“You’re killing me,” he ground out hoarsely. “No problems. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it. Just tell me.”
Lack of sheets, pillows, candles, music? He’d crawl on his hands and knees all the way to La Grange to get double of every last thing.
“I didn’t bring my bathing suit.”
“You didn’t…what?” His brain collapsed as he tried to make sense of the statement in the context of what he’d thought—assumed—they’d been talking about, which apparently wasn’t the same thing she’d been talking about. “What do you need a swimsuit for?”
“Well, I mean, I guess I don’t. I’ve never skinny dipped before either.” Aria’s cheeks pinked up, matching her hair in way he might find cute as soon as all the blood returned to his brain where it clearly needed to be. “But what is tonight about if it’s not being bold?”
“I’m sure I have no idea,” he muttered and shook his head in hopes of clearing out the impure thoughts he’d been having, which wasn’t greatly helped by the replacement images of skinny dipping with Aria. “Are you saying your big plans for tonight involve swimming, possibly without clothing, neither of which you’ve ever done with a man?”
He honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this point. If she hadn’t done either of those things, odds were good she had the same lack of experience with other types of things women did with men, just as he’d earlier surmised. Which meant he needed to back way off, since she probably had no idea how seductive this innocent conversation had turned.
But she just nodded as if the question had been a perfectly reasonable clarification. “The water stays cold year round, even in August. It’s part of the magic of this area that we can’t explain. Jump in with me. You can’t come this far without going all the way.”
Which seemed to be a fitting metaphor for the evening—why not roll with it? “What, we just jump from here into the water?”
“Sure. Nothing like going all in. We’re talking major commitment here because you can’t back out once you’re in the air.”
Also a metaphor? The undercurrents weren’t merely of the sensual variety, though plenty of those were still in the mix. She might have framed this evening as something to be savored with no expectations over what might happen tomorrow, but he was extremely aware that women of Aria’s caliber didn’t mess around with a man and kiss them goodbye in the morning, totally okay with nothing but fond memories for their time together.
Nor did he want her to be okay with that. He wasn’t okay with that. No matter what happened, Aria wasn’t going to be easy to walk away from in the first place, and adding intimacy to their relationship would make it nearly impossible.
That reality should scare him more than it actually did.
But still. His will was only so strong and swimming with a naked woman who had no clue how alluring he found her would break him, no doubt. “I’ll jump. But let’s keep our clothes on.”
“Oh, that would be a shame.” Disappointment crowded into her expression and she shifted, creating a space between them that he didn’t like. “Are you sure we can’t do the skinny dipping part? Ember has lots of times and she always made it sound so great.”
Isaiah bit his tongue before blurting out what had been on the tip of it, which was something along the lines of, the same Ember who has a seven-year-old son? But surely Aria was aware that Ember had likely gotten pregnant as an indirect result of her swimming preferences—or a direct result. That was not a fate Isaiah was prepared to contemplate right now, not when they had so much else seething below the surface of what should have been a simple kiss and so was not.
“Sweetheart, I would love to get naked with you, but not today,” he told her firmly and the blinding smile that earned him nearly knocked him from his already precarious perch on the rock.
“I changed my mind. I like it when you call me sweetheart more than Aria. Especially when you say things like that.” She hummed happily, pushing her chest against his with far too much heat, and he’d had about enough of tempting fate.
“What things?” he growled instead of pushing her away. Apparently he hadn’t quite had enough of making her happy simply by speaking what was on his mind, though. “That I want to see you naked? Pure truth. You’re beautiful and kissing you lights me up inside. I’d love to spend a very long time finding out how much better that could get if we took it to the next level. But we’re not there yet. As much as I’d like to hurry that along, we’re going to take it slow.”
Slow. Everything had come down to that. He didn’t bother to pretend Serenity had gotten it wrong when obviously she’d gotten every single word of his prediction right. Just in telling Aria that they were taking it slow meant he was on a downward slide toward fulfilling that prediction to the letter.
Slow down to find love.
He might already be there. That put a lick of panic in his stomach. But even that wasn’t enough to get him to step back from her.
And there was no way to avoid wondering if this was also the romantic retreat his prediction had called out. Since he hadn’t run screaming from the springs yet, perhaps he could open his heart to that part too. Just here. Just for now. There was no harm in believing in magic for one night, was there?
Tomorrow he could get back to the reality of his life where redemption wasn’t a thing.
“Okay,” she agreed, her eyes a little bit too shiny for a woman who had just been told she wasn’t going to have her world rocked. “Slow is good. But I have to ask how slow. You know, given that you’re leaving tomorrow.”
Yeah, that didn’t sound so great at this point. Soon, he’d have to pick up stakes. But it didn’t have to be tomorrow. “I’m suddenly not in such a hurry.”
She blinked. “Because of me?”
He had to laugh. “What do you think is happening here? That I was going to take advantage of all your sexy talk about being daring and then still jet off in the morning?”
The way she winced told him she had thought that. Wow. A little of the Aria miasma he’d fallen into wore off as he contemplated the quicksand he’d just stepped in. That jumpstarted his brain enough for him to realize that she might have been more aware of how flirtatious her earlier comments had been than he’d given her credit for.
“Isaiah.” She frowned and the vibe between them went colder than he’d have thought possible given all of the heat that had been burning him up a moment ago. “I would never hold you here. No matter what. Even if we…you know. I want to be with you for whatever length of time I can get. I’m totally prepared for you to leave tomorrow. I don’t want you to feel forced to stay.”