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Dawsyn is the one to press her lips into his, relishing the shape of his mouth, the taste of him. Her entire body thrums with the need for closeness. She’s staved that desire away for too long, tempted it more than she ever should have. When his hands move over her back and down to her waist, when she feels his lips spreading into a victorious smile beneath hers, she presses closer.

And then he is pulling away. Just as her tongue begins to trace the seam of his lips, he gently untangles himself from her grasp. His mouth leaves hers, his hands gently unwind her arms from his body, and he steps back, shaking his head.

“That’s enough for now,” he says hoarsely.

A laugh, exasperated and breathless, escapes her. “Enough?”

Ryon grins again, and it is so radiant, so filled with love – forher– that she almost ignores him. To hell with his protests.

“I’m not going to let you forget this when the sun rises, Dawsyn. I won’t listen to you when you claim that you never admitted to loving me.”

“Ididn’t.”

“You did,” he laughs. “I know you too well by now, malishka. I won’t have you try to pretend this is nothing more than desire.”

Dawsyn steps toward him, only for him to take a step back. He shakes his head. “Not until you tell me that this is what you want. Not just tonight, but from now on.”

Dawsyn tilts her head. She is easily lured into a test of wills. Her favourite game with him. She remembers those moments on the slopes when it was her against him, before it was them against the rest. She remembers the baiting, the taunting. She remembers undressing in front of him, and the way he’d swiftly folded.

She looks out to the sea then down, out to the warm water curling over her feet, and then rolls her shoulders back.

First, she rids herself of the holster on her back, and then her boots. Ryon watches, frowning uncertainly. But the more she devests of her outer layers, the tighter his jaw becomes. Stoically, he tries to give off passiveness, as though he is unaffected. But when she stands with only a long tunic covering her to her thighs, his eyes darken. “Don’t,” he says simply.

“You could always turn your back,” Dawsyn says.

He doesn’t.

She doesn’t bother hiding her smile as she lifts the hem, pulling it higher and higher over her body. She pulls it free of her hair, dropping it to the ground, and looks up to see Ryon alight with desire.

Dawsyn faces the water. She wades in.

“You can’t swim, Dawsyn,” he growls.

She clicks her tongue. “I have every faith in your ability to rescue me.”

She smiles at the horizon, where golden light is just starting to spread at the divide. The tepid water reaches her hips, and then her waist, and just as it skims the underside of her breasts, she hears an exasperated laugh from the beach.

Moments later, she hears the thrashing of water displaced as Ryon follows her out. And she can hardly wait.

“It’s beneath you to force my hand.”

“You needn’t touch me,” Dawsyn answers without turning.

But she hears him exhale, and then hands go around her waist. Slowly skimming her skin until they meet at her diaphragm. “Fine,” Ryon rumbles, his mouth at her ear. “You win.”

He moves his lips to her neck and presses them softly under her jaw. He hovers there a moment longer, taking in the scent of her skin, pulling her into the hard wall of his body. No clothes between them. No battle to distract them. The light too dim for any to find them here. Just the two of them, the ocean, and the horizon ahead.

Dawsyn turns. In that moment, she becomes imbued with something new, a sense of conviction, of rightness. A certainty that there isn’t anywhere else he or she should be, but here.

“I fear I may love you,” she tells him, her smile gone, finality in its place. And what she means is,I couldn’t stop.

“Ah,” Ryon says, cradling her body in his beneath the water, pulling her legs around his waist. “Then we both win.”

Their lips find each other’s, their fervency increasing with each lazy lap of the ocean. It’s as though Dawsyn’s body is attuned to his. It remembers the curve between his neck and his shoulder, the shallow dips of his stomach, the jut of his hips. His mouth moves over her throat, rediscovering all the parts of her as well. He grips her thighs tighter, and then his lips trace her collarbone, then lower.

Dawsyn sucks a breath between her teeth as the warmth of his mouth comes over her breast. His tongue flicks over her, and she squeezes her thighs around him in response. The more his mouth torments her, the more persistent her hips become, finding the hard length of him. She rocks back and forth impatiently, gasping as her pace quickens. It draws a dark rumble from him. She needs him more desperately than she’s ever needed another person before, and she doesn’t bother to conceal that desire, finally unbound. She lets him see it.

“Please,” Dawsyn whispers, the word carried away on the wind. “Please.”