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She growls, and smacks me on my arm. “You jerk!”
My head tips back, and I let out a belly laugh. “First you punch me. Now you’re hitting me. You’re assaulting me a lot today.”
“You deserve it.” A disgusted noise sounds in the back of her throat. “For the record, I wasn’t spying. I was just—”
“Checking out mysexy rippling muscles?”
“Sure, kind of like the way you were checking me out in my bathing suit earlier.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Now we’re even.”
I haven’t been able to get the memory of Charly’s tiny white two-piece out of my head all damn day. She dipped and swelled in all the right places, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her beautiful, luscious curves. I wanted to trace the droplets of water running along her skin with my tongue, pull on the strings tied around her hips and find out if she tastes like peaches. God, the way her nipples pebbled under my gaze ...
Stop. You cannot get hard in your swim trunks right now.
“That your book?” I point her attention away from the tent I’m dangerously close to pitching in my shorts.
“Yes. I threw it at the snake.”
“Because snakes are afraid of literature?”
She giggles, and brushes the mulch off the cover. “It was the only thing I had to defend myself.”
My heart skips a beat when I read the title. “Peter Pan?”
“Have you read it?”
I puff out my chest as we make our way to the pool. “I played Peter Pan in my fifth-grade play.”
She tilts her head back as she lets out a genuine, hearty laugh. “Oh, my God. You in green tights? I cannot picture that.”
I scoff. “I have nice legs. I rocked those tights.”
That makes her laugh harder.
I grab my towel off the lounge chair, and when I turn around, Charly’s eyes flick up to mine like a child who’s been caught looking at something she shouldn’t. She fidgets with the frays on her shorts, chewing on her bottom lip.
Disappointment slams into me.My scar. That’s why she was staring at me.
Part of me wants to face this, and get it over with so it isn’t the elephant in the room. The other part of me—the chicken-shit part—wants to go to my room, and close the door so that Charly never has to know about that side of me.
I shoot for somewhere in the middle. “That’s the real reason you were spying on me, wasn’t it? You saw the scar.”
She drops her gaze to the concrete. “I did see it, but that wasn’t the only reason I was staring.” A pretty pink flush rises up her neck and into her cheeks. Then she huffs out a soft titter. “But you’re probably used to girls staring at you all the time.”
“You’d be surprised.”
She edges closer. “That’s a pretty gnarly scar though.”
My throat constricts, making it hard to breathe. It’s been a while since I talked about it. Been a while since anyone asked without assuming they knew my story. “I had spinal surgery six years ago. I, uh, had an accident, and was temporarily paralyzed.”
She lifts her fingertips to her lips. “Oh, Bryce.”
I feign nonchalance and try to make light of it. “Swimming is my therapy. Helps keep me in shape because I can’t run miles like I used to. I do it every night, though nobody usually hides in the bushes to watch me.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry about catching you tonight.” She walks ahead of me toward the house, and when she gets to the porch, she glances over her shoulder and throws out one last comment, wearing a mischievous smile. “Your body is a work of art, Bryce. Scar or not, I’d have been staring.”
Is she ... flirting?
I’m assaulted by a fantasy of the two of us in the pool. Nothing but skin on skin, surrounded by the cool water, and blanketed under the starry night sky. My dick hardens as I imagine the way my name would sound on her lips, the way she’d come apart under my touch.
