Perfect Night (Mason Creek #4) - Terri E. Laine Page 0,44

you up?”

“Yes,” I said, taking a step closer to her.

“And what about me?”

“I’ll keep you warm too.” I was closing the distance between us.

I caught the twinkle in her eye a second too late as she took off. Damn she could run. By the time I reached the short cliff over the water’s edge, she was halfway out of her clothes. I could have nabbed her then, but I wanted her to shed her jeans.

Just as I had mine halfway down my calves, she leaped off and splashed into the water. I was right there after her, cannonballing my way in.

Water cocooned me for the moment. In that split second, all the memories of coming out here with friends struck me. Emma would have been here too on occasion. Though off to the side. She hadn’t been a flashy girl like Darcy who wanted the attention. But I’d caught her looking my way a time or two, and she had to have caught me staring or so I assumed. I broke the surface with a thought.

“What took you so long, stranger,” she teased.

I swam over to her. “I was just thinking,” I began.

“About what?”

“About how much I wanted you back in high school.”

She looped her arm around my neck. “Why didn’t you have me?”

I groaned. “By the time you grew up, I was in a complicated relationship.”

“Complicated, huh?”

“Very complicated. Besides, you had boyfriends too if I remember.”

“I did. Though none of them compared to this.”

Her gaze was equally locked on me as I said, “Maybe it was better we didn’t have then.”

“Why?” she asked, scrutinizing me with a look.

“Because I probably would have made mistakes, young and dumb as I was.”

“Pussy-whipped by Darcy,” she suggested.

“Maybe a little of that and a lot of guilt,” I said. Darcy had been good at using her tears until I became immune to them.

“Now that you have me, what are you going to do about it?”

I didn’t answer with words. I showed her. I promised slow and steady, so I didn’t rush the kiss. My movements weren’t hurried as I licked across the seam of her lips until she gasped. Then, I dipped in and did a little slow dance with my tongue against hers.

We waded over to a spot where my feet touched bottom, yet we were mostly submerged. She wrapped her legs around me and I held her tight.

“I’ve waited for this so long,” she said.

“Me too.”

Her core was perfectly placed on the ridge of my hard cock. Nothing but a shift of my boxers down and her underwear to the side, and I could be inside her in under a minute. As much as I wanted to fuck her raw, I didn’t act.

She rocked her hips against me almost breaking my resolve. We would fuck. “Not here,” I said, on a long exhale of breath.

She sighed too.

Her little moans and writhing against me forced my hand. Rather, I gave in to giving her the pleasure she sought but with my fingers, leaving my cock hard and jealous. I worked her tight bundle of nerves before slipping one, then two fingers inside her heat while thrusting until she found her release. I kept kissing her until we were both breathless.

When the water had calmed around us, no longer rippling from our movements, she said, “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

God, she was sexy, and it was taking all my resolve to wait this out. I had to remind myself she was so worth the wait. “I am actually. I think I have a lead on your father’s case.” That had been my other motivation to see her.

“What?” she asked. There was a fierce woman inside her. Determination was beating out sadness.

“I told you about the video from the auto body?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I was caught up trying to watch the car that went by slowly. After I went forward, it shows your father leave.”

“He left?”

“Yes, he was at the bar maybe twenty minutes and then he left.”

“Where did he go?” she asked, but I didn’t think she expected me to answer.

“I couldn’t see from that angle, but he came back maybe fifteen minutes later, and he wasn’t alone.”

Her eyes grew. “You know who it was?”

“Unfortunately, no. The problem was, I never saw them leave.”

I’d been watching over and over again, hours before her father came and hours after. The angle was off. It was possible they could have left another way. “We’re getting close,” I said, feeling it in my gut. I could