“You can’t buy your wife a fancy house with cash you make from selling smack. The bank wants to see the money trail.” Bitterness drips from Levi’s every word.
“Colton could have been working for his dad again.” I turn the puzzle pieces in my mind. “Maybe they got involved with the wrong guy, and something went south?”
He shakes his head. “He hadn’t done shit for Nelson in years. Not since he met you.”
I drag my hands over my face, then cringe when I feel how sweaty I’ve gotten. “When did it get so hot out here?”
“Are you ok
ay? Do you want to go back?”
“I’m fine. Just hoping I don’t look like a clown with makeup smeared down my face.”
His expression softens as he studies me. “I think you look beautiful, but we can go back whenever you’re ready.”
“No, this is good.” I grin. “It’s nice to give you a chance to thaw out after this morning.”
He cocks a brow. “This morning?”
“I was afraid you were mildly hypothermic after that shower.” I bite back a laugh.
“I’m glad I amuse you.”
“I just didn’t think cold showers were a thing anymore. I mean, at least not for men who know how to take care of business. Why not take a hot shower and jack off?” I try to keep a straight face, but laughter bubbles out of me. “It was surprising. That’s all.”
“You think I haven’t jacked off to the thought of you before?”
My eyes go wide and I turn my face away, too embarrassed to look at him.
“What? You brought it up.” He leans closer and lowers his mouth to my ear. “The thought of you under me has gotten me off more times than I can count.”
I meet his eyes. They’re as dark and intense as the day he came to Dyer to see me, but now I see a hunger in them too, and a chill races through me. “So what was different this morning? The cold shower, I mean.”
“You were thinking about him.” His gaze drops to my mouth and his full lips part with his slow exhale. “It screwed with my head. Call me old-fashioned, but I wasn’t real interested in getting off on thoughts of a girl who was fantasizing about another man.”
“Just because I was dreaming of Colton doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings for you.” The words are a pale reflection of the complicated, unnamed tangle in my chest, but right now they’re the best I can give. It’s not that I don’t feel more for Levi. I do—love, attraction, connection. It’s that I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with it.
His gaze locks on my mouth for a beat before he tears it away. He doesn’t move, but he might as well. He withdraws, and the emotional barrier he throws up between us is as distancing as a physical wall. He’s working hard to hold himself back, and I’m sitting here wishing he wouldn’t.
The tree behind us has a long rope tied to a high branch. “Does that swing out over the water?” I ask, standing.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Cool.” I pull my shirt off over my head then unzip my skirt, letting it fall to the ground.
Levi
Ellie is standing in front of me in a white lace bra and panties, looking like an image stolen straight from my fantasies.
She grabs the rope that dangles over the rock, wraps herself around it, and swings right out over the lake. The splash of her body hitting the water is followed immediately by her sharp squeal.
I grin when she surfaces. “You’re nuts.”
“Probably. The water is freezing!” she shouts. But instead of swimming back, she flips over and starts doing the backstroke toward the middle of the lake.
I strip out of my shirt and jeans as fast as I can and use the rope to swing in after her.
The water hits me like a bucket of ice. It’s been a warm autumn and the lake isn’t huge, so it’s not as cold as it could be, but swimming in Michigan in October is never a wise decision.