Chapter 23 #3
His thumbs press into my hips, then his arms are wrapped around me, almost like a hug. With our bodies fully pressed up against each other, it’s like electricity has run through my entire being. Like I’ve become a firefly—bioluminescent.
I shiver against him. It’s pleasure, vibrating through me as we kiss, but he pulls back and rubs my arms. “Are you cold?”
I nod—only cold now because he’s not up against me.
“Let me warm you up,” he says, and I think of that moment in the dressing room, how he’d warmed me up then, too, and I didn’t want him to let go, even though I was the first to pull away.
Now, he takes my hand, and I let him pull me through the lake toward the shore.
We walk through the water silently—as if a single word could shatter the moment somehow. As we move into shallower water, I feel the wind touch my skin, feeling increasingly exposed, like I’m slowly being undressed.
When we reach ankle-depth, I realize he’s not pulling me toward the house in the distance but toward Camp Bennet.
I pause at the door, heart hammering nervously, breath shuddering in my chest, water still dripping off me, feet muddy from the shoreline, but I don’t even care.
“Are we really doing this?” I whisper. “I mean, I want to, but everything between our families is already so tangled…”
Nate just holds my gaze, a soft smile spread across his beautiful, kiss-swollen lips. “Sometimes the best things are,” he says. “Spaghetti. Christmas lights. Your hair…” He reaches up and twines a few strands between his fingers, brushing them lightly back from my face, thumb grazing my cheek.
God, he’s right. I’d untangle a hundred strands of Christmas lights if it meant he could keep touching me like this.
And with that, I nod as Nate opens the door and pulls me inside.
OUR KISSES BEFORE HAD been slow and lush, but there’s nothing measured about this.
My lips crash into his as soon as we’re inside the cabin.
His hands find my waist, and he lifts me off the ground.
My legs wrap around him again like they did in the lake on that first night as he staggers forward until I’m pressed up against the closed door.
He smells like the lake, like the Dial soap I know is stocked in the shower, and beneath that, the warm smell of Nate, like fresh sawdust and thunderstorms.
His movements are sure as he sets me down.
His fingers tangle in my hair, tipping my head back to deepen the kiss.
His tongue dips against mine before he moves from my mouth to my neck, his stubble scraping along the side of my jaw.
I let out a gasp as his mouth closes around a spot on my neck, triggering a sensation I didn’t know existed. My knees buckle, and I sway into him.
He catches me. “Whoa there.” Nate pulls back, and an embarrassing mewling sound escapes from somewhere in my throat. His grip on my waist tightens in response. He pauses, his breath as ragged as mine.
Nate’s hands slide up my legs. I will them to keep going and press myself even more firmly against him. His fingers halt as if in question, and I let out a shivery “Yes.”
His fingers skate along the edge of my suit before pushing it aside.
His fingers move over me and into me. Circling the perfect spot over and over.
I cling to him as the heat builds in my core.
Pressing my face to his chest, I let out a sharp cry as the first orgasm I’ve had in front of someone else in years rips through me.
So fast, so unexpected, in a burst. Exactly the way I laugh in his presence—with total freedom.
As if no one’s watching. I’m so startled by it, I actually let out a quiet, watery laugh.
He smiles, laughs a little against me as he lowers me to the cot under the window.
I perch at the edge, feeling nervous for reasons I can’t say, vulnerable and needing him against me again to make me feel steady.
I pull him by his waistband toward me, and he hovers over me, his mouth returning to mine as I hurriedly unbutton his drenched shorts.
“Wait,” he says. Stands me back up. “Turn around,” he whispers.
Then I feel him gently move my sticky, wet hair off my back and over my shoulder.
Feel his fingers carefully untying the neck string of my bikini.
I let the top slide off, and he drags his fingers down my sides to the waist of the bikini bottoms. With a quick tug, they’re off too.
When I turn to face him, I suddenly realize that while I’ve slept with other men before, I don’t know if I have ever felt this naked with someone. Or this wholly myself.
There’s an artlessness to the way Nate’s mouth trails along my skin as if he’s trying to touch as much of it as quickly as possible, laying me back onto the cot. My back arches without meaning to, like my body needs his.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure.”
And then we’re joined together, and it’s as seamless as swimming in the lake.
We move in tandem, skin against skin, and Nate’s mouth has returned to that same spot on my neck.
His hand reaches between us to touch me, and I don’t care that my hair is a tangled, lake-drenched mess, or that my dress and shoes are somewhere in the dirt on a distant shore.
I am totally untethered. Released. Free.