Gage was charming.

Some might say too charming, but Lizzie rather thought he was just right.

The ancient wooden plank-boards creaked under their weight as they entered one of the few trails within the Preserve. The walkway was hardly wider than Lizzie’s arm span, raised above the murky, green water by no more than two feet, and the bayou surrounded them fully. Cypress trees rose up like skyscrapers, shielding the sky and the sun from view; the swampy water bubbled with frogs playing hide-and-seek with the lily pads. It was beautiful and earthy and Lizzie was determined to find them an alligator today.

Just one.

Although she stuck to humans with Naked You, she often took photos of nature just for herself. Her apartment was cluttered with prints, and her walls were a mosaic of architecture, naked bodies, and flat pastureland.

“So, how are we going to do this?”

Her four-figure Canon clicked, snapping a photo of a Cypress tree split down the middle, and Lizzie lowered the camera. “What do you mean?”

Gage’s strides were twice the length of hers, and he slowed his pace so she could close the distance between them. “Our first date,” he said, drawing her gaze down to his hands when he slipped his fingers into the pockets of his military-style cargo shorts. “Are you going to film us having fun? Should I throw you over my shoulder and pretend to toss you into the swamp?”

The dating challenge. Right. How could she forget?

Except that she had, for just a little bit. Gage Harvey made it easy to forget everything that wasn’t him. He commanded attention, both because of his looks and also because he had an air of authority about him. No doubt they’d taught him that back at S.O.D. school, along with how to drive fast.

Her stomach still felt a little queasy thanks to his maniac driving skills.

“I think we can leave out the part about tossing me into the water, thanks.” The bayou was pretty, but Lizzie didn’t particularly want to be doused in it. “I guess we could head back to the benches we spotted a few minutes ago. Maybe take a photo, do a quick livestream. You can turn on your charming behavior.”

“You look . . .” He stepped close, something she’d noticed he tended to do frequently. At first, she’d thought he wanted to intimidate her with his size. And maybe that had a little bit of truth to it because each time he approached and entered her space, Lizzie couldn’t stifle the sound of her breathing quickening, nor the way her face instantly tipped up to meet his. Always, his full lips lifted in a sexy grin, like he knew exactly what effect he had on her.

Now was no different.

Her heart picked up pace when his chest came within inches of hers. His baseball cap was tugged down low, and all she could see were shadows and the hard cut of his jawline and the sharp ridge of his nose.

“I look like what?” Breathless. She sounded so very breathless.

“Like you need to be charmed.”

She wasn’t prepared for his sneak attack. Thick arms wrapped around her backside, hauling her off the walkway and up into the air over his right shoulder.

With quick hands, she made a grab for her camera and clutched the strap with tight fingers. Don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.

Her squeak mingled with the chirping birds and the soft swaying of the tree branches, though her demanding, “Put me down!” went ignored by the tattooed god who carried her.

Instead, the jerk only strolled down the raised planks as though he had all the time in the world.

His voice reverberated through her chest and stomach when he asked, “How’s the world look down there?”

She stared at his ass. “Full.”

Chuckling, he reached up to pat her butt. “Same here, princess, same here. Tell me, you think this would make for an excellent selfie? What do you think the caption would be?”

“New Orleans Police Officer Mistaken for Louisiana Tarzan.”

“Hmm, a possibility.” Her stomach bounced against his shoulder as he readjusted her weight. “I was thinking something more romantic, something along the lines of . . . When a Man Sweeps a Woman Off Her Feet.”

“Too literal.” Would it be odd if she palmed his butt, just to see if it was as firm as it looked? “Maybe, Man Tempts Woman with a Dip in the Bayou?”

“Now who’s being literal? I’m exposing you to a different world out here, princess. Expanding your experiences. What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to try?”

“Doggy-style.”

He stumbled.

She almost wouldn’t have believed it had she not been tossed like a sheep over his shoulder, but, thanks to her position, she had a prime vantage point to watch it all go down. Literally. The toe of his right tennis shoe hitting an uneven bend in the wooden plank; his attempt to save his balance, but her weight was too heavy, too lopsided on his body, and . . .

There was nothing she could do.

Nothing but shout, “Save the camera!”

And then down they tumbled, a tangle of limbs and four-letter words.

Gage landed first, a grunt bursting from his lips, somehow managing to twist their bodies so he took the brunt of the fall. Lizzie met the water stomach-first with a cliché splash! Splash!

His toned stomach acted like a buoy, stopping her fall.

Not that it helped much.

Her face kissed the green water, her nose, eyes, and mouth submerging beneath, just as her legs struck something hard. A Cypress root—she hoped.

Rich, masculine laughter greeted her when she jolted upward. The bayou was a foot deep, maybe two, but the fall had succeeded in dampening all of Gage’s clothes. His gray shirt was plastered to his chest, molding over his powerful frame and tantalizing her with shadows of all the inked artwork beneath the fabric. Droplets of water clung to his arms, his neck, to the rugged stubble on his face.

He looked like something out of a commercial for body soap.

Meanwhile, she had a sneaking suspicion that she could currently pass for the Swamp Monster.

“I think I may have swallowed some of the water,” Lizzie muttered, planting her hands on his hard stomach to leverage herself up onto her knees.

He laughed only harder, chin tipping back, eyes squeezed shut under the brim of his LSU hat.

“You can stop laughing now.”

Wrong thing to say.

He gripped her arms, drawing her over his lap with a tug and a pull. Lizzie was average in height, average in weight, but he managed to make her feel as light as a feather. Stop liking it so much.

Impossible.

“You’ve got something . . .” He lifted a hand and brushed her wet hair back from her face. “It looks like a caterpillar.”

Oh, God, would the humiliation never end?

“Please take it—”

He pulled back, and there, pinched between his index finger and his thumb, was her false eyelash.

It was official.

Her humiliation was complete.

Lizzie dropped her head to his wet shoulder. His clean scent had been masked with the smell of swamp, but considering that she smelled just as funky, well, it seemed a little ridiculous to issue a complaint. Instead, she asked, “Did my camera make it?”

With an arm around her waist like a band, he leaned them backward and his chin shifted across her head. “You’re lucky as all hell. It’s on the walkway, along with your backpack and everything we had in it.”

“It’s called karma. I let you have some of my coffee, and therefore my belongings were saved. Coffee unites the fallen.”

His chest expanded with a quiet chuckle, and Lizzie felt the brush of his chest against hers. No bra. She was small enough upstairs to go without one most days, and no matter the fact that they were sitting in dirty swamp water, her nipples were hard. Hard enough that if he glanced down, he’d see twin peaks poking at her shirt.

And that, officially, would be the end of her.

This is what happens when you ditched your padded bras.

A few years back, those add-two-cup sizes types of bras had been her best friend. Seriously, greatest investment ever—until an ex had mentioned that her chest was false advertisement. 34C in the streets and a 34A in the sheets.

“You good?”

Lizzie’s head snapped up at the sound of his voice. “Yup! Yup, so good. All set. I’m going to get up now. Maybe pretend that none of this happened and—”

She screeched.

Loudly.

Shrilly.

And clung to Gage’s body like a stripper on her first day on the job.

His arms locked around her back, drawing her so close to his chest she felt the tempo of his heart against her breastbone. “What? What is it?”

Her eyes slammed shut. “Something . . . slithered against my leg. It felt scaly.”

A small pause. Then, “Like a gator?”

“I don’t know.” Her throat worked with a hard, nervous swallow. “Maybe.”

With one arm still wrapped around her, Gage dove his other valiantly into the water.

Like a hero.

Her hero.

Thank God for the nation’s first responders.

“Princess?”

Another hard swallow. Her fingers dug into the muscular balls of his shoulders. “Yes?”

“I found your gator.”

Her gaze tracked from his chest to his arm to his hand, and in it . . . a stick.

A wet stick, but a stick nonetheless.

Anxious laughter climbed her throat. “I think we’re done for the day.”

That big hand of his spread, fingers clutching her soaked shirt. “Pretty sure we’ve yet to take a photo documenting today’s date. Don’t let me down.”

“Now?” she said. “You want to take that photo now when we look like something out of a Brother’s Grimm fairytale?”

Without warning, he boosted her onto the raised pathway, setting her on her rear as he straightened and stretched. “Livestream,” he announced, “we’re totally doing this as a livestream.”

Absolutely, one-hundred percent no.

She told him just that, emphatically.

“You need to live a little, Lizzie.” Shaking his hands dry, Gage dropped to his haunches and unzipped her backpack. His purple LSU hat was the only part of him that wasn’t soaked and tinged green like Apple Jack’s cereal. A hat, which he twisted to the back. And then he flashed her a brilliant smile.

Dammit, he was too good-looking to reject.

Lizzie dragged her feet onto the planks.

Squish. Squish. Squish.

“I’m pretty sure you told me to expand my experiences twenty minutes ago, before I went head over heels into the bayou . . . that you promised not to toss me into.”

He lifted her cell phone from the backpack with a little wave and an exuberant hooah, reminding her immediately of her friend Anna’s husband, Luke, who’d been a lifer in the army before a career-ending injury. “Let’s do this.”

Lizzie snagged the phone from him. “I hate you. Just so you know.”

He only grinned, a sexy smirk that warmed her in all the wrong places—or the right ones, depending on how she looked at the situation.

Then he opened his arms, inviting her against his damp chest and even damper shorts.

She wanted to say no.

She wanted to turn away before she did something crazy, like actually jump into his arms and wrap her legs around his waist.

She wanted to do all of those things.

But she didn’t.

Like a true professional, she closed the gap between them and gave a pursed, tight-lipped smile. Do not show him how off-balance you are right now. And then she swiped open the first social media app she saw, and hovered her thumb over the GO LIVE button.

What did it matter if the world saw her at her lowest? She wasn’t alone. Gage was with her, and though the world didn’t know his full name—she’d wanted to protect his privacy as much as possible—her subscribers were already in love with the tatted-up man who looked like a rugged movie star come to life.

A single, innocent kiss had proven that Lizzie’s followers wanted a bad boy they could see on the regular. A bad boy she’d promised them would never be redeemed, because it was wholly impossible.

But Gage Harvey wasn’t all that bad, and he didn’t seem like a sleaze-ball.

He’d demanded a night in her bed, and had yet to bring it up since that day at Inked on Bourbon.

This was all for show, nothing more than an illusion of redemption for them both—him as the reformed bad boy and she as the woman who had risen above feeling scorned.

You can do this.

You can do this.

You can do—

And then it all went to hell, because the moment she gathered courage and tapped GO LIVE on her phone, Gage rasped, “Princess, is it just me or are your nipples hard?”

Yeah.

Today officially needed an END button.