Chapter 21 Avery
Avery
They drifted side by side, pool floats barely bobbing on the flat calm of the water. The heat from the day hung on with its fingertips and Avery, only just beginning to feel the drape of night against her skin, couldn’t be bothered to move.
Everyone else had gone home and the yard was an oasis of peace.
Bel and Drew seemed to have forgotten they’d given Avery a ride to Tanner’s house, disappearing without so much as a goodbye.
In fact, all her friends had gradually melted away until she’d found herself here, alone in the dark with Tanner, trying to convince herself that it was only because someone had to help him clean up.
“The stars are so pretty,” she murmured.
Tanner turned his head and the sloppy grin that curved his lips had an unruly effect on her heart. “Not as pretty as you.”
“Oh, puh-leeeze.” Avery snorted, even as the compliment brushed like warm fingers up her arms. “You must have better lines than that.”
“I have all the best lines. You’d be putty in my hands if I hit you with any of them.”
She rolled her eyes and gazed back up at the sky, her thoughts pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, courtesy of Bel’s punch. “Let’s not ruin a perfect night.”
“It’s not quite perfect.”
Avery glanced at him again.
“You’re too far away.” Linking his little finger around hers, Tanner tugged her nearer. His eyes, softly unfocused, never moved from her face.
Cast out of marble in the moonlight, he was all masculine planes and edges—just the chisel-slip of the scar through his lip to tether him to the realm of mortality.
The silver chain around his neck rested in the water-filled dip at the base of his throat, and his tattoos, over the framework of hard muscle, were art sketched upon art.
Her chest hitched. The lightest of shudders danced over Avery’s skin. “I think you’re a bit drunk,” she said and was flustered to hear a breathless pitch to her words.
“Just buzzed.” Tanner’s face was half in shadow as that grin flared again like a dangerous weapon. “It’d be irresponsible to be drunk in charge of a pool float.”
“Glad I don’t have to call Chief Martinez.”
“Stretch, you and me are going to have words if you keep bringing up that guy. Especially when I’m just about to kiss you.”
The night ground to a halt around them. The only movement was the water slapping gently against one of the filter traps. A dog barked twice. And some distance away, the trill of an eastern screech owl bounced through the air.
“I don’t date.” Was she reminding him or was she reminding herself?
“I didn’t ask you for a date. I asked you for a kiss.”
“Strictly speaking, you didn’t ask,” Avery pointed out, buying herself time to deal with her internal meltdown.
“I didn’t want to risk you turning me down.” Tanner’s pool float bumped hers, their fingers still intertwined. His confession was soft but intense.
Swirls of heat tangled in her belly as Avery fought the battle between alarm and desire. It was so damn hard to resist the words, the setting, the effects of the alcohol—and the magnetic draw that reeled her closer and closer to Tanner.
“I suppose you could always ask and see,” she suggested finally, her voice catching.
Buzzed or not, Tanner rolled from the inflatable with all the easy coordination of a surfer and shook the water from his hair.
It was one of the sexiest moves Avery had ever seen.
With stars blinking through the strands, he looked like the romantic lead in an epic love story, the physical manifestation of all her filthiest dreams. Tall and fit, he’d be anyone’s hero in a heartbeat.
But there was so much more to Tanner than that.
Funny, sweet, confident, thoughtful. As she’d told her dad, he had an unfair mountain of positive attributes, alongside his pretty, pretty face.
“Wait—” Avery panicked and Tanner froze, shoulder-deep in the water. “We’ll still be friends after this, right?” She wasn’t sure she could bear to risk something that was already proving so special.
Placing his hand over his heart, he vowed with solemnity, “Even if we’re hideously incompatible in the making-out department, I promise you’ll still be my friend.”
“OK.” She gave a shaky laugh and heard the nerves around the edge of it.
Wading slowly to her side, Tanner loomed over her in the dark, his mouth uncommonly serious and incredibly tempting. “Avery Delgado. Please can I kiss you?”
Maybe she was still giddy from Jackson Hale’s offer of more work.
Maybe she’d had enough punch to dull the edges of her common sense.
Maybe the electricity bouncing off Tanner’s skin had short-circuited her brain.
Whatever the reason, Avery found herself blinking slowly before saying, “Go on, then.”
The twin flames that flared in his tawny eyes turned her bones to liquid, but it turned out she didn’t need a reliable musculoskeletal system of her own. She yelped when Tanner scooped her up from the pool float, his shoulders slick beneath her grip as he strode into the shallows.
He lowered Avery to her feet against the side of the pool, the water lapping at her breasts as goosebumps pinpricked her skin, despite the lava-hot swirl in her stomach.
A half-step closer and he trapped her, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, between his body and the wall.
It was too much. He was too much. Flustered, she studied the Icarus tattoo on his ribs, just visible below the surface.
His index finger raised her chin. “Eyes on me, Stretch,” Tanner whispered.
And then he dipped his head and his mouth covered hers.
Tanner’s lips were cool but his tongue was warm.
It slid between her teeth like hot coffee and Avery drank him in.
His taste was unfamiliar and vividly fresh.
Fruit punch and pheromones—savory, potent, and utterly addictive.
Beneath the palms of her hands, his heart pounded an insistent rhythm that echoed her own.
One arm slid around her waist, pulling her closer.
His fingers fisted in her hair and he kissed her with utter focus.
Immersed in Tanner, she never wanted to find her way out. Avery stole shallow breaths that didn’t belong to her and pushed all conscious thought aside. There was a lot to be said for living in the moment.
“So fucking delicious.” His growl in her ear sent a sensitive shudder through her limbs. “Better than chocolate-covered cherries.”
Avery’s snicker died on her lips as Tanner’s fingers tracked the length of her back, curled around her hips, and lifted her feet from the floor.
“Put your legs around me.”
She followed his instructions blindly, her calves closing on the concrete curve of his butt.
Tanner’s rigid length flexed, hot and heavy, against her core.
The feeling was indescribable. A moan mingled with a sigh and spilled from her mouth.
When Avery tilted her pelvis, his tortured groan vibrated on her lips.
The water washed around them and she was surprised it didn’t steam where it licked at her fevered skin.
Huge hands spanning her thighs, Tanner’s mouth drifted to her neck, his teeth grazing a path from her collarbone to her ear.
When his fingers brushed the edge of her bikini bottoms, idly tracing the crease at the top of one leg for several long seconds, an ache began to build low down in her abdomen as need piled on top of desire.
But Tanner paused. “Can I?” He murmured the strained question against her skin.
Avery gave the slightest, jerky nod of her head, her body strung as tight as a zipwire, stomach quivering, poised for the freefall. And when his fingers stole beneath her bikini into the flood of warmth and moisture between her thighs, they sent a starburst of sensation licking through her center.
His breath rasping, Tanner trailed his thumb back and forth, tantalizingly slow, tension coiling tighter in every muscle of his body with each sensual sweep.
He returned to her mouth as if he couldn’t stay away, and his tongue teased hers, playing the sexiest game of tag she’d ever known.
And all the while his hand moved between her legs, making her long for more.
“Yes . . . there.” Did she mean his touch or his mouth? Avery had no idea. She clung to his shoulders; she burned everywhere. “Tanner—”
He slid his hand out of her bikini bottoms with a grunt and she protested at the loss of it.
Protested again when he boosted her out of the water and onto the pool deck.
Heaving himself up on straight arms beside her, Tanner grabbed Avery’s hand and tugged her to her feet.
He adjusted himself in his trunks with a feral grin, tipping his head toward the house.
“Shall we?” And there was a hint of uncertainty behind the swagger.
He was too close to think sensibly. Too overwhelming. Even in the semi-dark, it was like being blinded by the sun. Tanner shone. He always had. He was all she could see.
“I want you, but I don’t want to want you.” The jumbled sentence was all Avery could manage while this desperate need for him pulsed through her veins.
“I know,” he said, and she heard the depth of understanding in his voice. “You’re scared—I get that. But maybe we could have just one night?” He was as still as she’d ever seen him. “One perfect night.”
His eyes never shifting from hers, Tanner hung on her reply. Droplets of water clumped his lashes.
“Just one night?” Avery repeated, so tempted. “And it won’t ruin things between us?”
Tanner moved his hands to frame her face and his thumbs burned a path along her cheekbones. With his breath on her lips just before he placed the softest of kisses there, Avery felt her rules and resolution crumbling to dust.
“We won’t let it.” He smiled and it was beautiful.
In the dark, the pool filter gurgled, crickets chirped. And Avery caved.
“OK,” she said with the tiniest dip of her chin. “Just one night.”