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“Well…” I mimicked his movement, leaving nothing more than a sliver of charged air between us. “We wouldn’t want to risk your reputation.”

In one fluid motion, his hand dropped from my chin to my lower back. Resting on the slope, his fingertips slid into my jeans’ back pockets.

I rose onto my tiptoes, and his entire body stilled as our mouths met.

The heat of embarrassment flooded me—was I about to be denied? My heels dropped an inch, and then his lips parted against mine and he scooped me into his sculpted chest. Whatever doubts I felt about him—about us—melted away as his tongue slipped past my teeth. I answered its patterns, my senses severed from feeling anything except the circular motions it made.

His touch was like the pull of the undertow. Once I was caught in it, it threatened to drown me, but I gave in to it without thinking.

We swayed, riding our own current towards the shelter of the bluffs. The brittle sediment crumbled beneath my spine as he hoisted me onto a natural ledge, and I curled my legs around his hips.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked like he was coming up for air from a dive far too deep.

“Yeah.” My words trembled against his lips, the cavity intertwining our breathless voices with the ocean’s bellows.

His hands followed the outline of my waist, slowly skimming the outer arc of my thighs. I gripped the hem of his shirt, and we broke apart for less than a heartbeat for me to pull it over his head. I took in his naked upper body, so imperfectly perfect, with its nicks and moles, defined in all the right places. My hands swept over the peaks and valleys of his muscles, across the scars along his back, so similar to mine…He was a blanket I wanted to wrap myself in, so I covered every inch of myself with his warm ivory skin.

The flimsy straps of my tank slid off my shoulders as his kisses drifted from my mouth. Stamping my jaw, trailing beneath my ear, brushing down my neck.

I dragged my fingers through his hair, the smooth strands of his grown-out locks the perfect part of him to hold on to as he sucked on my collarbone and pressed his hips into me.

A pounding wave broke with my moan as he pulled the bust of my top down and the cool brush of air peaked my nipples.

His eyes widened at the bare sight of them. “Arch your back for me a bit, baby.”

I sat up a tad straighter, slightly bending my spine. “Like that?”

“Yes, oh my God.” He cupped the lower swell of my breasts with tentative hands. “So, so perfect. I cannot wait to get these beautiful things in my mouth.”

“I”—I gasped as he did just that, suctioning the rougher, pigmented part of my skin with a slight graze of his teeth—“I don’t know about that.”

“What?” he asked with a gentle tug that sent a shivery bolt through my heart and settled between my thighs.

My head shot back, every ounce of awareness honing in on that spot. “They’re just your average boobs.”

“Oh no, they are perky little bells, and you have the most exquisite nipples. Like I said, they’re perfect.” His tongue did figure eights around the hard, sensitive point as he massaged the other with his hand, his callouses a pleasant scrape against my tender skin. “Everything about you is.” He switched, and I was seeing stars at the light nips and pressure as he fondled them like they truly were the most magnificent things to bless this Earth. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the night we met.” My lashes fluttered shut.

He returned to my mouth. I peeked through slitted eyes, knowing he did the same once I closed them, and my fingers traveled to his waistband. For a moment I let my imagination take me to a dark, sultry place within the shadows of the rocky overhang, where we were reduced to nothing but feelings and flesh. Where I succumbed to the increasing roll of his hips and spread for the hardness pitched between them, and the motion of our bodies swelled with the waves.

Where I was a tide of nerves and pleasure, a surge of magic and release, and Ryder was the gravity that moved me.

I had these urges—normal, human urges. But I knew more than anyone that bodies and minds don’t always match up, and that night with Chet I didn’t want it, no matter what the slickness between my legs relayed. I dismissed the unwanted thought, as intrusive as its namesake, and lifted the strap from Ryder’s buckle, because this…this was different. This was my choice.

My fingers froze.

I wanted this. I did. My grip tremored as the belt’s prong released and a swell of nervous heat overtook me. The rocky nook suddenly felt like a prison where my pain would be recorded on the walls with my nails. The tension heightened and changed, like the rawness had coiled into something jagged that would tear me apart.

Up against the wall, trapped beneath his chest, it’d be so easy for him to take me.

No one would hear us. He might or might not stop. I winced, slowing as he continued to claim me—then he paused, his swollen pout featherlight on my lips. I expelled a sigh, one of equal parts desire and relief.

He backed away, the fire tamed but still smoldering, taking all of me in. Every hair, every freckle, every rise and fall of my chest. I waited for the snarls, for the sexual slurs, for his anger from the sting of rejection. Instead, he picked his shirt up off the damp sand, pulled it down over his head, and outstretched a tattooed hand as he waited to guide me into the open air of the clearing.

I slid the straps over my shoulders and cinched up my snug top as my muscles began to shake. Ryder was unreadable as he stared at the uneven patches of skin on his palm, averting his eyes while I took what seemed like forever to get myself dressed. Then I accepted his hand and we headed for the narrow split in the bluff where we first entered the cove.

There was another kind of demon that followed our footprints, invisible and unrelenting.

Livid at myself and embarrassed for ruining the moment, I did what I do best: shut down my emotions and buried the old wounds.