Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
No one has ever looked at me that way before.
I’m still waiting for her to answer me. I don’t know why, but I need to hear her say it out loud. Does it disgust you? Does any part of me repulse you?
“Honestly, Lord Poo?” Her eyes track to my left hand. “Never.” She grins at me deviously before she goes running down the narrow strip of sand. She hits the water, droplets spraying out all over, runs a few steps, then dives in. Her lithe body parts the waves, and she swims like she was born in it, a siren or a selkie, returning to her home.
My throat constricts as I stand up, strip off my T-shirt, and lose the shorts. My boxers stand little chance of hiding my massive erection, and there’s no way to angle to make this any better or less visible. It’s pretty much like sporting a lance in a jousting tournament. I need to make a decision. If I go in that water, I know I’m coming out a changed man.
I’m already changed. I’m not the same person I was before last night.
Nothing has ever been so painful. Or felt so freeing.
I hold my breath until Darby surfaces, and then I release it from my burning lungs because I didn’t realize I was doing it. She’s far. Out way past the dock, bobbing and floating along the surface. “Seriously, if you’re coming in, run and dive,” she yells. “There are way too many weeds and so much lake muck that it will grab you and swallow you up if you hit it past the sand. Float over it. It’s so nasty otherwise. If you don’t want six hundred leaches, run and freaking dive.”
I stand there, frozen for a minute. I don’t know why, but I just can’t move.
“Leon?” Darby calls. “Are you okay?”
I’m glad she doesn’t voice concern that my hard-on will put me off balance or sink me to the bottom like an anchor or that…—stop thinking. Those are crazy thoughts.
Closing my eyes, I race through the sand, hit the water, and dive, just like she instructed. I hold my breath and crest the water with powerful strokes, swimming to her. I have visions of leaches, which are horrifying because while toes and such might be alright, I’m worried about getting them stuck in other places. If she has to pull a leach off my arse, I will die. Of all the things she’s seen in the past few days, I will not live that one down. Not to mention the other unmentionables that a leach could choose.
I lift my eyes, shaking my head to clear them from the droplets of water cascading down my forehead. When I see Darby’s smile in the distance, beaming like the full moon above us, I stop caring about leaches and start swimming a little harder.
I think that maybe, my whole life, I was swimming to her.
11
DARBY
Holy grilled cheese sandwiches with pickles. Leon is gorgeous. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing my husband stripped down to virtually nothing, but I watch him take off his clothes on the beach now. He’s a good distance away, but that changes nothing. I can still see the massive sweep of his shoulders, the hard, defined muscles in his arms, the freaking rock-hard eight-pack he’s sporting, the manly V part of him that angles into the black elastic band of his boxers that rides low on his hips, and legs that are thick and powerful.
From this distance, I can’t see any scars that might be there.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and tread the water. The lake is warm since it’s mid-summer, so I don’t shiver out here like I would if it was mid-June and the sun was down.
When Leon hits the water, and I watch him disappear under the surface in a graceful arc, I mess up my strokes, and my head just about goes under the water. I choke on a gulp of lake water, spitting it out of my mouth. When he surfaces a few feet away and swims his way over to where I am, I just about go under completely.
He’s beautiful, arresting. He’s more god than he is man, and good sweet lord, the water is kind to him. The dark droplets bead in his hair, which looks black when it’s wet out here in the dark. His eyes are a darker blue. I want to lick every bead of water off his perfect, chiseled face, and there are many of them. I’d be there for a good long time, my tongue on his skin, which would suit me just fine.
I don’t know if it would suit him, though, and I’m afraid to hope.
Until he opens his arms in clear invitation, and I swim over, even though my movements are wooden and jerky because I’m still frozen with shock at the sight of his lean, powerful, muscled body. All of me feels cold, and now I’m shivering. Well, all of me except the spot between my legs. Right there, I’m burning up. I think my va-jay might actually have a fever.