I complete my spin, nearly losing my balance, and face Parker just as he starts to smile.
He smiles.
An amused burst of laughter accompanies his grin, and I go still, clinging to his hand. “Oh, my God.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he mutters teasingly, looking down at me with eyes made of mint and mayhem.
Or magic. Maybe it’s magic.
Lunging myself at him, I almost topple us both into the water as I slink my arms around his neck and pull him down, murmuring into the crook of his shoulder. “You smiled… you smiled, Parker.”
His body stiffens in my hold, his own arms hanging rigid at his sides. The water tickles my waistline as I try to inch up on my tiptoes and hug him tighter to me, my lips lightly grazing the little water droplets that roll down the arch of his neck. I inhale a shuddering breath, my fingers curling around his nape, playing with the damp scruff of hair.
His words in my bathroom skip across my memory:
“Smiles should be saved for things that bring us real joy.”
I brought him real joy. Me.
Acting like a fool in a murky lake, singing off-key, and dancing like no one was watching.
But he was watching. And it made him smile.
My grip on him strengthens, and I can’t help but press a tiny kiss to the side of his neck, nuzzling my nose into the glistening skin above his collar.
Parker’s breathing shifts from slow and steady to uneven. “What are you doing,” he mutters, and I think it’s supposed to be a question, a blatant demand, but it comes across more like a whispered breath—something unwittingly vulnerable.
I lower my arms, skimming my fingers down his torso, feeling him shiver, then I reach for his hands. Hands wound so tight, his limbs must ache.
Cradling his fists in my palms, I lift them to my hips, dragging them underneath my wet blouse until his fingers uncurl and grip my waist. Hard at first, his tension palpable, causing me to bow against him with a little whimper. Then his grasp softens, so I sweep his hands up further, over my ribs, until his fingertips brush the underwire of my bra. The water ripples around us as he inhales sharply. “Tell me what you feel,” I say, my voice quaking, knees quivering.
Parker’s hands slide back down over my slick skin, trailing the shape of my curves, then he latches onto my hipbones and tugs me closer. “You say that as if you think I know how.”
My gasp meets the front of his chest. “You do.”
“I’ll never feel things like you feel, Melody. I’m not wired that way.”
“You smiled,” I remind him. “You laughed.”
His fingers dig into my hips, forehead dropping to the top of my head. The air around us crackles and shimmers with possibility as he drags his hands back up my body with a subdued groan. I teeter and sway, my balance stolen by the muck beneath my feet and the man touching me in a way no other man aside from Charlie has ever touched me before.
Parker lets out a hard breath into my hair. “This won’t end well.”
He lifts his hands higher until he’s palming my breasts through the lace of my bra, and a surge of white-hot heat sweeps through me, arousal pulsing in my core. I’m waist-deep in ice cold water, but I might as well be standing in an incinerator. “Parker…”
“Fuck,” he grits out, his thumbs dusting over my lace-sheathed nipples, taut and pebbled. “You’re fucking me all up inside.”
I arch back, squeezing his sodden shirt between my fists for leverage. “Parker,” I repeat through an achy moan, his thigh angling right between my legs. “Kiss me.”
—NINETEEN—
All this time, I’ve been wrong about her.
She’s not sunshine.
She’s glittering nightfall, pale moonlight, silver stars in midnight skies.
She’s that beacon of light when darkness threatens and consumes.
No, she’s not the sun…
Melody is the moon.
“Kiss me.”
She grinds herself against the front of my thigh with brazen disregard for anything else. Her skin is slick and wet beneath my fingertips as I palm her tits through gritted teeth, my cock rock-hard despite the cold water. I’m trying not to lose control because I know the moment this begins, there’s no stopping it. I’m in too fucking deep, and the only way out will hurt like hell.
But goddamn, all I want to do is wrap her legs around me and fuck her senseless in the middle of this dirty ass lake.
Melody moans again, pressing herself fully into me. “Please.”
Kiss her?
Jesus… no. I can’t do that.
I won’t.
She grips the back of my head and lifts her chin until we’re eye to eye, noses touching.
… But fuck, I kind of want to.
I want to know if that smile that has haunted me for the last few months tastes as sweet as it looks.
A growl erupts in my chest, and I tug her hair back, just as a crack of thunder pierces the silent night. Melody stares up at me, chest heaving, eyes glazed with lust. Her perfectly pink lips part, beckoning me to sample them, and her bottom lip quivers as I inch closer until I’m a hair’s breadth away from her begging mouth.
I think I’m going to—I think I’m going to kiss her right here beneath lightly falling drizzle, my shoes sinking into sludge while my body sinks into her.
But the moment shatters… just like that.
Melody’s hands dip beneath my wet t-shirt, her fingertips grazing along my hidden scars, and I don’t think she even notices because she’s too preoccupied waiting for my mouth to claim hers… but I fucking notice.
And I freeze, going ramrod still and releasing her like she’s my foe crossing over enemy lines.
Melody stumbles, hardly keeping her balance in the water, her eyes wide and wounded when she steadies herself and stares up at me. “Parker?”
“This is a fucking mistake,” I ground out, moving backwards, my shoes and soaked denim weighing me down. “Just… stay away.”
“What?”
She looks like she might burst into tears, and I’d be fucking lying if I said it didn’t do something to me. Pushing through the unfamiliar feelings, I shake my head, throwing daggers at her. “Stay the fuck away, all right?”
Melody wraps her arms around herself like a protective shield, trying to reject my venom. “What did I do?”
“What haven’t you done? You just keep poking me—you keep invading, intruding, trying to find a way in. You’re a goddamn nuisance.”
I sling my barbed wire words at her, and I think they cut us both.
But goddammit, this is for the best. It can end now, or it can end later, and it’s going to cut a hell of a lot deeper later.
Melody’s gasp of surprise mingles with the light rainfall, and she jerks her head away from my hard gaze, biting into her lip. “I don’t understand,” she says in a broken whisper.
“That’s the point. You don’t understand me. You never will, so it’s better if you just stay the fuck away.”
She shakes her head with disbelief, still avoiding my stare. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah,” I bite out, continuing my backward trek to shore. “Looks like you dodged a bullet.”