These were different smiles, relaxed and happy smiles. They were devastating and no less precarious to my wellbeing than his mean and hard smiles.

“I’d like to see that,” he said after a beat. “I’d like to see you play.”

“We can go back now and I’ll show you. I think I saw a guitar in one of the rooms back at the compound.” I said “the compound” in a deep, weird voice, hoping to cut through the raging tension building between us, making it difficult for me to breathe.

I made like I was going to move away. His grip on me tightened, staying my attempted retreat.

“No.” He shook his head, the word sharp, and his eyes flashed with a warning. Then he brought me flush against him.

This was not a good idea. It drove all the breath from my lungs and I trembled, gasped, spikes of hot and cold rushing under the surface of my skin. I felt sensitized everywhere. Instinctively, my eyes shut, startled by the ferocity of the sensual, swirling, damning, overwhelming physical feels.

He half growled, half groaned then set me away, placing essential distance between us. My lashes fluttered open and I found him watching me with his jaw set and his eyes ablaze. His hands were on his hips and I saw his Adam’s apple move with a thick swallow.

I shifted on my feet, not sure what to do with my arms. I decided to place them in the water at my sides. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m not sorry.”

He growled, his eyes half closing, and he tugged a hand through his hair. He looked…frustrated.

His frustration made me frustrated because I didn’t know why he was frustrated. I surmised based on his expression that I’d done something wrong, made some novice misstep, but I had no idea what.

I hated I was so clueless about boys. I didn’t know anything about them other than what one can absorb from porn and pubmed articles. Otherwise they were a cornucopia of conundrums.

“What’s going on?” I blurted, feeling lost and confused by the last sixty seconds, not to mention the last two days. My hands convulsively gripped my thighs in the water. “What are you thinking?”

His eyes lifted to mine and he stared at me, saying nothing, but his frustration was tangible. I could hear him breathe though, could see his chest rise and fall with his deep exhales. The longer he stared at me without saying anything the faster my heart beat; I felt like it was going to throw itself out of my ribcage.

Then he said, “Come here,” causing me to jump a little, though his voice was quiet, almost lost amidst the combined sounds of the waterfall and the insect symphony. Even if I hadn’t heard the words, I would have read the want—what he wanted—in his eyes. He looked a little wild with want.

I tried to take a deep breath but managed only a shallow inhale. Silently I obeyed, wading toward him until a foot separated us. I was glad my hands were in the water so he couldn’t see them shaking, because they were shaking—just a little.

When I stopped, his gaze dropped to my body, to my chest, ribs, and stomach. My lower belly felt tight and my breasts heavy. Full. The force of his stare was physical—corporeal—and I shifted a half step backward under its intensity.

Maybe he thought I was going to turn and flee, or maybe he’d reached the limit of his patience. Whatever the reason, Martin closed the remaining distance between us. He gripped my waist again. This time the shock of sensation from Martin’s rough calluses against my bare midriff sent a jolt to my center and up to my heart.

He held me firmly as though he didn’t trust me to stay.

“I need to touch you.”

“You are touching me,” I whispered breathlessly, unable to tear my gaze from his.

Martin shook his head slowly, lifted one hand to the tie at my neck that was holding up my top. Without breaking eye contact, he tugged on the fastening, loosening, then releasing the halter. With a feather-light touch he brought the straps forward, the tips of his fingers on my neck and shoulder sending a shiver down my spine. His movements were slow and purposeful, and he didn’t stop pulling, and his eyes never left mine.

He brought his other hand to the second strap, the backs of his knuckles brushing against the tops of my breasts—pulling, pulling, still pulling—until he delved with meticulously measured movements into the material of my bikini top and tugged it down with aching deliberateness, exposing my body.

His gaze dropped to my bare breasts and he blinked, his eyes half lidded, the rise and fall of his chest obvious.

Then he touched me with the backs of his hands and knuckles—my hardened nipples and the undersides of my breasts—until the top was lowered completely. My stomach twisted and my back arched on instinct. I was near panting now.

I felt crazed, overwhelmed, like I was on the precipice of a high cliff and needed to jump—I had to. I had no choice. I absolutely needed it. Whatever Martin was about to do, I needed it.

A small, helpless sound escaped my lips, something like a whimper, causing his gaze to sharpen and his body to sway toward mine. I realized his chest was rising and falling faster than it had been, and the sense he was close to a similar edge made me bold.

So I touched him.

It was just my fingertips against the hard ridges of his abdomen, but it made him flinch and release a growly sigh like I’d both hurt and pleased him.

“Kaitlyn…” My name from his lips was tight, choked, needy.

He shifted an inch closer; the water swirled around us. One of his hands slid back up my body and cupped me—reverently at first, like I was fragile—and his other moved lower, around my back, slipping into the fabric of my boy short bikini bottoms, inside, down, until he was gripping my bare ass with one hand and massaging my breast with the other, his thumb sweeping over the peak twice before pinching it.

I cried out, the spike of pleasure severe and unexpected and clearly wired straight to my core. My hands instinctively lifted to grip his shoulders and my back flexed, arching on instinct.

“Dammit.” His eyes half closed, and he brought me against him with a jerky movement, as though it were a reflex he couldn’t control.

Suddenly he bent at his waist and his mouth was on me. He licked, kissed, and sucked my nipple into his hot mouth, then grazed it with his teeth.

“Ah! Martin.” My eyes drifted shut briefly and my hips bucked, my grip on his shoulders increasing. I felt taut and swollen and greedy for his touch, his hands, his mouth, his body.

“I have to touch you.” His voice rumbled. He circled the center of my breast with his tongue before drawing it between his lips.

“You are touching me,” I repeated, holding on to his neck and the back of his head, pressing him to my chest, and feeling a little insane.

“Not here,” he growled, his caresses growing more aggressive, insistent, forceful.

He bit the underside of my breast and my ribs like he wanted to consume me, his fingers on my bottom digging into my flesh, severe and punishing. He pinched my nipple again, this time harder, and it hurt, but it also felt necessary. Then his hand in my bikini moved from my bottom to my front, his fingers parting and entering me.

Martin straightened, then captured my lips with his just as I cried out my surprise. His tongue mirrored the stroking of his fingers. His free hand grabbed my ponytail and he roughly positioned me how he liked, tilting my head to the side, opening my mouth just as he was opening my center.

My nipples grazed his chest. I flexed my thighs, my stomach, and my back tight. My nails dug into his shoulders and back. His fingers were inside me and it wasn’t the soft teasing he’d employed in my dorm room. This was rough, urgent, his fingers searching, uncomfortable and a little painful, but…God, it felt so good. So good. So, so good.

My body seemed to understand what my mind hadn’t yet discovered and my hips rocked instinctively in time with his strokes. He bit my lip as I panted, his hot mouth moving to my jaw then neck as he yanked my hair, exposing the vulnerable expanse of skin to his teeth and tongue.

As though from a great distance, I heard him cussing and complimenting me. A steady stream of growled fucks and beautifuls and gorgeous and damns between clenched teeth, against my skin, hot breath spilling over my ear and neck. I became aware all at once that his erection was pressed against my hip and he was moving the hard length, rubbing against me, as I moved on his hand. My breath hitched as my stomach coiled tight. My jaw was tight. Everything felt tight and taut and close to breaking.

And then I did.

I broke.

In fact, I cried out.

Violent, sweet desolation tore through me, delicious spasms accompanied by fierce trembling. I was paralyzed by this vicious wave of beautiful destruction, strangling and releasing and suffocating me over and over. I became aware of his fingers stroking slower, softer, like they’d taken what they wanted and were now moving as a mere echo of their earlier urgency.

My body also instinctively relaxed without my telling it to do so, going almost limp. Martin’s mouth was on my neck, sucking, licking, and biting. I felt his heart beating against my bare breast and its thunderous pace matched mine. My vision was blurry and I realized I wasn’t breathing, so I gasped for air, swallowing a gasping breath as I buried my face below his neck, hiding.

I felt him shudder. His fingers inside my body, still stroking and petting—like I’d done something good and he was rewarding me with a gentle touch.