“You two have a lot to be proud of.”
“Yeah, I guess we do…”
My mind whirled. I tried thinking about the case, about the fact that we were just attacked by knife-wielding thugs, but all I could focus on was the ghost touch of Fox’s lips on mine.
“Let’s, uh, let’s go somewhere,” I practically spat out. I glanced at my watch, as if the time mattered. “Do you mind? I usually go to Pebble Beach when I have a lot to think about. Barely anyone ever goes there for some reason, so the beach is usually really quiet.”
“I’m down,” he said, putting the car into drive. “You’ve got a lot on your mind?” The way Fox asked made it clear that he was referencing the kiss.
But I couldn’t go there right now. “This case. I feel like there’s something that we’re missing, and it’s right there at the tip of my fingers.” I closed my fingers into a fist in the air. “Clearing my head usually helps me see things I couldn’t before.”
Fox seemed okay with that answer. “I agree.”
We drove in silence for a while; even the radio was turned off. I had lowered the window, the fresh air filling the car while thoughts of Fox naked and on top of me filled my head.
I couldn’t stop. After last night, after our kisses… damn it, Fox was quickly becoming my strange addiction. I couldn’t pinpoint it. Why was I so fucking attracted to him? He was a guy; he had a cock.
One that I want to play with twenty-four seven.
“—gay?”
“What? Huh?” I almost lurched out of my seat. I only caught the tail of whatever Fox had asked over the sound of the wind whooshing past as we drove.
He lifted the windows slightly. “When did your brother come out as gay?”
Oooh, okay, that’s what he said.
“Like eight years ago,” I said, grateful I wasn’t sitting next to a mind reader. “He had a difficult time with a couple of close-minded cousins, but other than that, he was thankfully okay. Well, and besides a couple of those kids from school I had to talk to. Other than that, he was good. Which was great, considering it wasn’t as easy back then. Crazy what a difference a couple of years makes, huh?”
“It really is. Things still are far from perfect, but at least we’ve gotten a lot closer.”
Fox pulled into a sandy parking lot, empty of any cars. Like I had guessed, people were too focused on South Beach to give Pebble Beach a shot. That meant we’d have a little slice of paradise all to ourselves. I wasn’t sure if that made me more excited or more scared. There were definitely nerves rising up inside me that I couldn’t explain, and they didn’t quiet themselves as we got out of the car and walked over to the start of the beach.
We took off our shoes and socks and walked barefoot across the hot sand. I felt a couple of shells and rocks poke at my soles. The water ahead was serene, with a whitish-blue sheen that made the ocean seem as though it were painted into the horizon in vibrant watercolors. The rhythmic sound of the waves breaking on the shore, mixed with the sweet scent of the ocean and the distant cries of seagulls, helped calm those raging nerves a bit. My thoughts stopped swirling around Fox and trying to figure out what it was about him that drove me crazy.
Wild. He drove me wild. How? Why?
I’ve felt attracted toward men before, but never this kind of magnetism…
This was exploding and I had no idea how to handle it. Was I actually feeling something for Fox? A deeper pull than a glancing physical attraction would suggest, which was confusing enough to deal with.
Plus, we’d only just met… but since when did that ever stop anybody?
It was only when Fox and I reached the wet sand, when we turned to each other, when his hazel eyes landed on mine, that those nerves came rocketing back into the limelight. They reacted the second Fox and I made eye contact. It was an immediate and overwhelming reaction.
“We going in?” he asked, that cocky smile growing.
“We’re going in.”
We turned to the water and stripped down to our briefs, chuckling like kids as we walked into the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean, leaving behind more than our clothes on the shoreline. When we got up to our chests in the water, I felt like everything else had been lifted from me. I felt weightless. All of my problems and worries and anxieties, the fact that we were just in a fight for our lives, all of it, everything was put on pause for a brief moment, left back on land.
Now, all there was to focus on was myself and Fox, a man who dipped under the water and rose up like some kind of sea god, water falling down his hair and face, dripping off his lips in thick, heavy drops.