He looks down at me, hair wet and slicked back, moonlight spilling across his high cheekbones.
His hand comes up slowly, water dripping from it. He drags his thumb across my bottom lip, still swollen and damp from the kiss, salt from the ocean mingling with the heat of his touch.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he murmurs, voice rough, like the words cost him something.
“A whole week and a half of knowing me?” I tease, voice breathless as I try to smile.
For a split second, something flickers behind his eyes. It’s a tiny twitch of his eyebrows—something I don’t understand. Like there's something he’s not saying. Something he knows that I don’t.
But before I can make sense of it, he’s already closing the distance again.
His fingers tangle in the back of my hair, tipping my head back just slightly.
“I love that smart mouth of yours,” he says, lips brushing the corner of mine. “And I can’t wait to find out how it feels,”—his teeth scrape against my bottom lip—“wrapped around me.”
Oh my God.
A violent spasm clenches low in my belly. I inhale sharply at the mental image he’s just conjured.
But I don’t get to answer before he brings me closer to him and his soft lips capture mine again. His fingers tug at the hair on the back of my head, causing my lips to part for him. His tongue slides against mine, his hand tightening in my hair even more like he’s claiming me, and the world shrinks to nothing but him.
I’m gone. There’s no up. No down. No logic or air or sense. Just the sharp sting of his teeth dragging across my bottom lip, the wet slide of his tongue tasting me, and the punishing pressure of his body grinding into mine.
I can feel everything—his hands, his grip, his cock, his heat. And he’s not being soft. He’s kissing me like he’s been starved. His fingers slide deeper into my hair and fist it to angle my head. His mouth finds my neck right before I feel his sharp canines sink into my skin.
I can’t stop the moan that leaves my mouth, shameless and loud. My legs tighten around him, and my hands claw at his shoulders. The muscles there are dense, flexing under my fingers as he holds me up.
My entire body is lit up, alive in a way I didn’t think was possible outside of fiction or fantasy.
I’ve never felt like this. Like I’m burning and flying and dying at the same time.
He shifts his hips and I feel him again—hard, thick, pressed right against where I’m aching. The sound that escapes me isn’t human. It’s desperate and broken.
He groans against my skin before he lifts me higher, putting distance between me and his cock. Like he can’t handle the feeling of it touching me. Like he’s holding himself back with every fiber of his being.
And even though I can’t feel it against my skin anymore, my mind still goes there.
What would it feel like inside me? Stretching me, filling me until I forget every other name I’ve ever whispered in the dark?
His lips find mine again, and he groans against my mouth. His grip tightens around my waist, and he grins into the kiss like he hears what I’m thinking.
“Jace,” I breathe against his mouth, barely able to say his name.
“Say my name again,” he whispers, his hand sliding up my side under the water.
“Jace,” I pant, my own breath mixing with his.
His lips are on mine again in an instant—hungry and merciless. The kiss is deeper and rougher, and just as it grows into something I can’t come back from, another name hits me.
Ghost.
The name is like an ocean being poured onto a fire. It stops me cold.
Suddenly, I remember whose arms I’m in. Not Ghost’s, but my brother’s teammate’s—an NHL superstar who most likely won’t remember my name the moment he gets what he wants. Or worse—have my name cursed into his mind when my brotherfinds out about this and makes him regret ever locking eyes with me during that welcome party.
My breath stutters, and while my body stays pressed against Jace’s—skin to skin—my mind is already running.
What the hell am I doing?
