Captured(33)

Like now — he’s not looking at me, but I can feel his awareness of me. The air between us is fraught and alive with tension and chemical combustion, sparking like a live wire. He saw me naked. Watched me strip.

I’m inviting trouble, and I’m fully aware of it. But I allow the words from my lips anyway: “Swim with me.”

Slowly, he pivots in place, and this time his eyes go to my shoulders, the hint of heel and calf and thigh as I kick to float horizontally on the water. “Swim with you?”

I nod.

He swallows hard. “I shouldn’t.”

I don’t answer, just meet his gaze and watch him decide.

My heart thuds in my chest, and my nipples tighten as he stares down at me, then grasps the hem of his shirt and peels it off. He’s put on a good bit of muscle over the last two weeks. A lot, actually. I think he’s working out in the barn. He has to be to have built that much definition in his arms and abs. There’s that “V” of muscle, making it clear he’s not wearing anything beneath the jeans.

The moment becomes a tableau, a challenge almost. Will I look away? Will he turn away? This moment feels definitive, delineating the path before us.

I return my eyes to his, staring up at him, making my choice. He hesitates with his hands on the button of his jeans. Unsnaps them. Puts finger and thumb to the zipper, his eyes so dark green in the night as to look black, not wavering from mine. Lowers the zipper. I blink and keep my focus on his gaze.

He pushes the denim down, steps out, standing naked in front of me.

I have to look.

Holy f*ck.

I blush scarlet and wonder if he can see the flaming redness of my cheeks, if he can hear the pounding hammer of my heart. He’s a very…blessed man. The glimpse I caught of him in the shower hinted at his size, but the huge, hard reality is something else entirely. It’s been so, so long since I’ve seen a man’s erect cock, and I’m powerless to look away.

He dives into the water, slicing in past me, splashing me. I kick off the bank and dive under the surface, kicking and pulling at the water. I dive down deep, until the water gets cold and my eardrums tighten, and then I kick to the surface. I emerge less than a foot from where Derek is treading water, waiting for me. His eyes go to my chest, then up to my eyes.

There’s nothing to say.

He swims away, and I pace him. We go back and forth a few times, side by side. I stop in the middle of the pond, turn to my back and float. I can feel Derek’s eyes on me, on my breasts and stomach and thighs.

Moments pass in silence, Derek floating somewhere to one side, each of us lost in our thoughts, lost in the myriad stars above, lost in wondering exactly what’s going on between us. The only sounds are the frogs and crickets and the occasional splash of a hand or foot as we float.

I roll over, tread water, and find myself inches from Derek, at his right side. He’s floating on his back still, eyes closed. I can see the dusting of hair on his chest and stomach, the bullet scars on his shoulder. Hipbones, a small thin white line of a scar across his right hip, high, near the stomach. The thick thatch of curly pubic hair, his cock, now at rest and floating and swaying with the swish of the water. He kicks gently with one foot, waves at the water with both hands. His right hand brushes my thigh. The brief, accidental touch sends a bolt of lightning through me; I blink, inhale, and there’s a splash, and Derek is there, eyes hot and darkest green and searching mine. I’m sucking in deep breaths, my chest swelling, breasts rising and falling, floating in the water.

Our legs kicking to keep us afloat, he reaches out through the water, and his palm finds my waist. I inhale sharply at the long-forgotten sensation of male touch on my skin. His fingers curl into my flesh, and the barest pressure is enough to tug me toward him. The tips of my boobs touch his chest; he’s leaning back, and I’m leaning toward him, he’s swimming backward, and I’m swimming forward. There’s no chance of resisting. I find myself on top of him, my arm around his neck somehow, my legs kicking between his.

This is such a huge mistake. I’m crossing a line, falling over some edge from which there is no return.

I feel the thick soft presence of his dick at my belly, hardening and lengthening.

Oh, god, why am I allowing this to happen? We shouldn’t be doing this.

But his hand is low across my back, just above my butt, and my eyes and his are locked, and I’m so completely unable to look away, pull away, swim away, or do anything except feel his body beneath me, hard and strong and intoxicatingly male. The bank approaches, and in a move I don’t understand and can’t quite follow, Derek is twisting in the water, his hands going to my waist, legs kicking powerfully, and he’s lifting me out of the water. I land in the soft cool grass beneath the willow tree, the long dangling strands undulating in a warm breeze with a quiet susurrus.

My legs wrap around his torso, holding him to me. My arms snake around his neck; he’s supporting himself partially out of the water with the strength of his arms alone.

His face is level with mine, his mouth slanting, closing in. “Stop me,” he whispers.

I exhale, my palm touching his jaw, and I close the distance between my lips and his.

God, god, god.

Lips alone, at first. Meeting, moving, melding. Then his tongue and mine venture out in the same moment, touch and tangle. Things jangle in the back of my head. Warning flags flap and klaxons blare, but they’re stilled and silenced by the taste of his mouth, by the solidity of his waist between my legs, his stomach pressing teasingly against my damp aching core, that long-ignored part of me.