stone-skipping wasn’t the challenge that intrigued me at the moment.
“I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me again,” I said.
They were bold words. Aggressively vocal, even. I regretted them almost as soon as they were out of my mouth.
But then he leaned toward me, and I didn’t regret those words at all. My heart galloped as I realized he really was going to kiss me again.
His hand cupped my cheek lightly, his thumb resting on my cheekbone. He leaned close to me, those green eyes bright in the moonlight.
He claimed my lips with his. That kiss was confident, branding, and my lips parted, wanting even more of him. I rested my hand on his knee, swaying in toward him. His hand slid down my neck, his thumb tracing over my throat, and I almost moaned in desire as his tongue slipped against mine.
He pulled away, his eyes smoldering.
“When we were teenagers,” I said, and my voice came out breathless; I didn’t sound quite like myself, “I always heard the other girls talking about how you took them out here to the springs.”
I didn’t mean that in a bad way, but he glanced out at the water, a rueful expression flashing across his face. “I love it out here. I don’t want you to think that I’m just…”
“I don’t,” I said, squeezing his leg. “I don’t mind, Dylan, or I would’ve told you no.”
His lips arched up. “Yeah, you would have,” he admitted. “That’s one thing that makes it easy to relax around you. I know you’ll just tell me how it is if you don’t like something.”
“Not everyone considers that a pro.”
“I do.”
He meant it, and butterflies fluttered in my chest. There was no feeling like being seen, being known, and having people adore you for it, flaws and all.
“I’ve always loved this place because it reminds me of life before I came to the orphanage,” he mused out loud. “My parents lived on the water—they took tourists out on fishing trips. I was swimming before I could walk.”
I took his hand in mine. He glanced over at me, a faint smile playing over his lips and replacing the somber edge in his voice.
I didn’t say sorry. We both knew each other’s stories, and we knew the pain the other carried.
His parents had died in a storm, their boat capsized. He’d been the lone survivor—a puppy clinging to a life preserver, against all odds, when the storm ended. He still wondered why he’d shifted, if it had helped him survive or if it had just hurt too much to be human.
Meanwhile, I was the daughter of some wandering tom cat shifter who never stayed in any one town long, and a human girl who had some serious concerns the first time her baby shifted in her arms. She’d almost thrown me across the nursery.
She’d been an amazing mom, someone who didn’t plan to have a baby, and definitely didn’t plan to have a baby with a tail, but she adjusted anyway. My early memories were a haze of love, of lullabies in her sweet voice as she rubbed my back while I drifted off to sleep.
I thought maybe my singing voice sounded like hers, and the thought made my eyes fill with tears. At least I could still have part of her, even though cancer took her away from me when I was just a kid.
As orphans, it was nice just to have someone who let you talk without acting like you’d killed the vibe. I lay my head on his shoulder, feeling comfortable with him.
“I heard before that you took girls out here to go skinny dipping.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent at the time. It’s technically against the law to swim naked in the spring.”
“Who said we had to be naked?”
His grin took on a devilish cast. “I did.”
18
“Turn around,” I told Dylan. I had to bite back a girlish, nervous giggle—and I didn’t think I’d ever giggled like that before in my life. I wrenched down on my lower lip with my teeth, determined to play it at least a little bit cool for once.
I started to wiggle out of my tight black dress, but I paused with it halfway off because he was unbuttoning his shirt. I was distracted by his powerful shoulders and lats working as he pulled the shirt off.
Then he unbuckled his belt and stepped out of the pants. He had a perfect ass encased in a pair