“It’s too cold,” she complained.
“Get in the fucking water, Minnow.”
Crap. He never said her given name, and in her slightly hazed state it was the most erotic thing he could have said.
She waded in partway then dove, ready to run back out again, but as the water closed over her head, it was warm. Not pleasant, but also not forming a thin crust of ice over her bare skin, as she’d half expected.
“See? If I wore underwear, I could have been polite like you,” he said, looking amused as she bobbed to the surface. “You know, I’ve only ever come here with my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Is that your first question?”
A cold breeze caught her and she sank lower in the water to get away from it.
“No. You mean Church,” she said. “I know that much.” She was hyperaware of the fact that he was naked, and she was only in her underwear, but he didn’t come anywhere near her, even though she felt him watching her whenever she looked away. “Okay, question one.”
He ducked under the water, then came back up slightly closer, water sheeting off his impossibly long, dark hair and making him looking like some sort of evil merman...mob enforcer...Viking. It was hard not to stare at the runnels of water as they skimmed over his muscle. Drops of water clung to his tattoos and dripped from the silver rings in his nipples. The things she thought about doing to those rings...
Damn he was fine.
“You had a question?” he asked.
She could tell he’d noticed her perusal. “About a million.”
“You only get three.” His cold eyes were narrowed. He was acting so different today. Was it the alcohol or something else? Maybe he was tired of being alone.
“I know, I know.” What to start with? “How long have you lived here?”
“Since I was about five. You ask boring questions.”
Five? She had trouble imagining this rough man had ever been a little boy.
“Did you ever have a normal life – with a family and school and friends?”
“No. My biological family lives in France – mother, two younger sisters. I’ve never gone to school. I’ve never really known anyone other than Church, his wife and kids, Sutton, and my financial manager, Rodrigo. There was my nanny too – Church’s mother – but she’s dead.”
“Why on earth don’t you get to know more people?”
“Most people aren’t worth knowing.”
Sometimes she felt that way too, but this was extreme.
“We’re going to fix that,” she said decisively.
“You think?” He moved closer, and she was reminded again that this wasn’t some timid and lonely little boy. He was a hulking, rude brute – who was now just inside her personal space.
Instinctively, she splashed him, moving back from the magnetic pull she’d started feeling around him. The water she’d doused him with dripped down his face, but he made no move to wipe it away. He only stared at her with an intensity that made her shudder.
“Cold?”
“Yes! And we don’t even have towels.” She laughed. He responded with a half-smile that seemed rehearsed, as though he had a guidebook to humans that said if one laughed, respond like this. “You’re a lot more friendly when you’ve been drinking.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly sober. I just find your sexual attraction to me fascinating.”
She stilled then glared at him. “You’re imagining things.”
“Lying isn’t a very good way to establish rapport, Miss Korsgaard.”