I looked away from that penetrating blue gaze of his.
“You don’t have to tell me. I’ll never push you for something you don’t want to give.” He ripped his hands over his hair. “It’s not like I have the right to know, anyway. We’ve known each other for a total of what? Eighteen hours if you combine all our time together?”
That had me turning back toward him. “Two and a half years,” I said, correcting him. “We’ve known each other two and a half years. And I didn’t want to graduate early, but my boyfriend was a year older, and he said he wanted me to come with him.” A sour taste filled my mouth. “And my parents were so thrilled with the idea that I might marry a Covington—”
“You were engaged?” His gaze dropped to my hand like he’d missed something. “And what the hell is a Covington?”
“No.” I shook my head. “And who is a Covington.” A bitter laugh escaped at my own foolishness. “God, I love that you don’t know. Love that you can’t tell me every senator that’s come from his branch of the family, or what their net worth is, because believe me, my father could spit those details out like a computer. The idea of me marrying into a family like that made him practically salivate. It’s everything they want for themselves, though they’d say it’s for me, and it’s why he offered to pay for Georgetown if I graduated Syracuse early and went with—”
“Dickface,” Nate supplied. “I don’t want to know his name. If he was stupid enough to lose you, as the term ex implies, then he’s a dickface.”
This time my laughter was anything but bitter. “Yeah, we can go with that. Dickface got accepted to Georgetown, too, of course, so we started planning.” I sighed. “I can even admit that it felt nice to live up to my parents’ expectations for once. They came to graduation and even threw a giant party. We rented an apartment close to campus, put the deposit down and everything . . .” My forehead puckered. “I should have known the second Serena told me she didn’t like him. She’s a freakishly good judge of character.” I bobbed up and down with the next wave now that we were deeper. “Anyway, he was accepted off the wait list for Yale just before graduation, and now he’s in New Haven.”
“He left you for a school?”
“Yep.” I sputtered when the next wave got the best of me, and Nate pulled me against his rock-solid torso. My heart skipped a freaking beat, but Nate’s was steady under the hand that I splayed over his chest. Concentrate. “And I tried the whole ‘let’s do long distance’ thing, because I’m naive. And he . . .” I searched for the right words. “He respectfully declined, seeing that there was a plethora of women who weren’t new money to choose from at Yale.”
“Dickface,” Nate muttered.
“Dickface,” I agreed. Yet, at that moment, with the cool water rushing around us and Nate’s warm skin under my fingers, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my newly single status. Nate was the opposite of everything Dickface had been. He was open, brutally honest, brave to a fault, and remarkably careful with me. “My parents haven’t quite recovered from their crushing disappointment of nearly marrying into the Covington family. So now, I’m at Georgetown because I chased someone else’s dream, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do with that.”
“Find a way to make it your own,” he suggested, lifting me off my feet when the next wave came. “Find a way to make a difference.”
Emboldened by the way he held me, I reached up and ran my fingers through his wet hair. This time tomorrow, I’d be in DC, and he’d be on his way to a war zone. “If I could make a difference, I’d find a way to keep you here.”
An emotion I couldn’t define but that looked a lot like longing passed over his face. “That would pretty much take an act of Congress.” His gaze dropped to my mouth.
“Guess you’ll have to go then. I’ve never been particularly interested in politics,” I whispered as another wave pushed my body firmly against his.
“Me either.” His arm locked around my back. “Izzy?”
“Nate?” God, I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth.
“I’m going to kiss you.” The certainty of his words made my skin flush.
“Oh yeah?” I ran my tongue over my lower lip, tasting salt.
“Yeah.” He lowered his head slowly, giving me more than enough time to object. “So, if that’s not what you want—”
“I want.” I tilted my face and arched up, brushing my mouth across his. It was nothing, a ghost of a kiss, but it brought every nerve ending in my body to life, and every single one of them wanted him.
His blue eyes flared with surprise, and then he brought his mouth to mine and kissed me senseless. His lips were cool, but his tongue warm as it slipped past my parted lips to slide along mine. Spearmint and salt consumed every thought. Electricity danced along my skin.
More. I needed more.
His fingers speared into my hair, and he tilted my head to kiss me even deeper. I was no stranger to sex, but I’d never been kissed like this. He took my mouth like I was the key to his next heartbeat, with equal parts mind-blowing finesse and dizzying need.
It was the best first kiss in the history of . . . everything.
I moaned, and he lifted me so our mouths were level, never breaking the kiss.
My legs wound around his waist like they belonged there, my ankles locking at the small of his back. Kissing Nate wasn’t just everything I’d dreamed of; it was better.
“Shit,” he swore, ripping his mouth from mine once we were both panting, and resting his forehead against mine.
“Not what you expected?” My fingers laced behind his neck as another wave crested over my heated skin, but didn’t even faze him.
“Just the opposite.” He pressed a kiss to my jaw, then my throat, before returning to my lips. “Everything I expected and so much more. I fucking knew it would be like this with you.”
“Chemistry,” I muttered, but that wasn’t the word tickling the edges of my mind. Fate. There was no other way to explain this, to explain us.
“It’s more than that, but I don’t think defining it would be fair to either one of us. Not when we only have a few hours before your flight.” He studied my face like he was committing it to memory.
“Our timing is pretty awful.” My thighs squeezed his waist as I feathered a kiss over his cheek.
“Our timing is shit.” His hand stroked down my spine but never went for my ass.
I wished he would. I wanted him in every possible way I could have him until the sun set. “Then give me the next few hours.”
Every line of his body drew tight against me, and his breaths grew ragged when I kissed a line down the side of his neck.