Chapter Three #3
I stepped farther in until water covered my ankles. The bottom was slick in places, but the stones were smooth, and the coolness climbed my calves like relief. I turned around and found Zane watching me with his jaw tight.
“Do you bring all your community service workers here after sign-out?” I asked.
“No.”
The single word landed hard enough to silence the next joke on my tongue.
Zane stepped closer to the shore. “I’ve never brought anyone from crew down here.”
“Good.”
His brows drew together. “Good?”
“Yes.”
“Daphne.”
“What?” I asked, but my voice had gone thin.
He came to the water’s edge. “If I come in there, I’m going to want to touch you.”
Heat rushed over my skin.
The lake wasn’t nearly cold enough.
I looked at his boots, then his jeans, then the broad shape of him under that dark sleeveless shirt. “I want that.”
Zane’s breath left him slowly. “Say it again.”
“I want you to touch me.”
He stepped into the water in his boots.
I laughed once, startled. “You’re wearing shoes.”
“They’ll dry.”
“That seems very reckless for a man who had strong opinions about my footwear.”
“My opinions are changing.”
He stopped in front of me, water moving around his boots and my bare ankles. We stood close enough that I had to tip my head back to hold his gaze.
Zane lifted one hand and brushed his knuckles along my cheek.
The touch was so gentle it made my chest ache.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said. “If you don’t want that, tell me now.”
“I want it.”
His hand slid to the side of my neck.
Then Zane kissed me.
It wasn’t careful after the first second.
The first touch of his mouth was controlled, a firm press that gave me one last chance to step back. I didn’t. I grabbed the front of his shirt and rose onto my toes, and whatever leash he’d had on himself went tight, then snapped.
Zane’s arm hooked around my waist. He pulled me against him, and I gasped into his mouth. He tasted like water and sun and restraint gone bad. His hand spread across my lower back, big and sure, holding me while he kissed me deeper.
I opened for him.
The sound he made went straight between my thighs.
My fingers twisted in his shirt. His chest was hard under the cotton. The lake washed around our feet, cool and soft, while everything above the waterline burned.
Zane broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine. “Still sure?”
“Yes.”
“You need to keep saying it.”
“I’ll keep saying it.”
His thumb moved along the side of my throat. “I don’t want you quiet.”
A shiver ran through me. “That’s optimistic. I’m rarely quiet.”
His mouth curved, and then he kissed me again.
I wasn’t quiet.
I made a small helpless sound the second his tongue stroked mine, and Zane answered with a deeper one.
His hand slid from my waist to my hip, then lower, fingers digging into the curve of my ass through my shorts.
I pressed closer before I could pretend not to want it.
He felt huge against me, broad chest, strong arms, all that controlled power finally turned toward me.
“Zane,” I said against his mouth.
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
His eyes opened. “Then tell me.”
My face heated. “I want more.”
The words hit him visibly. His grip tightened, then eased as if he caught himself.
“You can have more,” he said. “But I need clear words from you.”
My pulse hammered. “I want more. I want your hands on me. I want you to stop being so careful that I feel like I’m the only one losing my mind.”
Zane went very still.
Then he said, “I’ve been losing my mind since the first day you walked through that gate in those shoes.”
A laugh broke out of me, breathless and shaky. “The shoes?”
“The shoes. The paperwork. The way you looked at me like you were terrified and arguing with yourself about my arms at the same time.”
“I wasn’t arguing.”
“You were.”
“I was making observations.”
His hand slid under the hem of my tank top, palm hot against my waist. “You’re still doing it.”
“Zane.”
“I’ve got you.”
He kissed me again and backed me slowly toward the shore until my calves bumped the warm edge of the dock. His hands stayed at my waist, then moved up my sides, thumbs brushing the lower edge of my bra through the tank.
I trembled.
He felt it.
His mouth left mine and moved to my jaw, then the side of my neck. “Tell me what you need.”
“You.”
His teeth grazed my skin.
“More specific, Daphne.”
The low command in his voice almost took my knees out.
“Your mouth,” I said. “Your hands. I want you to make me come.”
Zane’s groan was filthy and beautiful.
“Good girl,” he said.
The praise hit low and hard. I grabbed his shoulders, and he lifted me onto the edge of the dock like I weighed nothing.
The old wood was hot under my thighs. He stood between my knees in the shallows, water darkening his jeans, and looked at me like every rule had burned down except the one where I had to keep choosing this.
“Tank off?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He pulled it over my head and dropped it on the dock beside me. His gaze moved over my bra, my flushed skin, the rise and fall of my breathing.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said.
The words were plain, and my throat tightened because I believed him.
I reached behind myself and unhooked my bra before courage could leave me. Zane watched every movement. When I slid the straps down and dropped the bra on top of my tank, his chest rose on a hard breath.
“Daphne.”
My name sounded wrecked in his mouth.
I should’ve been self-conscious. I was a little. But his face, his hands, the way he stood there in the water like touching me was the only thing holding him still, burned the worst of it away.
He cupped my breasts with both hands.
My head tipped back.
His palms were callused, gentle for one second, then less careful when I arched into him. He stroked his thumbs over my nipples, and the sharp pull of it went straight to my pussy.
“Oh,” I breathed.
Zane bent and took one nipple into his mouth.
I cried out before I could stop myself.
He sucked, slow and firm, while his hand worked my other breast. My fingers shoved into his hair. The short strands were soft against my palms, and the scrape of his jaw against my skin made my hips lift toward him.
“Louder,” he said against me.
“There’s no one here.”
“That wasn’t why I said it.”
I stared down at him, breathless.
His eyes lifted to mine. “I want to hear you.”
Every inch of me clenched.
He moved to my other breast, and this time I didn’t bite back the sound. It left me soft and needy and too honest. Zane’s hand slid down my stomach to the button of my shorts.
He paused.
“Yes,” I said.
His fingers worked the button open, then the zipper.
I lifted my hips so he could drag my shorts and underwear down my legs together.
The air touched me, lake-cool and sun-warmed all at once, and I had one dizzy second to realize I was naked on Zane McCrae’s dock while he stood between my thighs fully dressed and looking at me like he was starving.
Then his thumb found my clit.
I jerked. “Fuck.”
Zane’s eyes flared. “That’s it.”
He rubbed me slowly, gathering slickness, watching my face as if every reaction mattered.
I held myself up on my hands, wood scraped under my palms, while he touched me with the same competence he brought to everything else.
No hurry. No uncertainty. Just steady pressure, rough fingers, and his gaze fixed on me while I came apart by degrees.
“You’re so wet,” he said. “Is this for me?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“It’s for you.” My hips rocked into his hand. “Zane, please.”
He slid one thick finger into my pussy.
My elbows almost buckled.
“Good,” he said, voice low. “Take it.”
I did. I took his finger, then a second when he gave it to me, stretching around him while his thumb kept circling my clit. The pressure built fast, faster than I expected, heat tightening low until my thighs shook against his sides.
Zane leaned over me and kissed me, swallowing the sound I made when his fingers curled inside me.
“That’s it,” he said against my mouth. “Come for me.”
I came hard.
The orgasm tore through me in bright, shaking pulses. My hands grabbed his shoulders. My hips lifted against his hand, and Zane kept touching me through it, murmuring praise against my mouth until I sagged back on the dock.
He didn’t stop looking at me.
I might’ve blushed if I had any spare blood left for embarrassment.
“Still with me?” he asked.
I laughed weakly. “Barely.”
His mouth curved. “You survived.”
“That word is doing a lot of work today.”
He kissed the inside of my knee. “We can stop.”
“No.”
The answer came out so fast his head lifted.
I pushed up on my elbows. “I don’t want to stop.”
His face changed. The restraint came back, but now it had heat under it, a rougher edge. “Tell me what you want.”
I reached for the hem of his shirt. “This off.”
Zane let me pull it up. He took over halfway and dragged it over his head, dropping it beside my clothes.
I stopped breathing like a person with survival instincts.
I’d known he was built. Obviously. The man’s shirts had been fighting for their lives since the first morning of my personal consequences.
But seeing him bare from the waist up in full afternoon sun was different.
Muscle packed his chest and shoulders. Tattoos spread across his arms and over his skin, dark ink over sun-browned strength.
A trail of hair disappeared below the wet waistband of his jeans.
I reached for him.
Zane let me touch.
My palms moved over his chest, his ribs, the hard ridges of his stomach. His skin was hot from the sun. His muscles shifted under my hands, and when my fingers found the button of his jeans, his breath caught.
That sound gave me courage.
I opened his jeans.
He watched me, jaw tight, while I dragged the zipper down. His cock pressed hard behind wet denim and boxer briefs, thick and unmistakable. My mouth went dry.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I know.”
I pushed at his jeans, and he helped, shoving them and his briefs down enough to free himself.
The thought had no wit, polish, or useful commentary. It only had oh.