Until We Fly (Beautifully Broken 4)

I roll my eyes. “Are you always like this?”

She picks up the pole next to me, fiddling with it. “Like what?”

“So. Uh. Desperate.”

She sucks in a breath and turns to me, indignation spitting from her eyes. I almost laugh.

“I’m not desperate,” she announces, sticking her nose in the air as she further tangles the line on her pole. Annoyed, she tosses it down. “That’s broken.”

I can’t help but laugh as I pick it up and untangle it for her, handing it back. “Don’t mess with that part,” I point at the line. “Hold this button down, then release it as you cast it. Like this.”

I demonstrate.

“And you’re acting desperate. A woman like you doesn’t need to beg someone to fuck her.”

My tone is probably harsher than it needed to be because I can practically see her flinch.

“I’m not desperate,” she repeats, softer this time. “I just… I know what I want. And I only have a limited time to get it. That makes me driven, not desperate.”

I stare at her, at the way the sun is already flushing her cheeks, at the strange look in her eyes… vulnerable, but determined. And I can’t help but wonder once again, why she wants me so much.

I’m not stupid. I know I’m not lacking in female attention. But a girl like Nora can have literally anyone she wants. And girls like that don’t usually throw themselves at someone….because they think they’re above that.

It mystifies me.

We’re quiet for a while, surrounded by the scent of the hot wooden boards, the lake water, the sunshine.

But it doesn’t take long for Nora to get antsy, and I can see why her gardener wanted to be alone to fish. She chatters, and I sigh.

“You know, when you talk, you scare away the fish,” I finally tell her.

She glares up at me.

“You’re not catching anything anyway.”

I sigh again. “It takes time. And patience.”

She falls silent for just a minute, then my mouth falls open as she unties her bikini top.

“What the hell are you doing?” I blurt as she drops her top on the pier and sits topless in the broad daylight.

“I don’t want lines,” she shrugs. “There’s no one out here anyway. This is a private pier.” She turns her back to me, and thrusts a plastic bottle over her shoulder. “Put some sunscreen on my back, would you? It’s a curse of being a ginger, I burn easily.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

It’s the oldest trick in the book. A chick asks you to put lotion on them at the beach in order to get attention.

But still, I sit staring at her bare back, at the expanse of creamy white flesh facing me, and before I know it, I’m grabbing the bottle of sunscreen and dumping some in my hand.

My fingers glide over her soft skin, smoothing the lotion over her slender body, skimming over her shoulders, the friction between our skin warming my hand.

My groin reacts to such a simple act, tightening, constricting, noticing.

Hell.

Nora turns with a smile.

“Now my front?”