Sneaking out of her bedroom trying not to disturb Sandy, Lexi exited the house through the den and out into the cool night air. The wind caught her hair and whipped it around her face. She breathed in the salt enjoying every second. After grabbing a pink and yellow striped towel, she flew down the flight of stairs that opened to the sandy beach below.

Falling back against the towel, Lexi stared up at the giant luminescent moon overhead. This was much more pleasant than getting elbowed to death in her sleep. She just wished that she could somehow get Jack out of her mind. It’s not like her and Clark were currently in a rough patch. Things were going as well as they ever had. He had been a little moody as of late, but she just chocked that up to graduation and the looming prospect of finding a job. Other than that, it was just Jack that was bothering her. Things tended to go very, very wrong when she was around him. She had kept her distance since that time she had allowed herself to slip up. She couldn’t take that back, but she could try to prevent a repeat performance.

But he was so gorgeous in person! Those baby blue eyes had turned crystal clear with desire at her approach on the beach, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

The cool environment coupled with the slow rolling of the ocean eventually lulled her to sleep, even as she was thinking these thoughts about Jack.

A hand gently shook her awake and she jumped up from her slumber. She was terrified that she had slept through the entire night out here on the beach. But after opening her eyes, she noticed it was still pitch black outside, and breathed a sigh of relief. She turned to see who had caught her out on the beach alone.

“Hey,” Jack said removing his hand from her shoulder. He smiled down on her brightly.

Of course, it was him. If she ran back up to the house right now, would he be offended? Deciding against that course of action, she mumbled groggily, “Hi. What are you doing down here?” A long yawn followed.

“I could ask you the same thing. Scoot over,” he directed her, bending down and plopping on the small beach towel. He leaned his elbows back into the sand and stretched his legs out facing the ocean.

She tried to fix her gaze forward and avoid looking at him, but she couldn’t. Before he had woken her up, she had been having another…rather inappropriate dream about him. Apparently being within his presence had allowed him full access to her dreams once again. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked to make conversation, even though the silence wasn’t that bad.

“I saw you come down here,” he told her.

“I thought you were sleeping upstairs.” She couldn’t help but stare at his well-defined profile in the ambient light.

He shook his head. “Nah, sleeping next to guys...not my style. I took the couch in the den.”

She raised her eyebrows realizing that he must have been in the den all along when she had passed through the door. “Oh. How long have I been out?”

“About thirty minutes I guess, before I decided to join you.”

“How did you know I didn’t go for a walk or something?” she asked curiously.

He turned his head towards her, and by the light of the moon, she got a full look at the beautiful face she had been dreaming about. His eyes traveled over her flimsy sleeping clothes, and then rose back to her intrigued face. Finally, he shrugged and answered, “I just knew.”

“You didn’t come down and check on me before this?”

“No. I waited to see if you were going to come right back in, but then I realized you weren’t. So I came to find you. I just knew you’d be here, Lex. I just know you,” he said reaching out and cupping her cheek as he had done earlier that afternoon.

At his touch, her breath quickened, and her lips parted. How did he do that? “I’ve missed you so much,” he said his voice lowering intimately.

“Jack,” she whimpered as he trailed his hand down her neck, “you...you can’t touch me like that.”

He pulled her by her neck towards his waiting lips. Just as they were only an inch apart, he broke her steady gaze and began to kiss down her supple neck. She moaned deep in her throat, and then ripped herself out of his enticing grasp.

“I said no,” she cried standing in a fit of anger. He remained seated and rested back on his elbows again, not even looking up at her. “Why are you here? What do you think you are doing? I don’t want things to be like that again. My boyfriend...your girlfriend...our friends...everyone is up there right now and could see you doing this,” she said pointing up at the beach house. “Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?”

Ignoring her other questions, he coolly said, “Lexi, just sit down.”

“No! I’m not going to just sit down. Why do you have to be so demanding all the damn time?” she cried, her hands resting on her hips. She was glaring daggers at him.

“If you don’t stop using that voice with me, I’m going to take you right here on the beach,” he told her evenly. “You’re so much sexier when you’re angry.”

Lexi immediately stopped her argument and openly gaped at him. Was he serious? Was he really going to try to calm her down by claiming she was in any way sexy by yelling at him? The whole concept just infuriated her further. “I told you to stop telling me what to do. I will do whatever the fuck I want. And I want to know why the hell you’re here. You grab me in public and then completely ignore me. Then, just when I’m accepting that, you start kissing me?” she squealed. “What kind of game are you playing? What kind of...”

She was cut off by him standing so swiftly it hardly registered on her radar. He snatched her up in his arms and tossed her gently back onto the towel. From his standing position, he immediately moved over her, pushing his body flush against her. She gasped at feeling every inch of his hard body just as his mouth crushed against her own.

All thoughts left her at that point. She hadn’t been aware how much she wanted him...how turned on she already was from being close to him. Her body was aching all over with his mouth against her, moving suggestively from her lips to neck to ear and demandingly back to her hungry lips. He was hardly giving her enough time to breathe as he let his tongue roam her mouth. She let her free hand, that wasn’t grasping at the nape of his neck, run down to his hips to pull him closer.

Groaning, he continued his assault on her lips. “I want you right now,” he said, fumbling to reach down her cotton shorts.

“Jack, no. No, I can’t,” she whispered pushing him away.

“Lex, goddamn it, you’re killing me,” he growled sitting up and straddling her.

“Well, if you’d listened the first time, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” she said in between pants

“If I’d listened?” he asked in disbelief. “I told you I’d take you right here if you didn’t stop being so damn sexy. You are the one who didn’t listen.”

She sat up and shoved him into the sand away from her. “Fine whatever, it’s all my fault. It’s always my fault! It has nothing to do with you being here when you’re not supposed to be or you coming down to the beach to find me. It has absolutely nothing to do with you kissing me, for Christ’s sake! Taking advantage of me, when you know I can’t control myself around you,” she spat.

“You can’t control yourself?” he whispered into the gusty night, his words almost lost in the wind.

“Don’t play with me, Jack,” her dark brown eyes were nearly black in fury at this point.

“I’m…I’m not playing with you. What do you mean you can’t control yourself? We’ve been in social situations for the past two or three years, and you’ve never given me more than one glimpse of your so called lack of control. I think you have perfect control. You hardly look at me. You definitely don’t speak to me. God forbid, we have a normal conversation. So, yes Lexi, what the fuck are you talking about?”