The Lake House Had One Bed Left for Our Parents' Wedding Week, So I Shared It With My Soon-to-Be Stepbrother novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Flat Water at Five

The lake was so flat it looked like a sheet of tin, and Jack walked into it without breaking stride.

It was five in the morning.

Mist hung a foot above the water, and the far shore was a gray line with no trees in it yet.

I stood on the last plank of the dock in his MUSKEGON HIGH ATHLETICS shirt and nothing else, with my toes curled over the edge.

"It's cold," I said.

"It's not."

"You're lying."

"I'm lying a little," said Jack, up to his waist in it, turning around to look at me. "It gets better. Come here."

I went down the ladder one rung at a time.

The first inch of water hit my ankles, and I swore.

He laughed at me, low, so the sound wouldn't carry.

By my knees I had stopped swearing, and by my hips I had started to shake.

He met me halfway.

His hands closed around my waist under the wet hem of the shirt, and he lifted me off the sandy bottom.

My legs went around him.

The cold went right out of me, because every inch of him was warm.

"There," he said. "Better?"

"You're a liar."

"You said you wanted to see me wet."

"I did say that."

"Well?"

I looked at him.

Water ran from his hair down his forehead and off the end of his nose.

His shoulders were bare and shining, and the gray light turned his eyes the color of the lake weeds.

"I see you," I said.

"Good. I've been looking at you since Monday, and I'm only just getting started."

He walked us deeper.

The water climbed my back, my ribs, the bottom of my breasts, until it lapped at the neck of the shirt and the cotton floated up around us.

He pulled it over my head and let it go.

It drifted off toward the dock, and I didn't watch it leave.

"Look at you," Jack said.

He said it quietly, as if it were a prayer.

"Chest deep in a lake at dawn with your hair wet. Your shoulders. The little goose bumps right here." He kissed the top of my arm. "I could stand here until the sun comes up and never get tired."

"You'll get tired."

"Not of this."

I kissed him.

It was cold lips and a hot mouth and the taste of lake water, and it went on a long time.

My hands slid down his back to the waistband of his boxers, floating loose on his hips.

I pushed them off, and he kicked them away under the water.

I felt him then, hard and thick between my thighs, and I rocked against him, just to feel it.

He groaned into my mouth.

"Careful. It's deep out here, and I only have two hands."

"One for each of me."

"Is that what you want?"

"Both of them. Now."

His right hand went under me, spreading me, holding my weight.

His left slid between us, and I felt his fingers find me, slick even in the cold water.

"You're so warm here," he said. "Do you know that? The lake is freezing, and you're like a stove."

"Jack."

"Just here. This one spot. Warm and soft and so ready."

His thumb pressed my clit and moved in a slow circle.

My head fell back, and I saw the sky go from gray to pearl above the pines.

I made a sound, and the sound went out over the water.

A loon answered it, far off, one long note.

"Even the loon agrees with you," he said.

"The loon needs to mind its business."

"The loon has excellent taste."

He slid two fingers inside me, and the water pushed in with them, a cool slick pressure that made me gasp.

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