The Wrong Mr. Right (The Queen's Cove Series #2)(50)

Fuck. It drove me crazy all day.

So I went to the bar to distract myself but it didn’t work. When I walked home and saw her sitting in the window of The Arbutus, smiling softly to herself while she read her book and sipped her wine, she was so goddamn gorgeous. Her hair was shorter. Her foot tapped gently on the floor. She wore a dress, a white and blue one I had never seen. Did she buy it for the date? And why did that make me so happy?

Standing on the sidewalk, I had remembered her mentioning practicing. Possessive irritation had ripped through me. I hated the idea of anyone’s hands on her.

Anyone but me.

I wanted to be on that date with her, but she needed this. She needed to love herself the way—

I swallowed hard, looking down at her outside the surf shop. “Did you have a good time on your date?”

A slow, shy smile crept on her face before she nodded.

“I hope your date told you how gorgeous you looked.”

Pink washed over her cheeks and she grinned harder. “My date was lovely. I even got lucky.”

My cock reacted to her words. My head fell back and I closed my eyes, rubbing my forehead. My mind flooded with images of her in the dark. “Fuck, bookworm.”

She laughed. She actually laughed. I was in agony, fighting an erection and trying not to think about her in bed by herself, and she was laughing.

After I got home last night, I headed straight to the shower, thinking about her soft lips, the little sighs she made and the way she melted right into me while I stroked myself until I came.

“Where’s my shy bookworm?” I asked, shaking my head as her eyes shimmered with laughter.

My. It slipped past my lips without permission. I gauged her reaction, but she just smiled. The apples of her cheeks popped. Fuck, she was pretty.

She shrugged. “Guess you embarrassed it out of me.”

“Your hair looks nice.”

She reached up to touch it. “I like it, too. And this way it won’t get so tangled and in my face when I fall off my board.”

“You’re falling less and less these days.”

She bit her lip and shot me a tentative glance. “Wyatt?”

“Mmm?”

“I like surfing with you.”

Well, damn if that tiny compliment didn’t make me feel like a million bucks. “I like surfing with you too, bookworm.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t do much surfing out there, you just float and watch me make a sad attempt.”

“You know what I mean.”

Her cheeks were pink again and I wanted to feel the heat of them under my mouth.

“Anyway. Um.” She shifted, toying with her hands. “If I do find a, uh, boyfriend,” She said the word funny, like it tasted bad. “I still want to keep surfing with you.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “If you have time, I mean. If you’re still here in Queen’s Cove. And if you don’t have training or whatever.”

The thought of Hannah finding someone—someone who’d be sitting across from her at The Arbutus, someone who’d get to touch her hair and kiss her and make her smile like that—it made me sick. It made me feel like something had been taken from me.

Which was insane, because Hannah wasn’t mine. I was helping her out.

Guilt wrenched my stomach into a knot. I was supposed to be helping her, and I was trying to keep her. She trusted me and I was trying to get into her pants, telling her not to practice with other guys. Fuck.

I was such an asshole.

My chin jerked in a nod at her. My eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “Sure, bookworm. We can surf together as long as you want.” I gestured at the back door of the shop. “Shall we?”

We headed inside and retrieved our wetsuits. Hannah reached down and I watched as she pulled her shirt over her head.

Fuck. She was wearing that swimsuit again. The one that pushed her tits up into something incredible. If she knew how fuckable she looked in that suit, she wouldn’t have worn it around me.

Or maybe she would have. Yesterday morning in the back of the shop, she had toyed with me, trying to get a rise out of me.

I waved the thought away in my head and turned around to face the other way.

Surfing. That’s all we were doing today. I was going to be present with her, and with the ocean.

“Zip me up?”

I turned to see her standing with her back to me, wet suit unzipped and smooth skin so close. I swallowed, and my throat was thick. I pulled the zipper gently, slowly, slower than necessary. Definitely slower than I would with a tourist doing a lesson. At the top of the zip, my fingers brushed the ends of her hair, and she shivered before turning and giving me a little smile.

“Hey, professor?”

Fuck, that nickname. I had thought about her calling me that last night with my hand wrapped around myself. The soft, playful, teasing way she always said it made me come almost immediately.

“Mhm?” I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose. Deep breath.

“You didn’t ask me if I did all my homework.”

Blood surged to my cock and I exhaled through my nose.

Helping her. Not fucking her. Helping. Not okay to take advantage of her. She was less experienced. Helping. Not getting hard in my surf shop while talking to her. Not jerking off thinking about her mouth on my cock.

I couldn’t think straight right now. “I’m sure you did.” I opened my eyes to see her watching me with a smug grin.