Page 175 of Him Lessons

“Watermelon Sugar”drifted from a speaker set up down the beach, and the smooth summer groove of the innuendo-laden track was making Luke’s mouth water. And not just for the fruit.

Damn, that horny Harry Styles knew what was up.

Luke was thirsting hard for the Betty he was scoping through his specs right now, eyes trained on those thick thighs of hers. He was so going to love on those beauties later. So sexy and strong they were from all his wife’s workouts. From all her reps of twenty-five.

They squeezed him good too, those gorgeous thighs. Especially when she had them wrapped around his face.

Luke smiled.

Life was good.

Married life was fucking awesome.

Yep, he and Andy had made things official a few years ago on this very spot.

She’d been the most beautiful bride he’d ever seen. Clad in an ankle-length, halter-style dress a few shades lighter than the sand beneath her bare feet. A dress that had hugged her breasts with a deep curving V of a neckline before falling loosely from her body and billowing with the breeze sweeping off the ocean.

That same current of air had caught the loose waves of her hair, reminding Luke of the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. Only then, Andy’s hair had been flying from the hood of a windbreaker, and during their wedding, it was adorned with a delicate wreath of white and coral flowers.

Both memories were burned into the memory banks.

As was the moment being recorded now: his wife’s first surfing contest. It was an amateur event, of course, because Andy had only five years of surfing under her belt, but damn was she schooling some of the more seasoned chicks out there.

Luke grinned as his wife showed off her backside game. Her surfing one, that is. Of course, that ass of hers was phenomenal too, and it would be getting some attention later, but right now, Luke was leaning forward in his chair all excited-like because Andy was riding with her back to the wall of a super-rippable wave.

“Come on, Firebird,” he whispered urgently.

That’s what he’d started calling his wife after giving her the shortboard she was riding now. A board with a deck design he’d sketched and saved at Dylan’s suggestion years ago. A board that suited Andy to a tee because when the waves were firing, Luke’s Bird went flame-on.

Blazing up a perfect wall of water, Andy transferred her weight from her back foot to her front one, rotated her shoulders and hips, and snapped the board in a sharp U-turn at the top of the wave as it was breaking. Just as he’d taught her. Textbook vertical snap. One she quickly followed with another that sent up an even bigger spray of water.

“Hell, yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!” Luke cried as his wife finished out the wave with a perfectly executed blow tail.

“Uncle,”Frankie protested as he pumped his fist. “Stop moving! You not ’lowed to move!”

Indeed, his five-year-old niece had buried his feet in the sand. Luke had just enough time to lower his binoculars before she climbed onto his lap all imperious-like and settled her sand-dusted palms on his cheeks. “I awested you!”

She hissed the words about two inches from his face, making it pretty hard to miss the aroma of the Cheez-Its she’d been scarfing down between buckets. “’Sup, Five-Oh? Why am I being arrested?”

“Because I’m practicing.”

His niece wanted to be a cop when she grew up. A cop or a fairy princess. Luke was rooting for the latter for obvious reasons. But if she was serious about the former, he should probably help her out. He knew there were more good apples on the force than there were bad, and Frankie, no doubt, would be amongst the best of them should she set her mind to it one day.

“I think you’re supposed to use handcuffs, not sandcuffs, Officer Frankie.”

Frankie giggled. “Sandcuffs?! Uncle Luke, you aresosilly.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

His niece slid off his lap, black polka-dot swimsuit leaving a nice dusting of sand on his navy boardies. “Ha, ha, ha,” she said, popping to her feet. “I awested you withsandcuffs! And I have da key!” She scampered off towards her mother’s towel several feet away to the right.

A long muscled arm shot out from a sun tent shielding said towel, and Frankie burst into more hysterical giggles as it reeled her in. “I put Uncle Luke in beach jail!” she announced to the occupants of the towel.

Hearing a familiar masculine chuckle followed by a soft laugh from his sister, Luke shook his head. For a number of reasons.

Then he snorted at his niece’s joke.Beach jail.No doubt it was better than jail-jail.

Fortunately, Luke had never actually been locked up before. The cops had never come knocking to haul his ass away for beating the crap out of a douchebag once upon a time, and neither Luke nor his wife had ever heard from said douchebag again.

---