Page 17 of Hot Stuff

“You, too.”

“I ain’t doing shit,” he uttered. “I can’t. I’m not…” Now he was the one at a loss for words. “Anyhow.” He cleared the emotion from his throat. “Call me about that game. They usually have home games Friday nights.”

“Sounds good.” I didn’t push for him to share. As well as Abe knew me, I knew him just the same. He’d talk when he was ready.

We hung up, and I looked at the rock in my hand.

Believe.

Abe was right. I had to be smart. I still had to get my shit together and figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. He’d offered me a job, but we both knew I wasn’t cut out for installing pools or maintaining them. I’d be okay at it, but it wasn’t what was going to make me wake up excited.

Not like Karol, a voice whispered, and I frowned. There was a battle going on inside me between my heart and my head. I wanted her. I was man enough to admit that. She was different.

I headed to bed and settled in. With a pillow under my head, I looked up at the ceiling. Believe. The word kept bouncing in my head, and Karol wasn’t far behind.

I am going to believe in whatever this pull toward Karol is. I laughed as I thought about Abel's warning. Don’t get in over your head. Too late, buddy! I already was.

Karol

He stood back, and I grinned at him.

“What?” I asked. “What’s that look?” I couldn’t read his expression.

“I can draw, too. Did I mention that?” he asked, and my lips twitched.

“Really?” My head tilted. He extended his hand, and I took it. He pulled me up and tossed the piece of driftwood he’d been scribbling on the sand with to the side. I rubbed the sand off my ass and moved to where he’d been working.

My heart stuttered in my chest.

He’d drawn a big heart in the sand with K+D drawn in the middle. I turned to him. His eyes burned with heat and something else I had a feeling matched what I felt.

“You’re talented.”

“You have no idea.” He winked, and I blushed.

We’d been seeing one another for the last two days. We’d been inseparable. He’d brought me lunch at work both days, and we’d met at the diner for breakfast. Not to mention the bonfire dinner we’d shared the night before in the very spot where we were tonight.

Abby thought I was loopy and hadn’t been shy about being in over my head. But when I showed her a picture of him, she’d gone straight to the freezer, pulled a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and called me a lucky bitch. That was her giving me her approval in sister talk.

A hot and heavy as our make-out session’s been and how we’d fogged up the windows in his truck the night before, we hadn’t done anything past that.

And it was starting to drive me crazy!

Two days, and I was a horny, slutty, needy bundle of nerves. I’d even tried to get myself off the night before, but I couldn’t get there on my own. He hadn’t even touched me, and I already felt like he’d ruined me.

He didn’t want to rush, and I’d thought that was sweet. But now? It felt like the biggest tease. Especially with his sexy innuendos.

I turned and grabbed my phone and snapped a pic of the heart in the sand with the ocean behind it. Dan came up behind me and kissed my sunburnt shoulder.

“Thank you for hanging out with me this week.” His scruff against my sensitive skin mixed with the warmth of his breath made me shiver.

“Thank you for having me,” I whispered and turned in his arms.

I was done waiting.

I wanted him, and I knew for a fact, because I could more than feel it, he wanted me, too. I’d left work early, and we’d hung out at the beach all day. I’d watched him surf, and he had even given me a lesson. One that had felt like foreplay with how his hands had never been far from my body.

“Wanna get into the water?” I asked, tossing the phone back onto the sheet that held all our things.

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