Page 50 of Duke, Actually

“You are—”

He wanted to know what she’d been going to say before she cut herself off. “What?”

“All right,” she said, ignoring his question. “Let’s do it.” She smiled, a bright, unreserved one, and he loved seeing it, her mouth and eyes big. Happiness looked good on her.

He forced his eyes from her face and pondered the logistics of the task. He was going to have to grab her by the hips. Well, in for a pound... He stepped closer, bent his knees, and hovered his hands near her body but not touching it, under the surface of the water. “Okay?”

Still grinning from ear to ear, she nodded and put her hands on his shoulders.

Not wanting to grab her ass by accident, he rested his hands on her sides and slid them down and forward until he was cradling the points of her hips in his hands. Oof. The juxtaposition of soft flesh and pointy hip bones was really... something.

Her smile ignited into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” he teased, but he was laughing, too.

“This. You. Everything.”

He resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her. “Here we go.” He bent his knees and crouched to get some momentum, then launched her up into the air above his head—or tried to. He only got her about halfway up before he lost his balance.

“Ahhh!” She was shrieking and laughing at the same time as she came down, and it was contagious. He tried to break her fall and she tried to dive, and they ended up tangled together as they went under the water. He grabbed her, feeling bad about the sudden plunge, and she wound her arms around his neck as they resurfaced. She was sputtering but still laughing.

It was the summer version of Central Park. A stumble had turned into a hug. Except instead of wearing winter coats, they were skin to skin. Goosebumps rose, though he wasn’t cold. He pulled his hips away from her even as he kept hanging on to her upper body. He didn’t want her to feel his embarrassing erection. He felt like a teenager.

Except not, because he had never been this carefree as a teenager.

“Sorry,” he said through his laughter. “I’m no Patrick Swayze.”

“It took Baby and Johnny a few tries if I recall.” She said it as if issuing a dare.

He raised his eyebrows. “Again?” She nodded. “All right, let’s do a countdown this time—we lift on three.” She grabbed his shoulders, and he found the points of her hips. “I think I need a better grip. I’m going to hold you tighter this time.” God help him. “Does this hurt?”

She shook her head no, looking at him with an uncharacteristically serious expression that caused him a moment of unexplainedpanic. But then they were gone—her serious faceandhis hint of panic. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks, and she wore a grin so wide it looked like it might crack her face in two.

God, he justlikedher so much. He was so happy to be here, in the sun, in the ocean, in this moment, in what felt like grace, though grace was not a state Max had much experience with.

All right. Enough. He was being ridiculous. “Ready?” She nodded. He splayed his fingers around her hips and planted his feet in the squishy sand. “One, two, three!” He lifted, and up, up, up she went, extending and tightening her body as she lengthened her arms out in front of her.

“Eeee!” she called when his arms were fully extended and they’d reached an equilibrium. “We’re doing it!”

They were, and as he tilted his head back to look at her, a sharp spike of satisfaction, of pride even, rose in his chest, as if this were an actual accomplishment. She looked like a dancer. No, like a superhero. “We’re doing it,” he echoed, but it came out more a whisper than the triumphant shout that would have matched the sentiment.

She looked down, and he knew they were going to fall—the slight movement had been enough to nudge them out of alignment—but their eyes locked for a moment before it happened. She’d been laughing, gleeful, but her face suddenly went serious, contemplative. There wasn’t time to ponder it because the fall was underway. “Dive!” he called, and she did, bringing her arms together and tucking her head. She dragged him along with her as she moved through space, and as he fell back into the water, he started laughing again.

She popped up, the laughing, jubilant version of her pushingher hair out of her eyes. She flung her arms into the air in victory and started splashing toward him. She had one hand up, so he thought she was coming in for a high-five. He lifted a hand to meet hers, but she didn’t seem to see it, just kept coming until she wasthere, winding her arms around his neck and pressing her chest against his, pressing herbreastsagainst him.

He was frozen, momentarily stunned, but after a second, his brain caught up, shoving three observations into his consciousness. The first was that she washugging him. She had come over here with theexpress purposeof hugging him. The second was that it was merely a friendly, triumphant hug. The third was that if he kept standing there like an idiot, he was going to miss it. So he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up, letting himself notch his face into the crook of her neck. She smelled like salt and sunscreen, and he never wanted to smell anything else. He never wanted tobeanywhere else.

It was only a few seconds before the world intruded in the form of... applause? He set her down, her face mirroring the bewilderment he felt. A group of middle-aged women stood maybe thirty meters off, smiling and clapping. “Nice job!” one of them called. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” another shouted.

He smiled and bowed. “Thank you!”

“Oh my god, we looked like such idiots!” Dani said.

“No, we were glorious. They’reapplaudingus.”

She swatted his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

At that moment, he would have followed her anywhere.

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