Kissing Under the Mistletoe

"It’s out on the end of the dock. Come quick, but be careful getting down from there."

Seeing the concern on his face, she felt a little bad for messing with him, but it was for his own good. Besides, he’d know soon enough that everything was fine. She walked out to the end of his dock and waited for him. He swung down off the roof, his long legs quickly eating up the grass and the sand between them.

"What’s the problem?"

She couldn’t find the words to answer him for a long moment. Not when sweat had made his thin T-shirt stick to his chest. She’d seen pictures of men with perfect abs, but had never been this close to one. So close that she could reach out and touch him...

"Brooke?" He all but waved his hands in front of her eyes to pull her attention back to his face. "You said I needed to come down here to see something. What’s going on?"

"This."

Before he could figure out her intent, she shoved him into the lake, clothes, shoes, and all. The utter surprise on his face had her giggling, right before she jumped in, too.

Rafe was shaking the hair out of his eyes like a wet dog by the time she surfaced. Eighteen years ago, she would have been certain he would have thought what she’d just done was funny. But now? Honestly, she was a little nervous that he’d be angry with her, especially when she couldn’t read his expression at all.

"When you were eight," he began in a deep voice that had her shivering more than the temperature of the water, "I would have let you get away with that." He paused, and she was holding her breath until she finally saw the way he was trying to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching up into a smile. "But you’re not a little girl anymore. Which means I don’t have to play fair."

A second later he was reaching out to try to dunk her, but she was fast enough to swim out of reach before he could. Both of them were laughing now as he continued to chase her, and she managed time and time again to elude him. The water felt deliciously cool as she ducked beneath the surface and shimmied playfully around Rafe’s legs.

She hadn’t had this much fun in a very long time.

Oh, how she loved hearing him laugh, especially when the rumble of his joy danced across the surface of the water, the first real laughter she’d heard from him since last night. And in the end, that was what sank her, that she was paying more attention to the pleasure of finally making him happy for a few minutes, rather than working to make sure she stayed out of his clutches.

With one strong arm, he caught her around the waist, and when she lost her footing on the bottom of the lake because they’d gone out deeper than she’d intended, she instinctively wrapped her arms and legs around him to keep from going under.

In the space between heartbeats, playful fun shifted to heated desire.

Their wet bodies were so close that she could feel his heart pounding against hers. His fingers were flexing on her hips where he was gripping her tightly to him. She was breathing hard from their game of underwater chase, and her br**sts were pushing against his hard chest. Her ni**les beaded more from their close proximity than from the temperature of the water, and she could feel every hard line of his tendons flexing, every cord of his muscles...along with the thick ridge of his erection as it rose up between them.

A shudder ran through her at the sweet realization that he wanted her as much as she wanted him, and it was pure instinct to rock her hips into his. As the natural movement of the water in the light breeze brought them even closer, his name was a gasp of pleasure on her lips at the same time a groan emerged from his.

Her cheek was pressed against his, and she could hear the harsh rush of his breath in her ear even as he said, "Brooke."

Her name on his lips was full of enough raw passion and heat to keep her warm all winter long. She rubbed her cheek against his, and as her breath came out warm over his earlobe, this time he was the one shuddering.

Everything suddenly made sense, that the crush she’d had as a little girl would only mature over the years, even though they’d spent those years apart.

She’d always cared about him as a friend. Now she wanted him, too, the way a woman wants a man.

But before she could press her lips to his skin, he was unwrapping her arms from around his neck and saying in a stiff voice, "I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. Forgive me."

She couldn’t understand what had happened, how he’d been hard and hot against her one second and in the next he was leaving her to tread water all by herself as he walked out of the lake and onto the shore.

For her entire life, Brooke had lived by rules of dos and do nots that were supposed to keep her safe, especially after her one stupid mistake in high school. But she was tired of worrying about getting hurt by making the wrong choice. Especially when every cell in her body told her Rafe was finally the right one.

"Rafe, stop!"

Brooke waded through the water to the shore as fast as she could, not knowing if he’d actually stop, or how long he’d wait for her. Just because she’d decided what—and who—she wanted, didn’t mean that she had the first clue how to go about getting it. It was one thing to mull all of this over in her head, but it was another entirely to do something about it.

Something wild.

Chapter Seven

Rafe knew he shouldn’t stop, and that he definitely shouldn’t turn around and drink in the vision of Brooke standing on the beach, soaking wet from the lake. But she was his friend, so he couldn’t just disappear on her and pretend what had almost happened hadn’t.