Page 73 of Heart to Heart
“Well, you know me, I’m a rebel. A rebel who probably shouldn’t be following schools of fish to destinations unknown. They would most likely use me as some sacrifice to their fishy god, never to be seen again.”
“Sure, that’s one possibility. Or you would have gotten lost, and we would have had to deploy the Coast Guard to come find you, all while your disappearance was milked for ratings.”
“I mean, sure, if you want to be all realistic about it.” I looked around, noticing his shadows were conspicuously absent. “Where are Charlie and Brittney L.?”
Tristan rolled his eyes. “Brittney L. thought a piece of kelp was a shark, and that was all she wrote.”
“Did you at least offer to slay the kelp? It would have been the chivalrous thing to do.”
“It crossed my mind, but then I thought the real act of chivalry would be finding a missing woman in the middle of the ocean.”
“Six of one, half-dozen of the other.”
Tristan looked around. “My God, it’s peaceful out here. I should have swum out here earlier.”
“Why? So, you could get away from us?” I teased.
“No,” he said, his voice more serious. “Just them.”
My eyes dropped to his lips, fixating on the perfect angles of his pronounced Cupid’s bow, remembering our time in the hot tub down to the last second. Add fake flirting to Tristan’s ever-growing repertoire, because, my God, my entire body reacted to him.
“Really?” I asked, my voice coming out as more of a rasp. “And why did you want to get me alone?”
“Avery,” his hand caressed the skin where my neck met my clavicle, “all I ever think about is getting you alone. It’s getting kind of problematic for me.”
“If I’m such a problem, we should return to the boat.” I moved to swim away, but his lightning-fast hand grabbed my wrist, pulling me into him until my body was flush against his.
Tristan’s wide-eyed expression told me that he hadn’t anticipated his own strength, that he’d thought he’d crossed a line with me.
“Avery, I’m sorry.” He let go of my wrist. “I didn’t mean to be so rough with you.”
“You call that rough?” Jesus, I was practically panting. “Tristan, I know you can be rougher than that.”
Something shifted in the way he looked at me, like the Golden Retriever in him had retreated into its kennel, leaving behind its feral cousin. Before I could figure out what exactly that cousin was, Tristan’s lips crashed into mine, and we were all muffled moans and flailing limbs as we struggled for purchase in the water without breaking ourselves away from each other.
My fingers firmly entwined in Tristan’s hair, I positioned my legs around his waist, tasting the mint mouthwash on his tongue. His hand cupped my ass, holding me close as his mouth broke away from mine to plant kisses down my jawline, eventually landing on my neck where his stubble rubbed my skin deliciously raw.
“You’re so damn sexy, Avery,” he murmured in my ear as his grip on me tightened. I moaned, my pulse quickening. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”
Anything. Everything. All of the things.
My body hummed with anticipation, my nerve endings coming to life everywhere Tristan’s wandering hands touched me. I was on fire in the middle of the Pacific, a flame that couldn’t be extinguished.
“Talk to me, Avery,” Tristan commanded, his lips brushing against the smooth skin between my breasts.
“Tristan, I…”
A blood-curdling scream ripped across the cove, pulling us away from each other, wide-eyed and sexually frustrated. If not for a second scream following suit seconds later, I would have assumed it was the god of chastity screwing with us.
With a glance at each other, we took off, swimming back to the boat, not bothering to secure our masks around our eyes. Our snorkeling date was over, which was probably all well and good because I’d lost my snorkel at some point during my entanglement with Tristan.
We rounded Bird Rock, the boat coming into view just as Brittney L. yelled, “Shark!” at the top of her lungs.
“Oh, shit.” Tristan stopped, looking around in the water surrounding us. “Avery, get on my back,” he ordered.
I was about to argue with him but was stopped short by Tyler exasperatedly proclaiming, “For fuck’s sake, it’s just a buoy. Calm down.”
“For fuck’s sake is right,” Tristan muttered. He sighed, turning to me, frustrated. “Well, there’s no turning back now. We may as well get back on the boat.” He looked as dejected as I felt, like he, too, wanted to throw Brittney L. overboard.
