Page 67 of The Underachiever's Guide to Love and Saving the World

Regaining my footing, I brushed my hand over his hip, found his belt. My fingers fumbled. Reaching down, he helped me, and metal clinked as the buckle unfastened.

A tremor ran through his fingers, and I paused. “Good?” I whispered.

When he nodded, I slipped my hand past his loosened waistband. Eyes shuttering, he moved against my palm. The only evidence of pleasure he displayed was a barely audible groan stifled by tight-pressed lips and a knotted jaw, but it was enough. Enough to validate my own burning want. Resting his forehead against mine, he watched me with glazed eyes, his breaths matching the rhythm of my hand.

He explored the bodice of my dress, thumbs trailing over my nipples and sending a tug of desire down to my core. His lips skimmed across my cheek, breath warm where it ruffled the hair at my temple. I arched against him as he teased me through my bodice, letting a gasp slide free of my lips, and at last, he smiled. Movements growing urgent, his fingers tangled with ties and fabric.

“Fuck these damn laces,” Bryce growled, as though laces had been his personal vexation his entire life.

“Do the bodice-ripper thing,” I urged in a breathless rush. “Rip it.”

For a second, Bryce looked at me with the wonder of a man who’d been handed keys to a Ferrari. Then he gripped the top of my dress with his fists and pulled. And pulled again. “It won’t tear.”

Scrunching my neck, I looked down. “Have you tried trying harder?”

“Wow, stellar advice.” His voice rose.

“I’m sorry!”

“Stop yelling at me, you dick.”

“I’m not yelling; I’m encouraging,” I yelled, coiling my fingers in his shirt and yanking him against me. “Forget it.”

I redirected his hands to more accessible locations, and we became a blur of hands under hems, fingers over skin. There was an intense moment where my heavy skirt threatened to best our frenzied fingers. Bryce dug through yards and yards of fabric, and the sight of his frustration made me suppress a laugh. Then his hands were on me, skin against skin, brushing over my hips, nudging my thighs apart, and my laugh turned into a sigh. He hiked my leg to his hip, hooking my ankle around his waist. An ache, heavy and empty all at once, swelled between my legs.

He slid his hand between us, thumb finding the spot that needed him, fingers filling the emptiness until I clutched his shoulders and arched against the tree. I ground against the heel of his hand as his fingers massaged a place deep inside me that made my vision tunnel. My breaths quickened as pressure built. My limbs trembled, then trembled again,harder.

A low rumble filled my ears.

If Bryce turned out to be my most earth-shattering sexual encounter, I’d be shook.

My whole body shook.

CRACK!The sound split the night.

Bryce flinched, dropping my leg. My eyes flew open.

The ground rattled beneath our feet.

“Oh,” I said, “that makes more sense. It’s just an earthquake, not your sexual skills.”

“Justan earthquake?”

A second gut-wrenching crack thundered across the field. I stumbled away from the tree, staring out into the clearing. The earth churned as though it had transformed into a raging ocean, sucking grass and wildflowers into its earthy folds.

Bryce began gathering condoms.

I straightened my skirt and helped, scooping up everything I could. Because when the earth splits open, the first thing on everyone’s mind issave the condoms.

I found my senses somewhere under the subsiding sexual sensations ebbing from my body. “Let’s get out of here.” The ground rattled, and I stumbled, catching myself on a branch.

The dirt boiled under my foot. I tried to back away, but more earth gave way beneath me. Clods of soil bubbled up, revealing pale flashes of bone, lit by the blazing field.

A skeletal hand burst from the dirt and wrapped around my ankle.

I screamed.

Bryce looped an arm around my waist and pulled, but the cold bones tightened, squeezing sharp pain into my ankle.