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  She couldn’t agree more. She clutched at Garrett’s hair at his nape, pulling it a little as she struggled to hold on. He hissed, digging his fingers into the flesh of her ass as he scraped his teeth over the tender skin at the side of her neck, all while Evan stood in front of them, fucking her into sweet oblivion.

  He found her clit with his thumb, and she moaned as he circled the tight bud with the perfect amount of pressure. With a few more strokes inside her and a dozen more synchronized swirls on her clit, Evan had pushed her as far as she could go. The first sign of her orgasm tingled low and deep, an electrifying commotion that blossomed and intensified into something all-consuming with each drive of his hips.

  She dropped her head back onto Garrett’s shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut, panting, moaning, dying with each measured stroke while never feeling more lit up in her life. And when Evan clutched her hip, when his thrusts became halting and more jerky, she took a chance and opened her eyes. She expected to find him staring her down, but he wasn’t. His eyes were closed too. Tight, like hers had been, with his eyebrows drawn together in a tortured grimace. His groan as he came grew from somewhere inside his chest, transforming into a sexy rumble once it reached his throat.

  After a moment he slowed, drawing their pleasure out while bringing them both down, and he was doing it so sweetly, so tenderly, she wanted to cry. When he finally opened his eyes, he pinned her with a look so completely opposite what his gentleness had prepared her to see.

  His ardent scowl had transformed just like that, turning into an expression of pure agony. There was so much behind that one brief look, so much pain left stranded in his eyes that it made her heart hurt.

  “Evan,” she breathed.

  As soon as she spoke his name, his anguish disappeared. It was as if she’d verbally slapped him, pulling him away from whatever threatened to overpower and suffocate him.

  “Come here,” he said, slipping from her body and helping her to stand. But instead of drawing her into his arms, he stepped in closer. He pinned her against Garrett and captured her in what she suspected was a kiss meant to distract while Garrett lazily nipped along her shoulder.

  “Okay, you turned me into a believer,” he said when he slid from her lips to nuzzle her cheek.

  “A believer?”

  His laugh blew across her ear, sending a shiver down her neck. “Yeah. About the cotton candy being the ultimate sweet treat? You can officially call me a convert.”

  Even though she knew he was avoiding again, she didn’t have the heart to call him on it. “But I only got the chance to show Garrett, not you.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, pulling away to discreetly toss the condom in the garbage before coming back to rest against the center island. “It was still inspiring as hell.”

  “To say the least,” Garrett added.

  She grabbed the candy bag from where she’d tossed it on the counter and tore a piece off, offering it to Evan. He bit it in half and made a face. “Damn, that’s sweet.”

  “Well yeah,” she said, laughing. “That’s what makes it so good.” After she popped the other half into her mouth, she said, “Tell me it’s time to head outside. I honestly can’t think of anything I’d rather do right now than lie on the beach with you two. Unless, of course, you’ve both already recovered. If that’s the case, I can think of some pretty fun options that may or may not include scaring some fishes.”

  Garrett growled from over her shoulder. “Beach sex. Hell, I’m up for that. In about a half hour,” he said with a grin.

  Evan held up his hands, smirking as well. “Don’t look at me. After that, I may need an entire hour.”

  “Fine,” she said, faking an exasperated sigh while twisting the cotton candy bag closed. “Just lying on the beach it is, then. Maybe the last one out there in a lounge chair should be the one who has to make dinner?”

  That worked at getting Garrett’s attention, since she knew firsthand how much he hated to cook. He slipped out from behind her and kissed her on the temple. By the time he said, “See ya,” he was already out of the kitchen and halfway up the first flight of stairs.

  “Go,” Evan said when she didn’t move. “I don’t mind making dinner.”

  “You wouldn’t know it by the way he ran out of here, but I was joking,” she said. “We can all pitch in.”

  When his smile faded as he nodded and looked past her, her heart once again wrenched. “Is everything all right?”

  He didn’t say anything right away. Instead he picked their clothes up off the floor, separating hers from his and Garrett’s before handing hers over. She took them and waited for him to answer.

  “That’s the second time today you’ve asked me that,” he finally said.

  She shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure.” After another moment, she added, “You know, if this is too—”

  “It isn’t,” he said, cutting her off.

  Well, that was totally believable. Not.

  She tilted her head a little, trying to get a better feel for him. “Okay. I just thought… I mean, after the way you said things ended with Shannon and Brad…”

  “This isn’t the same.”

  Mentally, she completely understood that. Emotionally, hearing him say it wrecked her.

  She knew this wasn’t a relationship. She knew he was leaving for Texas at the end of the week, just as she and Garrett were going home to Chicago. She could tell herself over and over again that this week was simply about having fun. She could spend hours convincing herself that come Saturday morning, she’d be able to kiss him one last time and then walk away.

  But when he looked at her the way he did, when he smiled at her, when he touched her… God, it made her ache for so much more.

  He took a step toward her and reached for her hand. “I didn’t say that to hurt you.”

  “No, I know you didn’t.”

  “But I did anyway.”

  “No. Not really. I get it, Evan. You have your own life. We do too. I won’t stand here and tell you that I haven’t thought about where this could go if our situations were different, because I have. But I also know exactly what it is we’re doing. One week, right? One week of amazing fun, and then we’ll…”

  She let that last sentence trail off because she didn’t want to say it out loud. And then we’ll say goodbye and that will be that. She could already feel her heart splintering at the thought of leaving him.

  “And then we’ll have some of the best memories,” he said, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. “Ones I’ll never forget.”

  She looked down to where he was caressing her knuckles and blinked back the sting in her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry, damn it. Not now, at least. And not in front of him.

  “I won’t either,” she whispered, sniffling a little before raising her head and squaring her shoulders. She needed to regain her composure, and she needed to do it right now before she completely fell apart. “So let’s go make a few more. All that sun and sand is out there, just waiting for us.”

  The kiss he placed on the back of her hand was meant to be soothing, but all it did was rip her heart apart even more. “Sounds perfect.”

  Yeah, it did. It sounded absolutely perfect. And she tried to focus on that, on the great time they were going to have this week because, really…Lord help her if she let her mind wander any further than that.

  Chapter Eight

  Garrett wasn’t the least bit ashamed to be the first out on the beach because, for one, they really didn’t want him to be responsible for dinner, and for another, he was able to get everything ready for the three of them to spend the rest of the afternoon on the sand.

  He arranged three lounge chairs, complete with small, round tables in between and two beach umbrellas behind them to give the perfect amount of cool shade. Plugged into a portable speaker, his phone doubled as an MP3 player, which he’d taken care to program with all of his and Riley’s favorite music before they left home. The crashing surf ru
mbled not twenty feet away, tumbling over and over in frothy, sea-foam-green waves.

  The set-up—and the view—was perfect.

  Loaded down with an oversized tote bag while wearing what had to be the skimpiest—and sexiest—black bikini Garrett had ever seen, Riley raced toward him through the scorching sand in her bare feet, muttering a few eee’s and a couple of oww’s along the way. “Hot, hot, hot,” she said, jumping into a small corner of the umbrella’s shade.

  Hell yes, she was, but in his world that went without saying.

  She came around the end of the chair and dropped the tote in front of the small table. “Lotion me?” she asked, digging through the bag until she came up with a bottle of sunscreen.

  Huh, she didn’t have to ask him twice. He straddled the chaise and patted the spot in front of him. “Of course I will. Hop on, baby.”

  She grinned and slid onto the end of the lounge chair. “You’re the best.” After a moment of looking out at the water while he slathered the sunscreen on her back, she peered at him from over her shoulder. “I mean that, you know.”

  He slipped his fingers under the string tie of her bikini top to rub more lotion on her skin. “Ah babe. I love you. I’d do anything to show you that.”

  “There are so many people who just wouldn’t understand. So many of our friends—”

  “Who are not us. We don’t owe anyone an explanation for how we live our lives.”

  “I know. And I agree. I just wanted you to know, though.” She huffed out a chuckle. “I want to scream it at the top of my lungs, actually.”

  He laughed. “No one’s stopping you.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I think I would,” he teased.

  “Okay then.” She cleared her throat and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Garrett Watson is the absolute best!” she shouted to no one but a few seagulls, who flew away before she stopped yelling.

  “Well, obviously the birds aren’t buying it.”

  She faked a put-out look and moved to elbow him, but he was faster. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her back to plaster her against his chest, laughing right along with her while she struggled in his hold to try to nail him in the ribs.

  “No fair,” she squealed.

  “Oh it’s totally fair,” he said in between attempts to hold her sunscreen-slick and wiggly body still. He shamelessly copped a feel at the same time, which made her laugh and shriek that much louder.

  God, what this woman did to him. Her laughter lit him up, her playful screams spurred him on and their skin-on-skin contact, no matter if it was sensual or playful, never failed to wreak havoc on his entire body. He was getting hard again just from slicking that lotion all over her back, just from wrestling with her to try to keep her elbows away from his stomach. He was getting hard again just from being near her.

  Evan came around the edge of the umbrella then, saying, “Yeah, hold on a second,” before chinning his phone. “You okay there? Need any help?”

  “Yes please!” she screeched before letting out another high-pitched yelp when Garrett dug in and tickled her side.

  “I was talking to Garrett,” Evan said through a smirk of his own. “Need a hand, bro?

  Garrett stopped his torture and squeezed his arms around Riley, smacking a kiss on her shoulder before letting her go. “Nah, two against one would be totally… Wait, what am I saying? Get back here,” he said to her, but this time she was the quicker one. She scooted off the end of the chair, grabbed the bottle of sunscreen and moved down to the lounger at the other end.

  “No, no, no. You snooze, you lose.”

  She was still grinning from ear to ear as she squirted a healthy dose of the sunscreen in her hand and started smoothing it up and down her legs. Her simple yet seductive movements held him transfixed—until Evan plopped down on the end of the lounge chair in between them and distracted him.

  “My buddy says we can use his boat tomorrow. He doesn’t need it until next weekend, so it’s no problem if we want to keep it overnight. He’s got all the gear on board too. He’ll even provide the chum for the sharks, so all we’ll need is a little food for ourselves and we’ll be ready to go.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Garrett said as Riley groaned.

  “I still don’t like the idea of doing this at night,” she said.

  “It’ll be fine, I promise,” he said. “We came all the way down here to enjoy ourselves. Seems a shame not to take advantage of a sweet deal like this while we can. I swear you’ll have a good time, babe. Scout’s honor.”

  “You were never a Scout,” she replied.

  “But I was,” Evan tossed in. “So you can take my word for it.”

  She didn’t get the chance to protest any further before Evan stood and shifted his attention back to the phone at his ear. “We’ll be at the docks sometime tomorrow evening, then. Yeah, thanks man. I owe ya one. Later,” Evan said, then disconnected the call. “It’s all set. Tomorrow night, at the docks down in Destin. Everything will be ready when we get there.”

  Even though Riley wasn’t fully on board with the whole deep-sea fishing expedition, Garrett was fired-up and ready to give it a try. Out of all the high-octane activities he’d ever participated in, he couldn’t count shark fishing as one of them. Sure, most of the time spent waiting around for a tug on the line was going to be boring as hell, but once they got their first bite… He could already feel the adrenaline as if it were a living creature inside him, eager to be set free so it could run wild through his system. He loved the jacked-up rush he got just from doing something even the tiniest bit dangerous. It was one of the things Riley had never really understood about him, but a trait he could see he had in common with Evan.

  “Awesome,” Garrett said as he settled back in the lounge chair and stuck his sandy feet out in front of him.

  “Yay. Awesome,” Riley said, not doing a damn thing to hide the sarcasm in her voice. She tossed the sunscreen bottle back into the tote bag, adjusted her bikini bottoms and, without another word, stalked off toward the water.

  “Is she really upset?” Evan asked him. “We don’t have to go, you know. I just thought it’d be something a little different for you guys.”

  Garrett reached inside the cooler he’d brought down with him, dug out two bottles of water from the ice and chucked one to Evan. “No, she’s not upset. If she was, she would’ve given us a flat-out ‘no’ and told us she wasn’t going with us. Riley’s probably the strongest woman I’ve ever met, but by nature she’s also a world-class worrier. Remember what I said before about her being vicious when it comes to the ones she loves? Well, she doesn’t feel complete unless she’s worrying about them too. She’s told me she wasn’t always that way, that it started when she met me. Through the years, though, I’ve come to learn it’s how you know you’ve worked your way into her heart. When she loves, she loves deep. She loves all the way.”

  “I don’t want to make her worry,” Evan said after a moment, which made it more than obvious he was completely skipping over that whole being-loved-by-Riley part Garrett mentioned. “It’s only fishing. It’s just the fish you’re trying to catch are a bit bigger than normal.”

  “And with more teeth.” Garrett laughed, his gaze glued to Riley’s sexy backside as she waded knee-deep into the surf. “If we don’t push her to go, I can guarantee by next weekend she’ll be giving me hell for it. She loves the thrill just as much as I do, it’s just that she needs a little more of a nudge to get there, especially when there’s any sort of risk involved.”

  Evan sat back on the middle lounge chair and slid his phone onto the table beside him. “Did you nudge her for this? For us?”

  Garrett never took his eyes off her. “Not really. She thought that by wanting to be with you, she’d end up hurting me.”

  “But that’s not the case?”

  “No, it’s not. I learned a while ago to take life as it comes at me. There’s not enough time in any of our l
ives to waste even a minute of it being hung up on what some in society say is the right or wrong way to care about or enjoy someone.”

  “There’s still a risk in something like this.”

  Garrett peeled his stare off Riley and nailed Evan with it instead. “Of her getting hurt, yes, there is.”

  Evan took a long sip of his water. “You’ve got a hell of a woman there,” he said after he swallowed. “The last thing I’d want to do is hurt her.”

  “But you will anyway.”

  Evan flashed him a look.

  “You won’t do it intentionally,” Garrett went on. “And she’ll play it cool all week long, as if saying goodbye isn’t going to be a big deal for her. But I know my wife. When you leave her—when you leave us—it’s going to hurt her.”

  “Ah God. You have to know that’s not my intention. She’s just so…” Evan sighed. “I can go, before things get—”

  “Are you kidding me? No way. That’ll only make things worse. Give her the week. Let her have at least that.”

  “And what’s in all this for you?”

  The question was one he expected, and the answer he had to give was a simple one. He set his sights on his wife again, who was now up to her shoulders in the clear, emerald waters. He watched as she hopped up to stay above each wave rolling at her and laughed gently as she sputtered when one finally splashed over her head.

  “That’s easy. I get to see her happy. I did a lot of stupid stuff for a lot of years and took chances that would make even the most adventurous man think I was just a little insane. I was a spoiled rich kid whose parents really didn’t give a rat’s ass about him, and figured there was no better way to escape than by losing myself in the rush all that reckless shit created. There were so many years where I didn’t care if I lived or died—and believe me, I came this close to cashing it in on more than one occasion. But then I met Riley. She was the one who showed me that the biggest thrill I can get is not by taking careless chances, but by putting everything I have into living. And yeah, I get how corny that sounds. But it’s true. That woman out there? She saved me and I’ll spend the rest of my life repaying her for that.”