Page 24 of Messy AF
I’d take that win.
“What are you thinking about, angel?”
“How awesome I am.”
“And so humble too,” he teased, his gentle laughter carried away on the breeze.
“What?” I lifted my head and sat upright so I could look at him. “You don’t think I’m awesome?”
He stared back, the moonlight reflecting in his eyes. “I think you’re perfect.”
A bit of an oversell, but he would get no complaints from me. “Good answer.” Leaning back on the heels of my palms, I stared up at the ocean of stars that dotted the sky. “Are you ready to go?”
He answered with a question of his own. “Are you tired?”
“No, but it’s hot as hell out here.” Despite the darkness and the light wind that blew over the lake, the humidity was still sweltering. “If I have to sweat, I’d rather be naked,” I added, only partially joking.
“Who says we have to go home to get naked?”
I laughed, thinking he couldn’t be serious.
He was.
“What are you doing?” I hissed when he stood and began stripping out of his clothes. “You can’t do that.”
“Says who?”
“Public decency laws.”
“Who’s going to see?”
I jerked around, my eyes scanning the darkness as if I expected the Circle City PD or possibly the neighborhood watch to come storming out of the bushes.
“Warren, put your damn clothes back on.”
Instead of compliance, I received a cocksure smirk before he walked off the end of the pier and splashed into the water. He disappeared beneath the surface, reemerging only a heartbeat later like some Atlantean god.
“Are you going to join me?”
The lake looked endless as it stretched out behind him, its black surface swallowing the distant shoreline. Which somehow made him seem even more ethereal.
I hesitated, caught between the urge to scold and the ache to follow.
Warren drifted further out, his silhouette slicing through the reflected starlight, and his laughter echoing off the glassy surface. He moved through the water with an ease that felt almost taunting.
I hugged my knees to my chest, heart thundering in my ears, caught between the safety of the pier and the pull of Warren’s gaze. My toes curled against the rough planks as I warred with myself, trying and failing to resist the urge of being lured into his midnight dare.
“You’re impossible,” I muttered.
Warren grinned wider, obviously waiting for me to break.
“There is a sign.” I stabbed my finger toward the piece of metal posted in the sand next to the dock. “Right there. It clearly prohibits swimming.”
Warren jerked his head to the side, the motion somehow looking like a shrug. “Suit yourself.”
I glared at him, trying to summon the kind of conviction that could anchor me to the dock, but my resolve faded by the second. I liked rules—they existed for a reason—but I also couldn’t resist the need to follow wherever my mate led.
I glanced at him again, at the way he drifted lazily, arms outstretched, his confidence inviting and infuriating in equal measure.
