Page 50 of Boss Me

“What?” I shook water out of my ear.

He fingered the hem of his golf shirt. “Mind if I join you in the pool?”

“But you’re not—” I gestured at his shirt and shorts. “You don’t have a suit.”

One corner of his mouth curled up. “Neither do you.”

Fuck, I was out here in my underwear. I supposed this situation could fall under the dress-code exceptions Synergy had for pool parties. I’d have overlooked it for just about any other employee. Except myself. “I—I don’t think—”

“Don’t think,” he said. He pulled off his shirt, and I couldn’t help it. I stared. At the dark hair scattered across his chest, the paleness of the skin his shirt covered and the darker skin on his arms where the Caribbean sun had kissed it.

Then his fingers went to the button of his shorts, and I turned away to stare past the fence to the ocean beyond. I let out my breath when I heard the splash of his entry into the water.

Suddenly, the pool seemed too small. I breast-stroked to the deep end where there was a submerged seat and parked my ass on it. I gripped the ledge. Nothing would move me from this spot. Not until Ben left.

He paddled toward me but stopped where the floor started to drop away. “Did I make you uncomfortable in there?” He tilted his head toward the house.

“No.” The only uncomfortable thing had been the pressure in my shorts. But how did it look that I left right after he shared that very personal information with me? Jesus, I’d acted like an ass. I ran a cool, wet hand over my face. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. I like that you feel comfortable enough to talk to me.”

His shoulders slumped, and he paddled away from me to the steps in the shallow end. He sat on a low one, most of his body below the water.

“I thought we were talking. I thought maybe you’d talk to me.” The words were barely audible across the length of the pool.

My stomach contracted. “I—Ben, I—” Shit. I couldn’t shout this across the pool.

I swam toward him and stopped a few feet away from the steps. No, it was still wrong. I pushed through the water and sat on the far end of his step. A pool raft could have squeezed between us.

“I was moved by what you said. I didn’t have the greatest teenage years. I wish I had a Victor to go to.” Not that I would have. Fallons didn’t ask for help. They struggled until they drowned—or learned to swim.

Ben scooted closer. “You do?”

I dragged my gaze off him and stared over the fence at the ocean. Here on the island, time and the tide always eroded away my problems. And I didn’t want to conjure him here. My father had no place in this beautiful refuge. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Okay. But if you ever want to talk about it…”

I wouldn’t. But I nodded once.

A cool, wet hand landed on my shoulder, and it startled me enough that I looked at him. Ben was close, too close, his brown eyes dark and those full lips tempting. I longed to reach out a finger and touch them. But I couldn’t. I—

“Fuck it,” Ben muttered.

When he leaned across the distance that separated us, ripples lapped between our bare chests. I fixated on them. They’d touched his skin, and now they touched mine. Where did he end, and where did I begin? The water had washed away our barriers. My barriers. His gaze burned into mine, and I was lost.

After the briefest of hesitations, he brushed his lips across mine.

That slide of his lips was everything I’d imagined and more. His skin was soft and smelled of the honey-scented lip balm he kept in his desk drawer. His warm breath skated over my cheek. I kept my eyes open—I must have known at an instinctual level that I couldn’t miss a single detail of this experience because it could never, ever happen again—but his dark eyelashes fluttered down over his cheekbones. This close, I smelled his aftershave, and it made me think of lazy mornings, sunlight streaming across the bed, the tip of his hipbone just visible over the edge of a rumpled sheet.

I must have made a noise because he froze. I stilled, too, hoping if I didn’t move, I wouldn’t break the spell.

He stayed there, his lips an inch from mine, for three of my ragged breaths. The ripples caressed my chest when he tensed, readying to pull away.

I couldn’t let him do that. Now that I’d tasted him, I needed more. Like that fucking dog lying under the patio table, once I felt Ben’s caring kindness, I knew better than to let him out of my sight.

I’d wanted to do it for the past four days—hell, ever since he’d walked onto the sixth floor of my building—so I buried my hand in his hair to steady him while I crushed my lips against his.

Our second kiss wasn’t featherlight like the first. No, this one was mine, and it carried my need, my want, even my barely contained violence for anyone who’d ever hurt Ben. I thrust my tongue against the seam of his lips until he opened. I took and pillaged everything. I devoured the evening bristles around his mouth. I raked my tongue against his sharp teeth. I fisted his curls and tugged.

Ben didn’t pull away. Instead, he sagged against me, his bare chest sliding against my skin. He met each attack on his mouth with an easy counteroffense, sliding his tongue against mine, nibbling at my bottom lip, and resting his palm on the center of my chest, not to push me away but as if he needed to feel how my heart raced for him.

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