Best Fake Fiancé: A Single Dad Romance (Loveless Brothers Romance Book 2)

I KNOCK AGAIN, then wait.

And wait. I lean back against the railing of her balcony. Her porch light is on, even though it’s still bright outside. She probably forgot to turn it off this morning.

I raise my fist and knock again, a third time, as loud as I can, just for the hell of it. There’s nothing inside. No footsteps, no sounds of her frantically throwing books into piles, shouting sorry I was in the shower, I’m coming, just dead silence.

Something in my chest squeezes unpleasantly, and I’ve got the distinct feeling that I don’t get to see Charlie today. I know where her spare key is, but before I go get it, I call her.

It rings three, four times.

Maybe she’s in the shower and lost track of time.

Maybe she’s running late, coming home from work, maybe she ran an errand and got stuck somewhere….

Maybe even though I thought we made up, she’s still pissed, and this is how she’s telling me, by just letting me knock and knock and not answering the door.

Not Charlie’s style. At least, I don’t think so, but we’ve never gotten into a fight like that before. Not as a couple.

“Hey, what’s up?” she asks.

“I’m at your place,” I say.

I don’t say, It’s Thursday, I haven’t seen you alone in nearly a week and I’m crawling up the goddamn walls.

“My place?” Charlie echoes.

I’m still staring at her door, the bad feeling in my chest expanding.

“Rusty’s got piano right now?” I say. “Like she does every Thursday?”

“Today’s Wednesday,” Charlie says.

There’s a pause. I say nothing, because it’s not Wednesday, it’s Thursday.

“Shit,” she says, and then voice gets distant, probably because she’s checking her phone to see if I’m right. “I could have sworn…”

I quietly resign myself to jerking off in the shower tonight. Again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Shit. Fuck. I’m at the workshop, I’m finishing that table I told you about that had all the superheroes glued on and I totally just…”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, even as the disappointment coalesces in my chest, forms a ball of something viscous and unpleasant.

“I really thought today was Wednesday,” she says.

Of course she did. My irritation, my impatience both flare at Charlie. Of course she has no idea what day today is, because today’s the day I was too busy at work to text her about tonight. Of course she forgets something if I’m not constantly reminding her about it.

That’s not the worst part.

The worst part is the small, nagging voice in the back of my head saying she wasn’t excited enough to remember? You didn’t think about anything else all day.

“I’m so sorry,” she says again, and now she sounds awful and I feel bad. “We were super busy at work all day, and I just… I don’t know, sometimes I get the day wrong. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I say, and already I’m wishing I hadn’t made Rusty cancel her sleepover this weekend. When I grounded her, I didn’t give a single thought to how it would affect my plans.

Parenting blows sometimes.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “Which is Friday. I’ll take you out.”

“Rusty doesn’t—”

“You just chill, I’ll take care of everything,” she says.

I pause, still staring at her front door, hoping that her idea of taking care of everything isn’t leaving Rusty home alone, watching cartoons.

Of course it’s not. Charlie’s not stupid, she’s just a space cadet, and even though right now I’m annoyed and tired and holy hell am I frustrated, I know that.

“Tomorrow meaning Friday,” I say, just to double-check.

“Right,” she says. “Friday. The day after today, which is Thursday. I’ll pick you up at… I dunno, six?”

“If you’re not there I’m calling the cops,” I tease, and Charlie snorts.

“Accidentally leaving you horny isn’t a crime,” she says, laughing.

“It should be.”

“Thank God it’s not,” she says. “Can you imagine the fuckboys at the police station, mad about some girl they got coffee with?”

“All right, I see your point,” I concede, finally heading down her back stairs. “Six.”

“Six,” she says.

A FEW HOURS LATER, Charlie texts me.

Charlie: Is Rusty in bed?

Me: Yeah, why?

I’m in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter onto sandwich bread, packing Rusty’s lunch for tomorrow

I’ve just dolloped strawberry jam on when the next text comes through.

I drop the knife, because it’s a picture.

Of Charlie. Nearly naked, wearing nothing but panties in her bathroom mirror, one hand in her hair and one on her phone. Her nipples are stiff pink peaks. She’s smiling, laughing, and I can practically feel the curve of her waist in my hands, hear the sound she makes as I pull her in, squeezing, wrapping her legs around me.

I go from thinking I should put peanut butter on the grocery list to hard as fuck in less than a second. In my kitchen. With my daughter’s Critters of the Outback lunchbox in front of me.

Charlie: I really am sorry about today.

I shoot a glance toward the living room, where my mom is reading her book, then quietly put my phone in my pocket and go upstairs, to my own bedroom. The second I lock the door I’ve already got my dick out, my hand wrapped around the base.

I snap a picture and send it to Charlie.

Me: I forgive you.

Charlie: Good 😉

I pull up her picture again, conjure up a scene from last week: us standing in her bathroom, right where the picture was taken, her braced against the counter. I watched her face in the mirror as she came so hard her eyes rolled, and that’s what I’m thinking about ninety seconds later when I come without ever taking off my pants.

Then I clean up, start some laundry, and google how to hide naked pictures on your phone, because I don’t want anyone finding this, but like hell am I deleting it.

“WE’RE GOING WHERE?” I ask, pulling my milkshake straw out of my mouth.

“The skinny-dipping hole,” Charlie says, like I know what she’s talking about.

It’s Friday night. When I got home from work, my mom informed me that she was taking care of Rusty, and my job was to go make myself presentable because Charlie would be there at six.

Miraculously, she was on time. Well, five minutes late, but for Charlie, that counts.

“There’s a skinny-dipping hole?” I ask.

“Yeah, it’s down past where Washtub Road crosses Pony Creek, right before you get to the mountain,” she says. “There’s a dirt road right after that, and if it’s rained recently there’s a couple of streams you have to ford but it’s a great spot. The field hockey team used to go there all the time.”

She’s saying all this like I know what she’s talking about, and I don’t. I absolutely don’t, and I thought I knew every secret nook and holler in Sprucevale.

“Field hockey? You mean in high school?” I ask, still trying to catch up.

“Was I on another field hockey team?”

“Did you go skinny-dipping?”

“Of course, it’s the skinny-dipping hole. That’s what we did after we won games, we’d get Becca’s older sister to buy us some box wine and we’d come down here,” she says, like it’s common knowledge.

It is not. If I’d known that the whole field hockey team was routinely getting naked and drunk together, I’d probably have masturbated to different fantasies in high school.

“You’re telling me that while we were in high school a bunch of girls were getting drunk and naked together,” I say, just to make sure I’m crystal clear on what I was missing.

“I only ever went with the field hockey team,” she says. “But I thought everyone knew about it.”

“Definitely not,” I say, still staring at her. “Are you kidding? If I’d known that it would have changed everything about my entire high school experience. I’d have skipped school to live at the skinny-dipping hole if I’d known that a team of girls was getting naked together there on the regular.”

“Honey didn’t put out?” she laughs, naming my on-again-off-again-on-again high school girlfriend. We’d get together for a few weeks, break up over something stupid, she’d hang all over some guy to make me jealous, I’d steal her a rose from the grocery store, we’d get back together. Repeat ad nauseam.

“If you want to know about my sex life in high school, you can just ask,” I tease.

“Oh, I know that she once asked Paula Peterson if you could get pregnant from swallowing semen,” Charlie says. “I drew my own conclusions from that.”

I grimace at the window as we go around a curve in the road, because even though this is all long-gone history, I don’t love talking about other women with Charlie. Especially because we were already best friends at the time — half my breakups with Honey were over the fact that I refused to stop being friends with Charlie — even though Charlie was dating Steve Fisher, who was on the football team and drove a very large truck.

It just feels wrong, like I’m comparing her to them. There’s no comparison. She’s the sun and any other girl disappears in her daylight.

We cross a wooden bridge, and two hundred feet later, Charlie slows and turns onto a rough unpaved road that’s clearly not been maintained since at least 1990. Branches scrape my window, and I slurp my milkshake again, ignoring the gnawing suspicion that we’re not supposed to be here.

Sure enough, in another few hundred feet there’s a NO TRESPASSING sign. I point to it with my straw as we bounce by.

“It’s fine,” Charlie says. “They don’t care.”

“They cared enough to put up a sign,” I say.

“Yeah, but that’s all,” she says. “Trust me, it’s fine. I’ve been here a million times.”

I steal a sideways glance and wonder what sixteen-year-old Daniel would have done with this new information.

Finally, just as the sun is going down and everything is turning blue, she pulls into a clearing, the creek on one side. We’re at the base of the mountains, right where the ground rises from the valley back into the heights, so it’s a rocky creek, dotted with boulders, the water white upstream where it rushes over fallen trees and slabs of granite disgorged from further up.

It’s beautiful. It’s also illegal, a fact that I wouldn’t have cared about ten years ago but that bothers me now. At least my mom’s got Rusty if I spend the night in jail, right?

Charlie stops the car, kills the engine and lights, turns to me. Her eyes are dancing, dark in the twilight, and she leans toward me, one hand on my leg.

“Come on,” she says. “Live a little. You deserve to get wild sometimes.”

“I’m not wild enough for you?” I tease, sliding my hand over hers.

“You’re not wild enough for you,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “You need to get naked in the wilderness and say a whole bunch of curse words sometimes.”

She kisses me, and the heat of it floods my body. I’m insatiable when it comes to her, all the more because all of our encounters are over too soon, hemmed in by the demands of having a seven-year-old and the reality of living with my mom.

I don’t mention that around these parts, people don’t call the police on trespassers, they come out carrying a shotgun. I don’t mention that if we get caught, we could spend the night in jail, get ticketed, worse.

It’s been a long, long time since I did something not perfectly above-board. Too long, and she’s too tempting, wild, impulsive.

She breaks the kiss, winks at me, and then she’s throwing open her car door and I’m doing the same a step behind her as she pulls off her shirt, her bra, tosses them onto a rock. She loses her shorts and panties, her body pale and breathtaking in the fading light as she looks over her shoulder at me, laughing.

“Come on,” she calls. I’m still standing by the car, watching her undress because I’d hate to miss a second of it. “The water’s great!”

Then she puts one foot in and gasps, jerking it back out, and I laugh, tugging my shirt over my head.

“Great, huh?” I say, stepping out of my shoes, my pants.

“I think I forgot how cold it is,” she says, carefully sliding her foot back in. “Holy shit, did I really do this all the time?”

I stand next to her, naked, pretending that I’m not half-erect from the simple act of watching her disrobe, and dip a toe in as well.

It’s cold, but it could be colder.

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna wimp out,” I say.

“I’m not wimping,” she says, making a face as she puts her other foot in, now ankle-deep. “Just… letting myself adjust.”

“You gotta do it all at once,” I tell her. “It’s the only way. We’ll be here until Monday otherwise.”

“You do it all at once and leave me be,” she says.

I’m still on the bank, just watching her. After a moment she turns her head, looks up at me.

I can’t help grinning.

“Daniel, no,” she says, her eyes going wide. “Don’t you dare.”

“I thought you wanted to be wild,” I say. “I thought we were ignoring trespassing signs and being impulsive like a couple of badasses.”

She holds out one hand, pointer finger up, and takes a step backward, even though she’s trying not to laugh.

“No,” she says, like she can ward me off. “Daniel, don’t, it’s fucking freezing, my tits are going to fall off—”

I lunge, grab, lift and Charlie yelps. The water’s cold but I ignore just how cold as I wade in, the pebbles on the bottom smooth under my feet.

“No,” she gasps, upside down over my shoulder. “Nooooooooooooooo!”

“Quit kicking, do you want me to drop you?” I tease, wading deeper.

She kicks one final time, and I grab a handful of ass to steady her, and also because I can. Below my feet, the bottom drops, and suddenly I’m a foot and a half lower, the water up to my waist. We’re ten feet from the shore, and over my shoulder, Charlie just sighs.

“Ready?” I ask. “One…”

“Goddammit,” she sighs.

“Two…”

“Can you at least put me down slowly?”

“Three!” I say, and toss her in, yelping.

Half a second later she comes back up, water dripping from her hair.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT’S COLD,” she gasps, and splashes me. “Goddamnit, Daniel.”

“You’re welcome,” I tell her.

“I,” she says, sending a wave of water my way, soaking me, “Did not,” she does it again, “Say,” splash, “Thank you!”

She goes to do it again but this time I catch her wrist before she can get me. We’ve both got water dripping from everywhere, breathing hard, laughing. The water’s deep here, just above her nipples, which are rock-hard and bobbing right below the surface.

“You haven’t even been in,” she says, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “If you’re gonna toss me in, you have to at least go under yourself.”

“Says who?”

“What, it’s not too cold to throw me in, but it’s too cold to go in yourself?” she teases. “Don’t make me sling you over my shoulder and toss you in.”

Charlie’s strong, but I’ve got at least eight inches and sixty pounds on her.

“I would love to see that,” I say, sincerely as I can.

“You’re such a dick sometimes,” she laughs.

Then she puts both hands on my chest and shoves. Even though the rocks underneath my feet are a little slippery, I don’t budge.

“Seriously?” I deadpan. “Is this your plan?”

Charlie makes a face and shoves harder.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Shut up,” she says, still shoving.

“I don’t think it’s working,” I say, as she lifts one of my arms, putting her shoulder to my sternum and shoving again. “You know, maybe if you asked nicely—”

Suddenly my knee goes out and I fall backward, my body plunging into the deep water before I can even take a breath, the cold enveloping me instantly.

I come up a second later, gasping for air, shaking the water out of my eyes and hair, breathless.

“Cheater,” I say, the cold shaking the air from my lungs. “Shit, that’s really cold.”

Charlie laughs triumphantly, coming into the deeper water, just her shoulders in the air, bobbing near me.

“Told you,” she says, and kicks her legs up, floating, her body pale ripples under the clear water, knees and breasts surfacing and sinking, hair floating around her head like a dark halo.

I float, too. I forget about everything that’s not this moment in time: a landowner with a shotgun, if Rusty’s in bed yet, the hearing that’s scheduled for next week, my hurt that Charlie thought yesterday was Wednesday.

“See?” she says, her voice dreamy now. “Not bad, right?”

“Did I say it would be bad?”

“You weren’t thrilled when you saw the No Trespassing sign,” she teases.

I push off, float, look up at the trees above us.

“Well, I’ve tried to reform from my younger days,” I say dryly. “You just keep dragging me down. I was a law-abiding citizen until I fell for your charms.”

“Daniel Loveless, you lied to a damn judge without a single bit of help from me,” Charlie says lazily, arms spread out on top of the water. She kicks. Her nipples crest, sink.

“That was an act of desperation,” I say.

“That was an act of dumbness.”

“Either way, I like the consequences,” I tell her.

She’s quiet a moment, floating, thinking.

“Was it an accident?” she finally asks.

I’m still floating, looking up at the trees, and I find the bottom and stand and look at her.

“How?”

“Did you just say my name because we’d been texting? If you’d been texting someone else, would you have said her name?” Charlie asks.

She’s half treading water, half balanced on the bottom, arms waving just below the surface, her deep, serious eyes locked onto mine.

I don’t have an answer. I’ve honestly never thought about what would have happened if I’d said someone else’s name. I don’t know whose name I would have said, because it’s not like there are other women I think about.

“I said your name because you were on my mind,” I say slowly, truthfully. “You’re on my mind a lot, Charlie. You always have been.”

She looks away, ripples moving under the surface.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Don’t be,” I say, moving toward her, slowly. “But I promise you’re always the very first person I text with tattoos of beloved children’s characters performing sex acts.”

That gets a smile, a laugh.

“I’m flattered,” she teases.

“Except the time someone had a tattoo of the Giving Tree mooning Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes,” I say, thoughtfully. “That time I texted Levi. But he never texted back. Probably because he still has a damn flip phone. I don’t even know if he can get pictures.”

“Does he seriously?” Charlie breathes.

“Yes,” I mutter. “He claims he doesn’t want to be beholden to modern technology or the tyranny of the screen.”

“Nerd,” Charlie says under her breath. “I should get drinks with June, now that she’s back in town. Maybe I should tell her that her brother’s best friend has a thing for her.”

“Don’t do that to poor Levi,” I say, still staring up at the stars beyond the tree cover.

“What, give him a head start?”

“He’s gotta muddle through it himself,” I say. “The man is stubborn as anything, and if he finds out you tried to make something easier for him, he’ll never speak to her again out of sheer pigheadedness.”

Charlie just sighs.

“You’re all ridiculous,” she says.

“Just the others,” I tell her, and she laughs. “I’m the reasonable one.”

She splashes, and then her toe pokes my ribcage.

“Hey,” I say, grabbing her foot.

“Is that why you chastise anyone who says damn?” she teases. “Is that why you gave Eli shit for looking at his phone at the dinner table last week?”

I straighten up, pull her toward me through the water.

“I’m not hearing anything unreasonable yet,” I say.

“Is reasonableness the reason you practically tripped over your own feet making sure I wouldn’t go backpacking with Caleb without you?” she teases, wringing water from her hair as I slide an arm around her waist, her flesh warm against mine in the cold water.

“I like camping,” I say.

Besides, backpacking tents are tiny. It’s not that I don’t trust either Charlie or Caleb — I do, completely — but that doesn’t mean I have to love the idea of them sleeping six inches from each other.

“Sure,” she says, laughing. “For the record, I wasn’t going to go without you.”

She puts one hand below the water and flicks droplets up at me, her other arm around my neck, her nipples barely peeking above the surface, pink and pebbled and hard as rocks.

They’re not the only thing.

“Hey,” I say, making a face, and she does it again. “Quit it,” I say.

“Make me,” she says, and it’s barely out of her mouth before I’ve grabbed her wrist, my fingers encircling her bones, her upturned face luminous and beautiful and still laughing.

“What now?” I ask, letting my voice go low. I draw her in, my erection bumping against her stomach, and she just barely raises one eyebrow.

“Well,” she says, looking up at me through wet eyelashes, a devious look on her face. “I seem to be wet, naked, trapped, and at your mercy.”

“So I should dry you off, put your clothes on, and let you go?” I tease, lowering my face.

“Shut up,” she says, and I find her mouth with mine. Her skin is cold, but her lips are warm as she opens them beneath mine, deepening the kiss instantly.

I swear I can feel every day, every hour since the last time we were together like this in the ache that shoots through my body. Moments like this, the rest of my life falls away and there’s nothing but her.

Charlie breaks the kiss. She’s breathing hard, the flat of my hand against her lower back, her hips underwater and moving against my erection, throbbing despite the cold.

“You brought me here because you wanted to fuck outside,” I murmur into her hair, and Charlie laughs into my neck, her arms around me.

“The possibility occurred to me,” she says.

“Did it?” I tease, reaching one, thumbing one of her bright pink nipples. It’s stiff as cardboard, and I pinch harder than usual, wait to hear her gasp. She does. “Did it occur to you that getting naked and wet and giving me your fuck-me face might—”

She grabs my cock, and my words cut off with a groan.

“It’s been a week and I’m horny as fuck,” she whispers, stroking me hard. “My vibrator’s practically begging me for a break.”

I kiss her again, push her backward, the water now around our thighs.

“You never send me those pictures,” I say into her mouth, rolling her nipple between my fingers.

“I’m shy,” she says.

“Too shy to tell me what you think about when you’re wearing out the batteries in your vibrator?” I ask. “Make a wish, Charlie, maybe it’ll come true.”

Now she’s got both her hands in my hair, the water to our ankles. Charlie slips and grabs onto my shoulder, glancing behind herself at the rocks along the bottom. I take her hand, still steady on my feet, guide her back to the big flat rocks along the bank, stop her when she reaches it, her back to me.

“Well, this afternoon I was thinking about the time you came over and we took one of my dining room table chairs into my bedroom, where I’ve got the full-length mirror,” she says.

I pull her tight against me, bury my face in her neck. She gasps, but I’ve already got my hand between her legs where she’s still warm, fingers sliding through slippery folds until I’ve found her clit.

“And you rode me while we both watched?” I say, my cock jumping against her back, a tremor moving through Charlie’s body.

“I like seeing us together,” she says, her cold hands sliding around my neck, her back arching. Fuck, I’d love to have a mirror right now, so I could see her body as she’s like this, stretched out against me while I pleasure her, her ribcage rising and falling with quickened breaths.

“I like watching your eyelids flutter and knowing it’s because of me,” I say, massaging her harder, her clit sliding between two slippery fingers, a noise escaping her throat. “I like finding everything that makes you gasp and moan and whisper my name that way you do.”

I lower my head, kiss the back of her neck, and Charlie sucks in a breath. Found that one last week, and I take her hair in my other hand, tilt her head to one side, follow her neck with my lips to her collarbone, my hand still between her legs, working her slowly, steadily while she moans, sighs, standing on her toes to get us closer together.

I bring her close, to the brink, before stilling my fingers. She holds her breath and lets it out, shuddering, arching back against me like she’s trying to coax two more strokes, but I don’t let her finish because sometimes I like to tease her, sometimes I like to turn her breathless, wild, incoherent.

She makes me breathless and wild all the time. It’s only fair.

Charlie turns, pulls my face down to her with her strong hands and I move my hands over her hips, grab her, bring her body against mine, still wet so we slide against each other.

“Tease,” she says, and grabs my cock, biting my lower lip at the same time.

“You bring me out here to get naked and I’m the tease?” I ask. I push her backward, toward the rock, until the backs of her thighs hit it. She strokes me again, hard, her thumb sliding over the tip and I kiss her as a reflex even as heat slices through me, my hips driving toward her soft warmth.

Holy God, I want her. I push her back again until she’s on the rock and I’m over her, still standing with my feet in the creek, holding myself up on one elbow. She’s still stroking me and without knowing what I’m doing I’m rubbing her again, her clit under my thumb, two fingers sinking into her heat.

There’s something around my hips: her legs. I crook my fingers inside her and her eyes go shut, her thighs tighten, the tip of my cock against the soft velvet skin of her inner thigh, still slippery with water.

“Daniel,” she murmurs, her grip on me still tight. Her channel flutters around my fingers, squeezes, and I pull them away, surge forward to kiss her.

When we break the kiss I can barely breathe. I’m holding myself up, over her, one elbow on the rock and the other on her thigh, hitched around my hips.

“Condom?” I whisper, even as I irresistibly buck my hips forward, my cock seeking her heat like a magnet seeking north.

“In the car,” she whispers back. Her freckles all stand out in the dark, constellations across her face, the negative of the sky above, her eyes bright and her lips plush and I want her, I want her, I want her like it’s the only thing I’ve ever felt.

Charlie guides me to her, the tip of my cock suddenly at her entrance, and my eyes slide shut despite myself.

“Wait,” I say, leaning my forehead against hers, even though there’s nothing I want to do less.

“It’s okay,” she says, her lips on mine, the words muddled. “Just pull out.”

“We should—’

“Please?” she asks, and that’s all it takes.

I know better and I’ve been careful for years but all it takes is that one breathy, murmured please and I throw caution to the wind and sink into Charlie’s tight heat with a single thrust.

I go deep, deep enough to hit the spot that makes her fingers dig into my back, makes her legs tighten around me as she groans, her eyes closed, her head turned to one side.

“Like this?” I whisper in her ear, bending over, pulling her legs tight around me to get deeper. “You want me bare, like this?”

“You feel so fucking good,” she whispers, her eyes opening to half-mast.

The hairs on the back of my neck are standing and there are goosebumps down my spine with the sheer pleasure of Charlie, skin to skin like this, nothing between us. It’s dangerous and perfect all at once, all-consuming, unstoppable.

I try to go slow, to savor this. I want to etch every detail in my memory: how beautiful she is right now, eyelids fluttering and hair half-wild, my name on her lips. I want to make this last, the pure bliss of being inside her with nothing between us, the knowledge that I might never get closer to heaven than right now.

But I can’t, not now, not when we’re fucking outside, not when she begged me to fuck her with no condom, not when she’s dragging her nails down my back and whispering harder please God Daniel, please. Now I fuck her hard and deep and I growl you like that don’t you into her ear and she just gasps yes and it makes me want her harder, deeper, faster.

She brings out some primal, base instinct in me. Charlie turns me into a feral animal with no control, no power to stop my impulses. Right now, I’m nothing but a working cock slamming into her over and over again, feeling her twitch and shudder, feeling her body as it collides with mine and she draws me in, always wanting more, taking anything I can give.

I love this about her. I love that it’s always been the two of us, through everything, and now it’s the two of us here as close as two people can get. I love that she’s never backed down from me and I’ve never backed down from her.

I lean over her, elbow over her head, the thumb of my other hand on her clit because I can’t last much longer and her channel contracts around me when I do. I have to take a deep breath, clench my teeth, keep control.

I have to keep control.

“Come,” I tell her, my voice low, guttural, pure growl.

Her breath hitches and her eyes meet mine, unsteady, unfocused.

“Don’t stop,” she murmurs.

“I can’t last much longer like this,” I tell her, my voice bottoming out. “And I can’t come inside you, so if you want to come with my cock in you like I know you like to—’

Her fingers curl against my back and I clench both fists, forcing myself to hold back just a little longer. I rub her clit harder and hit the spot she likes with every stroke and she flutters, squeezes, her back arching.

“Oh fuck, Daniel,” she whispers, and I put my forehead to hers, every muscle in my body taut. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna come, Daniel, don’t stop—”

She comes. She comes so hard it nearly knocks the wind from my lungs and my vision edges black as I bury my face in her hair, her fingernails cutting ribbons down my back. There’s one second where I’m afraid I’ve lost control, too, that this was too reckless and too stupid, that of course there was no way I could resist her like this.

I come half a second after I pull out, spilling myself all over her thigh and hip in spurt after spurt. I’m still coming as she sits up and kisses me and puts her hand over mine, stroking me until it’s done and I’m gasping for breath, holding her close, kissing her, tangled.

“That was close,” I say, still standing between her thighs, my feet still in the cold water. I’m getting my own semen on me, but it’s not like I care.

“That was good,” Charlie says.

“It was,” I say, her face in my hands. I kiss her, and I don’t think about the next thing I say in this moment, I just say it.

“I love you,” I tell Charlie.

“I love you back,” she says instantly, and I kiss her, and the water’s cold on my feet and the night air is cool against my now-overheated skin and Charlie kisses me slowly and I feel like I’ll never want anything else, ever again.

We break the kiss. She looks up at me, hazel eyes wide, face pale and freckles dark in the moonlight, and her lips part like she’s about to speak.

Whoop!

We both freeze, and it’s been so long that it takes me a moment to realize what the sound is.

But then I see the blue lights blinking through the trees, and I remember.