again.”
Three
Garrett obliged. He picked her up by her waist, raised her out of the water and tossed her as easily as a beach ball. Once again, Shelby experienced the rush of sailing through the air and crashing back into the warm, clear water. Once again, she waded back to him.
“Again?” he asked.
She nodded. He picked her up and threw her again. Shelby emerged from under the water, laughing.
“One more time?” suggested Garrett.
He didn’t wait for her reply but waded over to her, picked her up and tossed her back into the ocean. “Now it’s your turn to throw me,” he said when Shelby surfaced.
She eyed his solid, hard frame. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Come on,” he urged. “You at least have to try.”
“What do you think I am? A sumo wrestler? I can’t pick you up!”
“You can in the water. It negates gravity or something.”
“‘Negates gravity’?” Shelby repeated scornfully. “I’ll bet you were a whiz in physics class with theories like that.”
“I never took physics,” Garrett confessed. He cupped his hand and splashed a spray of water at her. “I wasn’t into science. My talents lay elsewhere—like in the cheap-motel industry.”
“And in unassailable concepts like family fun,” Shelby added. She vigorously splashed him back. “Personally, I’ve always considered family fun to be an oxymoron. You know, a complete contradiction in terms.”
“Having met your father, I can understand why. Are your mother and sister as bad or worse?”
Shelby used both hands to shower him with blasts of water. “My mother is a dear. Everybody loves her. My sister is...” Her voice trailed off. How to describe Laney?
Garrett drew his own conclusions. “A jackal?” he suggested.
She shouldn’t have laughed, Shelby scolded herself after she’d already done so. She tried to repair the damage. “Wait until you see Laney. You’ll be tripping over your tongue as you spout accolades to her beauty.”
“I never spout accolades,” Garrett assured her.
He glided swiftly through the water to stand before her. “Are you going to toss me or not?” he challenged.
“I told you, it’s impossible. Look.” Shelby tentatively placed her hands on his waist. Her fingers locked around his wet skin, she felt his hard warmth beneath her palms. “See, I can’t budge you. You’re solid as a...a...” The husky thickness of her voice surprised her, and she lost her train of thought.
Her eyes flew to his face, just as he lowered his head to hers. Before she had a chance to speak or move or even think, Garrett’s arms came around her and his mouth took hers.
For a split second Shelby was so startled she stood rigid in his embrace, her eyes wide open, her lips closed. She was pressed so tightly against him that she could feel him everywhere, enveloping her in his seductive masculine heat. She was achingly aware of the virile, burgeoning strength of him throbbing against her, of the muscular hardness of his chest crushing her breasts.
His mouth was seductively firm and tasted of saltwater, his big hands moved slowly and sensuously over her, molding her ever closer against the taut male planes of his body. Shelby’s eyelids drifted shut as her arms crept around his neck. Her mind seemed to have short-circuited, giving her body free reign to do as it liked. And it most definitely liked these exciting, enthralling feelings coursing through her. A glowing warmth flamed deep in her belly, and she felt a secret intimate ache that swelled and throbbed within her.
Her lips parted for him and his tongue penetrated the warm wetness of her mouth, deepening the kiss. Shelby moaned when his tongue rubbed hers, stroking in tantalizing sensual simulation.
He slipped his thigh between hers and she yielded to him, parting her legs to accommodate the thrusting male pressure. Hot, sweet pleasure streaked through her. Shelby clung to him, drowning in a smooth silky sea of desire. As if of their own volition, her hands moved over the taut muscles of his back, reveling in the solid masculine feel of him. Her fingers dared to move lower, to the strong muscular curve of his buttocks.
Garrett lifted his mouth from hers and, groaning, buried his lips in the soft, damp curve of her neck. He was breathing hard and his heartbeat was hammering in his ears, as if he’d been running in a high-speed race. He clutched her possessively, caressing her, inhaling her sweet and salty scent.
The feel of her soft hands on him was so arousing that his mind seemed to splinter. When she uttered a small, sexy moan, he took her mouth again. He tilted her head back, slanting his mouth more securely over hers to deepen the kiss and heighten the intimacy.
Shelby kissed him back with an ardor and a passion she had never before experienced. Her senses seemed to be excruciatingly attuned to him, to their kiss and her own wild responses. Her breasts were pressed against the wall of his chest, and their sensitive tips tightened with aching pleasure. Shelby twisted feverishly against him, rising on tiptoe to fit herself even more intimately into him. A syrupy warmth flowed through her. His mouth was hot and hard and demanding, and she loved it.
They kissed hungrily, fiercely, their kisses growing wilder and hotter and longer, one blending into another. Garrett’s hands were in constant motion, touching her all over, caressing the curve of her breasts, her waist and hips. Cupping the rounded firmness of her bottom, his long fingers kneaded through the wet cotton covering her. He longed to strip it off, to see her, to feel her without the restricting material. He stroked the backs of her thighs, up and down in a sensually mesmerizing rhythm, then slipped his fingers under the wide-cut hem of her shorts.
Shelby felt his fingertips trace the elastic leg band of her panties, then slip audaciously underneath. The intimacy was shocking enough to jar her sense of time and of place back to the fore. Abruptly, she jerked herself away from him, her withdrawal so quick and unexpected that Garrett had no time to prevent her.
And he definitely would have prevented her from pulling out of his arms, he admitted, as he stared dazedly down at her. She was looking at him, her lips moist and slightly swollen from their kisses, her hazel eyes cloudy with passion. A shudder of desire racked him. He wanted nothing more than to yank her back into his arms and kiss her until they were both senseless.
And Shelby knew it. The intensity in his blue gaze made her quiver. “I—it’s broad daylight and we’re right here in the ocean,” she murmured shakily. “Anyone walking along the beach could see us....” Her voice trailed off. She was shaken and off-balance by her wild uninhibited response to him, and more than a little unnerved by the completeness of her surrender.
Garrett’s mouth curved into a slow, sexy smile. “Do you want to go back to the cottage and continue this there?”
“No!” Shelby exclaimed, horrified. She had regained full control of herself. The unbridled passion that had sparked between them only moments ago now seemed impossible and inconceivably out of character for her. One moment they had been playing and splashing in the water together and the next they’d been locked in a hot embrace.
Shelby
