Page 96 of Chasing Lynda

I don’t know how long we stand there on the damp sand, now completely uncaring of the cold stray waves that are starting to reach us more and more often as the tide is coming in.

“Fuck, you have no idea how much I’ve been dreaming about kissing you again like this,” I murmur against her mouth, punctuating each word by nibbling on her velvety lips. “Every time I get close to you, something or someone interrupts us and I’ve been dying to ask you on a proper date. Just the two of us, so I can show you how much I fucking want you, if you still had any doubt.”

She hugs herself closer to me, leaving no room between our bodies. “Isn’t this like a date? We’re alone here and I’m not going anywhere, Carter.”

I press her against me and there’s no way she doesn’t feel how hard I am for her. So hard, that I’m starting to struggle to express my thoughts in any other way that doesn’t involve my lips and my hands on her body, as all my blood is migrating south. “No, beautiful. I might be an ex-frat guy and I haven’t dated much since I got my heart broken in high school, but I know how to woo the right woman. So this isn’t even close to a proper date.”

Lynda’s smile does unspeakable things to my heart. If the guys could see me right now, as I place a feather light kiss on her lips, they’d rib me till the end of times.

My reputation as a tough and ruthless linebacker would be completely ruined and the truth is that I give zero fucks about it.

I hardened myself up when Chrissie used me and the others to make Dodge jealous but I know without a shadow of a doubt, that Lynda would never take advantage of any of us that way.

“You know you don’t need to woo me, right?” she asks, playing with the short hair at the nape of my neck. “You guys took me in when I had nowhere to go, asking for nothing in return and treating me like one of your own. I—”

Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say, but I hate the way she always talks about herself as if she were an inconvenience. “Why do you talk like you don’t deserve to be spoiled?”

She looks away from me, casting her eyes down on the sand but I can’t let this go. I cup the back of her head with one of my hands, supporting her back with my arm, so that we’re still close but she has nowhere to go, she has to look at me.

“I don’t know, Carter! Maybe because no one has ever cared enough about me to not make me feel like I was tolerated at best? To my parents I was an asset to be used to further their social standing. To my friends I was a charity case. They cared about me but I think it was more the way you do with a stray puppy. They just kept me around because they felt sorry about the way my parents treated me. And my ex ...”

22.

Shooting Stars

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Carter

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HER VOICE BREAKS AND I realize that maybe, aside from her hotness this is why we all feel drawn to Lynda. We all have families that are absent at best and all we have is each other. “What did he do to you, Lynda? I swear that if he touched even one of your hairs without your permission, I—”

Her eyes darken and she stiffens in my arms. “How do you know? Did Zane tell you?”

I try not to let the fact that she must’ve opened up to Zane but I had to guess bother me. “Not in so many words, beautiful. He just hinted at the fact that there was some real bad blood between you. But I could’ve guessed by the way you panicked last week, when you thought you’d seen him on the boardwalk.”

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