“Make it something… you’ve never told anybody else before.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath, as he appeared to think carefully about what he would share. “I love the water.”
She reached out and playfully tapped his arm. “Come on. That’s not a secret.”
“Wait, wait. I haven’t gotten to the good part yet. When I was young, really young, I almost drowned. My dad wanted to teach me how to swim and thought the best way was just to push me off the fishing boat, no lifejacket or nothing. He thought that since it was life-and-death, I would just figure it out. Well, I didn’t. I was half dead. Lost consciousness and everything. It was only dumb luck that someone on a nearby boat saw it and jumped in after me.”
Shae didn’t know what she had expected him to reveal, but this was so much more than she’d asked for. “That’s terrible. Your dad wouldn’t come in for you when he saw you were having trouble?”
Tristan shrugged nonchalantly, as if the fact that his father almost killed him wasn’t a big deal. “I figure he still thought he was right. That eventually, I would just know how to swim and I would find my way back to the surface. The Good Samaritan got the water out of my lungs and took me to the hospital. For the next few years, I never even set foot on the beach. I did anything I could do to avoid water.”
She thought back to what he’d opened with. That he loved water. “So what changed?”
“My dad died. All he left me with was anger and resentment. I don’t know. All shit that wasn’t doing me any good then. So one summer, I rented this little cottage on a lake in Montana. Every day, I’d go in the water and wade a little bit deeper. Eventually, I was in over my head and not drowning. By the end of the summer, I could actually swim across the lake and back without any problems. So now I love the water. It’s not a bad memory for me anymore. It’s one more thing I conquered. I beat it. So there. Now you know something about me that nobody else does.”
Tristan looked down at her. The clouds must’ve parted, because the moon was suddenly bright on his face. He said the words nonchalantly, but the expression in his eyes was so different. It seemed… vulnerable. As though he were looking to her for approval. To see whether she thought his fear of the water had been ridiculous, or she was proud of his conquering it. Shae didn’t have any comforting words to give him. She and her own father seemed to be struggling throughout her entire life, but he never tried to kill her at least. Then again, Shae had never been good with words. So she decided not to say anything. Instead, she stood up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. It started slow. Soft. Innocent. Tristan stayed still as her hands went up to his face, and she moved her lips against his.
At first, she thought she’d done something wrong. Maybe she’d misread this. Maybe he wasn’t really into her. Maybe she’d just gone and made a fool of herself. Right as she was about to pull away, something snapped in Tristan. He wrapped his arms around her and crushed her against his body as he finally kissed her back.
He opened his mouth over hers, and his tongue pushed inside as his hands moved along her back. One hand held still as the other found the curve of her ass through her dress and pulled her tightly against his very pronounced erection.
Shae gasped at the onslaught of sensations. She went through a mental list of the kisses she’d shared with different men, and nothing compared to this. This was desperate. This was all-consuming. She was confused, and turned on, and she never wanted it to stop. She willingly molded herself against his body and went up on her tiptoes for a better angle. One hand played with the back of his hair while the other roamed down a strong, muscular back, willing his shirt to disappear so it could be skin against skin. She’d just gotten to his waist when she felt something hard, and obviously not part of him. She pulled away with a questioning look, but he wasn’t looking at her. His attention was over her shoulder, and his expression was hard. He didn’t look like a man who had just been kissing her like she’d just been kissed. He looked focused and… angry?
“We have company,” he said.