Page 133 of Wildest Dreams

“If I put your tent next to mine then it’ll be easier to sneak over tonight with no-one seeing. And I wanna hold you, Ash. All night.”

Please don’t make me go without you again.

She smiles up at me all confident and beautiful, making me feel exactly the way that she did when we met four years ago.

Speechless. Love-struck. Willing to do anything for her.

She squeezes her fingers around mine and I grunt, tugging her closer.

“Fine,” I rumble. “I’ll set your tent opposite mine. But don’t think for one second that I’m happy about it.”

I drop her hand so that I can give her perfect waist a subtle squeeze, and then I’m trudging my way to the opposite side of the camp. I haul Aisling’s tent down in the space between Connell’s and Logan’s, and then I glance at her over my shoulder while I start unzipping the carrier.

The smile that she’s biting back is naughty as hell, but knowing that her eyes are on me has me working like a machine.

When I’ve finally set the whole tent up I start un-bagging quilts and sheets, padding out her tent to make sure that it’s soft enough for her to sleep on.

Then, after checking that the guys are too busy either throwing around Logan’s football or watching game footage on their phones to notice, I slip her new battery-operated fairy lights from the bottom of one of the bags, twining the string through the pole-loops in the fabric so that later tonight she can switch them on before she goes to sleep. I flip the switch to checkthat the batteries are still working and, seeing that they are, I turn them back off. I set the power-pack on one of her cushions, and then hunch out of the tent, re-zipping the door before I stretch in the sunlight.

The guys have finished setting up their tents when I get back to mine, although Hunter and Austin are currently half-building it for me.

The other half of their concentration is going on murdering Logan at his own sport.

“Career change?” I suggest to Logan with a smirk, grinning when he launches the football right at me. I grab it with one hand and send it flying back in his direction.

He grins back at me, eyes sliding down to my precariously half-formulated tent. The football twitches tauntingly in his fists.

I splay one hand in front of the tent poles and laugh, “Leave my tent alone, man.”

But before he can launch into a full attack the four of us instantly go silent as Aisling – my beautiful secret girlfriend – walks my way.

Like, she’s walking right over to me. In front of everyone.

She flicks a smile over at Austin that has the fucker turning to mush and then she’s right in front of me, pushing a hand through her hair before shielding her eyes from the sun.

A sliver of a ray manages to slip through her fingers, setting her irises aflame and shimmering like diamonds.

“Thanks for setting up my tent,” she says, that husky voice making my biceps flex.

I grip a hand at the back of my neck and rasp, “Thank you – I mean, you’re welcome.”Oh God.“I mean, it’s no problem. Like, thank you for, uh, thanking me.”

Hunter lets out a low whistle.

Austin mumbles, “Oh boy.”

Aisling breathes out a laugh, that perfect smile sparkling in the sunshine.

“You’re welcome,” she says, teasing the shit out of me, but it still makes me grin like that love-struck freshman, the hand that isn’t at the back of my neck gripping firmly around my belt.

I shoot a quick glance at the guys behind her, who are looking at literally anywhere other than us, and I take a careful step forward, not wanting to breach the distance between kind-of-friendly and we’re-fucking when we’re not disclosing that publically yet.

She arches her eyebrow at me under the shield of her hand and suddenly a thought flashes through my mind, making me smirk down at her.

“You need a cap?” I ask, and her breathing halts.

Her eyes momentarily widen.Yeah, I thought so.

She tries to shake it off by rasping, “Um, I didn’t bring one.”

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