Make Me Bad(52)

“I’m not completely hopeless, you know,” she says suddenly, eyes narrowing out toward the dark horizon. “Guys have been interested in me. Not a ton, one or two over the years…I don’t know, maybe they would have taken me skinny dipping and sought me out more, but my dad was pretty strict and I was a rule follower.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

She laughs and it sounds shrill, pained even. “Don’t I?”

She shakes her head and makes a move to swim away, but I reach out for her, clamping my hand around her bicep. She’s not going anywhere. A tidal wave could swell against us and we’d stay right here, rooted together.

“You’re beautiful.”

She puffs out air like I’ve just said something absolutely ludicrous.

“Fucking hell, Madison. You’re drop-dead gorgeous. Every guy in this town would agree.”

Again, her eyes roll and she yanks her arm, trying to get away from me so she doesn’t have to face what I’m about to tell her. Compliments are hard to receive, especially if you’re not used to hearing them. I want her to hear these.

“Can you tell how much I want you?”

Her gaze jerks up to me and her eyes narrow suspiciously. “Okay, Ben, you’ve made your point. You’ve made the loser girl feel very pretty and special. You can go back to your cool friends now and tell them you did your good deed for the year.”

I want to shake her. In fact, I do. I grab each of her shoulders and haul her right up against me. It wasn’t intentional, but now we’re skin to skin, and I feel her breasts brush against my chest, soft and full and slippery from the water. It’s so intimate, I can’t breathe. I’m surviving on dredges of oxygen as she tilts her head back and looks up at me. There’s fear there.

I’ve never been forceful with her—I’ve never been forceful with any woman—but like I said, this night is a first for me too.

I can’t let her go. My hands stay right there on her shoulders even though they ache to move lower. I want to feel the weight of her breasts, to knead them and tease them and show her why I’m the man for her. Not Andy. Not some nice guy. Me.

“Would you just listen to me?” I plead. “You think I’m lying to you?” I bend to her eye level. “You have eyes so green, sometimes I can’t look right at them. Your hair is never brushed. I’m not fully convinced you even own a brush, and yet your hair is all I can think about. I want to fist it in my hands and tug on it so you’re forced to look up at me just like you are right now.”

She swallows and blinks, completely and utterly frozen. She looks like an innocent animal caught in my trap.

“You’re funny and kind. You take such good care of everyone in your life. You have a heart the size of the moon.”

There are tears collecting in her lashes and I feel bad now. Maybe she wasn’t ready for the truth. Maybe I should have eased into this nice and slow, written her a note with one letter on it and sent it to the library. Each day, I’d send another, until one day, finally, she’d have a full sentence:

M-A-D-I-S-O-N H-A-R-T, I-M F-A-L-L-I-N-G F-O-R Y-O-U.

“Sorry, I’m hurting you,” I say, and I’m not just referring to my hands on her shoulders.

She shakes her head and sniffles. “I’m only crying because I’m a little drunk,” she says, wiping her nose on her shoulder.

Right. Jeez. I’ve picked the worst possible time to be honest with her. I tell myself I need to release her and give her space, but then her palm hits my chest, flat against my heart.

“Did you mean all that or are you just being nice?”

“I’m not that nice.”

She laughs and shakes her head, letting her hand wander down my torso. Her finger dips past my navel and I squeeze her shoulders in warning.

“I really want you to kiss me right now,” she says, gaze on my mouth. “Is that crazy?”

“No.”

“Because you could kiss me and I wouldn’t turn away. It would be another life experience I could cross off my list. Kiss Ben Rosenberg in the ocean: check.”

“Madison?”

“Yeah?”

“Be quiet so I can kiss you.”





16





Madison





This kiss is going to ruin me. I will have this kiss up on a pedestal for the rest of my life, encased in glass. On my wedding day, when I stand across from an ordinary man who makes me feel ordinary things and the pastor announces “You may now kiss the bride,” I’ll think of Ben and the time when he held me in the ocean and told me I was beautiful.

I’ll think of the way he looked: cast in moonlight, tapered muscles, hard lines. I notice the smallest details: the little freckles on the bridge of his nose, his amber eyes backlit by the fire burning inside him, his wet hair sending water dripping down the hard planes of his face.

There’s a terrible feeling buried deep inside me that keeps me from completely giving in to this moment. This is a gift, I remind myself, a memory to keep forever. Not to be confused with a beginning—this is not the first of many.

One of his hands curves under my jaw and the other loops around my waist, hauling me against him even more. We’re touching like we’re lovers, like every bit of his skin is mine for the taking and vice versa. I’m a live wire, the result of too many weeks pining.