by Maisey Yates
“This isn’t a horror movie. I’m not planning to build a creepy summer camp here.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“This is going to be much more fun. Everybody loves skinny-dipping.”
She stared back at him for so long, he would’ve thought she hadn’t heard him if he hadn’t seen the evidence all over her body.
He reached over and traced the burst of red he could see down one arm. “Every single feeling you have is written all over your skin. You know that, right?”
“I don’t like the heat,” she bit out, jerking her arm back an inch, which did nothing to get rid of the goose bumps. “What you’re seeing is a physiological response to too much sunlight.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re a vampire?” He laughed. “Let me guess. The sparkly kind.”
“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, glaring at him. “The heatstroke is getting to me. Because I actually thought you said that you brought me here to go skinny-dipping.”
“I did.”
He lifted a brow and waited. And Kit...sputtered.
“We can’t go skinny-dipping!”
“Why not?”
“Let’s start with the most obvious reason. It’s illegal.”
“How is it illegal?”
“I believe they call it public indecency, which I’m guessing you’re more than passingly familiar with, given your various exploits over the years. On and off bathroom walls.”
“That’s hurtful, Kit.” He nodded toward the water. “It’s my lake. My land. Private, nonpublic, and definitely not illegal.”
“Is this the Browning West experience I heard so much about in high school?” She made a huffing sound. “I do not mind telling you that I find this very disappointing.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“Is this really what your playboy reputation has been about all this time?”
“I have a playboy reputation? Who uses that word?”
“This can’t be your thing. You drive vulnerable women out to secluded spots and demand they skinny-dip with you?”
He laughed. “Is there a vulnerable woman in the vicinity? I think you might have scared her away.”
“It’s not that I feel remotely scared. I expected magic, that’s all. As promised on every bathroom wall and from every starry-eyed teenage girl you ever looked at twice.”
“Kit. Please. I took you on a motorcycle ride, which you loved. And I asked you if you’d like to go skinny-dipping with me. You can say no.”
“Well. Then, obviously—”
“But if you do, you break our deal.” He shook his head sadly. “Penalties will have to be assessed for that.”
She scowled. “What penalties? We didn’t agree on penalties.”
“There are always penalties for breaking sacred vows, Kit. Everybody knows that.”
“We didn’t make a blood pact, Browning.”
“No. We made a deal. If you renege on that deal, there’ll be a price to pay. You can’t be surprised by that.”
“We didn’t agree on a price.”
“That’s because I thought you could be trusted to keep your promises.” He made a tsking sound. “If you can’t, seems to me I get to decide the prices involved.”
She stared at him for another long simmering moment, then made the kind of noise that he associated with the teen girls she’d mentioned.
“Fine. Let’s define our terms, then.”
“Is skinny-dipping the kind of thing that’s confusing in New York? Because here in Oregon all that’s involved is taking off your clothes, then getting in the water. No definitions or terms necessary.”
“There will be no touching,” she said, her scowl deepening.
“I won’t touch you, if that’s what you want.” He grinned lazily. “But you can touch me all you want.”
She pointed a finger at him. “You will turn your back. You will not turn around again until I tell you that it’s okay to do so. When I am ready to get out of the water—something I will decide, not you—you will once again turn your back. You will stay in the water, back turned, until I am fully clothed and tell you so. Do you understand the terms and conditions?”
Kit was scowling at him like he’d asked her to haul manure, her gaze stern and that finger wagging at him. And all he could think was that he might actually die if he didn’t get his mouth on her. And soon.
But despite all appearances to the contrary, Browning had always been a patient man. Perfectly content to wait for what he wanted, because that made sure what he got would be perfect.
“I think you’re missing the point,” he observed. He wanted to catch that finger with his teeth, but he didn’t. “Which is, in case you forgot, fun. Not a legal contract on a pretty summer’s day.”
She sniffed in that snotty way of hers that, like everything else about her, he liked way too much. “If you do not agree to these terms and conditions as I’ve laid them out, that puts you in violation of our deal. That means I get to decide the price.”
He let his mouth curve into something much too hot to be his typical, easy grin. “It’s okay, Kit. You can build all the walls you want to hide from the fact we’re about to get naked together. I think we both know the truth.”
“You mean that I’m calling checkmate on your shenanigans?”
“If it wasn’t a big deal to jump in the water with me, you wouldn’t freak out and get all Supreme Court over it, would you?”
He didn’t wait for her to sputter at him over that. No need to rub it in. He kept his gaze trained on hers.
Then peeled his T-shirt off his body and tossed it aside.
He watched, delighted, as she turned even more glorious shades of red. She defied nature. She was a human torch and he wanted to burn them both to a crisp.
“What...what are you doing?”
For once, she didn’t sound like snooty, Princeton Kit by way of New York. She sounded...hot and bothered and sweet straight through.
“Skinny-dipping, Kit,” he said patiently.
Her eyes widened. “You can’t... I mean you’re just... You’re standing right in front of me!”
“I don’t care if you watch me get naked, baby. In fact, I prefer it.”
“Okay. Okay. I... I’m not your baby.”
“That feels cruel, I don’t mind telling you,” he drawled. He kicked off his boots and moved his hands to his belt buckle. “Especially while we’re getting naked together.”
She stared at his hands. Then she made a high-pitched sound of sheer feminine frustration. She whirled around, presenting him with her back and gripping the trunk of the oak tree like she needed it to keep her upright.
“Are you backing down?” he asked her softly.
“Certainly not.”
“You look like maybe you’re backing down.”
He could see every part of her trembling, and questioned the wisdom of his course of action here. He wanted her too much and he’d promised to keep his hands to himself—unless she didn’t.
And he couldn’t recall ever having those two things happen to him at the same time before.
“If all your twenty thousand other conquests could jump in that lake with you, Browning, I certainly can,” she said. Briskly.
Browning wanted to say something funny about conquests as he stripped off his jeans and boxers and kicked them aside. But there was nothing funny about standing there naked, looking at her beautiful body. He wanted to roar until the sky fell down. He wanted to drop to his knees behind her and lick his way up to the ragged hem of her tiny shorts.
He wanted to possess her, totally.
“I’ve never brought anyone else here,” he told her gruffly. “Only you, Kit.”
He heard the soft, needy sort of sound she made then. It about broke him.
Then he marched himself to the lake and dove straight in to cool himself off before he lost it.
And while he was at it, figure out what the hell he’d been thinking.
CHAPTER FIVE
KIT HEARD A splash and carefully turned around from the tree she’d been gripping for dear life, afraid of what she might see.
Liar, she chided herself. You’re not afraid at all.
And she wished so hard and so deep that she had her cell phone, so she could text her friends and share this impossible scenario with them. It actually made her ribs ache.
She had spent her whole life obsessed with finding the precise correct word to describe any situation or scenario and yet she didn’t think there existed a proper word in any language to describe how she felt now.
That motorcycle ride with the wind snapping all around them, her arms tight around him so she could feel his ridged abdomen, her body pressed into his back so they moved as one with every turn...it had amazed her how intimate it could feel to be hurtling down a road like that, wrapped around him like a clinging vine, like it had always been supposed to be that way.
She didn’t understand anything that was happening, the tumult inside her, the strange emotion that seemed to swirl around them when Browning spoke of houses he might build and the future he planned to have, right here on the shore of this lake he’d only ever showed to her.
Only her.
Kit told herself that had just been a line. He probably used it on everyone.
But deep down, there was a sweet, sharp kick of pure joy at the idea that she might be special to this man in some way.
Anyone could have a crush on him. And many did. But he’d brought her here.
Now he was out in the water and there was nothing fair about that. Browning fully clothed was a problem. Browning standing there in the lake, grinning at her while water coursed all over that beautiful body of his...
Kit wondered if she was actually having the vapors.
“Turn around,” she ordered him.
Maybe she had to say it a couple of times, because her voice didn’t seem to be working the way it should.
“I heard the rules, Kit.” He shook his head at her. “I’m not the one who wanted to go back on the deal we made.”
“Says the person who’s not turning around.”
He laughed, then made a little production of turning his back to her.
She felt a shot of something that was a little too close to shame. That she wasn’t cool enough, like the girls he knew. Like Chelsea Mackavoy, back in high school, who had been so sure of herself. So at ease in her body when all the other girls were awkward disasters.
“He probably thinks you’re a Puritan,” Kit muttered to herself.
It was sheer temper and bravado that had her stepping out of her shoes, then shucking off the shorts and the shirt and everything beneath. She would do this. She would prove, once and for all, that it wasn’t that she didn’t know how to have fun. It was that she’d chosen a more serious path. Because she liked it. Because it was satisfying, and worthy, and had led to all of her dreams coming true, as planned.
That line of thought got her all the way down to the water. She stopped there for a minute, breathing too hard because Browning’s beautiful back was right there before her. And she was stark naked, standing out in the open for any passing creature to see.
Her heart was thudding so hard and so loud she was surprised it didn’t rip its way right out of her chest. And it was more than simply beating. It was sending pulses all through the rest of her. It charged through each limb, turned into something knotted in her belly, and became a long, slow lick of flame between her legs.
Kit wanted to burst into action—either race back for her clothes or quickly throw herself into the water and submerge herself to her chin—
But she made herself stop.
Because she had never done anything like this before and was very unlikely to do it again. So she...breathed it in, this bizarre moment. She could hear birds, loud and gossipy in the trees. There was a faint summer breeze, rustling the leaves and dancing all over her bare skin. It felt a lot like the way Browning’s fingers had, moving over her arm.
The sun felt like his laughter, bathing her in all that light.
For a moment, just a moment, she didn’t think about what she ought to do. She didn’t sort every sensation and feeling into what was serious and what was frivolous, then govern herself accordingly between the two.
She tipped her face toward the sun. She took a deep, shuddering breath. And for a moment, she simply enjoyed being in her own skin beneath the endless summer sky.
For a moment, she enjoyed everything.
When she looked at him again, Browning hadn’t moved. He still stood out there in the water, his lower body hidden from view, and waited.
As if he could wait forever. And would.
Kit believed he would.
She started into the water, cautiously at first. But it was a hot day and the cool embrace of the lake felt like another caress. After a few steps, she sank down into the water herself, dunking her head, and then swimming a bit.
And it was...a marvel.
The water was silky smooth and, feeling it everywhere, with no barrier, was a revelation. She thought of all the romance novels she’d read in her lifetime, too many hundreds upon hundreds to name, and the wonder of it was that she wasn’t sure she’d ever understood the meaning of the word sensual until now.
She swam farther out, feeling as if her body was being held aloft, wrapped up in the water and the sky above, until she could hardly tell whether she was faceup or facedown, swimming or flying.
When she stopped, she was facing Browning from a few feet away. And Kit thought her face might break apart at the force of her smile.
She braced herself then. For the jokes. The banter. The usual Browning response to anything and everything. Her heart seemed to pick up speed, because she couldn’t tell if that was what she wanted. Or if she wanted...this, instead.
The suspension of everything she knew. Nothing left but skin and water and sky, and the two of them caught right in the center of it.
But Browning didn’t crack a joke. He didn’t even smile.
A different kind of shuddering began to work its way through her, a kind of deep shaking she knew, instantly, was changing her. The very foundation of who she was, while she stood there, caught.
Because the way he was looking at her wasn’t funny. Or wicked, in that way of his.
His eyes were a dark blaze of heat. His beautiful face was all fallen, no angel, and there was nothing to distract her from the stark beauty of his features. He was all male, and if she wasn’t mistaken, as caught in this moment as she was.
She stretched her toes down to press into the sand beneath her, as if that would help ground her. But the water caught her anyway. It was easier to float, and she forgot that she should’ve been guarding herself. Making sure that the parts of her that needed to stay private were beneath the water.
It was like...being in the water changed everything.
“You’re going to want to be careful,” he said after an eternity or two, lost in the heat between them. In the tugging need she could feel all over her, making her nipples hard and the core of her slick. Making her skin feel over-sensitized by its own nudity and the water against it, reminding her. “You keep looking at me like that...”
“And what?” She’d intended it to be stern. But it came out like an invitation. “If you do anything at all, you break the rules. And then you pay the price.”
“It would be worth it.”
Kit agreed.
Rules and deals and prices seemed like the sorts of things she’d left onshore w
ith her clothes. Everything that had happened since Hope’s terrible wedding day seemed to have been leading her here. Right here, to this lake.
To Browning.
Because it had been easy to tell herself that she was a good friend. That she could honor the pact she’d made with the others, because it was fun. And she was fun when she wanted to be, damn it. Kit had told herself that, even as she’d thrown herself into the opening of her bookstore the same way she’d done everything else in her life: with a humorless drive and single-minded focus that was exhausting, which was often what her best friends used to make fun of her. It was also the reason Browning had made this bargain in the first place.
And sure, she’d achieved her dreams. But somewhere along the way, she’d decided that dreams were only worthwhile if they were all about hard work, dedication, sweat and tears and an endless grim march forward.
Maybe all of those things were necessary. But Kit was opening a bookshop that celebrated love. Passion. Women and men who took a clear-eyed view of facts and figures and then threw themselves headlong into raw, aching vulnerability anyway.
She’d approached the shop the way she’d approached getting into Princeton, or her editing career in New York: grim marches in all directions, when surely the part of life that mattered most was the brightness. The joy.
Anyone could march grimly. It was joy that was so fleeting. It was joy that people would truly kill or die for, in the end.
And Browning West—the Browning West—was in this lake with Kit, not Katherine.
Kit, who he seemed to like no matter how strangely she behaved around him. When she’d whispered things in his ear at the bar. Laughing uproariously at everything he said. Or that stupid hatbox. Even the crying.
He’d taken all of that in stride. And still, here he was.
It was a national holiday today. Kit decided that maybe, just maybe, she ought to take a holiday too. From herself.
She moved a little closer, aware of the exact moment the bright sun up above dimmed in comparison to the heat in those dark eyes of his. And all over his beautiful face.