Her brows lift and she blows out a sardonic laugh. “You’re assuming it started that way.”
She presses up on the pool edge to pull herself out of the water, but her hand slips. It’s as if time lags and I see it happening in slow motion. I’m not going to let anything else happen to Addie on my watch. On reflex, my hand darts out and I grab her shoulder before her chin comes smashing down on the cement. The next second, she’s in my arms. Between my knees.
I’m frozen by her proximity—by the silk of her skin on mine. By the desire I see in her eyes and all over her face.
My heart launches into a gallop as she slithers the rest of the way into my lap, planting that firm, round ass on my thighs. And God help me, there’s nothing I can do to keep my body from reacting. She turns to face me, her hot breath feathering across my lips, and I know from the look in her hooded eyes, hungry and wanting, but also a little scared, that my growing hard-on hasn’t gone unnoticed.
I grasp her hips. I think I mean to slide her onto the pool deck next to me, but my fingers dig in to soft flesh and pull her closer.
When I remember to breathe, it comes in a shaky rasp. “Are you okay?”
Her gaze trickles down my face as she gives me an anemic nod, and it sends a shudder through me as if it were her fingers caressing oh so softly over my skin. When the trail of her gaze stalls on my lips, I can’t help but lick them, sure I’ll taste her there.
And then I do when she closes the few inches between us and her mouth finds mine.
Chapter 14
Addie
His spicy scent wraps me in a cocoon of bliss and I stop thinking. I know this because when a shard of coherent thought pierces the bubble, I find my lips are on his. I don’t even know how they got there. Not only that, but I have a death grip around his neck. In my shock, the reflex is to let him go…but then I realize he’s kissing me back. His kiss feels like liquid fire burning through me. A low moan vibrates between us, and somewhere in the back of my mind I know it’s mine. The rumble deep in his chest that answers my moan feeds my hunger for him.
One of his hands grips my arm hard, just below my shoulder. But it’s the other one that has my attention, sliding slowly down my hip until it rests on my ass. He drags me over him so I’m straddling his lap as he tilts his head and deepens our kiss, and the hard bulge in his swim trunks presses against sensitive spot between my legs. I feel him from the tingle in my scalp to the curl of my toes. And when he moans into my mouth, the sound vibrates my bones.
I lose myself in the feeling of his hot, hard body pressed up the front of mine; his dark scruff scratching my face; his wet, warm tongue invading my mouth and taking possession of me; the frenetic beat of our hearts, each matching the other’s.
Time stops. There’s this excruciatingly intense moment where we exist in a vacuum, just Marcus and me. My senses dull and sharpen at the same time as the world fades out and everything Marcus is doing to me is amplified by the electricity flowing between us.
I totally lose myself in the flood of sensations I’ve never experienced before. When I come to my senses a few seconds later, Marcus has set me on the cement and is staggering to his feet, his eyes wide and his head shaking an adamant no. But the bulge in the front of his swim trunks puts the lie to the denial in his body language.
“I was…that was…” He bumps into the starting block and it seems to jar him back to his senses. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
I gain my feet. “It’s okay.”
God. I’m a moron. It was so much more than okay.
He must see something in my eyes, because his soften again. “Addie…” He trails off with a slow shake of his head before taking a deep breath and starting again. “You are this incredible…” He trails off again and swallows. “…girl. You’re a girl. I have to keep reminding myself of that, because every time I look at you I see this gorgeous, sexy, amazing woman.”
“I’ll be eighteen in January.” Why can’t I stop myself from saying things that make me sound totally pathetic?
“And I’m twenty-three.” There’s a repulsed scowl on his face as he says this that makes it pretty clear what he thinks of the notion of us together.
I grab my towel and wrap it around me. “I’m sorry. I just thought…” My turn to trail off, because I have no clue where I was going with that. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought, except that you’re the only person in this shithole town that seems to give a rat’s ass about me.” I lower my gaze and huff out a disgusted laugh. “I guess I just thought—”
“You thought right, Addie,” he cuts in, saving me from myself.
His voice is low, and when I look up, Marcus has closed half the distance between us. From his expression, it looks like it’s taking great force of will not to come the last two feet.