Page 15 of Faking It at Sea

“Sometimes.”

“You do realize you’re basically issuing me a challenge?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

That wasn’t how I meant it, but if he wanted a challenge, I would give him one. “I wouldn’t think you any less of a man if you decided you weren’t up for it,” I taunted.

And just what the hell did I think I was doing? Did I actually want to ride all over Nassau with this guy’s big, hot body pressed against my back?

I mean...

No. Bad June. That is so not the point.

I wasn’t supposed to want him. There wasn’t supposed to be a real attraction on either side. This was an arrangement. Nothing more.

Sutton ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth before responding in a low, almost threatening tone. “Oh, I’m up for anything you can throw at me, babygirl.”

I’d never been fond of nicknames, and even less so of pet names like honey or sweetheart. So then why would hearing “babygirl” roll off his tongue send a thrill through me?

6

SUTTON

I was setting myself up for a day of torture. Just being in June’s presence had a heady effect on me, but this?

I was in trouble.

She climbed on the four-wheeler first, with the most irresistible blush coloring her neck and cheeks as she swung her crossbody bag around in front of her. Once she was situated, she shot me a look loaded with defiance. “You coming?”

No single straight man in his right mind would say no. There was just one complication. The second I settled in behind her, my mindless cock rose to the occasion. It didn’t seem to matter in the slightest that I’d jacked off in the shower that morning to prevent just such a situation.

In hindsight, it probably didn’t help that I’d been picturing her the entire time.

Still, I was thirty-two. So what if it’d been years since I’d felt a genuine attraction to a woman? That was no reason for my body to respond like I was a randy twenty-one-year-old.

Add in that I’d underestimated just how awkward it would be trying to “arrange” myself with June’s lush rear end planted right in front of me, and maintaining even the illusion of disinterest was pretty much a lost cause. The best I could do wasscoot as far back on the seat as possible and hold onto the rack behind me.

“Hands on her hips,” the tour guide said in his unique Creole-French accent.

I flashed him a pleading look. “I’m good like this.”

His brown eyes crinkled with humor as he shook his head. “Safety first, my man. Hands on her hips.”

Fuck. Me.

June twisted around, uncertainty dimming her natural glow. Did she think I was avoiding touching her because I didn’t want to?

I licked my lips and planted my hands on her hips. My body didn’t care that there wasn’t any skin-on-skin contact. Just the feel of her under my palms was enough to pull every damned part of me to attention.

The tour guide chuckled and patted me on the shoulder. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Speak for yourself,” I grumbled.

June stiffened, and I instantly felt like an ass for the comment. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

She didn’t bother looking back when she replied, “I didn’t say anything.” She didn’t have to. The shift in her body language sent the message loud and clear.

“It’s not you,” I lied, because it was all her. And my body’s reaction to her.

If offense had a sound, it was the huff that slipped through her lips. “This is all for show, anyways. Right?”

---