Page 63 of Beached Wedding

“Fox,” I murmured shyly.

“You’re so pretty, Ash.” His voice, so coarse and moved, raised goosebumps all over my body. “Beautiful.”

I usually felt very average, but not today. As he caressed me so reverently, my eyes dampened with emotion. Ifeltbeautiful. Like a freaking goddess who was more a spirit of nature than a being, one who had come up against another force of nature in the type of storm that left scars across the landscape. The kind of heat and energy that cracked and bolted like lightning, capable of melding two things into one. Indelible.

I shivered again, realizing this would never be the sort of encounter I might have with another man. For me, sex was pleasant and sensual, but a bit routine, like washing my hair. I could go through the steps and feel refreshed afterward, but nothing in my life was different afterward.

This would change everything. It was carnal and intimate andmeaningful.

This was the point where I should tell him to stop, but I didn’t. Couldn’t. I looked down at the breasts that captivated him. At my own nipples, beige with pink tips, sharpened to tight points by arousal and the cool mist coating the air.

I watched him lick his lips and dip his head.

I curled my toes and closed my eyes and still wasn’t prepared for the heat. For the pull that sent a sharp jab of acute arousal straight into my pussy and dragged a groan from deep in my chest. A pulse point seemed to throb and grown in strength between my legs, calling to him.

My hands went to his shoulders, his hair. This wasn’t new, I acknowledged distantly, but it felt new. It felt like nothing I’d ever experienced.Thiswasn’t a sharing of self but loss. Surrender. Not to him. Toneed. To this thing that gripped both of us equally.

All I knew was Fox. His smell and the shape of his shoulder and the feel of him shifting between my thighs.

I ought to feel excruciatingly wrong, doing this with him, but a bizarre tenderness filled me. Something that wanted to savor and memorize the textures from his thick, crinkly hair to the fabric of his shorts against my inner thigh. I wanted to breathe him in. Lick him. Bite.

He moved to my other breast and I made a garbled sound, arching myself flagrantly. My knee came up and I felt him press more firmly into the space I’d created, keeping me in place with this weight.

He lifted his head and cupped my face, kissed me with such tenderness I could have cried. The stiff line of his erection met the pulsing folds of my mound and I sighed.

He rocked and the sensation coaxed another noise of abandonment from me, driving my arousal to higher and higher degrees.

“I won’t get pregnant,” I confided when his lips trailed across my cheek.

He stilled his mouth against my skin. He dropped his head against my shoulder while his whole body seemed to slump in defeat.

“I had a physical before I came away—” I realized I was starting to sound desperate.

All the beauty from this moment bled away. Iwasdesperate. Because I could tell that I’d ruined it. I wanted to cry, I was so angry with myself. With him, for being more noble than I could ever hope to be.

He was shaking. He lifted his head as though it weighed more than he could manage. The regret in his eyes arrowed straight into my heart, cracking it into jagged pieces.

“We can’t. You know we can’t.” He licked his lips and rubbed his thumb against my cheek in a caress that was probably meant to soothe, but it felt as though it would break the skin and leave an open wound. “This was too much. Incredible,” he breathed with a restless track of his gaze over my face and hair. “But too much. It shouldn’t have happened. Can’t.”

He drew away in a hunch like an old man, catching my hand as it fell off his shoulder. He tried to kiss my knuckles, but I yanked my hand away, stupefied by the plunge from arousal to incredible pain.

He flinched and his gaze held mine. Begged forgiveness.

“Let’s go for a swim. Cool off.”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off, that swimming was the last thing I wanted to do.

But since the waterfall was the only place to hide my tears, I skimmed off all but my underwear and waded into the pool.

FOX

Harry, you son of a bitch, I was still thinking when we landed on the man’s lawn.

My new friend hadn’t understood the problem, but had believed he knew the solution. He’d sent us to swim alone, trying to engineer exactly the close encounter we’d had.

I had treaded water as far from Ashley as I could get, seriously considering hiking down the entire mountain and hitchhiking to the resort, just to avoid further temptation.

To avoid the bitterness in her profile.

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