The towel is pulled off me. I hear the squeeze of lotion and the rasp of Rhett’s palms rubbing together.
Those warm, calloused hands slide up over my bare back, and I moan because it feels good, but mostly because I can’t get enough of Rhett touching me the way he does.
“I feel like I should be the one massaging you.”
“I feel like you’re wrong,” he husks. And I melt into the bed, soaking up this side of him I didn’t even know existed. Sweet, and tender, and swoony.
Somehow, the fact he looks so rough and tumble makes the swoon more intense. He doesn’t look like a soft man, one to pull out pretty words or take you on lavish dates.
He is nothing like any man I’ve been with.
And that’s a blessing.
“I love your freckles,” he murmurs from behind me, the pad of his finger tracing lines across the expanse of my back. “They remind me of all the constellations. Like I could draw lines between them, and pictures would appear.”
It’s such an oddly worshipful thing to say. I wiggle my toes, hum softly, and tip my cheek against the bed to gaze back at him.
“Right here, there are two so close together they almost look like one.”
“Like binary stars,” I murmur.
“What are binary stars?” His finger tenderly swipes across the spot he’s talking about.
“It’s two stars that look like one to us when we see them in the sky. But really, they’re two. Stuck together by a gravitational pull, always orbiting one another.”
“Kind of like the two of us, stuck together,” he muses.
It’s that thought of us stuck together tumbling through my fading consciousness that leads into the sound of my phone buzzing on the bedside table.
Which leads to Rhett taking his hands off me.
Which leads to my stomach dropping, because what Rhett says next is, “It says Rob calling.”
I push up on my elbows and look over my shoulder at Rhett.
“Why is he calling you?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. However, if I had to guess, it would be something to do with Rhett winking at me before and after his ride tonight. Tonight’s event was broadcast, which means it’s feasible that someone would have seen that. That someone being Rob, who used to give me tummy flutters when he called. But right now, regarding the lit screen of my phone in Rhett’s hand, all I feel is dread.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” I say, flipping over and sitting up, pulling my towel back around myself. It opens up a jar of worms I’m not ready to show Rhett yet. I need to figure out where this is going before I go down that path and expose everything.
Rhett pushes the phone at me, his face hard and unreadable. “Answer it.”
I quirk a brow at him, wondering if he can truly handle this. Based on the way he flew off the handle over Emmett, my guess is no. But I’m not in the mood to argue, so I push myself up to the top of the bed to lean against the headboard and take the phone from Rhett’s hand. Without looking him in the eye, I swipe the screen to answer. “Hello?”
Rhett flops down on the bed beside me.
“Summer?” Rob asks, his voice polished and smooth. It doesn’t make my hair stand on end at all. It doesn’t sound rough and sexy, like tires crunching on gravel.
“Yeah.” Obviously. Who the hell else would it be? “What’s up? Is something wrong?”
“Why does something always have to be wrong for me to call you?”
My face pinches and my eyes roll. A year ago, that might have sounded sweet to me, now it just sounds stupid.
“You shouldn’t be calling me at all.”
Rhett’s head turns in my direction, and I feel his gaze on me like a touch.
“I know,” Rob says. Though I barely hear him over the rush of awareness Rhett’s spurring on in me.
“Okay, so—” I stifle a squeal as Rhett suddenly reaches over and lifts me on top of him. My towel falls away, and I’m straddling Rhett Eaton, buck naked, his hands gripping my hips while he looks over my body like it might be his next snack.
“Sorry,” I breathe, trying to not sound as shocked as I feel. “I, uh, dropped my phone.” Rhett quirks a brow and then holds one finger up over his lips in the universal sign for shh.
I’m momentarily confused.
And then his hands push up on my hips, right as he pushes himself down the bed, lining his face up with my . . .
“Oh, God,” I murmur, staring down into Rhett’s honeyed irises. All trouble and promise. I widen my eyes at him, as if to say, Are you fucking kidding me right now?