...He showed her how to close the knife without cutting herself, then tucked it into her tote. His hand brushed her waist. Leaning forward a bit, Cassandra pressed her hip against his.

“You’re making this very difficult,” he charged, the words a heady exhalation of breath.

With an almost pained sigh, he dipped forward and captured her mouth with his. Wasting little time, his tongue barged through her pursed lips, stopping only when it butted against hers. Then he proceeded to tantalize her with a thorough if not aggressive kiss.

By the time he’d relinquished his claim, Cassandra was shaken and out of breath. She blinked several times in succession, trying to clear her staggered gaze. Were she not clinging to his forearm, she would likely have sunk to the ground in a quivering mush of wanton need.

“You kissed me,” she breathed, refuting his accusation.

Cray brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “So I did.” His gaze lingered a bit, then he said, “We better get going. We’re almost at Fern Canyon.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes; she couldn’t care less about ferns at the moment. But one thing was for certain, she could tell by the way he’d just kissed her that Cray wanted her just as badly as she wanted him. His reason for hesitance was a mystery; one she intended to crack.

She followed along behind him in silence, secretly studying the way the muscles in his posterior flexed as he stepped over various obstacles along the path. She imagined how his athletic derrière would flex as he pumped his stiff cock in and out of her. The vision made her insides clench with need.

She pictured him a giving lover, one who took great care in pleasuring his mate. First his hands would transverse her body, causing havoc in their wake, then his lips would follow. And from the way his tongue had possessed hers, she could only speculate on the wonders it would invoke on her clit.

A spear of excitement shot through her apex, making her gasp. Catching her foot on a rock, she tripped. Cassandra stumbled forward a bit before catching her balance, miraculously managing not to fall flat on her face in the dirt behind Cray’s heels.

He glanced over his shoulder, his brow arched with concern. “You okay back there?”

Cassandra’s face burned with humiliation. “Just twisted my ankle,” she lied. “I’m fine.”

Cray grunted. “There are some steps up ahead leading down into the Canyon. They can be slick so watch your step.”

The trail began a downward slope, bringing them to the top of a mundane set of wooden stairs that looked to have seen better days. Following along behind Cray, Cassandra descended, being careful to place each foot firmly upon the preceding step. It emptied onto a spacious, stone-encrusted path that hugged a shallow stream.

Enormous walls of vegetation comprised of massive ferns dripping with moisture shadowed the meandering stream, a formidable barrier between them and the cliffs of Gold Bluffs Beach. Flabbergasted by the towering greenery around her, Cassandra stared in awe. They were at least thirty feet high.

Cray stood behind her. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her backside against him. “Some of those ferns have ancestry dating back three hundred twenty-five million years,” he whispered next to her ear.

His warm breath tickled her lobe. Cassandra shuddered. “That’s pretty amazing,” she breathed, trying to concentrate on the wall of foliage and not on the hardness pressing into her backside.

As though sensing her dilemma, he pushed himself more firmly against her.

Cassandra’s heart rate quickened. God, it felt so good to have a man do that. She wiggled her bottom, loving the way his dick poked her ass.

Cray’s hand strayed to her center, cupping her mound. As his palm stroked her through her clothes, the crotch of her panties grew wet with arousal. Too much more of that and she’d leak through the thin material of her shorts.

Fearing she might come right then and there, she stilled his hand. “You’re driving me crazy,” she confessed, turning to face him.

Cray offered a boyish grin, indicating he knew damn well what he was doing. “We’ll pick up the Coastal Trail here and make our way around to the beach. There’s a bathroom up on Miner’s Ridge, in case you need it.”

Bathroom?

Were she not so horny, Cassandra would have slapped him. She didn’t need a bathroom—a blanket maybe, or an air mattress, hell, even a soft patch of grass would do. The idea that he purposely tormented her was infuriating.

Pulling away from his grasp, she regained her composure. “A bathroom would be nice,” she said coolly, casting him an irritated glare. Two could play his game.