In This Moment(48)

Reluctantly, I pull my hand away and let it fall to the sand between us. This is fucking torture. I cough and lean back.

I’ve been with enough girls to know the signals, but this is the one girl that has me questioning anything and everything. She’s had me confusing up and down and left and right and who knows what else since the day that she fell into my lap.

Her eyes cut back to mine and they are darker than I’ve ever seen them—two swirling seas blinking at me from her pale face.

“I want to go to the meet. To see you race,” she says in a whisper and I realize that I’ve almost forgotten what we were talking about.

Running track. The invitational in a few weeks.

“Do you miss it? Racing?” I’m able to keep my voice flat even though my insides are rioting.

“I miss a lot of things,” she says, bowing her head as she works through her thoughts. I love the gentle way her neck curves into her shoulders. I want to touch her there. I want to taste her skin and kiss her eyelashes and drink up everything about her. “I haven’t been in the water in more than a year.”

I don’t think either one of us has moved but somehow our bodies have managed to get closer than they were five seconds ago. Her hip is pressed against my hip and her leg is flush against my leg, and our fingers are brushing the sand between us—almost touching. Almost.

“We could go in now,” I say gruffly, nodding my chin toward the water.

Her lips curl. She looks from my face to where the waves are breaking over the sand. “I don’t have a bathing suit with me.”

I think about saying something fucktastically clichéd about not needing a bathing suit, but I can’t do that. Not with her. Not tonight. “Ah, well… we’ll come again soon, yeah?”

She nods and leans back on her elbows like me so that her hair is dangling in the sand. Each time the air moves around us, I can smell her shampoo and it’s sweet, like having a plate of pastries just under my nose.

“Aimee…”

She absently runs the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip and that one small movement stops the earth in place. Just stops it.

I can hear my heartbeat.

I can hear the sound of my brain churning out thoughts and the blood flowing through my body and the air displacing around our bodies and my nerve endings firing off.

I’m aware of every single thing about this moment—the way that the white dress she’s wearing clings to her body in all the right places, her toes buried deep in the soft sand, her clear blue eyes reaching far into mine, and the low sound that her body makes each time she exhales.

Right now I really don’t want to think about the girl that I had sex with two nights ago, but I do, and I fucking hate myself for it. Technically, it wasn’t cheating. But still. I wish that I could take her back. I wish that I could redo most of my shitty life and—

“Cole,” she says with her eyes on my lips. My eyes. My lips. My eyes. My lips.

“Be careful,” I warn in a voice so scratchy and hoarse that I’m not sure that she can understand me. Fuck. I don’t mean that I don’t want this to happen with her. I do. But she needs to be sure, because once we go to that place there will be no turning back. Not for me.

Aimee hesitates. Uncertainty is smeared across her face and I think that I’ve officially blown everything to shit, but then the tips of her fingers breeze up my arm and she seesaws her body, closing the gap between us. I see her eyelids fall shut and mine do the same. How many seconds does it take? One? Only half a second? As soon as her warm, moist breath touches my lips, I’m a goner. Any argument that I may have had with myself leaves my head and the only thing that exists is now. This breath. This touch. This moment.

The first kiss is tentative, painfully brief, the same way you take a small bite of food that you’re afraid might be too hot. I pull back and look into her blue eyes. Her entire body is bundled tight, held taut and stiff like she’s unsure of my next move. Carefully, conscious not to break the moment, I touch her slightly parted mouth with my finger. She gasps and opens her mouth farther and I feel the wetness of her tongue against my skin as she moistens her lips. Man, I already love those pink lips. I already love the way that they feel rubbing up against mine.

“Are you going to kiss me for real or what?”

I laugh and after that, everything happens in a rush. We come together hard and this time my hungry mouth presses firmly into hers and my tongue glides between the crease of her lips and I discover a new taste. Aimee Spencer. It’s a mixture of salt and fresh air and something that is so her that I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to get enough of it.