But that someone wasn’t me.
“We should go into town and get dinner or a drink,” Ronnie said as he grabbed one of the towels we’d brought with us and started drying off his hair.
I grabbed the other one and did the same. Our family had gotten together for the weekend to camp not too far from the lake. And after my mother insisted we go for a dip in the water while they cooked dinner, Ronnie all but pulling me along, here we were, soaking wet and knowing that this probably meant more to him than it ever would to me.
“Listen, Ronnie,” I said, about to tell him again that there would be nothing between us, hopefully for the last time, that I just saw us as friends. Because I knew if I agreed to go out to dinner and drinks tonight, it would be more than what it really was. I had tried to nip this in the bud more times than I could count, but it seemed like it wasn’t getting through to him. It seemed like me telling him what a good friend he was, how I saw him as my brother, fell on deaf ears.
But before I could start speaking again, I heard something coming closer, this thumping and pounding that seemed to vibrate the very ground I stood on. Was it a stampede of wild animals? It sure as hell sounded that way.
I turned my head to my left to where the noise was coming from and at first didn’t see anything. I glanced at Ronnie and saw he was looking in the same direction I had been, hearing the
same thing.
“What is that?” I turned back and faced the sound, and after only a second, I saw a man barreling toward us. I knitted my brows in confusion… and a little bit of surprise and fear.
The expression on this stranger’s face was fierce, focused right on Ronnie. He looked angry, enraged. He was big, lean with muscles stacked under his golden skin. It was as if everything happened in slow motion as I stared at him, took in his fierceness. Short dark hair, square cut jaw. His lips were full, his nose straight. His dark eyebrows were knitted low, and his equally dark eyes were hard set…
On Ronnie.
“What the fuck?” Ronnie murmured, but I couldn’t take my focus off the man coming at us. “Who is that?”
I shook my head, although I felt like that was a lie.
I know him. But I don’t. What’s going on?
Those words played through my mind over and over again. I didn’t know who this man was, had never seen him before, but I felt his anger, his… possessiveness.
The latter toward me.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, not even sure anyone but myself had heard. And as the man kept coming toward us… toward Ronnie, all I could do was stand there, watch him as he slammed into Ronnie with so much force he was propelled backward.
I cried out involuntarily and covered my mouth with my hand, feeling my eyes widen. Ronnie grunted out in pain as he slammed hard against the ground. The man who’d been coming at us like a wild animal was now on top on Ronnie, his fist slamming into his gut, the side of his face. Everywhere.
I snapped to attention, ran over to them, and grabbed the stranger’s bulky, muscular arm. It was like concrete under my touch, turning me on, heating me from the inside out.
And that had everything in me stilling. That one touch. I felt something in him change as well, as he froze, stopped beating on Ronnie, and slowly turned his head to look at me. Our gazes locked, his dark eyes penetrating mine, the world coming into focus, everything seeming… like it finally fit.
I stumbled back, my hand feeling on fire. I looked down at it, expecting to see flames. It wasn’t painful, but the feeling consumed me, starting to make its way up my arm and covering every single cell.
It felt so right. He felt so right.
“What the hell is going on?” I whispered again, unsure what to say, what to feel.
I felt him watching me and slowly lifted my head and looked at this stranger… this man I felt like I knew better than I knew myself.
He climbed off Ronnie and turned to face me. I could hear my friend groaning, but I couldn’t focus on anything or anyone besides the man in front of me, the man coming close to me. I couldn’t move, could only tilt my head back and stare at him. He was so much bigger than me, so much more… masculine than any person I’d ever met in my life.
He was so male.
That was the only word I could think of to describe him.
He started moving toward me, and I was rooted in place, unable to move. The air sawed in and out of my lungs, so forceful I felt like I might pass out. Finally, I moved backward a step, then another and another until a tree stopped my retreat.
I sucked in a breath as I tipped my head back all the way to look at him.
“What’s your name, my female?”
My female?