“At Black’s?” I clarify, brows raised.
“Sure, why not?”
“I know next to nothing about surfing, and even I know Black’s does not have a bunny hill, Logan.”
“There’s a section of nude beach here. Maybe I just want to get you naked.”
I press my hand to my dick and close my eyes with a groan. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
* * *
TAKING THE WOODEN stairs that lead down the cliffside, I spot London’s bright orange bikini top almost immediately. She’s amazing, just a neon speck in this massive blue ocean, and surrounded by guys who look almost twice her size. I stop and watch her for a minute, noting how patient she is as she waits for just the right wave, how determined she becomes when she finally finds one. It’s hard not to want to run out and save her when she gets knocked into the surf, but I realized a long time ago, London doesn’t need me to save her from anything.
I continue down to the beach and take a look around. London’s right: for someone who’s lived most of his life near the beach, I’ve spent shockingly little of that time at any of them—this one included. From the sand, Black’s is nothing but ocean and giant cliffs all around, and it’s easy to forget there’s a city just beyond it.
London sees me from the water and I watch as she paddles in, all long arms, strong shoulders, and tan skin. I find a place for my board in the sand—carefully, just like she showed me—and sit down to wait for her. She makes it to the shore and tucks her own board under her arm, crossing the beach and stopping close enough for water droplets to land on my feet.
“Hey,” she says, smiling down at me.
I can’t help but let my eyes skim the curves and lines of her body, before meeting her smile with one of my own. “Hey, yourself.”
She wrings out her hair and then, after a moment of hesitation, straddles my lap.
I let out an intensely feminine high-pitched squeak. “Cold!”
“Oops, sorry.”
I fight halfheartedly against her attempts to press her wet, cold chest against my dry, warm one. “You don’t look very sorry.”
“Because I’m not. I like you in your swim trunks, though,” she says, fingers teasing down my sides to tug at the waist of my shorts. “I didn’t get to tell you that last time.”
With my hands bracketing her ribs, I brush my thumbs along the skin just below her breasts . . . because this is a thing I can do now. I think.
“You mean when you tried to feed me to the sharks?” I ask. She nods and I lean in, kissing her chin. “I liked your suit, too. It took superhuman strength not to get hard every time you touched me.”
“I could barely concentrate; I’m surprised you didn’t drown.”
I laugh against her skin, running my nose along the column of her throat. She smells like the ocean and sunblock, and I wonder idly how much convincing it would take to get her to blow off whatever it is she’s thinking about and come home with me.
I tug a little on the string tying her top together and brush her wet hair over her shoulder. “I want to apologize again for not seeing your texts. I really would have liked to have seen you last night.”
“It’s fine. Your phone is crazy, I totally get how you missed it,” she says, and I feel the vibration of her voice against my lips. She scratches my scalp and tugs on my hair and I moan, almost missing it when she says, “Are you a good monster, or a bad monster, Luke Sutter?”
I close my eyes and lean into her touch. “Can’t I be both?”
She runs her finger from my hair to my forehead, down my nose, and over my top lip. Opening my mouth, I take her fingertip between my teeth, and bite it.
“You make me sort of crazy,” she says, eyes a little unfocused, mouth slightly open.
“Crazy is good.”
“You’re like junk food.”
I suck a little, and then smile, speaking around her finger. “Junk food?”
“Yeah,” she says, tongue peeking out to lick her lips. “Pizza. Chips.”
Her words scrape up my spine and my heart falls several inches in my chest. I tilt my head to see her face. “I wasn’t confused about the term ‘junk food,’ Logan. Rather, the choice of metaphor.”
She pulls her finger free, and touches the tip of my chin. “Like I want to shove you in my face but I worry I’ll feel awful afterward.” London scrunches up her nose in adorable frustration but then sighs, leaning into me.
So she means pretty much exactly what I thought. I close my eyes again, jaw tight, trying to ignore the visceral pull I feel when she’s this close, and instead let the anger and hurt boil up and out.
She wants me but will feel awful afterward.
I’m not only unhealthy, I’m regrettable.
“London?”
“Hmm?”
I move her off my lap and stand, looking down at her. “That comparison makes me feel like shit.”
She seems to realize exactly what she’s said, and her face falls. “No. Luke—”
“I haven’t been with anyone else. I want to be with you all the fucking time. I told you I love you, and you call me junk food? How is this any different than Daniel referring to girls as snacks?”
She stares up at me, surprise melting into regret. “You’re right, it’s not,” she says. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“But you think it.”
“Luke.”
She can say my name as many times as she wants but fuck this. I stand and brush the sand from my shorts, grabbing my board before I start to walk away. A hand wrapped around my forearm stops me, pulls me around to face her.
“I already don’t trust my judgment and now I’m falling for the most terrifying person possible,” she says. “You know why you missed my texts last night? Because they were buried in there with twenty other messages. You think I don’t realize that? How many women texted you last night, Luke? Forty? More? You used to bang anything with a pussy.”
She jolts, like her using such words surprised her, too. Which only makes me wonder how long they’ve been simmering just below the surface.
I hesitate, scowling at her even though I know exactly how right she is. I want to tell her she’s a pain in the ass, has no idea what the fuck is going on here or what I’m doing with who, but the first words out of my mouth are the most trivial: “Not anything.”
“Fucking hell, Luke.” She runs her hands through her tangled hair and stares up at me, exasperated. “Really?”
Maybe I should have gone with my first instinct—to tell her she’s right, but that isn’t me anymore. “London—”
“Have you considered that the reason you want me is because I’m resisting?” she asks. “Is it the cliché of the challenge? I mean, if we do this, and we’re together—”
“I know how to commit,” I growl. “I know what it looks like.”
“Fine,” she says, low and flat. “But before, Mia was all you knew. Now you’re used to that thrill of discovery, the chase. What if sex between us grows familiar? What if we’re together five years and you get bored? The thought of being with you, and you taking home some other—”
“Stop.”
I turn away. I can’t listen. It reminds me of the betrayal I felt when I slept with Ali. The idea of being with someone else when I could have London, of her being with another guy, actually shoves a spike into my head.