Paper Dolls Read Free Page B

first, but then I did, and every time it felt like shooting stars under my skin.
    “I knew you had it in you.”
    I spun to face Clay, his face all grin and perfect, straight teeth. He was standing partly out of the water, his taut pecs just above the waterline, and droplets on his tanned skin. His fractured reflection underneath him was a beautiful inversion.
    I was staring.
    Of course, he had noticed me staring, a half-grin pulling up at the corner of his mouth. I looked away trying to pretend that he didn’t stun me the way he always did. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him, burning the backs of my eyes like I had been staring into a flame for too long. I always had to rip my gaze away from him, but it was only ever temporary, my eyes just drawing back to him like moths.
    Clay pushed back along the surface of the lake, forcing the water out of his way, until he slowed to a stop and lay on his back just floating there. With his body partially out of the water, I could see the scattering of dark chest hair plastered to his chest, a tiny pool of water between his firm chest and those ridges of his abdominal muscles. I never used to understand women’s fascination with the male body, but now I did. There was a coiled power promised in each muscle, a seductive heat that seemed to radiate from each fibre that drew me closer, fingers itching to run along those firm lines and sharp edges. And I wanted to suck the water out from every place that it pooled.
    “Hey, what do you think that looks like?”
    I flinched at his voice. Had he caught me drooling over him?
    No, he was still floating on his back, staring directly up, his right arm now outstretched.
    “What are you looking at?” I lifted my face to the heavens. The sky was a perfect Queensland summer dark blue, a few scattered clouds ambling their way across.
    “You have to come here.”
    I waded towards him and stopped a metre away. My eyes found his torso, golden and firm and perfect, rising up out of the water like a golden island.
    “Closer.”
    I moved half a metre away from him. If I lifted my arm I could touch him.
    But it was he who touched me first. His right hand wrapped around my arm and tugged me to his side; where he was touching me felt like it was on fire. “Get on your back, like me.”
    I did as he asked. I almost sank from disappointment when he took his hand from me and lifted it up to the sky to point again.
    “That cloud. What do you see?”
    “What?”
    “In that cloud, what do you see?”
    I frowned. “A cloud.”
    He laughed. “Come on, angel. You can do better than that.”
    I sighed quietly and stared at the cloud that he was pointing at. It was misshapen and fluffy and I didn’t see a damn thing in it other than a cloud. But I know Clay wouldn’t let up if I didn’t say something. “A rabbit.”
    I felt his eyes on me, then he hummed as he studied the cloud. “A rabbit. Yeah, I can see that. There’s his ears and his teeth and his tail.”
    I frowned. I didn’t see a rabbit. Trust Clay to see things in the clouds that I couldn’t. I started to drift away from him across the water. I was going to let us drift apart but I felt his hand finding mine just under the surface of the water. His fingers pushed their way through my fingers and he tugged me so that I floated right up against him, his thick corded arm pressing right up along mine. I was too surprised to protest.
    It felt so good, just floating there with Clay, staring up to the sky and watching the cluster of condensed air that people called clouds, even though a voice inside of me warned me not to let him get too close. It was a habit now, I guessed, after three long years of being alone, moving every few months, of searching for a sister who didn’t want to be found.
    “What about that one?” He pointed to another, this time with his left hand, his right hand firmly curled into mine.
    “A…baby rabbit?”
    “There are more than rabbits in the clouds.”
    I