Page 101 of Nerdplay
My arms tighten around his neck. “Now that we’re up close and personal, I’m here to tell you dangly bit is an understatement.”
His low chuckle reverberates in my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “Is it gone?”
“Can’t tell. I’m afraid to feel anything,” I say, and in that moment, I recognize the bald truth of my statement. Our gazes lock and Charlie seems to understand.
That’s when he kisses me.
One hand moves to cradle the back of my head and the other wraps around my waist to pull me closer. My boobs crush against his bare chest as the kiss intensifies. I lose myself to the hunger that’s been growing inside me since the moment I met him.
Hot, wet, and a little wild—not a description I’d expect to apply to either one of us, yet here we are. The kiss is so electric that, for half a second, I worry about our safety given that we’re engulfed by water.
“How about now?” he murmurs.
“I definitely feel … something.” All the things, in fact. Tingling. Aching. Breathless.
“Sorry,” he says, and releases me. It takes me a second to realize he mistook my response for a comment on his throbbing erection, which I also felt because it was impossible not to. Sea serpent, indeed.
“No need to apologize. I had no idea you packed your own light saber.”
He doesn’t laugh. His eyes seem to generate their own heat. My heart pounds as we stare at each other like it’s a contest, which maybe in his mind, it is. People talk about being ‘in the moment,’ but I’ve never felt as fully present as I do right now. Admittedly, I haven’t experienced many romantic evenings in my life, but tonight is top of the charts. I’ll still be thinking about our moonlit kiss on my deathbed. Quite frankly, I didn’t expect someone like Charlie to be capable of injecting a kiss with that much passion. It feels like a dream. An incredibly pleasant dream.
I’m not sure what persuaded me to give in to his request. I’ve always been self-conscious about my body, not because I think there’s anything specifically wrong with it. I realize that Charlie is right about me. For reasons that I don’t need to dig very far to unearth, I’m uncomfortable feeling seen.
And Charlie Thorpe sees me.
Those blue-green eyes are worse than Superman’s X-ray vision because they see straight to my emotional core. All this time I’ve been working on his vulnerability, trying to coax him out of his Gucci shell, when I was hiding behind my geek-chic outerwear.
Charlie clocked me—I don’t choose those clothes for style alone. Like the lawyer in his tailored suit, I wear loose Marvel shirts like a protective suit of armor that announces to the world which kingdom I belong to, that way if they reject me, I can blame the kingdom. I can say they failed to get past the armor, so they can’t be rejecting me. But without a willingness to remove the suit, I also don’t give people a chance to know me.
To be seen.
Well, Charlie has seen all of me tonight, more than I ever intended to show him, in fact. It feels scary.
And it also feels really, really good.
If I never have another experience like this for the rest of my life, I’d die a happy woman, but if any falling stars happen to be passing overhead right now, please know I’d really like to have another experience like this, preferably with Charlie and preferably tonight.
I can’t believe I kissed Cricket. It wasn’t my intention when I convinced her to skinny-dip with me. I fully expected a flat no to that request, like her response to LandStar’s proposal. The kiss seems to have shocked the entire world around us because absolute silence has descended upon the lake, and I’m too distracted by the taste of her to think of anything clever to say to break it.
Thankfully the water is high enough to keep her covered, although I can see the swell of her breasts, which makes me grateful my lower half is deeply submerged.
I clear my throat to break the spell. “Would you like to try floating now that the moon is behind some clouds? I can only see your silhouette. No sensitive areas.”
“How big is the cloud?” She glances skyward.
“Very big and very slow-moving.”
“That’s what she said.”
I crack a smile. “Think of this as a trust exercise.”
“Well, that explains why I can’t do it.”
“You’re naked in the water with me. There has to be a certain amount of trust there already or you wouldn’t have agreed.”
“You did already feel me up in the woods. I suppose nudity is the natural progression of events.”
“That was for ticks!”
