Most shocking, she does so while maintaining eye contact, a feat I admire as I know she’s still having some shy reservations around me.
I have to brace my feet apart to hold my ground, otherwise, I might pounce on her. My entire body goes tight as she shimmies out of those little panties to stand before me gloriously naked.
Clarke nods as she asks, “Going to join me in the pool?”
I scramble into action, kicking off my shoes. She turns from me, moving over to the edge of the pool that snakes into our room from the outside patio underneath a glass wall that opens fully to the outdoors. Undoing the latch, she slides the door, which comes in four panels and essentially removes the entire wall that separates us from the balcony. I’m just working at my belt when she starts stepping down into the small lap pool. As she had not turned on the lights, that damnable dark water covers up her body as she sinks farther down.
I refuse to be embarrassed by my own hard-on that sprang forth while watching her undress, figuring the cool water will tame it into submission. When I’m naked, I follow her into the pool.
The pool is only about five feet in depth, something I can easily walk the length of. Clarke is barely over five feet, so she has to move on her tippy toes or swim it, but I find her at the far end that extends onto the balcony.
The way the rooms are situated—built into an incline of a mountain with privacy walls on either side—we could be laying out on the balcony deck buck naked and no one would see us.
The rooms to our left and right are completely shielded, but sound carries so I keep my voice low as I move to her end of the pool. “Did you want anything else to drink tonight?”
She shakes her head, spreading her arms out along the ledge of the pool behind her. “Just some water before we go to sleep. I have a feeling we’re both going to be a little hungover.”
That’s the truth. I’ve got a good buzz going on now, and I know she does as well. I credit part of that with giving her the courage to strip down in front of me for the first time without my assistance and for us to do nothing more than take a cooling dip in the pool.
I wade through the water, which barely hits my shoulders, and come to stop in front of her. Bending my knees, I dip my entire body under the water and when I come up, I wipe the water from my eyes, seeing Clarke’s smile. The lighting out here is strictly moonlight and two dim sconces, one on each privacy wall to our left and right, but I can tell she’s feeling mellow and relaxed.
I actually am, too, despite the heat that had been coursing through me over her naked body moments ago. Slipping my hands under her arms, I grip onto the wall and keep a foot in between us. I can feel her legs treading slightly between my own, her feet sometimes brushing against my shins.
“Can I ask you a question?” she says, her arms now moving and her hands coming to rest on my shoulders.
“Of course,” I say.
“After dinner tonight, you and Rafe were talking about your dads. Your dad died?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice dipping low as I force the acknowledgment up and out. “A few years ago.”
Her hands glide back and forth along the skin of my shoulders, almost in a soothing way. “You don’t have to share with me if you don’t want to.”
My hands move under the cool water to her waist. I consider just kissing her to move on from this subject, letting my actions be the answer to her curiosities about my dad. It’s going to lead to more about my mom, two subjects I don’t like to talk about. The only reason Rafe is privy, and even he doesn’t know the full story, is I knew he was in pain and needed the guidance.
Still, as I look at Clarke’s face and see nothing but concern mixed with curiosity—not the salacious type but rather born of a need to know me a bit deeper—I realize I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of by letting her know about my past. The connection I’ve formed with Clarke has deepened day by day, and I have no reason to hide anything from her.
“My dad was a drunk while I was growing up,” I say. By the way her eyes grow round, I can tell I’ve caught her completely off guard. “He wasn’t mean or violent when he drank. Just extremely apathetic. He didn’t care about his family, me in particular. He drank a lot… every day after teaching at school… and he’d just sit in his office and ignore my mom and me. Now, granted… my mom was a drinker too, but she did not ignore me. Quite the opposite… she tried to overcompensate for my father’s lack of interest. She was oppressive, really.”