Mouth to Mouth (Beach Kingdom 1)

“You either.”

She heard him swallow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Olive decided to let him get away with the lie. “You weren’t on duty when I got to the beach. Where did you come from?”

Rory didn’t answer as they passed beneath an arch into another room, separate from the locker area. And darker. He eased her feet to a tile floor. Before she could look around to discern their new location, Rory steadied her with his left hand and punched something above her head with his right—and holy blessed warm water went streaming down her head, shoulders and back, shocking her chilled skin with blissful heat.

She backed further into what could only be a shower and Rory followed, his grip reassuring on her elbow. “Ohhhh.” Her neck loosened, head tipping to one side. “That’s perfect. Totally worth almost drowning for.”

“Agree to disagree,” came his low voice from the other side of the spray. Olive peeked around the stream of water to find Rory battling concern…and something darker. Hotter. His inked chest lifted and fell in a staggered rhythm, steam from the shower dappling him with condensation. “Are you warmed up?”

His gravelly tone of voice turned Olive’s nipples to painful points. I’m wearing a bathing suit. No cover-up. Nothing. Her arms flew up to cross over her breasts, but that only pushed them up more, so she dropped her hands to their original position. “Did everyone see my boobs?”

“What?” His gaze sharpened and snapped to hers. “No. No one saw any part of you they shouldn’t.” He dragged a hand over his eyes. “But I’m seeing way too damn much right now, Olive. Are you warmed up?”

The word yes sprung to her lips, but no sound came out. She was alone in a dark shower with a man who’d stirred something to life inside of her. Something that made her feel…older. Feminine. She’d had crushes on neighborhood boys in the past and swore she’d experienced attraction. Nope. Nothing in her life had come close to the yearning that crawled all over her now, wreaking discomfort and emptiness in places she didn’t know such things were possible.

And God. God, it didn’t help that Rory was absolutely gorgeous with his wet hair and cords of tan muscles, topped with tattoos so stark, they seemed freshly painted. That wasn’t what made her ache, though. No, his eyes did that. They betrayed how aware he was of Olive. That this gravitational force between them was not typical. It wasn’t typical at all.

She could no more say the words, “Yes, I’m warmer now,” than she could go about the rest of her day without drawing Rory closer. Finding some way to touch him. Be touched. Because if she said those words, they would leave this place. He’d put an end to this thing between them that he’d obviously deemed wrong.

“So…” Operating on their own terms, her fingertips traced the edge of her bikini bottoms. Rory’s eyes tracked their progress like a hunter, a violent shudder passing through him. “You’re not going to call me. You’re just going to be my personal rescue service?”

Restless hands flexed at his sides. “I don’t know how to answer that, Olive.”

“Try.”

A beat passed. His nostrils flared. “I made it through a day without calling you. I was trying to make it through another…and then I saw you in front of someone else’s chair, looking like a fuck fantasy that has no place in my head—” He cut himself off with a sharp exhale. “So I switched. I switched so I could be near you. I couldn’t help wanting to be near you.”

Fuck fantasy. Fuck fantasy. The words pinged around in her head like hailstones off a window. “I picked this bathing suit specifically for its modesty.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Oh.” Olive didn’t realize she’d stepped back until her shoulder blades pressed to the steam-covered tile wall and she nearly moaned at the sensation of something—anything—touching her skin. The hard surface made her feel provocative. Trapped. She wanted to be trapped between the tile and Rory. “Will you just come here?” she whispered.

A scrape of a sound left his mouth. “I don’t know if I can stop touching you once I start. I don’t know anything when it comes to you.”

The running water sluicing down from above sent wet hair into her face, obscuring her vision, so she pushed it back, let the damp warmth run over her lips. “Please?”

Rory lunged, growling, stopping just short of making contact. His hands slapped the tile above her head, his chest heaving. And then his mouth gave the barest brush of her temple and Olive almost collapsed under the rush of bliss, unable to trap her moan this time.

“Come on, Olive,” he said choppily. “Barely touching you and that body reacts like I’m giving it that first hard thrust. You’re killing me here.”