“Get out of your head, Emily, and join me.” Even in my thoughts, he watched me. “Sit. Or were you planning on taking up my offer for a swim?”
I could sit. There was a space heater between him and another deck chair, and the idea of curling up there was warm and inviting.
Except, I didn’t think that was what he really wanted. For that matter, it wasn’t what I really wanted. I wanted to push things along. I wanted to show him that I was up to the level, that I could deliver what he preferred.
I wanted what he preferred. “I’m guessing the pool is heated?”
He nodded. “Did someone show you where you could change?”
“Anatolios did.” Well, it was now or never. I took a deep breath and turned to him. “But I seem to remember you saying it was your preference that I didn’t wear a suit. Was that wrong?”
“Not wrong at all.” Was it my imagination or did his grin widen ever so slightly? Those damn sunglasses – if only I could see his eyes. “It’s not exactly secluded back here.”
“I noticed. Funny how you hadn’t mentioned that before.”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. Daring me. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Ah, this game. The one where he set the challenge high and expected me to back down. This game had once been my favorite, and, though it had been ages since I last played, adrenaline surged through me without hesitation, as if it had been simply waiting for the cue.
Any doubt I had disappeared. Confidence underscored my movements.
“You’re the one who gets jealous.” I reached back to the knot that held my dress up at my neck, and paused. “So you tell me. Are you okay with other people seeing me?”
“As long as seeing is all that other people get to do without my say-so, then I’m fine with it.” He leaned back in his seat. “In fact, I’m more than fine with it.”
“Then we’re good.” I pulled the tie of my dress and let it fall to my feet, leaving me completely bare. It was tacky to watch Reeve’s reaction, but I couldn’t help myself. He kept most of it behind his glasses anyway, but there were some reactions he couldn’t hide. The bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, for one. His hands curled around the end of his armrests, his knuckles whitening. The emerging outline of his cock through his trunks.
I bit back a satisfied smile. “What about you? Are you swimming naked as well?”
“I’m not swimming at all.” His voice was controlled, but just barely. “I’m watching.”
Watching. That changed things. Not a lot, because I liked being watched, but I had gotten myself set on the idea of being watched with Reeve, not by him.
I turned my back toward him as I moved to the edge of the pool, letting the new scenario digest. Before I dove in, I cocked my head at him. “Why do I feel like I’m on an audition?”
“Maybe you are.”
The water wasn’t quite as warm as I’d expected it to be, or perhaps it was Amber that brought the chilliness over me. She was an anchor – holding me down, making the ascent back up from my dive more difficult than it should have been.
He liked watching me too, she said.
The thought stirred me to be defensive and jealous, chasing me through my laps. Each breath I took, each stroke was an effort to shake her from worming into my head. It was unexplainable considering how often she and I had shared men in the past. Ridiculous because I was only there for her in the first place – to find her. To protect her.
It rattled me. Why should I care what she and Reeve had been to each other?
By the end of twenty laps I had no answer. I only knew that Reeve didn’t mind if there were other people watching me, and for that reason, neither did I. But I wanted to be the only person he saw.
The realization made me come shooting out of the water, gasping for air. I clung to the ledge and willed myself to calm down.
“You look good out there.”
My eyes rose to find Reeve’s pinned on me, his sunglasses now gone. The compliment warmed through me, making my limbs tingle. He couldn’t have ever said that to Amber since she didn’t know how to swim.
It was petty. I was petty. I smiled anyway. “I usually do another twenty.”
“Don’t.” It was sharp, commanding. “Skip it. Come be with me.”
The tingling spiraled through my body, intensifying to a rhythmic pulse. I was naked and watched and turned on. And even though my long game remained Amber, I wanted Reeve. I wanted Reeve to want me.
I lifted myself to sit on the side of the pool then nodded at Reeve’s neck. “I don’t suppose I can use your towel?”
That grin. His grin. It undid me every time. “You could. But I’d prefer to watch you drip dry.”
I frowned, squeezing the water out of my hair. “Of course you would.”
“Ah, stop with the face. You like it.”
My nipples were tight beads because it was chilly but also because I did like it. I liked everything about it. Reeve knowing it, acknowledging it, only undid me further. I lost the frown. But I didn’t stand. I wasn’t sure my feet could move.
Maybe he understood that too. He stood, took the towel from around his neck, and spread it on the lounge chair next to him like a blanket. Then he came to me and held out his hand. “The heater will warm you up fast enough. Come.”
His fingers around mine sent shockwaves through my system. Or maybe it was the way he raked my body with his eyes. He lingered on my breasts, lingered longer at the apex of my thighs, his gaze touching me so thoroughly as though it were his hands instead. As though he’d already rubbed his thumbs across my nipples, pressed the pad of his finger to my clit.