“I don’t usually deny myself things just because it would be wrong to take them,” he said, “In fact, sometimes that makes it all the sweeter when I get what I want. And you can be damn sure that I always get what I want.”

Dave didn’t break his gaze. He stared at me and then slowly, deliberately, he ran his eyes up and down my body with an urgent sort of hunger. It was clear and defined and when he finally worked his way back up my curves to my eyes he smiled a wolfish grin, giving me a look that made butterflies tremble in my belly.

“I’m hot,” I said, “I need to cool off.”

As I pushed up off of the chair and stepped all the way down to the water the world felt like it was on fire. The sand was burning beneath the soles of my feet and the sun was pounding down on me and I felt like I was burning, and I knew just why that was.

I was damned. I was playing a game and it was all leading to an inevitable end and I didn’t know if that was really right anymore. I didn’t know if Oliver really deserved what he had coming to him.

He’d done me wrong. Our whole relationship had been built on a foundation of lies and it was shaky and crumbling around us. We hadn’t been good for a long time and what happened this morning, it was only a symptom and not a cause.

But that didn’t mean that I could be mean to him. It didn’t make it right, to do what my body was aching for me to do.

Oliver might have his flaws but he wasn’t a bad man. He might have done me wrong, but this was taking things to a new level.

Still, I was frustrated. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and that hard place was Dave and the way he had made his intentions for me perfectly clear. The way he’d kept his hands to himself only because I hadn’t begged him to put them on me, because the little willpower I had left was being held in check by the thought of what was right.

It was getting harder and harder to do what was right though, especially when what was wrong promised it would make me feel so good.

My feet touched the water and it lapped over them and I didn’t stop. I pressed on putting one foot in front of another until it hit my calves and then my knees and then my hips. It was up to my belly button before I dove forward, dipping smoothly beneath the surface and gliding silent out into the depths of it as I felt it surround me and I felt him behind me.

Dave wasn’t giving me an inch of space. He’d followed me out here and I felt his presence behind me, confirmed even without having to look and knowing what came next.

The moment I broke the surface of the water I would have one chance, one moment. It would be just the two of us and I could utter only one word and I knew that if it was the right word he’d do what was right. He had no interest in pressing his luck, in pressuring me into something. It only worked for him if he broke me, if he made me give in. It was all about power to him and he gained when Oliver knew what he’d lost.

I kicked off the sandy bottom of the water and broke above the surface, bobbing there for an instant and turning slowly. My eyes opened and he was standing strong in the water, feet on the bottom while I bobbed out of control and it made me realize just how big he was. He made me seem so small in comparison, so weak and so insubstantial.

And he waited, hovering on the edge of me and ready to drift away or rush forward. Dave waited for the word I would speak and though I know what it should have been I knew at the same time what it was going to be. What it always should have been. What it would have been had it been anyone who offered me an escape from an existence that I didn’t have the courage to turn my back on, an excuse to break fifteen years of commitment and fifteen years of mistakes. Fifteen years of regret, washed away in a single syllable, a breathy mewl.

“Please.”