“I’ve known since my second year on the ASP.” There, that sounded simple enough. Didn’t quite convey the heart-stopping terror he’d felt when he’d first found out.

Which had never exactly made sense to him. Terror? It wasn’t like he’d been in a two-wave hold-down, feeling his lungs burn for air as the ocean tried to keep him smacked to the sea floor. But it had felt oddly similar. Like having his world shaken upside down.

Like he’d never known the man who’d raised him.

“How did you find out? What happened?” Her voice had softened. Eased. She was being kind to him.

He didn’t like Avalon kind. He liked her sharp and dueling with him. Or naked. That had been damned fine. He could willingly go back to that. The shadows had made her a ghostly goddess, all curves and dips and her nipples in bright relief.

Maybe if he kept that image in his head, this shit would all be easier to deal with.

“Mako happened. I was in Tahiti for the Billabong Pro. He was a little fuck, only fourteen. But he hitchhiked to the staging area for the heats. Waited for me. I came off a damn good run to find him there.”

He trailed off. That easily, he was back there again. Riding high, the sand soft and silky beneath his feet. He’d already dropped his board on the rack, stretching out the worst of the kinks in his back. It had also been the year of his first World Championship and he’d always associated the two together. Made Tanner wonder if that had been part of his problem in never nailing the championship again. He needed the win this time. Needed it with something that verged on craving.

“Tahiti? Your second year?” She looked back toward land. Moonlight glided over the pure line of her shoulders. “I remember that event.”

Who didn’t? He’d fucked up the final heat royally. Despite having gone in on top, he’d barely managed to stand up on a wave. Kind of hard to do when it felt like there’d been no world under his feet anymore. He’d been lucky to take second. But admitting that would be entirely too raw. “Been following my career, have you, Avalon?”

He liked that image. She’d have still been way too young then, probably only fourteen. But he could picture this version of Avalon with Surfer spread out in front of her. After she finished analyzing all the photos as competition, maybe she’d flip through a second time looking for him.

She shot that down quick enough with a soft laugh. “No. I remember because Kelly Slater kicked your ass in that last heat. I had a crush on Kelly my whole freshman year.”

“Fuck Kelly Slater.”

Her soft chuckle spiraled up into a full-on, head-thrown-back laugh. “Dude, there’s press who’d pay big money to hear you say that.”

“And you’re technically press.”

Her eyes went wide and fixed on him. “Not tonight. I want to make sure you know that. I’m not press tonight.”

Under the water he hooked his foot around her ankle and tugged her closer. The kiss he took leaning out over the water tasted like salt of course, but beneath it was more. Her. Sweetness and earnestness.

“I know.” The words breathed over her lips, and they were so close, his exhalation washed back at him.

She smiled, a soft curve that he wanted to taste again. “What did your dad say?”

“Seriously?” He pulled back until he was sitting firmly over his own board. “I’m kissing you in the middle of the water and you’re thinking about my dad? I think I’m losing my touch.”

“Oh, shut it. You do damned well for yourself and you know it. We need to get this out of the way.” Her fingertips trailed over the inside of his thigh. A deliberate provocation? He couldn’t tell. He liked that about Avalon. There was something about her that kept him on his toes. “So we can move on to other things.”

Her bikini was sexy-small. Barely covered the dip of her pussy, more tease than anything else. “By all means. Let’s move on.”

She snapped her fingers under his nose. “Up here, please? For now?” But she was grinning at him. “Your dad. Did you talk to him?”

Christ, answering her questions was easier when he concentrated on her fuckable little body. “Yeah. I did. He convinced me it was once, an accident practically. Oops, he fell in a local girl. Didn’t ever happen again.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Now, I’m not.” His heart rate was going up again, like he was that twenty-year-old kid confronting the dad he’d once adored. He swallowed down the memory. “Then, I bought it hook, line and sinker.”

“Until?”

He blinked his gaze back into focus. The tiny red bikini cupped her breasts lovingly. A single drop of water gleamed under a ray of moonlight, then dipped and ran down her cleavage in a slow plunge. He liked watching that drop far more than he liked remembering how things had gone from crappy to miserable. “Until the next year, when the tour went back to Tahiti. And I couldn’t find Dad in his hotel room one night. I asked around until I finally found his buddy Bondo, who told me where the asshole was.”

“Oh, Tanner, you didn’t.” Her eyes were wide, her mouth a soft O shape in the dark.

“Yup. I went. Tiny little house, with surfboards in the front yard. I banged the door until Dad came out.”

She scrubbed her hand across the back of her neck. The pinch of her mouth and wrinkle over her nose chagrined him. It was bad enough to have to make this trip down memory lane. He didn’t need her pitying him. “Jesus, Tanner.”

“I know.” He made himself shrug. “It was all screaming and this short little woman clinging to Dad’s arm. How much more drama can you get?”

“No, not that.” She pinned him with a look that had way too much sympathy in it for his tastes. “It had to hurt. Finding out like that. I know how much it sucks to have a parent lie to you.”

Her mom had been flighty to the utmost power. It was why his mom had taken Avalon under her wing. If anyone was going to understand that pain, it’d definitely be Avalon.

But that didn’t mean he liked rolling around in it. “I moved on.”

“You’re so full of it. Please do tell me how not talking to your dad for nine years is any sort of moving on.”

“It was better for everyone. Telling something like that . . . Not my damn place. It should have been Dad, if it had to come from anyone.” He spread his hands wide over the board. Latched his muscles into place. “And I didn’t think I could keep my mouth shut if I looked at him in that house. My house. Every bit of my childhood became a lie.”

Something dark pinched her features. “You don’t think that’s a little melodramatic?”

“Maybe. But that’s what it felt like.”

He didn’t want to think about this, not anymore. After almost a decade spent ignoring it, he was going to get more than he wanted over the next few days. His mom would likely want to go a few rounds, get to the “emotional core” of what he’d told her. Because that was the type of woman she was.

Tanner rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. There’d be enough time for that sort of flaying-open tomorrow. Now he wanted something easier to understand.

And beyond everything, the connection that he and Avalon had on the physical level made sense to him. He’d never had a more responsive woman in his arms. Their moment in his old bedroom, in the middle of the party, hadn’t been long but it had been perfect. Exactly what he needed to know how good it would be between them.

“Is that enough for tonight?” He looked back at her.

The dark pools of her eyes glimmered in the moonlight. He had the feeling that, despite the numerous times he’d looked off to the horizon, she’d watched him the whole time. The small rush he got off that was exhilarating.

His sister would have his head if she knew what he was thinking about doing to Avalon.

Good thing she wasn’t anywhere around.

“Enough?”

“Questions. Laying me open. I’m going to get plenty tomorrow from everyone else.”

“One more.” She trailed her fingertips through the water, leaving a shimmering wake in her path. “Did you try to talk to him? Mako? Before he went to the press?”

The smile that lifted Tanner’s mouth didn’t feel that comfortable. Mostly hard anger. “Yeah. I’ve tried talking to him. Obviously it didn’t work.”

“It’s got to be hard to look at you. Know you were the one who Hank raised.”

“Avalon?”

“Hmm?”

He moved close enough that he could wrap his hand around her elbow. Tugged her even closer. Their knees bumped, then their thighs as their boards came into alignment. He stroked the very tips of his fingers over her jaw.

Her shoulders worked over a shudder and her eyes drifted shut.

Leaning close meant feeling the heat coming off her in waves. He let his mouth hover over the shell of her ear. “He’s dug himself a big enough hole that I’m done with him. For good. I don’t give a flying shit how he feels.”

Her eyes snapped open. The melting near-curve of her spine jerked upright. “Tanner Wright. That’s mean.”

“It’s the truth.” The fingertips he grazed over her jaw became a stronger stroke. More take than touch. The back of her neck was delicate as he gripped it. “Want to know what else is the truth?”

Her slender neck thickened infinitesimally with a swallow. But she didn’t pull away. If anything, she leaned nearer, into his grip. “What’s that?”

“I want to kiss you.”

The vision of her body had been floating at the back of his mind. How she’d looked, the way the moonlight had skimmed over her curves. The slightly nervous, but mostly defiant way her chin had risen so that she looked at him through the screen of her lashes. Together, incredibly tempting.