“Oh my god, Knox. Not our future. Yours!” I push his shoulder back and place my hand on my hips. “You should see the look on your face right now. You’re white as a ghost, and since you’ve become some kind of Greek deity in this Tennessee sun, that’s saying something.”
A little color returns to his cheeks. He stalks towards me with a devilish gleam in his eyes, and I squeal, racing across the sand, doing my best to keep away from him. “A Greek god, you say?”
“Something like that!” I shout.
All I hear is answering silence. I pause my retreat and see that Knox is no longer following me. Instead, he’s stripping underneath the nearly full moon, showing off all his naked glory. I scan the shore, hoping we’re alone. That body is for my eyes only.
It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s using his body to ignore my question. I don’t mind. Okay, I’m lying to myself if I say that. I know we’re just a fling, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. And friends talk. So, even though my mouth waters at the way the moon highlights the hard planes of his chest, I vow that we’re talking tonight, not screwing.
Doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the show first though.
Knox inches into the water then turns towards me, revealing all his naked glory. “You gonna just let me do this by myself or are you comin’ in?” he hollers.
I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s dark as hell and you don’t know what’s in that water.”
“Probably no ball-choppin’ serial killer.”
I snort and shake my head. “Not doin’ it.”
“Hmm… What was it Sunny told me a few weeks ago? You can never turn down a—”
“Don’t you—” I interrupt.
“Dare!” we say in unison.
I’m not sure if he can see my glare in the dark, but it’s burning through him right now.
“You’re such an ass,” I mutter, which only causes him to snicker.
“You love it,” he teases, and the insinuation sends my heart aflutter.
I’m getting in too deep. Too fast.
I quickly regain my composure and drop my clothes in a small pile beside his. “You wish. After this, you’ll be lucky to get any!”
“Come on, babe. The water’s still warm.”
He’s not wrong.
“Now.”
Why didn’t anyone ever tell me mono-syllabic beckoning could be so sexy?
“No. I’ll go skinny-dipping, but I draw the line at having sex in a lake.”
He laughs. “Come here, Amelia. No funny business. I just want you close to me. Promise.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You’re tellin’ me that I’m naked in the dark and you won’t touch me? I don’t know if I should be impressed or insulted.”
“Never said I wouldn’t touch you. But, babe, between rehabin’ the house and bangin’ you more times than I can count, I’m beat. I just wanna talk.”
I sigh. We’re so on the same page.
“Well, since you explained so eloquently…” I trail off as I glide towards him.
As soon as I’m within arm’s reach, Knox pulls me into his broad chest. “Much better.”
Indeed.
His fingers trail along the curve of my spine, eliciting a shiver even though the water’s comfortably warm. “I like being here with you.”
“Even though I’m terrified of what creepy-crawlies come out in the dark, I suppose I like being here with you, too.”
Knox’s hand grasps my chin, tilting it up our eyes meet. “No. I like being here with you. In Crystal Cove. I didn’t want to come here. Having met you, I can’t imagine not having come here.”
“I guess we both found something we didn’t know we were looking for.”
“Yeah.” His lips curve up, that dimple highlighted in the moonlight. “Guess so.”
“I’m thrilled you’re here. I didn’t know what I expected from the summer; it certainly wasn’t you. Your mother may not know it, but she sent me the perfect distraction.”
“She’d love you.”
It takes me totally by surprise. I tear my eyes from his gaze, glancing up at the moon and then back at him. I’m not sure he even realizes what he said. Or, more likely, I’m reading too much into it.
“Calm down, Amelia. I’m not asking you to come home with me after the summer,” he says, his tone teasing. Probably to put me at ease, yet it does the opposite.
I plaster on a grin I’m not exactly feeling. “Duh. Trust me, I’m completely aware of—and on board with—our current arrangement. No meeting dear old mom for me.”
He pushes back from me, creating a few inches of space between us. One hand takes hold of mine. If there were any time I wish I could read minds, it’d be this moment right now. He’s so hard to read. Does he feel more? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? I want to scream.
I should let it go. If he wants to be a closed book except for in the bedroom, I should take what I can get. But I can’t. Call me crazy, but I’d like to know a bit more about the guy who’s giving me the most mind-blowing orgasms night after night. So against my better judgment, the words spill out.
“Look, I know I joke about us doing nothing but sleeping together—which is amazing and I’m not complaining at all—but if I’m going to have these fond memories to look back on, I want to know more about you. More of who you are. Not just the surface.” I blow out a breath, hoping I don’t send him running for the shore.
His fingers tickle my bare belly. “You already know a lot about me that most people don’t. There’s not much more to tell.”
I want to wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, but in this moment, distance is probably necessary. “I have a feeling there’s much more than meets the surface. I mean, what kinda city guy agrees to spend his last summer before graduation fixing up a house in the middle of nowhere?”
Knox runs a large hand over the top of his head, his form perfectly illuminated in the moonlight. “The kind of guy who knows exactly what he wants for his future yet knows that that future is missing something.”
I swallow hard. I don’t want to push, but I have to know. “What does that mean, exactly?”
The sound of him gliding through the water towards me echoes in the still night. When he gets to me, he pulls me close. “I’m not sure, Amelia. But what I do know, is while I’m with you, I don’t want to think about it.”
Touché.
“Then we won’t,” I say. “We’ll stick to what we agreed on. Friendship. Sex. And lots of it.”
I’m okay with that. I tell myself I’m okay with that. I will myself to be okay with that. Because the sooner I get it through my skull, the sooner I’ll be able to block him out of the deepest part of me. And I hope like hell he’s not already there.
“Besides, I said I wanted to get to know you better,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.
“You already know more about me than most people.” Ha. Two can play coy.
He raises an eyebrow. “Pretty sure I haven’t even scratched the surface, babe.”