Page 20 of Something to Someone

“You know what I think scares you the most?” he asked, energy thrumming off his skin in palpable waves.

“Climate change? Nuclear war? Spiders?” I offered not wanting to hear his answer. But he ignored my suggestions and gripped my waist, guiding me to turn toward him. My mind told me to fight him, but I knew it would have been futile. My body had taken the lead.

With sincerity brimming his blue eyes, he clasped his hands on either side of my face. “I think what scares you the most isn’t the fact that I want you, it’s that you want me, too.”

Wow, very astute,I thought to myself because there was no way in hell I was going to admit that aloud no matter how correct it was.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “Your silence is just as loud.” A smirk, the same one that always made me feel like I was a pubescent teenager with her first full-fledged crush, curved his lips, slow and tempting.

My eyes raked over his face as I tried to steady my breathing. Eyes like a dark-blue sky and a jawline that could cut glass covered in a stubble as dark as the hair on top of his head. Hair that fell in messy, loose waves onto his forehead.

All his attention was on me, and I felt lightheaded beneath his gaze. My eyes dropped to the wide set of his shoulders and like he was following my lead, his hands dropped from my face, the heat of his palms vanishing yet appearing once again against the sides of my neck and over my shoulders.

A shiver I had no control over whipped down my spine as my eyes lowered to his chest. It was intentional, I wanted to see if he would follow my eyes with his hands and was simultaneously pleased and horrified when he did just that. Confident yet light, his fingertips grazed the sides of my breasts, lingering over the skin near my swimsuit. I was no longer breathing. I couldn’t do more than one thing at a time, and breathing would require me to think about something other than staying incredibly still and taking in the man in front of me.

Lower and lower his hands fell, dipping beneath the water and finding the smallest part of my waist while I considered what his abs would feel like under my own touch. Finally, at my hips, Ryder’s large hands wrapped around me and squeezed hard enough that I had to force air into my screaming lungs.

“Please, Caroline,” he whispered. “Let me show you how good I can make you feel. How good it can be. Please.”

And down, down, down came my walls. My eyes shot back to his, but he was already moving, lifting me into his arms and walking toward the edge of the pool.

“Fuck it,” he muttered.

ELEVEN

THREE WISHES

Caroline

My ankles lockedaround Ryder’s waist, and my hands landed on his shoulders. One second, he was wading through the water, and the next, he set me on the tiled edge of the pool.

I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing, but it was a pointless question. Especially when one of his hands returned to my cheek and tilted my head higher with his thumb, crushing his mouth to mine.

Lightness like I’d never known radiated through me. His lips felt more amazing than I imagined. There was no other way to describe them. They were firm yet soft, and every feeling he’d ever had toward me was communicated in that one single meeting of our lips. It was more overwhelming and powerful than I ever thought possible.

But it didn’t stop there. His tongue swiped against my lips, and I knew it would have been a shame not to taste him. My hands on his shoulders banded around his neck and tugged him closer as our tongues tangled. His hands were everywhere all at once, fisting in my hair and memorizing each inch of my body he could reach. It was a brutal, hungry kiss as both of us fought for dominance and control.

It was better than any kiss before it, and any kiss after was unlikely to surpass it. That thought along with the clawing, heady desire settling low in my stomach and burning through my veins, made me pull back.

“Fucking trouble,” I muttered, but Ryder wasn’t done. He reached behind me and found the towel I’d tossed there for after my swim. He positioned it and urged me to lay back with a hand at the base of my throat.

An uncanny desire burned bright in his eyes, and I couldn’t resist it. I wanted to see where he would take this, and fuck, he was right. I wanted him, too.

My head dropped down on top of the perfectly placed towel, and his eyes swept over me. Another shiver, not from the colder night air, andIwas on the verge of begging the longer he stood there, studying me but not touching me. I’d never begged before in my life, and the words clawing up my throat and poised on my tongue were foreign. It was a feeling I couldn’t decide if I enjoyed, but luckily, Ryder’s hands interrupted my thoughts.

He tapped the inside of my thighs and stared down at where my little swimsuit bottoms covered my sex.

“Open your legs for me,” he requested. “Give me a little room to play.”

“Ryder,” I said again, but he shook his head and shot me a hardened look.

“The next time you say my name, I want it to be between moans as you’re coming on my tongue, okay? Now, open your fucking legs.”

I wasn’t one to easily give up control. Often, I found myself the more dominant one in the bedroom—or on the edge of the pool—but there was something about his growly, hungry disposition that made me drop my legs open.

He groaned and licked his lips. “Thank you,” he said politely, running his hands from my knees up the inside of my thighs until his thumbs brushed against the edge of my swimsuit.

“You’re only welcome if you know what you’re doing down there.”

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