“You wouldn’t delegate that,” she murmured, without thinking. Thank you, vodka.
Andrew watched her in silence a moment, before shaking his head. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. Not in a million fucking years.”
Don’t think about Andrew shirtless and heinously sexy in his red shorts, watching you swim with that single-minded focus. Don’t do…it. Too late.
Jiya pulled in a lungful of oxygen. “I don’t swim because of seaweed. That slimy feeling of it brushing my legs.” She shivered. “Is a seaweed-free ocean so much to ask?”
His amusement shone. “There are parts of the beach with less of it. I’ll…maybe I’ll take you someday.”
“Cool. When?”
The amusement clouded over and his throat worked. “I don’t know. Someday.” Suddenly serious, he jerked his chin toward the distant bonfire. “Come on, sweetheart. I’ll bring you back.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said quietly, jolted by his off behavior. Fine, things had been a little strained since she embarked on adventures in dating, but Andrew was a rock. Were they never going to get back to that comfortable ground where they’d stood their whole lives? Jiya rose and started to turn, so she could climb backwards down to the sand—
—but her foot slipped on the rung and tethered to nothing, she fell down, down—until Andrew caught her.
Neither one of them moved for a stretch of seconds. Jiya sucked in breath after breath, her open mouth on Andrew’s shaking shoulder. His hands roamed over her body, all business. Searching for injuries?
“Fuck,” he growled finally, wrapping his arms around her, plastering her front to his chest. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you climb up there when you’d been drinking. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” she echoed, voice dull. “The drop just scared me a little.”
He held her tighter, humming comfort against her temple. His heart pounded right up against hers, like dueling drums. So stupid, Jiya. It wasn’t that far of a fall. But the adrenaline surged in her, nonetheless, but instead of saving her like it was supposed to, the chemical that released in her blood only made her aware. Of Andrew. His smell, the firm musculature of his body and all the places where it corresponded to her softness. His hands on her back.
The unmistakable thickness of his manhood trapped between their bodies.
Andrew’s low expulsion of air held the touch of a moan and it created a sensual coil in her belly. One that twisted into tighter and tighter spirals the longer Andrew held her suspended above the ground. Before she could stop herself, her knees lifted and found purchase on his hips and he bit out a curse in her ear.
“No. No.” Betraying his words, he wrapped an arm beneath her butt to keep her in place, tiling his hips up ever so slightly. “Don’t do that.”
She gasped. “Are you talking to me or yourself?”
A vibration traveled through him. “You have to stop me, sweetheart.”
“I don’t think I can.” She touched her parted lips to his neck and absorbed his shudder. “I definitely can’t.”
“Jiya, please.”
“You’re…” She lifted her head and met eyes she’d never seen before. This wasn’t her best friend Andrew. It was a man in severe need. Of her. “You’re hard for me.”
He shook his head. “That’s my problem. It can’t be your problem.”
There were a million reasons she should drop her legs, walk away, chalk their lapse in judgment up to vodka come tomorrow morning. This was her best friend. She could ruin their relationship. She was supposed to be moving on and pursuing a relationship with someone else, Andrew knew it, and he wasn’t trying to stop her. So at best, having her legs wrapped around him in this uber-romantic setting was a terrible idea. But nothing—nothing—had ever made her feel more complete than teetering on this magical moment where possibilities lay between them. Kiss him. She could kiss him. “Can’t you make it my problem?” Jiya whispered finally, laying her lips against his and feeling electricity all the way down to her toes. “I have a problem that n-needs solving, too.”
“Don’t do it,” he ground out against her mouth, teeth bared. “Don’t you dare tell me your pussy is wet.”
She wheezed a breath over his language. “Just once, just tonight. I’m so w—”
His mouth locked over hers—and a dragon might as well have swooped down from the night sky and engulfed her in a breath of fire. She was almost angry in that first split second of registering how achingly good Andrew’s mouth fit hers. He tasted like something she’d been craving her whole life without fully realizing how much. Ocean and male and raw hunger. His swelling chest invaded her space, crushing her breasts while his hands pulled her even closer, bruising and reverent and exploratory on her hips.
Jiya wrapped her legs around his waist more securely, though they weakened and threatened to drop every time his mouth slanted a different direction. Every time the tips of their tongues brushed. The harsh sounds he made were like nothing she’d heard from Andrew before. He was admonishing himself even as he savored, licking into the furthest recesses of her mouth like he’d never tasted anything so sweet. Like a famished man set in front of a feast.