Page 26 of Kane

She gives me that smile again, and I can’t breathe for a minute or two. “Okay. Let us go, then.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

She’s like a little girl,unleashed. She dives right into the Pacific, squealing and giggling as the surf smashes against her. I follow, knifing in and coming up, wiping my face. She’s already been under too, and the water streams down her beautiful, flawless brown skin, and her hair gleams wet, inky black. Her smile is the brightest thing I’ve ever seen, just pure, radiant joy.

We swim for at least two hours, splashing and playing, diving in and swimming out. I’m not sure how strong a swimmer she is, so I stay close. I don’t let myself touch her. Not in that bikini. I’ll take liberties I’m not sure she’s in a position to allow or not allow. I don’t think she knows any better, and she’d let me. They’re not my liberties to take. Not with a pure, innocent goddess like her.

Finally, she rises from the water beside me and leans a shoulder against mine, smiling up at me. “I am tired, now. And also, so hungry my belly is yelling at me.”

“Same, babe. I could eat a horse.”

She frowns at me. “Do you mean this literally?”

I laugh. “Shit, no. No, just an expression, meaning I could eat a lot.”

“Oh good. I should not like to think of you eating a horse.”

“Cows, yeah. Pigs, yeah. Chickens, turkeys, ducks, pheasant, porcupine, snake, alligator, rabbit, deer, antelope, bear—yeah. Horse? No.”

“You have eatenallof those animals?” She’s shocked silly.

“Yeah, sure have. Bugs, too.”

She makes a disgusted face. “Bugs?”

I laugh. “Wasn’t my favorite, but it was a situation where I didn’t have much choice. On assignment deep in-country, ran out of rations, and that’s all there was.”

She shivers all over, making a disgusted noise. “Ugh, bugs. I do not like bugs.”

Before I know what I’m doing, I take her hand, fingers twined. “Come on, darlin’. Let’s get you fed. And no bugs, I promise.”

We towel off with the beach towels I got us and lay in the sun to dry off a bit. She falls asleep, and I let her. She’s so peaceful, so beautiful, on her belly, face in her arms. I just lounge, and let myself steal a few long lingering looks at her ass. Wish she was mine, so I could run my hands up theSof her spine, rub some oil on her skin.

Shit, shit.

She stirs, after about half an hour. Peers over her sleek, slim arm. “You let me fall asleep.”

I shrug. “Wasn’t in a hurry, and you looked so peaceful and pretty, I couldn’t make myself wake you up.”

Her smile is so fucking soft and warm it cuts me stem to stern, gut to gullet. “You are a kind man, Kane.”

I shake my head. “You just don’t know me very well.”

She frowns, sits up. “What does that mean?”

I shrug. “Nah. Nothin’.”

“No, it was not nothing, it was something. I wish to know what you meant.”

“I just meant…” I don’t have the first clue what to say. There’s a lot of reasons she shouldn’t look at me like that, why I’m not a kind man. “Nothin’.” I stand up, shrug into my shirt. “Let’s go find food.”

She’s disappointed, I can tell. But then, she’s not sharing either. She doesn’t push it, and puts her jeans and shirt on over her bathing suit. And god damn me to hell if watching her dance her fine ass into those jeans isn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

I make myself look away as she buttons them, before I rip them right off and do sinful things to her right here on the beach.