I opt for a subject change. “Well, anyway, I missed you last night.”
There’s a moment of silence before London answers. “I missed you, too.”
I am so fucking crazy for this girl that such a simple admission and my chest is filled with helium. “What are you doing today?”
“I’ll probably finish Lola’s site, maybe run some errands. Right now I’m just hanging out, thinking.”
“Just thinking?”
She pauses. “Yeah . . .”
I don’t like the way all of this makes me feel. “Need some help?”
“Some help thinking?” she says, and I close my eyes, imagining the way her dimples are probably denting her cheeks when she says this.
“Don’t you need to get to work today? Or are you taking another personal day?”
“I’m meeting one of the partners down at the courthouse later this afternoon. I have some time this morning.”
“You want to meet at Black’s? We could work on your pop-up,” she says.
“At Black’s?” I clarify, brows raised.
“Sure, why not?”
“I know next to nothing about surfing, and even I know Black’s does not have a bunny hill, Logan.”
“There’s a section of nude beach here. Maybe I just want to get you naked.”
I press my hand to my dick and close my eyes with a groan. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
* * *
TAKING THE WOODEN stairs that lead down the cliffside, I spot London’s bright orange bikini top almost immediately. She’s amazing, just a neon speck in this massive blue ocean, and surrounded by guys who look almost twice her size. I stop and watch her for a minute, noting how patient she is as she waits for just the right wave, how determined she becomes when she finally finds one. It’s hard not to want to run out and save her when she gets knocked into the surf, but I realized a long time ago, London doesn’t need me to save her from anything.
I continue down to the beach and take a look around. London’s right: for someone who’s lived most of his life near the beach, I’ve spent shockingly little of that time at any of them—this one included. From the sand, Black’s is nothing but ocean and giant cliffs all around, and it’s easy to forget there’s a city just beyond it.
London sees me from the water and I watch as she paddles in, all long arms, strong shoulders, and tan skin. I find a place for my board in the sand—carefully, just like she showed me—and sit down to wait for her. She makes it to the shore and tucks her own board under her arm, crossing the beach and stopping close enough for water droplets to land on my feet.
“Hey,” she says, smiling down at me.
I can’t help but let my eyes skim the curves and lines of her body, before meeting her smile with one of my own. “Hey, yourself.”
She wrings out her hair and then, after a moment of hesitation, straddles my lap.
I let out an intensely feminine high-pitched squeak. “Cold!”
“Oops, sorry.”
I fight halfheartedly against her attempts to press her wet, cold chest against my dry, warm one. “You don’t look very sorry.”
“Because I’m not. I like you in your swim trunks, though,” she says, fingers teasing down my sides to tug at the waist of my shorts. “I didn’t get to tell you that last time.”
With my hands bracketing her ribs, I brush my thumbs along the skin just below her breasts . . . because this is a thing I can do now. I think.
“You mean when you tried to feed me to the sharks?” I ask. She nods and I lean in, kissing her chin. “I liked your suit, too. It took superhuman strength not to get hard every time you touched me.”
“I could barely concentrate; I’m surprised you didn’t drown.”
I laugh against her skin, running my nose along the column of her throat. She smells like the ocean and sunblock, and I wonder idly how much convincing it would take to get her to blow off whatever it is she’s thinking about and come home with me.
I tug a little on the string tying her top together and brush her wet hair over her shoulder. “I want to apologize again for not seeing your texts. I really would have liked to have seen you last night.”
“It’s fine. Your phone is crazy, I totally get how you missed it,” she says, and I feel the vibration of her voice against my lips. She scratches my scalp and tugs on my hair and I moan, almost missing it when she says, “Are you a good monster, or a bad monster, Luke Sutter?”
I close my eyes and lean into her touch. “Can’t I be both?”
She runs her finger from my hair to my forehead, down my nose, and over my top lip. Opening my mouth, I take her fingertip between my teeth, and bite it.
“You make me sort of crazy,” she says, eyes a little unfocused, mouth slightly open.
“Crazy is good.”
“You’re like junk food.”
I suck a little, and then smile, speaking around her finger. “Junk food?”
“Yeah,” she says, tongue peeking out to lick her lips. “Pizza. Chips.”