“I told you she can be stubborn when she wants, didn’t I?” I say to Blake. I try to appear relaxed, as if I don’t care one way or another.
“I’m not being stubborn!” She puts her hands on her hips and I raise a brow, trying not to smile at how riled she’s getting. She points at me. “And you have no room to talk. You’re a mule.”
Blake finds this far too amusing, laughing like a hyena. “She just called you an ass, man.”
“I am an ass-man.”
Anna purses her lips, annoyed, and I’m quite enjoying it. I’ll banter all day if it’ll keep her here.
“Aw, c’mon, just stay,” Blake whines.
“I don’t think so,” she says, and I want to spank the stubbornness out of her. She marches over to my chair and says, “Just get up and say bye to me, Kai.” Again I raise my brow and she adds, “Please.”
I get to my feet and look down at this girl, a mix of sexy, sassy, and sweet.
“Bossy, aren’t you?” I ask. I’m not ready to let her go. She stares up at me, and I know she’s not ready to leave either, but she won’t admit it. “Right, then,” I say. “You’d best cool off before you go.”
She screams in surprise as I scoop her easily over my shoulder and run for the pool, jumping in.
When we come up for air, Anna is livid. I can see it in the wideness of her eyes and set of her mouth. She pushes me, but I grab her, and we start to wrestle. I can’t help but laugh, just as Blake is in hysterics at the side of the pool.
“Let me go!” she yells at me.
“Not until you agree to stay.” I look at her, feeling her body skimming mine as she treads water. She is still angry, and for once I want to calm her. I whisper, “Stay.” Please.
“Fine,” she says.
I let her go and she swims away from me. I’m right behind her. She climbs the ladder and her bum’s right in my face. Blake yells something I can’t hear because lust has caused the blood to rush through my body in a rapid whoosh.
Feeling lust for Anna is not like lusting for other girls. This lust is stronger, braided and twined with love, admiration, and all the pain she’s capable of causing me. It’s too strong, and I can’t resist following her, desperate to know if she feels any of this or if I’m alone in my madness.
She bends over to dig in her bag and I swear I whimper. Her wet clothing clings to her and I can see the bikini lines underneath. Her body calls to me like a flashing beacon, luring me closer. She stands quickly and turns, colliding with me. Every place she accidentally touches me alights.
“For the record,” I say, hardly able to speak through the lust that pumps through my veins, “I was more myself with you during those three days than I’ve ever been with anyone in my life. It’d be easier if I could be fake with you, but you bring out everything in me, little Ann. All of it.”
The good and the bad. The hot and the cold. The lust and the love.
She stares at me for a long time before blinking and stepping back, bumping the deck rail. She’s so filled with goodness, this girl the angels prophesied about so long ago. This girl who has no clue of the things I’ve done.
And because I can’t help but compare her innocence with my dodgy past, because I don’t deserve anything good, because it’s in Anna’s nature to care for the lost and aching, I begin to doubt the validity of what I feel between us. I doubt everything. And I push. Because, like her, I need proof. I need to hear it.
“However it is that you think you still feel about me,” I say, “I can assure you it’s nothing more than a classic case of someone who wants the one thing she can’t have. If you had me and got it out of your system, you’d realize the good boy’s the one you really want.”
She eyes me hard. “Those are your insecurities, Kaidan, not facts, and I wish you would stop taking them out on me.” She tries to step away, but I block her. I don’t want her to leave.