Chapter 19 #2
I slide down and sideways, just a little, slipping my legs over his shoulders and around his ribs. His hands naturally go down with me, his long forearms extending along my thighs, his fingers wrapping themselves around my mostly bare ass.
Our eyes meet, and heat surges between my legs. I don’t even notice the cold anymore. All I feel is the brush of his abs against the apex of my thighs.
My thinly veiled pussy, if I’m being frank.
I drop lower, stopping when my arms rest on top of his shoulders, my breasts above the water.
Inches from his face.
“Sasha,” he says. His voice is a warning. But there’s something in there. A thick thrum of desire. His eyes drop down to my nipples, already hardened points with the cold, tenting the thin fabric of my swimsuit.
Then the man licks his lips.
He actually licks his lips.
I suck in a breath, my nipples aching as if they’re the most sensitive part of my body. Just a brush of his thumb, and the fabric would be gone.
He makes a growling sound like he’s mad at himself. But he grips my hips underwater, lowering me farther.
I don’t think he means to keep us pressed together, but when my legs lock around his hips and his obvious arousal brushes against my pussy, I can’t help the little whimper that escapes my lips.
“Fuck me,” he breathes, so quietly I almost miss it.
“You want to?” I ask.
His eyes snap to mine.
I tighten my legs so his full length notches between my pussy lips.
Griffin’s pupils dilate right before my eyes, his cock twitching against me. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
I squeeze against him, and he makes a low sound in his throat.
Abruptly, he closes his eyes and pushes my hips off him. My body aches where it was touching him.
He holds me a whole arm’s length away in the water. “Enough.”
“Why?”
“I can’t think when you’re…”
“When I’m what, Griffin?” I ask as I wrap my hands around his arms, not taking my eyes from his. I’m challenging him. Openly.
Griffin’s jaw pops, and a moment later, he’s walking forward. I don’t even have time to react before he lifts me up onto the ledge, my ass landing on the flat rock with a wet slap.
He closes his eyes.
I laugh softly.
As Griffin moves away from me, I lean back on my extended arms. But I keep my legs open, my calves swirling in the water.
I should stop. But I don’t think he wants me to, not really. His eyes look ravenous as they rake down my body. I can practically see him warring with himself when his eyes drop between my legs, where everything is clearly visible.
I really, really enjoy fucking with this unfuckable man.
Finally he makes a sound of frustration and drops under the water.
I watch his shadow under the surface as he swims over the deepest part of the swimming hole.
Once he’s put enough distance between us, he says, “I can’t do this with you, Sasha.” He’s treading water. “I won’t be able to keep you safe if my head’s not in the right place.”
“What did I tell you about the ‘keeping you safe’ thing? It’s getting old.” I close my legs, pulling them up so my heels rest on the rock. “I don’t believe that, Griffin. I think you know how to think under duress. I think maybe you need to let off a little steam. I know I could.”
“I don’t get involved with clients. It gets messy.”
I get to my feet. “Is that all I am?” It’s true, I am just a client. Actually, I’m not even that. I’m some lost cause he’s taken under his wing. But he’s full of shit if he thinks that’s all we are. “You let all your clients sleep in your bed? You remember what they like on their toast?”
Griffin glowers.
“No one’s saying it would be anything long term.
” I’m not sure why I’m pressing the issue when I’m not even sure I could handle fooling around with Griffin.
Because it’s not just sexual attraction with him, is it?
If we took how my body reacts to him out of the equation, I’d still want him to stay close to me, wouldn’t I?
That thought is sobering enough that it should make me want to stop trying to tease him into submission.
I reach for the towel and snap it out flat, laying it on the sunny part of the rock.
But my words carry on without me, part of the corporeal part of me that wants him so badly it does things like what I’m doing right now.
“What would happen if you just let yourself relax, Griffin Kelly? Just for a little while? Do you think the whole world would fall apart?”
When I peer over my shoulder, his face is just above the water. His scowl has turned to something darker. He does think that. He thinks he can control things so long as he’s got his wits about him.
I know I’ve probably gone too far. But so long as he really wants to do this thing for me—marry me to keep me safe—maybe I should make it my job to take some of his wits away. We’re safe here.
And I need a win.
I reach behind me, tugging at the string holding my bikini top on.
When it falls loose, I pull the scrap of fabric off my body and drop it to the ground.
Then I hike my already skimpy bottoms up so they wedge between my ass cheeks and make a show of getting down on my hands and knees, crawling onto the towel, then lowering slowly onto my stomach.
There’s a splash in the water behind me, and I have to fight to keep the smirk off my face. I don’t think he’ll bite, but at least I’ve riled him up.
For a moment, the only sound is the chirp of birds in the trees, the only sensation the warm rock under my towel and the sun on my mostly bare backside.
Then there’s another little splash—closer—and the soft slap of bare feet on rock.
My stomach flips. Will he really give in to me right here? It doesn’t seem like his style.
Not that I’d say no.
Cold water drips across my legs, moving up my ass and lower back. I gasp at the sensation, but force myself to stay where I am, lying down with my eyes closed, even as my skin rushes with heat as I sense him drawing closer.
Then I realize what he’s doing. He’s holding his whole body over me. I feel him everywhere, like his entire length grazing my back. I open my eyes to see his arm braced beside mine.
This is what it would look like if he took me like this.
Suddenly, every sassy word I was racking up to tease him with lodges in my throat. Blood rushes from my brain to the tiniest parts of my skin that are almost making contact with him.
“I don’t think the world would fall apart if I relaxed, Sasha.” Griffin’s voice is an electric rumble at my ear. “But if I let myself do what I want with you, I might. And I don’t like falling apart.”
Then, as quickly as I felt him over me, he’s gone.
A moment later, there’s the plunking sound—the sound an Olympic diver makes—so little splash that when I peer over my shoulder, the water’s barely rippling.
I sense more than see the dark shape under the water as he cuts across to the other side, toward the soft water tumbling over the edge of the rocks.
I want to beg him to come back. I want him to turn around and slide that one little piece of cloth between us away so he can do whatever he wants to my body.
So he can make me forget everything else that’s happening and I can melt into the one person who doesn’t just make me feel completely safe but makes me feel everything at full fucking throttle.
But I don’t turn around; I just watch his back, slick with water and edged with muscle, pop from the water as he deftly leaps out and stands under the spattering waterfall, his back to me.
Then I grip the towel in my fists, trying to swallow the fact that the one place I had control; the one place I had the upper hand over Griffin Kelly, I just lost.
And I don’t even care.