He had hidden tattoos on his chest.
Ones that I hadn’t seen until he’d shucked his shirt.
He also had chest hair that was incredibly enticing, making me want to run my fingers through it and see if it was soft or wiry.
“You ready?” he asked.
I shivered at the look in his eyes, and I wished that I hadn’t been so naive over the last few years that I couldn’t tell what it was that he was thinking.
“I am,” I confirmed. “Meet you down there.”
Since our stairs dumped us out underneath our houses facing each other, I was able to see him coming unhurriedly down the stairs. My eyes took in his muscled thighs as they bunched and jumped with his movements, and I had the crazy urge to poke them to see if they were as hard as they looked.
“Ready?”
I blinked, surprised to find that in the time I’d been studying him, he’d moved to the concrete beneath the house while I’d hesitated on the second to last step.
“Yep,” I confirmed. “Let’s go.”
The moment we stepped out into the drizzling rain, I shivered for an altogether different reason.
“Holy crap.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “It’s freakin’ cold!”
As in, really cold.
I could barely stand to be in the rain, and I’d literally been in the rain for a total of five seconds.
“You’ll warm up when we get down there,” he promised.
I didn’t believe him.
When we got down to the beach, the lot of the brothers and Iris and Sophia were gathered in a circle underneath a tent.
I joined them, squirming my way in behind Price, and all but touching him when I felt the heat wafting off of his body.
“Y’all ready to play?”
No. I was too busy freezing to death.
“What do you want to do?” I heard one ask. “Split the girls up and give the one with only one girl an extra guy?”
As they figured out logistics, I started to blink my eyes, feeling my eyelashes get heavy.
Then I nearly groaned.
I’d just gotten those eyelashes put on.
Generally, I wasn’t very high maintenance.
Except when it came to my eyelashes, because for some reason, my eyelashes were nonexistent.
Meaning, I got fake ones put on by a professional once every six weeks.
And one of the drawbacks of fake eyelashes was trying to keep them dry. Out on the beach the first day when Faye had died, I’m not sure how they didn’t slide right off.
My eyes landed on the ground, where a sandy pair of goggles lay discarded in the middle of a beach chair.
I bent down, picked it up, and walked off to wash them in the ocean.
When I had them clean, I walked back toward where the men and women had dispersed on either side of the net.
I came to a pause on the side of the court and said, “Which side do you want me on?”
It was Bram who pointed at the team across the net.
I put the goggles on and walked up to where there was a tiny little opening for me.
Shivering all the while.
At first, nobody noticed my goggles.
They were too busy bouncing the ball from one person to another.
Then the ball came my way, and I had to move out of the way of a very large body chasing said ball.
When Tide dove to the ground at my feet, it caused everyone to look at me.
It was Price who said, “Why do you have goggles on?”
I looked up to find him not too far away from where his brother had just covered my lower half in sprayed sand.
“My fake eyelashes,” I answered. “They don’t like rain.”
His lips twitched, but he shook his head and didn’t tease me anymore.
That didn’t mean that the rest of them didn’t.
Even Sophia and Iris got in on the action.
“Haven’t y’all ever had your eyelashes done before?” I countered when Iris giggled again in my direction. “Seriously, this is my one single vice. I don’t get my nails done. I don’t get my teeth cleaned every three months. I get my eyelashes done. Because if I don’t, it looks like I have none. I have to protect them, because the idea of having to go to the lash tech and get them done again before I usually do makes me break out in hives.”
Iris flashed me a smile and served the ball directly at me.
Sadly, because my goggles were fogging up, I completely missed that it was aimed directly at me until it literally smacked against my thighs.
“Oh, shit.” I paused. “You’re supposed to ask if everyone’s ready!”
“Were you not?” Iris wondered.
I paused. “Well, I was, I guess. Technically. But I was waiting to hear you yell it.”
Iris snickered and Tide, who was on my left, muttered something beneath his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “We’re going to lose.”
I bit my lip and then showed them what a college division three volleyball player looked like.