Crash Into Me

Chapter Ten: Alli

"I want to know everything about you," Eli tenderly brushes away a wet strand of hair from my face with his thumb. The jets from our private hot tub roar around us. Bright blue underwater lights lazily morph to green. I don't want him to know everything about me. I'm afraid he might not like what he learns. What if he finds out about that night? He'll never look at me the same.

"There's not much to know." I stare down at my wine glass, its condensation dripping into the angry water below.

He laughs, "There's a whole entire twenty-six years of life to know about you," he says, wrapping one of his strong arms around behind my back.

"And there's thirty-one years of life for me to know about you."

"Touché," he smirks. "Okay, we can play it that way. You're a good-old-fashioned girl, miss spaghetti and pizza," he teases. "How about a classic game of truth or dare?"

This should be interesting. I quickly weigh the pros and cons in my head. Pros: 1) I might find out some more details about his past relationship with Jannine that I've been curious about and 2) we might take things a little further than what happened earlier at the reef. I'll admit that I can't stop replaying today's events in my mind over and over. Cons: He will ask the one question I am desperately hoping he won't. The question about her. Or maybe all of the above...

"So, what do you say?" He softly rubs my back with his hand.

I raise the wine glass to my mouth and tilt my head back, taking an enormous gulp. It burns its way down my throat to my stomach before I push my way through the water to the opposite side of the tub. I want to be able to escape this dangerous game at a moment's notice. "Okay," I say through squinted eyes, as the cold wine hits my warm stomach "Let's play."

He claps his hands together and sits up straight in the tub, pulling his rugged arms out of the water and splaying them on either side of his body. "Ladies first," he smiles.

"What a gentleman," I tease him back. "Truth or dare?" Tucking my legs underneath me in an attempt to get comfortable, I feel a rush of warmth flood my cheeks. That's some strong wine.

"Let's get warmed up first," he grins. "Truth."

I rack my brains for a good first question. The buzz begins to hit me and I don't feel the need to second-guess everything I say before I say it. "What was your first impression of me? Honestly."

His grin turns into a wide smile. "Other than the fact that you're incredibly clumsy?"

"Hey!" I shove some water at him.

"I'm kidding!" he laughs. Damn he's so hot when he laughs. His laugh subsides as he continues, "I thought everything about you was unbelievably sexy. The way you bite your lip when you're nervous." I look away, temporarily, in embarrassment, fighting the desire to bite my lip right now. "That look you get in your eyes when I touch you." I want him to touch me right now. "The way your voice does that thing when you don't know what to say. I was immediately drawn to everything about you."

I turn back to face him and he's unapologetically staring at me. How can I not fall in love with...that?  His top four chiseled abs are exposed above the water and his already naturally tanned skin is even more bronzed from today. The rumbling sound of the jets fills the outdoor patio. I can feel the heat of his gaze from all the way across the water.

"Truth or dare?" he asks finally, shaking me from my fantasy.

"Truth." I gather my hair up and twist it into a messy bun on top of my head, before wrapping a thick blue hairband around it.