to piss me off. “Arrogant.”
“Right now? Yeah.”
“Men who admit that are usually insufferable.”
“Men who hide it are worse.”
“That sounded like a line.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It worked like one.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth.
The lake moved behind me, soft and black, while the bonfire lit his skin gold. I had kissed Easton before, once on the Hockey House porch, reckless and too good and stupid enough that I spent the next week pretending I didn’t remember the exact pressure of his hand at the back of my neck.
This felt different because there was less of an audience, less party around us, and less of an excuse.
The dark water was behind us, the fire at our backs, and my bikini left too much skin available to the air and his eyes. His body was close enough that I could see the fine pellets of sand still clinging near his collarbone, and my entire personality had apparently forgotten it had objections.
“You’re thinking too hard,” he said.
“I’m thinking the right amount.”
“About leaving?”
“About whether you’re worth me staying.”
His gaze sharpened. “And?”
“And you keep talking, which is not helping your case.”
That made him smile, quick and devastating. “You want me quiet?”
“I want a lot of things.”
His voice lowered. “Name one.”
The words moved through me like a hand beneath my skin.
I could have walked away. I want that noted for the record too. I could have gone back to Bliss and Charm, found some safer guy with easier eyes and fewer instincts, or made Easton into one sharp little memory and saved myself a whole lot of future emotional bullshit.
Instead, I stepped closer until my toes touched his in the sand and his body went still.
I loved that. Maybe too much.
“I don’t do soft,” I said.
His gaze stayed on mine. “Okay.”
“I don’t do morning-after breakfast.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t do cuddling.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t do men who ask me what this means tomorrow.”
His jaw flexed once. “Okay.”
“You agree too easily.”
“I’m listening.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“It’s basic.”
“No, Easton.” I shook my head and hated how my voice had gone quieter around his name. “Most men hear rules and start looking for the loophole.”
“I’m not most men.”
I rolled my eyes. “That is exactly what most men say.”
“I’m still listening.”
The fire snapped hard behind us, sending sparks into the dark.
Somewhere up the beach, Briggs yelled something about someone disrespecting marshmallow integrity, and Ryan’s answering insult carried faintly over the sand.
They were normal party sounds from a normal summer night filled with normal people making normal choices.
Nothing about me felt normal when Easton looked at me like that.
I took another breath. “If this happens, it happens my way.”
His eyes did not leave mine as he leaned closer. “Tell me.”
The words should have felt like victory.
They didn’t. They felt like a door I had thirty deadbolts on and, for whatever reason, I was unlocking them one by one for him.
I looked past him toward the tree line, where the shadows were thick enough that no one from the party would see much unless they came looking.
Blankets were scattered near the second fire, but farther down the shoreline, the sand curved behind a bank of reeds and a half-rotted dock that blocked the view from the house.
Dark. Private. Safe enough for what I allowed safe to mean.
When I looked back, Easton was still waiting without pushing, teasing, or dressing impatience up like charm.
He was waiting.
I swallowed around something I refused to name. “No lights.”
His brow barely moved. “We’re outside.”
“Then we stay where it’s dark.”
“Not what I expected, but okay.”
“No getting me naked.”
His gaze flicked down, not crude or lingering for show, only aware of how little I was already wearing. “Define naked.”
“My bikini stays on as much as I decide it stays on.”
“That’s not a definition.”
“That’s the rule. If I let you inside me, you do it my way.”
His mouth curved, but his eyes stayed serious. “Okay, rules. Got it.”
“And no names.”
That one changed his face only a little, but it was enough to tighten the air between us.
“No names?” he asked.
“Not during.”
His gaze searched mine. “During what?”
I gave him a look.
He didn’t smile this time. “I want to hear you say what you’re agreeing to.”
A hot rush of irritation and something much worse moved through me. “I’m agreeing to fucking, Easton. Do you need a signed affidavit?”
His name came out sharp, but it didn’t push him back. If anything, his attention locked harder.
“No,” he said. “I need to know you’re saying yes because you want me, not because you’re trying to shut me up.”
I stared at him.
The worst part was that he wasn’t wrong.
Kissing him had started as a way to end a conversation and have fun the first time we met at Hockey House when summer started.
Touching him now had the same easy shape.
Shut him up. Blind him. Make the room physical before he could ask emotional questions I did not owe him.
I knew that trick. It had kept me safe more than once.
Easton looked at me like he knew the trick and still wanted the truth beneath it, and I hated that. I wanted him so badly my skin hurt. Both things could exist because I was, unfortunately, a woman of range.
“I want you,” I said.
His breath changed, only a small, controlled inhale that made every inch of me aware he had been holding himself still on purpose. “Good,” he said, his voice rougher now.
“Good?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you have?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth. “I have plenty.”
My stomach dipped.
I took one step back because if I didn’t, I was going to touch him before I finished setting the battlefield. “No names. No lights. No getting me naked. No asking why.”
His eyes lifted. “That last one’s new.”
“It’s implied.”
“Is it?”
“It is now.”
He studied me for a long moment while the lake wind moved between us and cooled the sweat at the back of my neck. I held his stare because looking away felt too much like giving him something.
Finally, he nodded. “Okay.”
Suspicion pulled at my chest. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re not going to ask?”
“You told me not to.”
“You’re not going to make a joke?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to pretend you understand everything?”
His expression softened, and that was somehow worse than if he had smirked. “No.”
My throat tightened.
I covered it with attitude because I have never once believed in letting a feeling wander around unsupervised. “You are deeply annoying.”
“I’ve heard.”
“I mean it as a flaw.”
“I took it that way.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No,” he admitted, stepping closer. “I didn’t.”
My pulse jumped so hard I felt it between my thighs.
Easton stopped just short of touching me. He was close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his body and the ends of my braids brushing my shoulder when the wind moved, close enough that his mouth was suddenly the only reasonable thing in the world to look at.
“Tell me one more time,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. “Tell you what?”
“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.”