He thrust deeper and deeper, rocking every inch of me with desire.
The pressure increased, the desire to come, and there was no stopping now. I held on tight to the edge of the seat as he drove himself into me, harder and harder, faster and faster.
I tried to hold my breath, in anticipation of being dunked in the water, but the shortage of oxygen only made me come harder, letting out an animal groan to match his as he unleashed inside me.
The stars were so bright, but they paled next to the fireworks. I blinked in disbelief as my body shook with pleasure, my skin sizzling with steam. The fireworks were noiseless, and they disappeared. Just a hallucination. Bright lights flaring to the beat of our hearts.
He kissed me roughly, drove into me a final time, and stayed.
We held each other tightly as the canoe stopped rocking and settled once more, everything still on the glass-smooth lake. Frogs and crickets hummed with activity on the nearby shore. A breeze ruffled the left-hand side of my hair, and then came around to the right, like magic.
Dalton slowly withdrew, gasping with sensitivity when my muscles clutched at him on the way out.
He nodded down and quietly did up his jeans. The sun had set, and locating my underwear was difficult in the thin blue light, but he finally found them bunched in his back pocket.
“Careful,” he said as I wriggled around to put my panties back on.
My jaw dropped in mock disgust. “You’re telling me to be careful? Me? Um, excuse me. You’re the one out here in the middle of a lake, drilling me like you’re a greedy mining corporation and I’m a mountain full of diamonds.”
“Yes, but I was moving front to back. You can rock a canoe safely from stern to, um, the other part.”
“You mean starboard?”
“No, this is starboard.” He jerked his body to rock the canoe to one side. The midnight blue water around us splashed a warning.
I raised a finger. “Don’t.”
He rocked the boat again. “Starboard.”
This time, the canoe rocked far enough to the side that a wave of lake water splashed over the edge to pool at our feet.
I gasped and lifted my feet.
CHAPTER 29
I’ll never know why I was so concerned about getting my blue sneakers wet. They weren’t suede, after all.
Something about water splashing into the vessel—the vessel that was supposed to keep the water on the outside—made me freak out.
I lifted my feet and leaned back, forgetting that I wasn’t sitting on a chair, but on a bench, with no back. Once I’d tipped the point of no return, I was going down. I landed on my back in the hull of the boat.
I wasn’t hurt so much as I was shocked, and the wind knocked out of me. Wheezing, I struggled to get over the shock and catch my breath.
Dalton chose this moment to be heroic, which, in this instance, involved standing up. He was, unfortunately, well to the starboard side of the boat, and I think you can figure out the rest.
Everything flipped, and keeping my blue sneakers dry was no longer a concern.
Into the cold water we plunged.
I surfaced in the dark, gasping for air and flailing around for something to hold me up. The bright yellow life jacket bobbed up right beside me. I grabbed the jacket and clutched it tightly to my chest as I got my bearings.
“Dalton?”
Only frogs answered.
I told myself not to panic, but you can imagine how well that worked.
“Dalton!” I yelled.
From the darkness came his reply. “On a scale of one to ten, how upset are you?”
“I don’t know.” I kicked my feet and twirled myself around in the water until I spotted him, treading water with one hand on the overturned canoe. “This water is warmer than I expected.”
“It’s a nice night for a swim.”
“Dalton… I don’t mean to alarm you, but where the FUCK IS THE DOCK?!”
“Right behind you,” he said calmly.
“Oh.” I looked, and saw lights on by the dock.
He explained, “I turned the lights on at the shed, remember. I’ve had my eye on it the whole time. You don’t think I’d take you out on a lake at sunset with no exit strategy, do you?”
I splashed a wave of water his way. “You’re a disaster.”
Even in the dark, I could tell he was smirking as he replied, “No, you’re the disaster. My life wasn’t like this before I met you, Peaches Monroe.”
Grumbling a few choice words, I joined him at the canoe and helped him right the thing.
If you’ve been on a canoe a time or two, you’ll know that getting back in after you’ve been capsized is not the easiest operation. In fact, if it ever happens to you, I recommend getting in a time machine, going back in time, and warning yourself against renting a canoe.