anyway?” I asked as I waded out into the water and let it engulf my knees.
Peter came in behind me. The sun beat down on his shoulders and reflected off the water all around him. He looked like a god or an angel or someone so out of my reach it seemed hard to believe that it was just the two of us in this little paradise.
How was a man like him single?
Were there demons in his past I didn’t know about? Was he not the kind, patient, handsome, funny man I knew him to be? Was I only seeing the best parts of him and he was keeping his lesser qualities buried?
I’d met men who’d done that very thing and pulled it off for months upon months before I realized I needed to get the hell away from them.
No, I thought. Peter isn’t like the rest of them.
He stopped and stood beside me in the water. “How deep does it get?”
“Deep.”
He chuckled. “That’s what she said.”
I laughed and shoved him playfully. Peter stumbled and tried to regain his footing, but he failed. He teetered to the side and reached out for me for support, but I leaned away and let him fall. His eyes widened the moment he realized he was going down, and wild laughter bubbled out of me as he pitched sideways and broke through the surface of the water with an incredible splash.
With no intention of letting him come back up and have the chance to push me over, I hurried out into deeper water and dove beneath the surface with my hands pointed above my head.
The cold water filled my ears. Everything muted except for the sound of my own heartbeat, the rushing sound of the waterfall, and Peter’s splashing as he got back to his feet. I smiled to myself under water as I came back up and broke the surface to take a deep breath of fresh, warm air.
I opened my eyes as I slicked my hair back. Peter was watching me and shaking water out of his ears.
“Rude,” he chastised.
“Don’t be a sore sport.”
Peter arched an eyebrow. A trickle of water ran down his nose and dripped down to the water to leave little rings on the surface. “A sore sport? Me? Never.”
Before I knew it, he dove in after me. I watched him come under the water toward me. He was surprisingly graceful for a man with such little control over his limbs out of the water. I tried to paddle away as he reached for my legs underwater. A cry of delighted surprise took me when he grabbed my ankle and then jerked me under the surface.
Water rushed in my ears again.
Peter pulled me to him. His arms wrapped around my waist. I grabbed hold of his shoulders.
He took the back of my neck, pulled me in close, and kissed me underwater.
I smiled against his lips as we held our breath. Little bubbles rose above our heads toward the surface that was bright from the sun. His hand tightened on the nape of my neck before he bent at the knees and pushed upward from the ground. We broke the surface together, lips still pressed firmly against one another’s, eyes closed, lungs full of air.
We parted to catch our breath but I didn’t let him go. We treaded water together and caught our breath only so we could kiss again.
This time, I pressed my tongue against his teeth. He yielded to me and let me explore his mouth. The kiss deepened and I was filled with a primal need that I hadn’t felt in a long time. We moved together toward shallower water so we could put our feet down.
“You’re a good kisser,” Peter breathed.
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Oh?”
I pushed playfully at his chest. “I’m joking.”
“I don’t mind if you have, you know. How else would you have known how to do that thing with your tongue?”
“That thing?”
“Yeah,” he said, turning pink. “That little swirl and the—”
“Oh,” I nodded knowingly. A little giggle left me. I’d always kissed like that. “That.”
He nodded. “That.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist and he held me up as I ran my hands over his shoulders and biceps. He was rippling muscles upon rippling muscles. Now it made sense when he told me he used to work construction. None of this power felt like it had been made in a gym. It felt more like it had been made out of purposeful labor,