“A quick escape… yeah. I guess I do that. I blindly decide to do things because, like you said, I can. I can afford it. I have access. I don’t deny it.” He jerked his thumb toward the stately lake house behind them. “I was able to put off some work because I don’t need the money. It’s a passion I’ve made a career out of, but it will always be a passion first. It’s not a legacy I would leave to any children to pick up unless they really wanted to. It’s not Feldman Steel.” Zack lay back on the dock, shielding his face from the sun making its slow summer descent to the forest canopy. “And you always seem so stress out. I haven’t known you that long. You’re right. I’m not a good friend yet if I don’t know these things about you.”
“No, I’m being too hard on you.” Rachel hovered, her wispy ponytail blowing in the slight breeze overtaking the dock and lake. Zack parted his fingers so he could catch a glimpse of her illuminated face. “I’m sorry. You’ve done a lot of nice things for me and I keep throwing them back in your face.”
“A little, yeah.” Zack flung one hand over the side of the dock. A mosquito came close, but he waved it away. “I don’t mind, though. I’d rather you throw my nice stuff back in my face than point out every one of my flaws like I don’t know them.”
“Yeah, right. Like you know of all your flaws.”
“You think I don’t?”
“It’s impossible to know all of your own flaws. Some are impossible to see from your own point of view.”
“All right.” Zack pulled his knees up, feet flat on the dock again. “So what’s one of my biggest flaws you don’t think I know about?”
“This is a trap. You don’t really want to know.”
Damn, she’s already thought of something? From the woman who has only known me for a couple of weeks? They certainly were moving quickly. “Now I have to know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Rachel gave him a contemplative look. Let me have it, Rachel Taylor. Fuck me up with the truth.
“You don’t understand how good you’ve got it.”
“Come again?”
“I could say that your biggest flaw is that you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to be financially insecure, stuff like that… but that’s easy. You seem like the kind of rich boy who understands that to a point.” Rachel sat on her legs, hands in her lap. “But what you’ll never understand is how much other people would kill to be you. Regardless of what downsides there are to being who you are, who your family is, and the kind of shit that uniquely comes with being a billionaire heir, you’ll never, ever understand what drives someone to become like you.”
“Wow.” Zack snorted. “That’s pretty deep.” She wasn’t wrong, either. Zack wasn’t pompous enough to suggest that he knew what it was like to be poor. He also didn’t know what it was like to go from being poor to rich overnight or over a lifetime. God willing, he would never have to know either of those things.
“All right.” Rachel looked away. “My turn.”
Zack claimed to not have heard her.
“I said it’s my turn. What’s my biggest flaw that I don’t realize?”
“We’ve already covered that you barely know how to chill and are probably going to waste your youth with this whole work thing…” Zack grinned. “Nah. I know what a dangerous game this is. I’m not about to tell a woman her fatal flaw.”
Rachel furrowed her beautiful brown brows. “Do it. Give me the hard truth, Zack.”
“You don’t want the truth.”
“I think the phrase is You can’t handle the truth.”
“That too.” Zack propped himself up on his elbows. “You really wanna know what I think your biggest flaw is?”
“Yes.”
“You promise not to freak out at me?”
“I won’t. Even if I disagree with you.”
“All right.” Even so, Zack braced himself. “Your flaw is that you will never know how much you’re worth.”
Rachel didn’t respond. If anything, her silent response sounded more than a single word she could say.
“You’ve been colored by shitty life experiences. Apparently people, especially men, have made you feel like you’re not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, whatever. You don’t have to tell me that your self-esteem was shattered back in college. Now you have to take care of your mom? It’s a lot to ask. Surviving that kind of stress requires you to…”
Zack didn’t have a chance to fully explain himself. Not when Rachel pounced on him, her face coming dangerously close to his.
For a man who had kissed countless women before, he was forever amazed by the kind of punches Rachel packed.
He was also in shock. Because one of the last things he expected from this quick getaway was Rachel Taylor kissing him like he had dreamed of kissing her more than once.
Was she as pent up as he was? Was she willing to go back on her vow of celibacy? Does kissing count toward breaking that vow? Or was it only sex? Rachel had made sure Zack understood that boundary a few days ago. Absolutely no sex. Making out in the lobby of her apartment building was as far as it went, and they weren’t going to talk about it afterward.
This whole “friendship” started because I asked her out.
If Zack needed any convincing that Rachel was into him too, he now had it. He also now understood her hesitancy to make love with him. People – men – had hurt her. She was under a lot of stress and using casual sex as an outlet. Somewhere along the way she decided that was harmful to her psyche and growth as a person. So, celibacy. For a whole summer.
Yet she was kissing Zack? With tongue?
Like hell he’d let her do all the work. It took two to kiss well.
Zack wasn’t going to stop it. If Rachel wanted to kiss him? Fine! He’d kiss her back! He’d show her how much beautiful worth she had, and he said this as a man who had only known her for a fortnight.
It felt like years. Those two kisses they had shared so far screamed that they had a bond so old it would never be matched by anyone else in the world. A scary thought, since Rachel had never seemed that interested in him.
Until now. When she straddled his waist and bent down to kiss him some more.
Chapter 16
There they were, Zack flat on his back on an open, wooden dock, and Rachel straddling the breadth of his body so she could kiss him with both hands on his face. Zack’s fingers slowly untangled and were drawn into her silky hair.
Wow. That was the only thought he allowed himself while sensually kissing Rachel’s lips. Just… fucking wow. This wasn’t the intense first kiss they shared after the night at the movie in the park. This was the slow kind of kiss that was nothing but them exploring each other and testing uncharted waters.
Which also meant they had a lot of time to change their minds.
“Shit.” Rachel sat up, pushing her ponytail back behind her shoulders. “What the fuck am I doing?”
“Yup. That was all you.” Zack dropped his hands to his side. Birds squawked overhead. His phone buzzed with a text from God knew who. Rachel’s breath rattled in her chest as she closed her eyes and acted as if she had traveled a thousand miles away.
They were utterly alone. Yet Zack felt like they were exposed to every eye in the world.
“What the fuck am I doing?”
“Dunno.” Zack’s eyes wandered to her chest, because he couldn’t help himself. She has got a nice… Oh, like he had never looked at it before. Stared at it. Ogled it. Rachel’s chest was one of the focal points of her whole body. She carried her breasts well. As a man who had his face in plenty of fake and natural breasts, he knew that one did not mean better than other. Some natural breasts were beyond proportional to a woman’s body. Some fake ones accentuated her in ways she could never achieve otherwise. Either way, I’m a fan. Rachel looked like the best of both worlds: proportional with all the sensation maintained. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing you.”
“Not right now you aren’t.”
“No, but…” Rachel hopped off him. So neither of us are going to mention how that got me half-hard? She probably hadn’t noticed – but Zack sure had. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.”
Rachel curled her hands into a tight fist and bit her lip. “God damnit! Why does it have to feel so either or?”
Zack rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his hand. “You’re the one making it either or. You’re the one who has kissed me, twice.”
“You kissed me first.”
“True. Because I like you. I’m not shy or ashamed to admit that I asked you out because I was attracted to you. But I admit I’ve never had a relationship go this way before.”
She snorted. “We could never be a real couple.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“Reasons in your head?”
“Sure.”
“I’m willing to wait for you, but you’ll torture me the whole time.”
“Wait for me to what?” She shot him a heated look. Damn, that’s scalding hot. Zack was getting more and more turned on now that his body decided it was aroused. “To fuck you?”