Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 101(@200wpm)___ 81(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 101(@200wpm)___ 81(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Prickles of warmth spread down my back when Dean walks down the row behind my bench and leans down to speak in my ear. “Can I talk to you alone, Margot?”
I almost knock the bench over in my haste to get up.
Wow. Apparently, I am so easy.
Who cares, though? Because when I stand up and face Dean, he stares down at me long and hard before holding my hand. Holding my hand. And leading me out of the dining hall in a sea of gasps and whispers.
Oh my God.
I throw a shocked glance over my shoulder at Isabel, who is bouncing in her seat, fluttering her hands around like she’s going to explode.
Same.
All I can hear is the rapping in my temples. Dean guides us around the side of the dining hall, the camp noises growing quieter. More distant. Finally, we’re standing in the shade beneath the eaves, frogs and crickets providing a gentle soundtrack from the nearby woods. Once again, Dean’s attention is zeroed in on my face—my face that flushes wildly when he strokes his thumb across the harried pulse in my wrist.
“You’re not a catastrophe. You . . .” He shakes his head slowly and pulls me closer, brushing his lips against my forehead. “You’re the heart and soul of this place. For me, you’ve always been that. You are the summer, Margot. You are this entire season.”
My stomach flies up into my mouth. “Wait. D-does that . . . mean you like me?”
That earns me an are you serious eyebrow raise. Well deserved. This man just told me I am the summer, and I ask if he likes me.
Holy hell, he just told me I am the summer.
“I more than like you.”
“I more than like you too,” I whisper back, my voice trembling.
“I know.” Regret clashes with the adoration in his eyes. “You were trying to tell me. I’m not sure I deserve you after being too dense to figure it all out. The frog, the snakebite, the trees . . . the countless other stunts you pulled. All of them had meaning. A purpose.” He dips his mouth to mine and breathes there for a second. “Margot adds drama to everything. I won’t forget again.”
I’m not cut out for this.
I thought I had the soul of a romantic, but now that I’m being presented with the most romantic gestures and words and touches that a girl could ever hope for, I have forgotten how to speak or think or breathe. “Okay,” I manage dreamily.
Dean laughs. “Okay?”
“I wasn’t prepared for your romantic side.”
“I see,” he says solemnly. “How long do you need to prepare?”
“Couple of years, give or take.”
He hums in his throat, as if he’s having a think. “Yeah, I don’t think I can’t wait that long. Can you speed up the process at all?” He swaps our positions and slowly walks me in reverse until my back is against the building, his forearm propping itself over my head. “I want to take you out tonight.”
My knees are going to give out. Is this real? “Take me out where?”
“I was thinking that grove of laurel trees you sent me to, trying to be thoughtful.” His mouth is rubbing over mine, dragging right to left and back again, and oh boy, that twisting and tugging beneath my navel is something. “I want to appreciate them, like I should have done the first time.”
“What would we do . . .” I begin, my question partially muffled because his lips persist on mine, right there on the edge of kissing. “. . . in the grove of laurel trees?”
He uses his jaw to nudge my chin, tilting my head back, his mouth slipping up the side of my neck, and now I’m wet. I’m actually wet out in the daylight with Dean Ingram’s mouth on my neck. It’s a moment so much more potent and dizzying than I could have imagined. “I have some ideas.”
“Kissing?”
“If you want me to, Margot, I’ll kiss you until the sun comes up.” He lifts his head to peer down at me, and I notice his pupils have expanded, his breathing getting a little choppy. “We’ll only ever do what you want.”
That. That turns me on the most. Because I know he means it. “Thank you.”
“Mostly, I was thinking I could show you my Scout badges.”
My gasp is embarrassingly loud. They probably hear it in the dining hall. “Really?”
I hear him swallow, something a lot like misery dancing in his gaze. “You’ve wanted to see them that badly?”
I nod.
His chest rises and plummets. “I have a lot to make up for.”
“We’ll call it even if you kiss me.”
He exhales on a shudder, and then I’m just surrounded by gold. That’s what it’s like to kiss Dean Ingram in the summer sunshine. His body presses into mine, a slow and secure pinning against the side of the dining hall, his lips coasting over mine one final time before he tilts his head slightly and comes into me with a hot marriage of our mouths, a pulling and inhaling of texture and taste, his tongue licking in and convincing mine to join him, a groan rumbling in his chest, tension building in his hard body as the tempo of the kiss picks up. And oh, it really, really picks up.