It was little things, really, that showed me his lighter side. He wasn’t going around cracking jokes. Hunter was far more subtle with his humor.
Like today. It was Tuesday, and we’d been lounging on the beach for a while this afternoon. I was reading a swoon-worthy romance novel on my tablet, and he’d been busy playing some game or another on his phone, both of us idly passing the time and having a few drinks. Or really, more than a few drinks.
Every time he got up and went to the bar, he came back with a beer for himself and a fruity cocktail for me—something Lance would have had a conniption fit over because of all the calories in them. I didn’t care what Lance thought right now, though. Those things were amazing. Delicious. And every time Hunter brought me one of them, I thanked him and drank it. Yeah, I was a little tipsy right now. Maybe a lot tipsy. It was a good thing we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, and I wasn’t in a hot tub with a bad boy in Cancun, or I might really find myself in trouble. Again.
I wasn’t entirely convinced I wasn’t in trouble now, with Hunter.
He snorted out loud at one point, so I looked over and raised a brow in question. He shook his head with a shrug, drawing my eye to the fire-breathing dragon tattoo on his shoulder and arm, but there was no denying the fact that a smirk was curling up the corners of his lips, apparently against his will. I kept trying to surreptitiously peek at his tattoo to see it better. It was bold and colorful, and the dragon’s tail was curled around something in a protective manner, but I couldn’t tell what. I wanted to know what the dragon was protecting, and if he was supposed to be the dragon. But I couldn’t tell. I would have to come out and ask him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him knowing I’d been looking that close.
“No, really,” I drawled. “What’s so funny?” It was only fair for him to tell me since every time I’d let out a happy sigh over something I’d just read, he’d insisted I tell him why. Lord knew he had to be sick of hearing about my romance novel. Either that or he was a closet romance lover, too. I giggled, thinking about him reading romance novels in the locker room and his teammates finding out, what they might say to him about it.
“It’s nothing important,” he said, putting me off again. “Just thinking about our good friend, Lance.”
I pouted. He tended to only avoid talking to me when it was something to do with his family, particularly Kade, so I was taken aback by his refusal to explain his laughter. Then I scratched my head, trying to sort out what he’d said. I was just about to question when Lance had become anything close to a man Hunter would consider a
good friend
when he decided he wanted another beer.
He tossed the phone on his beach chair to go to the bar, and I snuck a glance at the screen. He’d left it unlocked, clearly trusting I wouldn’t take a peek. It was open to a word scramble game, and he’d solved the puzzle including at least half a dozen words I’d never heard before. Or I didn’t think I had. My eyes were crossing a bit, so it was hard to be sure. I should maybe let my last drink settle before I had anything else. The longest word from that particular scramble was one that I absolutely knew, though, no matter how dizzy I might be from drink.
Bastard
. Well, that explained the Lance comment. I hid my grin behind my e-reader when he returned carrying a beer for himself and a mai tai for me.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, repeating my earlier question, as dry as ever.
I must not have hidden my reaction as well as I’d hoped, then. “It’s nothing important,” I mimicked, shaking my head. That made my head swim, though. I shouldn’t do that again anytime soon.
I took the drink from him, giving the glass the side-eye. I shouldn’t drink it. I
really
shouldn’t drink it. At least not for a while.
He quirked up a brow, smirking. Then I shrugged and took a big sip from my drink, ignoring my own advice and swallowing my own laughter along with the fruity liquor. Hot damn, that was good, like liquid candy. I smacked my lips.
He narrowed his eyes at me, glancing over at the now locked screen of his phone. The smirk from before turned into a full chuckle, though. He picked up the tube of sunscreen from the table between us, setting his beer where it had been, and squeezed some into the palm of his hand. “Need to reapply so you don’t burn, or you’ll be miserable later.”
He should know, since he’d burned up his back like a lobster on our first day here. I supposed he didn’t get a lot of sun up in Canada. It was sweet of him to want to take care of me, but I could take care of myself. I shook my head, instantly regretting it, and held out my hand. He raised a brow and passed the tube over to me before kneeling down in the sand beside my chair. He rubbed the lotion into my shoulders and back while I took care of the tops of my legs. Kind of. The lotion didn’t seem to be cooperating with me. Neither were my hands. I needed to stop drinking.
His touch was firm but gentle, as I was coming to expect, but it was also starting to feel familiar. He hadn’t kissed me since that moment in the church nursery during the immediate aftermath of our wedding. Here, without anyone to perform for, I supposed there was no reason for him to keep up the show. But that hadn’t stopped him from touching me in other ways.
When we sat beside each other at dinner, talking about our friends or our childhoods—but never about Kade—often his fingers would casually brush against the back of my hand. When we walked along the tideline, the pulsing of the waves washing over our bare feet, his palm remained securely in place where the dip of my waist met the swell of my hip.
Maybe it was for the best that we touched occasionally, even when no one was looking. That sort of casual contact could only help us to be convincing when we needed to be.
Regardless, I couldn’t complain about it. I liked it more than I should. I was beginning to crave his touch, a lot more than was good for me. I wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping my heart out of our relationship. Soon, I would need to redouble my efforts, but I supposed that could wait until we returned to Oklahoma. It was at least going to have to wait until I sobered up. For now, I would just allow myself to enjoy his touch. To enjoy him.
Each night, when we said good night before going to our separate rooms in the resort suite, he gave me a look. It was one I wasn’t sure how to interpret but which made it seem as though he wanted to reach out and caress my cheek or maybe even something more. All of those touches, those looks, left my belly doing flip-flops and my pulse racing like a NASCAR engine, but I never got up the gumption to do anything about it. I never asked him to stop so I could better gird myself against it, and I never searched for something more.
The same things were happening now, and this time I needed to draw a line in the sand. I either needed less or more, one of the two, and I honestly wasn’t sure which direction I was going to go. It would probably be better if I waited until my cocktails wore off, but I kind of doubted that would happen.
Hunter wasn’t just rubbing the sunscreen into my skin; his thumbs and fingers pressed in, massaging my neck and shoulders, kneading the muscles and making me want to go limp and lean back into him. I focused on taking slow, deep breaths, concentrating on the strength of his hands and the warmth of his body behind me.
He smelled good, like sun and air and the ocean, making me wish I could burrow up against him. I wanted to nestle my head in the space between his neck and shoulder, breathing him in. Every connection between us only seemed to make me long for more of his touch.
He worked his way down from my shoulders to my biceps, an inch at a time. He reached my fading bruises, and I winced, hoping he wouldn’t notice. They didn’t hurt—not like they had in the beginning, at least—but there was still some tenderness I couldn’t ignore, particularly in my slightly inebriated state.
Apparently, he couldn’t ignore it either. Almost at once, he moved his hands to work on my back instead. “I’m sorry. I should have been more gentle.” The way he was touching me had changed, though, growing more clinical and less intimate, focusing more of his efforts on actually rubbing the sunscreen into my skin and less on the things that made me wish I could crawl up alongside him and hold on tight.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “You’re always gentle with me.” Too gentle. Those hands were strong enough to do all sorts of things with them. Delicious things. Sexy things. Naughty things. His hands gave me all sorts of inappropriate thoughts, but I supposed they weren’t exactly inappropriate if he was my husband.
“Not gentle enough.” His voice was gruff, having lost the hint of humor. I wished we could go back in time so I could brace myself better for when he touched my arms. If I hadn’t winced, I wouldn’t have reminded him of Lance and all the things that took Hunter from sarcastic and laughing to sullen and grumpy.
It was a shock to discover that his mood could change so quickly based on things to do with me. Not only did it appear that I mattered to him, maybe more than he would like, but I was far more concerned with the things going on in his head than I should be if our union was truly going to be in name only, as it had been laid out. We were only a few days into this marriage. I needed to do a better job of protecting my heart, because that was all on me. This wasn’t a good sign of things to come. Even though I knew it wasn’t a good idea, I found myself turning toward him, letting my legs fall off the side of the beach chair so my toes could play in the hot sand.
He must not have been prepared for me to turn, because his hand grazed my boob, which felt amazing. I bumped into him more and giggled.
Hunter dropped his hands to his sides.
I didn’t want them at his sides. I wanted them on me. I picked up the tube of sunscreen and took one of his hands, turning it over so I could squeeze some into his palm. His eyes were on the swell of my breasts, the place where my bikini top ended and my skin began.
My hand circled his wrist, and I held it there until his eyes flitted up to meet mine. Breathing harder than I should be considering I was sitting still, I drew his hand in toward my chest. I pressed his palm flat over my heart, holding it in place, still laughing a little. My laughter died off pretty fast because of the look in his eyes. It was hot. Needy, like me. “You don’t always have to be gentle with me, you know. I’m not going to break too easily. You’re not going to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” I wasn’t sure why I was so certain of that other than the fact that Hunter was so concerned about the possibility that I trusted he would never do anything to deliberately harm me. Even though I barely knew him, there was a part of me that trusted him not only with my body but possibly even with the deeper parts of me. My heart thundered in my chest, pounding against his palm, but he maintained the connection.
“He hurt you.”
“Yes.” There wasn’t any point denying it. Not when there was visible proof. I leaned in closer, breathing in the scent of him. The malty scent of his beer floated in the air between us, making me feel even tipsier than I was.
“You let him hurt you. You didn’t do anything to stop him.”
“I…” I didn’t have the first clue how to respond to that. I shrugged, and Hunter’s palm slid downward slightly. Closer to where I wanted it. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I walked away. Isn’t that enough?”
He brought his other hand up to join the first, slowly spreading the sunscreen over my exposed skin. Every tiny bit of contact made my nerves zing. His hands moved dangerously low over my breasts, but I couldn’t complain. I’d been the one to initiate this. He was only going where I’d taken him, and if I was being honest with myself, I wanted to take him further.
“But you tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “When a man leaves bruises on you, it’s a big fucking deal.”
“I know that, but—”
“I don’t care what else was going on at the time. It’s not all right. Don’t ever try to make out as though someone hurting you is all right.”
“Okay. I won’t.” I felt another pout coming on. This wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him touching me. I wanted him kissing me. I wasn’t sure what to do with this protective streak coming out of him, and the way he was massaging lotion into my chest left me feeling heady. I needed more. I needed his hands to drop lower, his fingers to dip beneath my bikini top. I needed him to touch me in ways few men had ever touched me before, like how he was already touching my heart.
He put more sunscreen in his palm and applied it to my belly, and I wondered if he could feel the bumblebees buzzing around in there. His touch made me wish we were alone and in private instead of out on a beach where someone could walk up and interrupt us at any moment.
“Are you agreeing because that’s just what you do? Or do you really mean it?”
“I mean it,” I said, my voice cracking with my sincerity. Or maybe it was all the liquor.
The tips of his fingers rested on my ribs, just beneath my breasts. If he moved them up slightly, he’d be cupping me. I fought the temptation to contort my body to make it happen.
“Has he ever hurt you before?”
I shook my swimming head, unable to move my gaze from his even though that left me swaying.
“You swear it? Because if he has…” Hunter let his voice trail off, leaving me to fill in the blanks of his threat.
“He’s never hurt me before.” Not physically, at least. Sometimes I thought that the things he’d said to me were ten times more hurtful than any sort of physical harm he could have caused. Bruises healed. Scars faded. But all the ways he’d made me feel inadequate over the years, all the times he’d told me that I didn’t measure up had taken their toll. I didn’t want to feel the ways Lance had made me feel anymore, like I wasn’t ever going to be good enough, like everything I did fell short. With Hunter, I didn’t feel that way. Being with him gave me a confidence I couldn’t explain any more than I could explain my suddenly insatiable desire to have more of his touch. “Hunter?” I said after a moment.
“Hmm?” His fingertips traced patterns on my skin and tickled me.