I frowned, opening my mouth but not sure what words to give it to speak. “I’m… I’m not…”
“It’s co-dependency in its truest form,” he continued. “Instead of asking yourself what you want and then doing that, you ask yourself what will make everyone else happy, what will make them feel okay.”
I shook my head, but the truth of his words made the motion feel sticky and slow.
“You are. You’re too scared to be honest.”
“I am not!” I said, louder this time, with enough determination to make Theo tilt his head.
“Okay then,” he said, and he dipped lower into the water, until it slipped over his chin and met the bottom of his lower lip. The moonlight reflected off the water and into his eyes as he inched closer to me. “Tell me something true.”
I swallowed, heart racing more and more the closer he came. When I was sure I’d pass out if he came even an inch closer, he stretched back, elongating himself over the water and floating for a moment before he sat upright again, the water at his chest.
He stared at me.
Waiting.
“Go on,” he said. “Tell me something so true you’ve never spoken it out loud.”
I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest at the ridiculous request.
Theo just arched a brow.
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Oh, there are many things I want from you, Miss Dawn,” he said, sliding across the water until he was so close I felt his breath on my nose. He watched me for a long moment, eyes flicking back and forth, lips curling a bit when he noticed the way my chest heaved in my next breath. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”
And I couldn’t explain it, what happened next, with his eyes on me and the steam of the water drifting between us. A chill raced up the spine of my neck, hairs standing on end, and below the water, my fingers curled under my thighs, as if I were Eve and I needed to sit on them to keep from reaching out for the forbidden fruit.
“You’re right,” I whispered. “I am afraid.”
Theo shook his head. “Tell me something else, something I don’t know.”
“I like the way you look at me.”
The words slipped from my tongue like oil, slicking my inhibitions on the way out. I couldn’t believe I’d said them.
I couldn’t believe I wasn’t tripping over myself to take them back.
Theo inhaled a stiff breath through his nose, nostrils flaring a bit, his eyes bouncing back and forth between mine. His lips parted like he wanted to speak, but something held him back.
Around us, the night came alive.
The water seemed swept away in a storm, a sudden gust of breeze sending it crashing instead of softly lapping as it had been. I somehow heard laughter floating over the water, all the way from shore. I somehow saw every crater on the moon reflected in Theo’s eyes. I suddenly felt the vibration of each star in the sky, humming through me like a bass drum.
“Your turn,” I said, and I would have sworn it was someone else possessing my body when I inched toward him in return. “Tell me something true.”
Theo swallowed, and it was inexplicable, what that simple notion did to me. I watched the bob of his throat, the hollow area where his neck met his collarbone as it ebbed, and something hot and bewitching slid between my legs. Every muscle tightened, a frenzy of fire and ice, and I squeezed my knees together against the ache I’d never felt before in my life.
“Something true?” he asked softly.
I nodded, lips parting of their own accord.
A breath of a laugh came from his nose, and he shook his head, almost imperceptibly, like I’d asked him an impossible task. Then, slowly, he glided through the water, closer and closer, until the confidence I’d had moments before vanished in a puff of smoke.
I swallowed at the intensity of his gaze, backing away from him like I was his prey until my shoulder blades hit the edge of the tub.
“I always get what I want,” he husked, his nose skimming the tip of mine.
“Something I don’t know,” I said, throwing his own words back in his face.
His eyes cast down on mine, and the corner of his lips tilted up just a tick, like I was just a toy he’d dragged out of his toy box out of boredom, completely at his mercy.
Under the water, warm fingertips brushed the outside of my thigh — just above the knee, and just lightly enough that I questioned I’d felt it at all as my next breath lodged in my throat.
Suddenly, Theo pushed back, the water parting for him as if he were Moses. He turned just as my breath came back to me in a kick, and in one fluid motion, he pushed himself up out of the hot tub as the oxygen burned my lungs.
He turned to face me then, water dripping from his hair, down his chest, over his arms and the swells of his abdomen. His jaw was set, arms rigid, back straight and shoulders square.
But my eyes locked on where a large bulge strained against his wet shorts, the fabric outlining every single inch of him.
Theo had to have known where I was looking. He had to have known that I could see it now, the way I affected him, but he stood rock solid and proud and unashamed.
And that icy-hot ping of electricity struck me at my core again, making me squirm under the water.
Without another word, Theo swiped his towel off the back of the chair behind him, wrapped it around his waist, and let heavy, wet footsteps carry him across the deck and down
