My sandals abandoned, the dark water a shimmering promise. The sand is cool, then wet, then the first warm rush of ocean swallows my ankles, my calves.

I hear him behind me, the heavier, faster tread, and a laugh bursts from me—wild, free, a sound I haven’t made in years.

The water is warm tonight, a bath after the cool air, and I plunge into it up to my waist, the silk of my bikini top and the loose threads of my skirt blooming around me.

He catches me a heartbeat later. His arms locking around my waist from behind, hauling me back against the solid, soaked wall of his chest.

“You,” he murmurs into the damp hair at my temple, his voice a vibration against my skin, “are a menace.”

I twist in his arms, the water swirling between us. His linen shirt is plastered to every ridge and plane of his torso, a transparent second skin. My hands find it, gripping the wet fabric.

“You followed,” I breathe, our faces inches apart in the lapping water.

“Of course I followed.”

His blue eyes are dark pools, reflecting the fragmented moonlight on the waves. One hand slides up my bare spine, a slow, deliberate path that makes me arch into him.

“You bit me and ran into the sea. It was arguably the most interesting thing that’s happened all week.” His thumb finds the nape of my neck, presses. “Now you’re here. And I’m here.”

“Just people in the ocean,” I whisper, the mantra taking on a new, liquid meaning.

“Just that.”

His mouth finds the sensitive curve where my shoulder meets my neck. Not a kiss. A slow, open-mouthed press of heat against salt-damp skin. A shudder wracks through me, intense enough that my knees buckle.

The water buoys us. His arm tightening to keep me upright. His other hand slips from my waist, skimming down over the soaked silk of my bikini bottom, over my hip. His fingers find the knot at my hip where my wrap skirt is tied. He tugs, once, and the threads unravel, the skirt falling away into the dark water beside us.

The night air kisses my bare skin, but it’s nothing compared to the heat of his gaze. He looks at me, there in the chest-deep, moon-washed water. His eyes trace the line of my throat, the swell of my breasts in the wet green silk, the tight peaks of my nipples pressing against the thin fabric. His jaw is tight, a muscle feathering.

“Christ, Imogen,” he breathes, the propriety burned away, leaving only raw reverence.

“Are you just going to stare all night?” My voice is a breathless taunt, braver than I feel.

The water laps at my breasts, the thin silk of my bikini top plastered and useless. His gaze is a physical touch, more intimate than anything I’ve ever known.

His answer is a low, rough sound that isn’t a word.

The hand on my spine slides around my waist, pulling me flush against him. I can feel him, hard and insistent through the wet fabric of his trousers, pressed against my lower stomach. The contact is electric, a jolt that makes me gasp. His other hand comes up, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip, then tracing down my throat, over the frantic pulse there, down the center of my chest.

He watches his own progress, his face a mask of intense, reverent

focus.

“No,” he says, finally, the word a vow.

His fingers find the tie of my bikini top at the back of my neck. One slow, deliberate pull, and the knot gives. The silk sluices away, lost to the dark water. The night air is a shock, but his eyes on me are fire.

“I am going to learn you.”

His mouth finds my collarbone, then the swell of my breast, his tongue flicking over my tightened nipple before drawing it into the warm, wet heat of his mouth.

I cry out, my head falling back, my fingers tangling in his wet hair. The sensation is a direct, blazing line to my core, an ache so profound my legs tremble.

He switches his attention, lavishing the same devastating focus on my other breast, his hand cupping and weighing me, his thumb stroking the wet peak.

It’s too much.

It’s not enough.

I’m panting, little desperate sounds I don’t recognize. His hand slides down my belly, over the soaked silk of my bikini bottom, his fingers pressing against the aching heat there. I jerk against his touch, a sob catching in my throat.

“Sebastian—”

“Tell me,” he murmurs against my skin, his breath hot.

His fingers hook into the side of the bikini bottom, slipping the fabric aside. The cool water touches me there, a fleeting shock, before his fingers find me. Not entering, not yet. Just resting against my slick, swollen flesh, his thumb making a slow, torturous circle over the most sensitive part. My vision blurs. I brace myself on his broad shoulders, my nails digging into the wet linen of his shirt.

“Tell me what you need.”

“I can’t—” I gasp, arching into his hand, my body begging for more pressure, more friction, more of him.

The coil inside me is wound impossibly tight. The guilt, Mark, the entire world is a distant murmur drowned out by the roaring in my blood. His finger dips, just the very tip, inside me, and I shatter.

“Please. I need you. Inside of me. I need to feel you.”

The words are raw, stripped of all performance. A pure, desperate truth.

He stills.

For a heartbeat, he just looks at me, his blue eyes black with need, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

Then he nods, a sharp, decisive motion.

He fumbles with the fastening of his trousers, his usually precise fingers clumsy. I help him, my own hands shaking, pushing the soaked fabric down his hips. He kicks them away. And then he’s there, the thick, hard length of him pressing against my thigh, hot and alive. He grips himself, guiding the head to where I’m wet and open and desperate for him.

v“Keep your eyes on me.”

The words are a raw scrape of sound, not a request but a command, a lifeline thrown into the storm between us. My gaze, which had fallen to the place where we are joined, wrenches upward. I find his eyes. They hold me, anchor me, as he pushes in.

Slowly.

It is an invasion and a homecoming, a burning, inexorable stretch that tears a silent gasp from my throat. I feel everything—the brutal, glorious fullness, the way my body yields, splits open, and then clenches tight around him, a perfect, shocking fit. He stops, buried to the hilt, his forehead crashing down against mine. The air is gone. There is only this searing connection, this ache that is finally, mercifully, being filled.

A ragged groan is torn from him, hot against my lips. “Christ. Imogen.”

He doesn’t move. Not yet. He just stays there, buried inside me, our foreheads pressed together, our ragged breaths mingling with the sigh of the waves. The fullness is a shocking, live wire, a claim so absolute it feels like my bones have been rearranged to make space for him. His hands come up to frame my face, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and I realize my cheeks are wet. I don’t know if it’s seawater or tears.

“Breathe,” he murmurs, his voice sandpaper-rough. “Just breathe, Imogen.”

I obey, a shaky inhale that makes me clench around him. A sharp, punched-out sound escapes him, and his eyes squeeze shut for a second. When they open, the control is back, but it’s a different kind. Deeper. Hotter. “Now,” he says, the word a low vibration against my mouth. “Now, I move.”

He pulls back, a slow, devastating retreat that feels like a loss, then pushes forward again, a relentless, measured stroke that steals the air from my lungs. It’s not frantic. It’s deliberate. A study. Each thrust is a question, and my body’s shuddering answer is yes, yes, yes.

He sets a punishingly slow rhythm, one that allows me to feel every inch, every ridge. The way my body grips him, the wet, slick sound of our joining louder than the ocean. This is him setting the pace. This is the surrender. I am just the vessel, the echo, the wreckage.

“You feel that?”

I can only nod, my head lolling back until he catches it, holding my gaze captive.

“I feel everything.”

“Good.” A faint, wicked curve touches his mouth. “Remember it.”

His pace increases, not in speed, but in depth. Each stroke goes deeper, hits a place that makes stars burst behind my eyes. My fingers scramble against his back, the wet linen of his shirt, finding skin.

I dig in.

He groans, a dark, satisfied sound, and bends his head, capturing my mouth in a kiss that’s all tongue and claiming heat, perfectly in time with the thrust of his hips. The coordination is obscene. My thoughts have dissolved into pure sensation—the salt on his lips, the ache of my breasts crushed against his chest, the relentless, building pressure coiling tighter, tighter.

“Sebastian, I’m—”

“I know.” He breaks the kiss, his breath hot on my cheek. “Let go. I have you.”

His hand slides between us, his thumb finding that swollen, desperate peak, and presses. The world whites out. I shatter with a broken cry against his shoulder, my body convulsing around him, milking him, the waves of pleasure so intense they border on pain.

He follows me over, his own control fracturing into a ragged shout lost in my hair, his hips stuttering, his whole body seizing as he pours himself into me. For a long moment, there is nothing but the crash of the sea and the violent, shared tremors of our bodies.

He doesn’t collapse on me. He gathers me closer, his arms locking around me, his face buried in the curve of my neck. We stand there in the water, joined, trembling. Slowly, gently, he slips out of me. The loss is physical, a hollow chill. He must feel me shudder, because he makes a soft, wordless sound and lifts me, my legs wrapping instinctively around his waist, and carries me out of the water toward the warm, dry sand.