Trick - By Lori Garrett Page 0,21

hell are you talking about?”

“You’ve been avoiding me all day, all week. You don’t want to have sex with me, and I get it. I know I wasn’t that good—”

“Can you shut up for a second?” Gunner laughed and held me around the waist, lowering his mouth. “The sex we had? Best sex of my life. And I’ve had a lot, Harlow. I didn’t try again because you were a virgin. I wanted to take it slow. But it hasn’t been easy. Hell, it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was pushing you away. Trust me, I was fighting every second of every day to keep from stripping you down and having my way with you over and over.”

I feel light and perfect in his arms. “I want that. I want you so badly, I don’t know if I can wait.”

Right on the sand, oceans at our back, in the middle of the broad daylight, Gunner slid his fingers under my bathing suit bottoms and slid them into me.

“Fuck, Harlow. You’re ready for my dick right now, aren’t you?”

I nodded and he dragged me toward the water. I dug my heels in. “I don’t want to swim right now.”

He cocked a naughty smile my way. “Me neither, gorgeous. We have that big ole bed to ourselves all night. I don’t wanna risk breaking the headboard just yet.” He kept pulling, and soon we were in the clear, warm water up past our waists.

I looked left and right, but there was no one anywhere on the beach, so I let Gunner undo my top and suck hard on my nipples while his fingers slid in and out of me. I locked my legs around his waist and bobbed on the water.

He pressed his shorts down and yanked the crotch of my bottoms over, fitting me on top of him before he pulled me down and filled me in every way.

“Gunner,” I gasped.

“I love how your titties look all shiny and wet,” he said, pressing hard into me. “I love licking the salt away and tasting your skin, all peaches and cream.”

The water licked at me and held me up and closer to him than I’d ever imagined possible. I bucked against him, hard, breathing hard. My fingers knotted over the elastic muscles of his shoulders, and I gasped when he braced my back with one hand and slid the other down. His palm lay flat on my stomach and his middle finger ran over my clit in quick, maddening circles.

I came undone, my breasts pushed flat against his chest, my arms locked around his neck. A second before he was ready to come, he pulled out, groaning against my neck as his body jerked and released.

“You could have come in me,” I whispered, running my fingers through his damp hair. “I’m on the pill.”

He tied my suit back on with focused attention. “I don’t want to take any chances. The last thing you need is for your future to be over cause you’re knocked up with a Hunt baby.”

The moment shattered like a glass dropped to the cement.

We fixed our suits and waded out of the water. When we came to the back porch of the beach house, I took his hands.

“I don’t want to have children yet, but I’d be proud to have yours someday, Gunner.”

He tightened his fingers over mine and his mouth went flat and hard. “I appreciate you saying that, baby. I really do. But know this now: that’s not a possibility. I’ll never hook you that way.”

There were so many things I wanted to say, but Gunner pulled me into the house, grabbed a bottle of tequila and a cup of ice, and told me to get in the shower and get ready for him.

I couldn’t resist following his command, so I did, and I never regretted it.

Except I wish I’d told him that being hooked to him was the only thing I would ever want. Under all the arrogant swagger, Gunner Hunt needed to know someone loved him with their whole heart.

I gaze out at the wide open summer afternoon and wonder if I should just run to him now.

But I have a dinner party to get through. I don’t need to raise my father’s suspicions. Upset as he is about the idea of me pursuing ballet, and even as mortified as he is about New York City, nothing could hold a candle to the pure outrage