Fuck, she's gonna… "Aval—" I don't even get her name fully out before she jumps.
I shoot forward, leaping towards the ledge to stare over, watching as she falls the length of at least half a goddamn football field into the murky depths below. Her body hits, and a wave of water goes flying. I clench my teeth, hissing out my breath as I wait for her to resurface.
"Come on, come on, come on," I mutter. "Come up, damn it."
Thirty seconds go by. Then a minute. A minute and a half.
"Fuck this." I rip my shirt up and over my head, shuck my jeans and boxers, and toe off my boots in record time. My heart is jackhammering inside my chest. I swear to fuck if she drowns, I'm going to be so fucking pissed. Closing my eyes, I take the leap right after her.
Ice cold water closes over my head. I don't know how far I sink, but as soon as I gradually slow down, I swipe my arms up and swim for the top, popping up for a breath of air, only then realizing that she's finally resurfaced and she's laughing.
"Why did you jump too?" she chuckles, swimming first one way and then the other, her dark hair—which had been in tangles around her face earlier—is slicked back behind her ears.
"You didn't come up right away," I say, watching her body cut through the water like it's nothing. "I thought you'd..."
She spins in a circle, dipping her head back into the water again. "What? Thought I hit my head?"
I had. And the tightness that I feel in my chest now makes her amusement that much more irritating.
"What were you gonna do?" she asks, staring at me across the water. "Save me?"
Kicking my feet, I feel like an animal tracking its prey. "Of all the girls in the world," I say as I trail her through the water. "You act like there's nothing in the world you need saving from."
"Because there's not," she replies easily. "Anything I've ever needed saving from, I've always done myself."
She follows my movements with her eyes, backing up slowly as I advance. "Like what?" I press.
Her head shakes and when I'm only three feet away, she turns and dives deep—or at least she tries to. The attempt to get away is cut short when I reach out and wrap one arm around her waist, yanking her back against my chest. Ava's head comes popping back up out of the water, her hair flying in her face as she coughs.
"What the hell!" She gasps and sputters, spitting the gross lake water out as she yells at me. “Why are you naked?”
I smirk and lean down even closer. "You didn't answer my question." I whisper the words against her ear, causing her to stiffen. Her ass rubs against something else that's just a bit more stiff than she is.
Black hair slaps me in the face as she looks back. "Are you seriously hard right now?"
I ignore the question and instead, turn her completely around until we're both treading water, face to face. "What have you had to save yourself from, Avalon?"
Her lips part and I'm torn between wanting to stare into her eyes and watching her tongue as it slips between her teeth. "Maybe I need saving from you," she counters.
I shake my head and smile. "Oh baby, there's nothing in the world that can save you from me."
For several long seconds, we're locked in a battle of wills, her and I. Our eyes center on one another, neither of us willing to look away. Bubbles pop up from the depths of the lake, reminding me that we're currently floating in a pool of algae and an unknown number of fish and other aquatic creatures.
This is not how I want to fuck her. For all I know, we'd both end up drowning. Yet, even though my mind agrees, my body pulses with need. My cock is rock hard as it presses against her lower abdomen.
I lean forward, until she's all I see. When she doesn't move back, her complete attention focused on me—making me feel like the most important thing in the world right now—I slowly touch my nose to hers. I want to kiss her. No. More than that. I want to fucking devour her. Consume all of her.
Avalon isn't the type of girl a man merely kisses. She's the type of girl a man gorges himself on until there's nothing left.
"You're so fucking dangerous, you know that?" I don't mean it as a question, but the words come out as one nonetheless.
One corner of those lush, fuckable lips of hers curves up. "If I'm so dangerous, then why do you insist on stalking me?" she quips.
My eyes flick between hers as I slowly kick my legs, driving us towards shore. She must realize what I'm doing too, because in the next moment her legs lift up and circle my waist. My cock fucking pulses.
I suck in a lungful of air. Down here, in the water, in the woods, in the middle of fucking nowhere—everything feels humid and hot.
"Because," I say honestly, trying to drive my need to fuck her back, "I tried to leave you alone. Now, it's too late."
She tilts her head to the side, her smirk dipping into a frown of confusion as her brows draw down low over those gorgeous fucking eyes of hers. "Why is it too late?"
"You throw everything out of whack." Stroke. Kick. Stroke. With her strapped to my chest now, willingly clinging to me, it's easier to swim. "You go off on your own and do stupid shit."
She scoffs and when she would pull away, I stop swimming and press a hand to her back, spreading my fingers over her spine, stopping the movement.
"I don't do stupid shit," she argues anyway. "I just do shit that isn't sanctioned by the 'Sick Boys.’" When she says the stupid name Abel, Braxton, and I have grown up with, her arms come up out of the water alongside both of our heads and she curls her fingers into air quotes as she says the words.
I smile. "We didn't choose that name, you know," I tell her.
She blinks at me, her arms plopping down, splashing the side of my neck with water. "You didn't?"
Stroke. Stroke. Kick. "Of course, we didn't," I reply. "It's dumb. People have been calling us that since high school. First it was the Eastpoint heirs then it was the Sick Boys..." I trail off, meeting her eyes as my feet find the ground beneath the water and I stop swimming long enough to stand. "Does this feel boyish to you?" I ask, one hand cupping her under her ass and pressing her more fully against my raging hard on.
Avalon doesn't gasp. She doesn't blush. She doesn't do anything another chick might. No, she just looks up at me, unblinking, and doesn't say a damn word. So, I answer for her. "I haven't been a boy since I was sixteen," I tell her.
Finally, a flicker of life in her eyes. "Why then?" she asks. "Why that age?"
Because that was the age I'd killed my first man, but I don't tell her that. I may want to fuck Avalon Manning, but I don't trust her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
"Doesn't matter," I say instead, striding further until the water only reaches my hips before dropping her to walk on her own. She peels herself away from me without complaint, turns and heads for shore and I watch her go, hating the feeling of coldness sliding over my wet skin now that she's no longer clinging to me. "We're men. Not boys."
I watch as she turns and glances over her shoulder as she heads back towards the beginning of the path that leads back to the ledge where my clothes and her bag are. When her eyes dip below my abdomen as I walk the rest of the way out, it takes everything in me not to react. Her eyes widen and her lips part.