He takes off his shirt and pants, and comes toward me in easy, lazy strides.

He picks up speed as he reaches me, water splashing up to my thighs and stomach as he catches me around the waist, hoists me off my feet. I shriek with surprised laughter, and he carries me deeper, my arms locked over his.

“Don’t drop me,” I say, voice fading into the crashing of the water.

He swings me into his arms, carrying me outright instead of simply hauling me along. “Never,” he says.

With every step, the water splashes against us, and then we’re in so deep that it’s lapping at me, pouring over Miles’s arms to thread across my stomach. He stops and sways me back and forth, my toes trailing over the warm surface.

I close my eyes, and every sensation amplifies: the sunbeams drenching my face, Miles’s arms crooked beneath my back and knees, the way his breath presses his stomach against my side on every inhale, the lazy squawk of seagulls in the distance, and the grit of the sand on my feet, and a complete kind of safety.

Like being in a womb. Like lying on a quilt in the yard of our old house, the one we shared with Dad, on a summer day, legs tickling as a roly-poly climbed over the back of my calf. Like being tucked back in the library stacks with no one around and a good selection.

I let my eyes open, and now the sight of him—that messy hair, his sun-freckled face and scruffy jaw, those chocolate-brown eyes—it cuts through my veins, a thousand wakes from a thousand little boats with Miles on their sails, headed straight toward my heart. “Thanks for bringing me here,” I murmur.

His eyes settle softly on me. “I already told you. I didn’t do it to be nice.”

28

We drive home with the windows open, pine thick in the air and wind howling.

At a red light, Miles looks across the dark cab, sets his hand on mine on the seat. My heart beats like a hummingbird at the back of my throat. I turn my palm up to his, let his fingers slide between mine.

We hold on to each other the whole way home, across the sidewalk to our building, up the stairs.

He gets the door unlocked, pulls me into the dark apartment, pushes me against the door.

Our breath is shallow. My heart is battering in my chest.

We’re right up against the ledge we’ve been sliding toward all summer, and I’m still trying to talk myself down when he kisses me.

A rough, breathless kiss that turns my legs to liquid. A kiss that breaks through every last bit of willpower I had. My hands slip up the back of his neck into his still-damp hair, and his hips lock with mine, months of need thrumming between us.

The kiss deepens, his tongue in my mouth, his teeth on my lip, his groan slipping down my throat to curl up in my low belly. His hand slides down my chest to cup me through my damp shirt, and I have no more patience.

I reach for the buttons on his pants. He helps me undo them. I pull his shirt off. He does the same with mine, both cast on the floor. We crash back into one another, move into the kitchen. He walks me back against the counter, his rough hands sliding around me to undo my bra, pull it off me, then pin my hips back to the counter while he looks at me.

“Gorgeous,” he says raggedly.

I pull him to me, gasp at the feeling of his chest flush against mine. He lifts me onto the counter and steps in closer, our bodies moving restlessly against each other, trying to find every last bit of friction, my thighs tight against his hips.

Kissing him is so different now that I know him. Now I understand that the breezy, carefree Miles I first met is only his topmost layer, that his nonchalant way of moving through the world is a product of self-control, but beneath that surface, he wants.

The last bite of cheesecake.

The final sip of wine.

The bracing cool of the lake.

To be kissed.

To be held.

To be protected.

He wants it all, even the things he’d never let himself ask for, or won’t let himself have.

His hand sifts across the back of my head and winds into my hair as our kiss coarsens.

The thrills going through my belly make me feel lightweight, helium-filled. Our teeth clink. A breathless laugh, his or mine, and then a deeper kiss. My hands down his back, my nails scraping over his goose-bumped shoulders.

I love how his skin feels, how it’s dry from exposure to the elements, and the smell of the winery never quite washes away.

I want him to know that I love it, so I tell him, in a whisper just beneath his ear, and he nuzzles into my throat, lets his hand graze down my chest, rolling against me until I can barely breathe.

Then he lowers himself between my knees, his hands light against my legs, his mouth warm and heavy on my low stomach, the crease of my hip, and then, eyes slanting up to mine, between my thighs. I lean back into my palms, breath quickening as he brushes my underwear aside, presses his mouth to me, murmurs my name in a low gravel that makes everything in me pull taut. I work my hips against him, his hands skating around to guide my movement until I feel like I can’t breathe, can’t see, like my heart might crack through my ribs if I can’t have more of him.

“Condoms?” I whisper.

His eyes slice to mine, dark and inky. “Do you want to?”

I know what he means: not Do you want to use a condom but Do you want to do something that requires a condom, and I almost laugh, because I can’t imagine it being more obvious what I want.

“I do,” I say, “as long as you do.”

He stands, squeezing the back of my neck. “Stay here.”

When he comes back, he tosses the strip of them on the counter and pulls me back to him, a fierce, hungry kiss as we scrabble with each other’s pants. I get his off first, wrap a hand around him, and his head bows into my shoulder, his muscles going tight in a way that thrills me. I gently push him back by the shoulder, our eyes connecting as I slide off the counter, kneel in front of him.

“You don’t have to,” he murmurs.

“I want to,” I tell him. And I do, like I never have before. His hand flutters into my hair as I take him in my mouth, a ragged sound scraping out of his throat. He moves with me, my hands climbing up his thighs, to his hips, guiding him.

“Daphne,” he says gruffly, shaking his head. “No more.”

Which is good, because hearing him this turned on is making it hard for me to keep going. He pulls me back up, our mouths melting together as his hands skim down me, peeling away my pants, then my underwear. For the first time we’re entirely bare together, and it’s exhilarating and terrifying and sensual having his arms wrapped around me, our thighs tangled together, feeling his pulse in so many different places as he bends to sweep a kiss along my trapezius, then another at my temple, then finally a soft kiss on my lips.

For several seconds, we’re tender, delicate, but soon the need wins out. He turns me by the hips, pushes me against the counter, and wedges himself between my thighs, teasing me until I’m practically crying, pushing myself back against him, pleading with him.

I hear the tear of foil packaging, and strain eagerly back against him, and seconds later, finally, he’s pushing slowly into me, and I am crying out, my whole back alive with goose bumps as his hands drag down me, settle at my hips, guiding me back to him feverishly. He slides one hand around my waist to nestle between my thighs as we move together.

The counter’s edge digs in my waist. His fingertips score into my hip.

“More,” I say. There’s no such thing as enough.

He withdraws long enough to turn me back to him. We clamber back together for several dizzying, desperate seconds, and then we’re on the kitchen floor, and he’s biting me and I’m licking him, and my thighs are wound around his waist, our skin slick with sweat, his hips bucking into me. Like I’ve wanted. Like I’ve needed.