I lean in, slowly. She straightens, her head lifting from my arm, her dark eyes locked on mine, and I brush my lips against hers.
Just a taste. Just a tease, just a test, just to see if I can do it and still pull away. I can, but not far. I can, but not for long.
It’s slow as a first kiss, but nowhere near as tentative. I explore her mouth with mine. Gently, patiently, even as below the water my fingers sink further into her thigh and my thumb finds the edge of her swimsuit, the spot where fabric meets flesh, crosses the boundary.
She straightens, locks her other hand through my hair, traces her fingers over my neck. She parts her thighs and drapes one over my leg, her hand still between us, the side of my finger finding the edge of her bathing suit between her legs.
Delilah sighs, and it crashes over me like a wave. I pull her onto my lap and she bobs onto me, arms going around my neck, laughing as she leans in.
“See?” she says. “This would be so awkward with other people around. Can you imagine us making out in a hot tub while Bob and Jim discuss golf five feet away?”
“I’d rather not,” I tell her, pulling her in. Her mouth is soft, open. “I hate golf.”
She laughs, shifts on my lap, takes my shoulders in her hands. Squeezes until her fingernails dig in, then lets go. I’m hard as a rock underneath her, every tiny movement she makes echoing through my body.
“Nobody likes golf,” she says. “They all just think everyone else does, so they pretend.”
“I’m sure someone does,” I say, and I wonder who nobody and everyone are. I wonder if they’re in the box.
“Sure. One person, somewhere,” she teases. “Everyone else just likes driving that cart around.”
“You gonna make me do that next?” I ask. My hands are on her hips, pulling her in sideways.
“Are you saying I made you go skiing?” she says. An arm around my neck, a hand on my chest.
“Just that if it weren’t for you, I’d probably be driving four-wheelers through the mud and shouting yeehaw! this weekend,” I say. “You know, some lowborn redneck shit.”
“That does sound fun,” she says. Her mouth finds mine, pushes it open. Her body presses against me, and she pulls away, leans her forehead against mine.
Squirms on my lap until suddenly she’s straddling me in the water, the heart tattoo right in front of my face, both sides bowed in by the swell of her breasts, shining even in the low light.
Her nipples are hard as pebbles in the cold air, and I close my hands around her ribcage. My thumbs on her sternum, breasts in the valley between finger and thumb as she rocks against me softly once, twice, a loose curl bouncing against my temple.
The tiniest movement, and I’ll be across the line we’ve set. The line that’s become the bond between us. The line that keeps us from falling off a cliff.
“So, you’d rather be out muddin’ than here?” she teases, softly. “I’m not sure I believe you’ve ever even been.”
“I went once,” I say. I hook my thumbs beneath the fabric over her sternum, pull it down until I can see the very top of the raven’s head, the fabric over her breasts denting into them. “It was enough. You get real dirty, turns out.”
I pull harder on her swimsuit and this time she comes down, kisses me open-mouthed. Locks her hand around my neck, the other still on my chest, her hips grinding slowly against me.
I’m crumbling, fast. I don’t want to think about the wedding album and the box, but I do. It’s there, below the surface of my mind like a whale about to breach. The vast unknown of what he was to her, what she was to him. Why.
But I know what I’ve been, and I know how to make her forget everything else. I know how to possess her, at least in body, so I unhook my thumbs from her swimsuit and slide them across her cut-glass nipples.
Delilah moans. Her mouth is still on my mine and the sound vibrates through me, surprised and breathy. Loud enough to echo off another condo building and come back to us as she claps her hand over her mouth, faces still inches from mine.
I lean forward, take a knuckle between my teeth. Run my tongue across the ridges and wrinkles as I push my thumbs over her nipples again, this time flicking my thumbnails over the flat.
She takes her hand off her mouth and kisses me, dragging her fingers across my face. She rolls her hips and makes a noise as she presses her clit against the thick ridge of my cock.
I groan. I’m not as loud as her but it’s an accident, not intentional. I cup her breasts in my hands, pinch her nipples between my forefinger and thumb. I roll them, and she whimpers, works herself against me.