Page 52 of Against The Tide

I turn to find Rhett standing behind me. The sun tinges his skin a deep golden shade that highlights the lean muscles of his arms, the contours of his cheekbones, and the sharp lines of his bristled jaw. His hair is still a little damp from his shower post-sugar explosion, making the roots look a few shades darker than the sun-bleached ends.

“No.” I shake my head. To fill the silence that follows, I add, “I used to watch people canter on the beach and on the dunes in Montauk.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah, it was. My mom was devastated that I was too scared to give it a try. All the other girls loved it, but I always preferred the water.”

He looks at me fondly, as though he’s truly fascinated by what I’m telling him.

“You’re scared of horses?”

“No, not the horses. It’s the mounting and riding part that…” I pause as a perplexed expression flits over his face. “Every summer we used to go to Long Island, we had a house on the beach. One summer, I remember sitting on the porch waiting for the sun lotion to set, and this girl was riding by the water. One minute she was flying past, and the next she was on the ground.”

“Was she all right?”

“No, she hit her head on a submerged rock, and a few days later she died in hospital. That one incident was enough to scare me for life.”

“And yet, you’re not scared of swimming with sharks,” he muses.

“I know. I’m an oxymoron, and it’s a stupid fear.”

Rhett comes closer. Boldly, he threads our fingers together, squeezing our palms together, his tanned skin a fraction darker than my own. Veins pulse on the back of his hand as he flexes his hold on mine, kneading our flesh together, a kind of comfort no one has offered me in so long.

“Avery…” The soft whisper of my name makes me peer up at him. “There’s nothing stupid about you.”

The faraway sound of hooves pounding earth and satisfied neighs from closer by fade into a buzz as he fingers the ends of my bangs, twisting them away from my face.

The way he’s looking at me makes my insides warm, my lungs burn with the need for air. But it feels so thick, too thick to breathe it in. And I don’t want to breathe. I don’t want to think. I don’t want anything except for Rhett Reynolds to look at me forever in the way he’s looking at me now.

I want him to kiss me. I want him to kiss me and to touch me. I want him to devour me with every nerve, fiber, cell, and molecule of my being.

And maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it’ll never happen, but the longer he looks at me in this thought-consuming way…the more I need him to do it. The more I need him to make me forget everything.

Another gripping squeeze brings me closer to him, my heart beating so hard that it’s threatening to blow. The sun gleams in the dark golden threads of his thick hair as Rhett leans forward, so slow, and I wish it was faster because all I can think is that I’m about to combust.

His thumb skims the shell of my ear, down to my jaw.

Oh God.

The tip of his nose ghosts mine.

Oh Jesus.

My pleas echo in my thoughts, while all I want is to feel something. Rhett’s kiss. I want to know what his affection feels like. The taste of it.

“Rhett…”

Bright, ocean-green eyes bore into mine, darkening the longer we stand breathing the same air with our pulses hammering together between our hands.

“You’re killing me, Avery. I want to give you time, I do. I want to give you what you need.”

My hand flattens to his hard stomach, pushing and pulling. Unlike all the other times he’s given me room to maneuver around him, Rhett holds my hand tighter while his hand cups my face harder.

With my blood rushing hot and frantic through me, my pulse pounds and pounds so deafening inside that it drowns out all thought and feeling outside of it.

My fingers claw at him as he pulls me flush to him, his strength winning out, all the gentleness from the last several weeks gone.

The longer he holds me to him, the more I crave him. The warmth of his body thaws the ice in my veins and breaks down all the barricades I tried to erect around my heart.