it.”
He pushed that flannel off her shoulders, tugged her T-shirt up over her head. She gasped as the air hit bare skin.
That braid of hers was plain and simple, and inflamed his desires in a way he couldn’t quite articulate. And didn’t even want to. He didn’t want to articulate. Not anymore. He just wanted. For the first time in his life not every feeling was his enemy. And he was damn happy with that. Because this felt good. She felt good.
She had brought cookies, and her beautiful body, and moments in the sun, and it was a form of magic he hadn’t thought he could have.
Her lips were sweet, the curve of her breasts over that bra plump and delicious. He lowered his head and licked her skin, and felt her shiver beneath his touch.
“You’re beautiful,” he rasped. “I want to make sure you know that. Beautiful like I’ve never seen.”
And he didn’t care about anything but the truth of those words. He didn’t care about the past. He didn’t care about the future. He didn’t care about anything but holding her soft, sweet body in his arms. And it was sweet. So damn sweet. He moved his hands down her back, pushed them down beneath the waistband of her jeans so that he could cup her ass.
“Griffin,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Just... You.”
He stripped those jeans off of her, her underwear. And all he could do was stare. At that enticing thatch of curls there between her thighs, at all that smooth, creamy skin. He had forgotten. All the things he liked about women. The things that made him so happy to be a man. She was all of them. Every last one. She was everything. She wiggled out of his hold, and stood, shaking out her long dark hair. And he could only stare. Then she turned away from him, her hair cascading down her back, ending just above where her waist nipped in. He looked at her hips, generous and lovely, at the dimples just above her behind. The round curve of that plump flesh. He was struck by a deep, completely aggressive urge to have her. And also rendered completely motionless by the sight of her.
It was a hell of a thing. And so was she.
She looked over her shoulder, her expression one of shy innocence, mingled with a slow roll of seductive thunder. Whether or not she knew that was there, he didn’t know. But it was. At least, it was to him. It reached out and grabbed him. Compelled him to stand. Then she looked away from him again, her dark hair shimmering like a wave when she took a step forward into the water. She jumped back, a reaction to the cold. But then she stepped forward again, this time more determinedly, putting both feet into the slow moving stream. “I’ve never done this before,” she said, and he could tell that as she lifted her arms to wrap them around her body.
“What?”
“Skinny-dipping.”
Then, as if she was compelled by an invisible force, she took two large steps forward, then lay forward in the water, shrieking as it closed over her skin.
“Cold,” she said.
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Are you going to join me?”
“I could,” he said. “But the view is awfully nice.”
“Come on,” she said.
And he felt like she was beckoning him to something else, though he didn’t want to pin it down. He wanted it to keep on shimmering inside of him, moving around like an invisible force. Weightless. Wonderful.
Because so few things in his life were. Nothing, if he were honest. For the last five years, nothing. And then, there she was. A forest sprite or an angel, he didn’t know. But she was something.
And he wanted her.
He stripped the rest of his clothes off, and his eyes caught hers. Her gaze was... Hungry, there was no other word for it. He thought a lot about his own hunger. About how long it had been since he felt these things, since he’d touched another person. Since he felt connected in any way.
Since he felt sexual desire. Stripping it back to its most basic, taking away even that human connection element, he had just been starving for pleasure.
But she was too, and that made him feel something.
Something deep and immeasurably satisfying.
“I’ve never seen a naked man before,” she said. Her words were small, and he knew she didn’t mean those to be seductive. But dammit they were.
“Really?”
“I mean, not... Like that.”
He looked down. “Aroused?”
“Yeah,” she said, her