Page 81 of The Bad Wedding Date

Charlotte tilted her head and raised a brow. “You haven’t seen what’s on offer under the surface yet.”

“Is it?” I reached out a lazy hand to brush my knuckles over her cheek, watching as a small flurry of goosebumps rose to life on her neck and shoulders, betraying anything she may have been trying to hide. “On offer?”

“Depends how badly you want it.”

“Surprisingly, a lot.” She splashed my face with water before I could blink, making me wipe down my face and gasp as I looked at her. “What the hell?”

“Surprisingly?” She splashed me again.

“Hey! Whoa. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it like that.” I wiped my face again and reached out to grab her, but Charlotte was too quick in her favourite habitat, and while she pushed away in a graceful, slick line, I was left to growl and push my shoulders back. “Charlotte, get back here.”

“Nope.” She offered me a grin while she swam on her back, her laughter pouring free as her pace picked up, leaving me in the shallow end when I so desperately wanted to chase her and drag us both under water.

“You’re maddening, woman,” I said, loud enough for her to hear me just as she reached the end, looked my way, and turned.

“That’s no way to speak to your boss. Mind your manners.”

This carefree, playful version of her intrigued me, and when she finally tried to swim past me in a smooth, elegant front crawl, I lunged for her, curling my arm around her waist and pulling her back to my chest as she cried out in a girlish squeal.

A rough laugh of my own poured free, my grunts and groans mingling with her cries for me to put her down until I’d pushed my back against the cold tiles of the pool and managed to hold us both still.

My heart pounded wildly. The warmth of her skin against mine made me swallow and work the muscles in my jaw to try and stay in control.

“What are you doing?” she eventually panted, her smile wide.

“Saving you.”

“From what?”

“Making the biggest mistake of your life.”

“Care to share what that is?”

“I think you know.”

Her amusement drifted away, pouring out of her body until she became lax in my arms. The water around us calmed, leaving nothing but her shallow breaths filling the air as she stared forward.

“But we hardly know each other,” she asked.

“Thirty-eight hours, Charlotte. Over two thousand minutes. More than a hundred and thirty thousand seconds. If we talk in smaller amounts of time, it seems like we’ve known each other longer, and maybe that’s what we both need.”

“Is how long we’ve known each other the only thing you thought about?”

“What do you think?” I answered, pressing my lips against the curve of her neck.

A small shiver ran through her, pleasing me enough for me to smile against her skin.

“I’ve thought about how I’ll probably get sacked from being your bodyguard if you knew all the dirty things that I want to do to you if, one day, you tell me you want my hands all over your body. Touching you. Teasing you. Exhausting you to the point of recovery because there isn’t an inch of your skin that I don’t want my tongue to meet.”

Charlotte’s breathing picked up, her hard nipples visible through the thin, tight material of her swimsuit.

“Mainly, I’ve thought about what it would be like to be inside you and how amazing it must be to have a woman like you in my life, if only for thirty-eight hours at a time.”

“What are you waiting for?” she whispered.

“Your permission.”

Angling her head back until our eyes met, she held my gaze. “You have it.”

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