Close Quarters

by Kandi Steiner

“I’m not accustomed to having to make requests twice, Miss Dawn.”

“You are consequential,” he said, voice low and rasped. “You’d do well to realize that and use it to your advantage.”

I’m not your master, Miss Dawn.” Then, he pressed his palms on the table, leaning toward me with a wicked grin. “Though, if there was ever a time you wanted to change that, I would be happy to oblige.”

“Go get changed and get in this hot tub, or I’ll come over there and drag you in.”

“However, if you were mine?” His eyes traced their way over my collarbones, down the line of my cleavage, to my waist, my hips, my thighs, and back up again. “You wouldn’t have even made it to that top stair before I was dragging you back to the room for my eyes only.”

“Don’t say my name like that, Aspen,” he warned, his eyes flicking to where I’d pinned my bottom lip with my teeth. “Not unless you want to unleash a part of me you haven’t seen yet.” His jaw tensed. “A part of me I can’t tame once it’s loose.”

“How could a seemingly ordinary girl from Colorado who wasn’t even supposed to be on my boat at all, become the center of my focus and attention, of my every waking thought and every sleepless night?”

Choose yourself every now and then, because if you don’t, then who else will?”

“The one where you pretend like you don’t want me,” he husked, and under the water, a warm palm wrapped around my waist. I inhaled a stiff breath, shaking violently at the touch, my eyelids fluttering as he slipped that hand around to my lower back and pulled me closer, into him, until we were flush against each other and I could feel his desire pressed against my core that ached for him in return. “And I pretend like you’re not already mine.”

now that I know you exist in this world, I cannot live without you existing in mine, too.”