He flashes a grin my way as he rubs his hair dry. “We’re definitely going back to my place, but we’re celebrating first. There’s a funky little brewery farther down the beach. You’re going to love it.”
“Yeah?” I finish drying off and reach for my cover-up.
“Trust me. I know what you like,” he says, in a voice that makes me sizzle all over again.
“You do,” I say, in a voice that I hope makes him burn up too.
He flashes a heated gaze my way, and yep, that “to-don’t” list can wait.
18
Jesse
Her lips part.
Her lashes flutter.
And she moans, “Oh my God. So good.” Her lips close around the perfectly roasted marshmallow I slip into her mouth, triggering a vivid mental flashback to this morning, when she took my cock in her mouth with similar relish.
I want to bite her bare neck, slip my hand under that filmy cover-up that does nothing to hide her curves and get her off while the waves crash onto the shore.
She deserves an orgasm or five after the dragon she slayed today.
And maybe I’ll get to give her one, sooner rather than later . . .
After the last of the sunset light fades and the darkness closes in, no one’s going to be able to see what my hands are up to.
We’re at one of Lost Summer Brewery’s beachside firepits. There are eight of them in total, but they’re all several yards apart, granting a certain degree of privacy, and our closest neighbors are a couple nearly as into each other as we are. They’ve barely come up for air since they sat down.
Though I’m sure to anyone looking on, Ruby and I seem like a couple too.
We can’t keep our hands off each other, and by the time our server delivers our second pint of Kona Ale—a coffee-flavored dark beer that is fucking delicious with roasted marshmallows—Ruby is in my lap, sprawled across me in the big Adirondack chair.
“Beautiful,” she murmurs, gazing out across the darkening water. “I wish we could stay here. Just . . . camp out on the beach and wake up in the morning to the sound of the waves.”
“I thought you hated camping?” I challenge her.
“Not romantic camping on the beach,” she counters. “That might be nice. Not Four Seasons nice, but nice.”
“No camping around here that I know of, but there’s a place on Governor’s Island. You can rent a tent and sleep across the water from the Statue of Liberty.”
“Really? That’s so cool.” Ruby snuggles closer to my chest with a yawn. “Maybe we should add camping to the ‘something new’ list, after all.”
My head rears back. “What? You’ve really never been?”
“No, never.”
“But I thought you went to Camp Knick Knack Paddywhack with Claire when you were kids. The one my mom’s friend owns upstate? Claire went every summer. Sometimes twice.”
“My mom wouldn’t let me,” Ruby says, reaching for her beer on the small table next to our shared chair. “She and Dad are terrified of heavily wooded areas. They watched too many camp-themed horror movies in the eighties. And they’ve lived in the city their entire lives. That many trees all together seems . . . unnatural to them or something.”
I snort. “Trees? They’re literally the most natural thing there is.”
She swallows her sip and laughs. “Right?” She shakes her head and sets down her beer on the table between our chairs. “But you know how they are. Once they get their minds set on something, there’s no changing it. So, my dream of spending summer at camp with my bestie went unfulfilled.” She freezes for a moment before turning back to me with a wide-eyed look.
That matches mine.
It’s instant, this awareness.