Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1)(28)

His gaze was hooded now, the blue between the lids a blurry line.

And those lips of his, so softly parted…

It made her think he wanted to kiss her cheek in return. In fact she thought he might have, if she hadn’t pushed off from him at that exact moment. She had to shed her shoes to do it, but she managed it. She swam back through the quiet waters, trying to grin and look casual as her heart battered against her breastbone.

Trying to sound casual, too, despite everything.

“You know, now you’ve got me in here we should probably try to have fun.”

“That would be a great plan, if you weren’t still in the clothes that almost drowned you.”

“I already ditched the sneakers.”

“Ditch the sweater and jeans and I’ll feel better about it.”

“If I do that I’ll basically be in my underwear,” she said, even though she could already see the logic of what he was saying. Her legs felt coated in lead weights. The sweater was getting heavier by the second. It was just a commonsense suggestion, yet somehow it didn’t feel that way.

And doubly so when he shook his head.

He just did it so awkwardly, like the physical equivalent of someone stuttering.

“I wasn’t…I’m not going to look at anything.”

“I know that. Of course I know that.”

“So then what’s the big deal?”

“No big deal, I guess.”

“I mean I’m half naked.”

He stood up, as though the point needed emphasizing.

But by god, it really did not at all. She already knew that he had those heavy pectoral muscles.

And the things she had no idea about were best kept a secret. She didn’t want to see his surprisingly narrow hips, or know that the strip of hair that trailed down to his bathing suit was darker than the hair on his head. All it did was make her stomach feel suddenly full of hot silver.

She had to look away before it spread to other places.

“I know. I was just wedged against your half nakedness.”

“And it wasn’t weird.”

“Weird isn’t the word I would have used.”

“What, then? Come on you can tell me. We’re friends here.”

“If you think I’m going to say amazing you are sorely mistaken.”

“No, I don’t think you’re going to say amazing. I think you were going to say enormous and gross and misshapen, like something you dug up that might one day come alive and destroy humanity.”

“Dude, you can come up with all the great movie premises you want, I’m never going to give in to such a blatant fish for compliments. Compliments that you do not need, I might add. I mean, of the two of us, you are not the one who spent high school feeling like the blob.”

She turned back to him, still laughing.

Then stopped dead the second she saw his face.

He was serious, somehow. Really deadly serious.

And he kept on being serious, all through his next little speech.

“Yeah, but you totally get now that I never meant any of that shit. Whereas I know for a stone-cold fact that my size still completely freaks you out. In my dorm room you couldn’t get away fast enough—and the same thing just happened here. As soon as you realized how close I was you swam away. You even turned as soon as I stood up, like my body burned out your eyes.”

“I was just trying to get out of my jeans,” she said.

Then she wrestled with the buttons, to make it look like the truth. She even got her arm out of one sleeve of her sweater, to back it up—but could see it was having no real effect. He looked almost morose. He’d submerged every inch of his torso, as though her eyes on him were just a little too much. Her eyes on him, Tate Sullivan, the guy who’d once made her attempt to cut off her love handles with a pair of scissors.

It was incredible, unbelievable, infuriating.

Yet the ache to tell him otherwise remained.

“And besides, your body doesn’t burn out my eyes, Tate. I doubt it could ever do that to anyone, considering you’re a six-foot-five-inch athlete in the prime of his life.”

“What difference does being an athlete make?”

“Oh come on. You know what kind of difference it makes. Just look at the way girls drool all over your hot bod constantly. I swear to god the other day some babe tried to take an up-skirt picture of you, even though you weren’t wearing a skirt. Last Tuesday this incredibly hot cheerleader asked me if I would be interested in getting you involved in a threesome. And when I told her that we aren’t even doing a twosome, she said: ‘Come on, no one on earth could spend that much time with him without at least sucking his cock.’?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the same. They all like the gigantic meat head and the enormous pecs and the total lack of any visible neck. They find it super hot, whereas you kind of gag over it.”

“And their opinion is the one that matters. Mine doesn’t.”

“Feels like it does though. I don’t want you to find my body gross.”

Now he was almost up to his neck in the water.

Apparently, hiding his nipples wasn’t enough.

“I don’t, Tate. I really don’t find it gross at all.”

“Boring, then. Boring and stupid.”

“I don’t think muscles can be boring and stupid.”