“Mint.”
I sniff it, giving her a suspicious look that makes her grin.
“I’m not poisoning you, Lumberjack, see?” She stuffs a leaf in her mouth and chews happily. “You more than anyone should know what this is. Mint.”
I open my mouth, feeling the warmth between her legs slide over my thigh. She leans and sets the leaf on my tongue, and air finally rushes out of me.
Pungent mint bursts inside my mouth. The leaf tickles as I chew and watch Willa mirroring my movements. Her throat works as she swallows, and hunger coils tight inside me. Willa’s hands clasp mine, then skate up my arms. I can’t hear my breath, but I can feel it. I can feel each violent tug of air, the pound of my pulse along my length. Need soars up my chest, tightens my throat.
I stare at her lips. It takes considerable effort not to bite them.
“What do you want, Ryder?” her mouth says.
What do I want? That’s not the question. The question is what do I get? Do I want Willa? Hell, yes. Can I have her?
She leans closer. “What do you want?”
I’ve spent weeks restraining myself. Weeks trying not to picture her every time I close my eyes at night or pass a soccer field or taste oranges or smell roses. I haven’t touched myself once to the thought of her. I’ve shut it down every step of the way.
I could lie to her, text her some stinging jab, politely set her off my lap. But I don’t want to. What do I want? I want her. So. Fucking. Badly.
Her eyes are luminous, sunlight pale and wide, as they flick to my mouth. My shoulders flex as Willa’s fingers wrap around them.
She arches forward, making her breasts slide against my bare chest. My fingers sink into her hair and grab hold, nothing gentlemanly in my touch. I feel primal. Desperate. I fist her hair tight and watch her mouth fall open. Those lips. I’ve watched them for months, tortured by how full and soft they look, dying to taste them. I sit straight and slide my palm around her neck. My mouth lowers toward hers, controlled, slow. One moment we’re separate, the next we’re fused.
Boom.
Velvet-soft, decadent. The feel of her sweet mouth is so much better than I imagined. I gasp for air and steal hers. She tastes like mint leaves and something sweet that must simply be Willa. I haul her tighter to me, wrap her in my arms, as my hands feel everything I’ve barely let myself imagine touching. The dip and swell of her backbone, the jut of her hips, the curve of her waist. Every single rib.
When I part her lips and tease her tongue, she moans. I want to throw her down, rip off her swimsuit and rut into her like an animal, but if I’ve learned anything in my life it’s patience, it’s the long game. So, I’m gentle, exploratory. Our tongues tangle, a seeking kiss that starts whisper soft and ends in an open-mouthed beg for more. It becomes hungrier tastes, wet and hot, slow and lazy. Breathing is an obligation, and I resent its interference in the best kiss of my life.
Willa’s arms curl around my neck. She presses herself into me, her warmth seated over my lap, where I’m hard as fucking stone for her. She sighs as she feels it, and her fingers scrape through my hair. I can’t help but groan and sense my voice filling her mouth. It’s so impossibly sexy to feel her sounds, to give her mine.
Willa’s lips open wider over mine, her tongue a teasing flick that taunts mine to find hers again and dance. Slide, then nip, a kiss that pretends to be delicate before it builds in rhythm like a wave swelling to the point of collapse. Willa writhes over me, her movement so natural, her fit so perfect, we were made to do this. Her thighs lock around my waist, her elbows prop on my shoulders as she slides her fingers through my hair, and my world telescopes to this tiny breadth of space in which we touch and kiss and feel.
She grinds on me, and I roll my hips beneath hers, panting against her mouth, knowing if I do much more of this, it’s game over.
My hands find her shoulders and squeeze. Breaking apart, breathing heavily, I press my forehead to hers. Willa leans in for more, but I pull away just enough for our eyes to meet.
I’m beyond overwhelmed. My brain is scrambled, my senses confused.
When Willa sits back, her eyes search mine. She must read my torn expression, my shock. I watch her eyes cool and her walls go up. Clasping her hand, I wrack my brain for the right words, wishing I were clear-headed or brave enough to make her tell me why she asked me what I want, why we’re kissing when the drive up here was stony silence.
All we’ve done for months is banter and snap, prank and poke until this game ratcheted up to a dangerous realm of sexual tease. That damn yellow top started it all, and since then we’ve been brutally amping up each other’s libidos, taunting each other’s bodies.
Is this just the final move? Is this checkmate in our one-upmanship, and now all that’s left is to knock every piece away, to wipe away the history of each lost battle and victory from the board, now that she’s come out the winner? If so, I lost. She got me to kiss her. She undid me. I was putty in her arms. Willa fucking won.
Our eyes hold for a small eternity, hers cooling even more as time extends. On a long sigh, Willa gives me a halfhearted smile, then sweeps up her phone.
“Come on, Mountain Man. Back to reality.”
More obligatory questions answered perfunctorily, then our assignment is done and regret is a boulder in my chest. I know her favorite food, her twenty-year plan, her earliest memory, and the last state she lived in, but I still don’t know why she asked me what I wanted, why we just kissed and touched like the world was ending. I still don’t know what Willa Sutter wants from me.
Our descent’s silent, light still high in the sky as we walk to my car. Our clothes are sun warm, our skin sticky from sweat and the falls. Willa leans her temple against the window and stares out at the Pacific Coast Highway as I drive and rack my brain for how I can gain some clarity, some insight into what the hell is happening.
Just then I drive by a billboard featuring a father, his arm wrapped around his son, and it hits me. Dad.
I don’t often take advantage of the fact that my dad’s a physician, minutes from campus and my place. In fact, I never do. Mostly, it’s because I’m conditioned not to need him too much. My whole life, many other people’s need of him was more time-sensitive than mine, and I don’t mean that to sound like a victim, it’s just the truth. Dad’s an oncologist, he’s a father of seven, he’s a husband who loves his wife and prioritizes time with her. He’s on the boards of too many things to count, he even works with fellow veterans in his nonexistent spare time.
He’s a busy guy. I’m the middle child of his seven kids, so even when it came to family time, big agenda items like baby fevers and periods and first steps and failed tests were way more pressing than Ryder waiting with a book under his arm to read with Dad.
I learned how to be patient. I learned how to find those slivers of time when Dad was mine. I’d get up early to watch him shave and tell him about my day. I crawled into bed after he got home late from work and had showered off. Just five minutes cuddling in his arms before he started snoring, that was all I needed.
So now, as an adult man with his education underway and a practical life-plan ahead of him, I tell myself I shouldn’t need my father at all. Except I should, and I do.
I really need my dad.
My brothers and I aren’t talking much except for Ren, who’s empathetic to woman puzzles but not particularly helpful. He’s a bull in a china shop when it comes to the ladies. Aiden’s been there for me before, but he knows what’s good for him and has kept his distance the past few days, seeing as this whole mess is thanks to him moonlighting as a goddamn yenta.