My stomach begins to turn, and I look away, but his hand lifts, gripping on to my chin and bringing it back so I’m looking at him.

My eyes meet his and my tongue presses against the roof of my mouth, my teeth clamping together to the point of pain. My breathing picks up and something outside of myself takes over. Rather than shoving off his chest, as I should do, my hands decide to glide along it, and while his pecs flex beneath my touch, he doesn’t push me away as I wish he would.

He’s like a mannequin, flawlessly shaped and cut, intended to draw maximum attraction, to create envy and desire with every sharp, refined angle. He’s soft and warm, has abs without flexing and his biceps fill the sleeves of his shirts to a T.

But his face...

My hands pause at the center of his chest, my fingers spanning out and pressing into his smooth skin.

His face is not one to grace the cover of a magazine; he’s too harshly handsome. Sharp, darkened angles and tortured eyes.

He’s more the unexpected stranger who lives in the deepest parts of your mind, only to appear in your dreams. The guy who vanishes when your fantasy-killing alarm clock rips you awake and you try to fall asleep again for a few extra minutes, just in case he comes back. But he doesn’t.

Because as dreams go, the guy within them is a figment of your imagination.

He’s raw but not real.

In reach, but untouchable.

Not even if you’re touching him now?

My eyes, reluctantly, pull from his chest, meeting his magnetic blues.

Something aches low in my abdomen, high in my chest, deep in my conscience.

“You’re human. You do want.” His palms wrap around my outer thighs. “And you do need.” He squeezes and whispers, “I’ve felt your need... just like you feel mine now.”

He lifts his hips, pressing them against me beneath the water and I swallow, staring. He’s hard beneath me.

The spa light illuminates half of his face while shadowing the other, making him appear dark and dangerous.

Like a bad decision.

Like trouble.

“Jameson,” he rasps, a note of desperation adding weight to my name, weight that wears within me.

He brings me closer, his lips now an inch from mine, and I hold my breath as his fingers glide into my hair, tightening.

I don’t know what he’s doing, but I like it and the sound that slips from me is proof.

He growls, and I swear he’s ready to take whatever he might want, but then his eyes squeeze shut, his muscles tensing.

He spins us, now hovering over me, the veins in his neck strained and angry, and then he’s leaping from the water.