Reluctantly she left her musings. “Oh, I have it on. All I have to do is jump out of these.” She pinched the stretchy terry cloth and pulled it away from both thighs, while grinning up at him.
“Well, I’m ready if you are.”
“Just a minute. I think I’ll leave my sandals in here.” She rolled to a sitting position with one knee updrawn and began unbuckling the ankle strap. While she tugged at it, he moved closer to stand beside her and study the top of her head. She was terribly conscious of his chestnut-colored legs, sprinkled with hair, just at her elbow, and of his bare toes close to her hip.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a woman who’d wear toenail polish.” Her hands fell still for a second, then tugged again and the first sandal came free. As she reached for the second one, she raised her eyes to find him standing with arms akimbo, looking down at her, the front panels of his shirt held aside by his wrists. His bare chest drew her eyes almost magnetically.
“I’m trying a lot of new things these days that I’ve never had the nerve to try before. Why? Don’t you like it?”
He suddenly hunkered down, captured her foot and began removing her sandal. “I love it. You have the prettiest toes of any violin player I’ve ever gone swimming with.” The sandal dropped to the floor, and to Theresa’s astonishment, he carried the bare foot to his lips and kissed the underside of her big toe, then the soft, vulnerable skin of her instep. Her eyes flew open, and the blush began creeping up. Brian grinned and unconcernedly retained possession of her foot, lazily stroking its arch with a thumb. “Well, you said you were trying new things you’d never tried before, and I thought this might be one to add to your list.” This time, when his teeth gently nipped at the sensitive instep, her lips fell open and her eyes widened.
Theresa stared at him. Her throat had gone dry, and she was unable to move. When he’d lifted her foot, she’d lost her balance and teetered back, so sat now with elbows locked and both hands braced on the carpet behind her. Suddenly she realized her fingers were clutching the fibers. Though her eyes were riveted on Brian’s face, she was arousingly aware of his pose. Balancing on the balls of his feet, his knees were widespread, but pointed at her so that it was all she could do to keep her eyes from dropping to the insides of his thighs. She knew by some magical telepathy, though she hadn’t looked, that his inner thighs were smoothed of hair, just as his knees were. The muscles of his legs were bulged and taut, his insteps curved like those of Achilles running. His unbuttoned shirt fell loose and wide at his hips. The elasticized fabric of his white bathing trunks was molded to his thighs and conformed to the masculine rises and ridges between his legs.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Theresa carefully withdrew her foot.
“I think we’d better go out,” she advised shakily.
“Right. Grab your bag.” Straightening those alarmingly close knees, he reached a hand down and tugged her to her feet. He rolled the sliding screen back and she moved out into the sun ahead of him, her senses so fully awakened by his nearness that even the sound of the vinyl rollers gliding in the track made her feel as if they’d just wheeled smoothly up her spinal column. How odd to be stepping into the intense heat of the late June sun, yet be shivering and experiencing the titillating effect of goose bumps rising up her arms and thighs.
There was nobody else in the pool area this early in the day. Yellow and white striped umbrellas were still closed, and the tubular plastic chairs and recliners were all pushed neatly under the tables. The concrete rectangle was surrounded by a broad stretch of thick green grass on all sides, and as Theresa crossed it, the cool blades tickled her bare toes.
The pool was stunningly clear, its surface shimmering slightly. In the aqua depths an automatic cleaning device snaked back and forth, back and forth, sweeping the pool floor.
Brian dipped one knee and stuck his toe in the water.
“It’s warm. Should we go in right away and work off our breakfasts?”
“I was too excited to eat breakfast.” Realizing what she’d said, she sucked on her lower lip and chanced a quick peek at the man beside her to find him gazing down benignly at her pink cheeks.
“Oh, really?”
“I’ll never succeed as a femme fatale, will I? I don’t think I was supposed to admit that.”
“A femme fatale would keep a man guessing. But one of the first things I liked about you was that you didn’t. I could read you as easily as you just read the words to ‘Sweet Memories’ in there. That is what you were reading, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder how many times I played it and thought of you during the past six months.”
He stood so near, Theresa thought she could feel nothing more than the auburn hairs on his arms entwined with the strawberry blond ones on her own. His eyes held a sincerity mixed with controlled desire, and she met it with an expression much the same. On the cool ceramic coping upon which they stood, his right foot eased over an inch until his toes covered hers, and Theresa wondered if a touch that innocent could release such a wellspring of response within her body, what must the carnal act inspire? His voice was deep and held a note of self-teasing. “There. Now we’re even. Whatever the male equivalent of the femme fatale is, I’m not it. I don’t want to hold any of my feelings back from you. I never wanted to, not since the first day I met you.”
“Brian, let’s go swimming. I’m dying of the heat ... whatever’s causing it.”
“Good idea. Especially since we have the place to ourselves for now.”
He moved to the end of the pool and cranked open one of the umbrellas, then angled its top toward the sun. She flung her tote bag on the tabletop, then unzipped her coverup, shrugged it off and tossed it over the back of a patio chair. With her back to Brian she shimmied the elastic waist of the matching terry pants down past her hips, then flung them, too, onto the chair.
She heard the buttons and zippers of his shirt hit the metal tabletop with a ping, and assumed he was standing behind her, studying her back. This was the moment about which she’d dreamed and fantasized for years. She, Theresa Brubaker, clad in a bathing suit that left just enough to the imagination, was about to turn and face the man she loved. And she didn’t have to cross her arms over her chest, nor keep her towel draped around her neck, or hunch her shoulders to disguise the thrust of her feminine attributes.
She turned to find him staring, as she’d known he’d be. Neither of them moved for a long, silent stretch of time. His chest was bare, and the white trunks dipped just below his navel, leaving it surrounded by a thin line of hair leading from the wider dark mat above. His nipples looked like copper pennies in the shade of the umbrella. His ribs were lean. His lips were partially open. His eyes unabashedly scanned her from face to knees, then lingeringly moved back up again with the slow deliberation of an art critic.
“Wow,” Brian breathed. And incredible as it seemed, even to herself, Theresa believed him. The airy word was all she needed to reaffirm her desirability. But she could imagine her damn freckles zinging to life on her blushing neck and cheeks, so she turned to open her bag and rummage through it for the sunscreen.
“You’ll probably eat your word within an hour. You’ve never seen what happens to me when the sun hits my skin. I’m a living demonstration of why physicians refer to freckles as heat spots. And I burn to a brilliant neon pink.” From the depths of her bag she retrieved the lotion and uncapped it, then squirted a generous curl into her palm. “Want some?”
“Thanks.” He took the bottle, and they busied themselves applying the sweet-scented lotion to their arms, necks, faces and legs. When Theresa rubbed it along the edge of the V-neck on her suit, she felt his eyes following the movements of her palm and glanced up to find him putting lotion on his chest. Her eyes dropped to his long fingers that massaged the firm musculature, delving through crisp hair, leaving it glistening with oils. He took another squirt, handed the bottle to her, and they stared at each other’s hands—his running
across his hard belly and along the elastic waist of his trunks; hers traversing delicate ribs, and the horizontal line along the bottom of her bikini top before curving into the depression of her navel, then around her exposed hipbones.
The lotion was slick and fragrant. It smelled of coconut, citrus and a hint of berry, filling the air around them like ambrosia. Watching his hands gliding over his skin, Theresa conjured up the thought of them gliding over hers. She dropped to the chair and began doing her legs, stretching first one, then the other out before her, sensing his eyes following again as she stroked the tender flesh of her inner thighs. She kept her eyes averted but saw peripherally how he lifted one leg to hook his toes over the edge of a lawn chair and massage fruit-scented magic along the length of his leg. He’d turned to the side, and she had a chance to study him without being studied herself.
Her eyes traversed his curving back, the buttock, the raised thigh and the junction of his legs where secrets waited. It suddenly flashed across Theresa’s mind why in Victorian times men and women were never allowed to go ocean bathing together. It was a decidedly sensual thing, studying a man in swim trunks.
She dragged her eyes away, wondering if she was supposed to feel guilty at thus new and unexpected curiosity she harbored. She didn’t. Not at all. She was twenty-six years old—it occurred to her it was high time this curiosity surfaced and was appeased.
“Will you put some on my back?” he asked.
“Sure, turn around,” she answered jauntily. But when she was squeezing the bottle, her outstretched palm trembled. His back was smooth and had several brown moles. He had wide shoulders that tapered to trim hips, the skin taut and healthy. When her hand touched his shoulder he twitched, as if he, too, were keyed up with awareness, and had been awaiting that first touch with as great a sense of anticipation as she. When her fingers curved around his ribs to his sides, he lifted his arms slightly away from his body to allow her access. For a moment, she was tempted to run both hands all the way around his trunks and press her face to the hollow between his shoulder blades. Instead she squirted a coil of white into her palm and worked both hands unilaterally across the crests of his hard shoulders and up the sides and back of his neck, even into the hair at its nape. Already the hair was longer, which pleased her. She had never been crazy about his Air Force haircuts, for she’d imagined that if allowed to grow to collar length, his would curve gently in thick, free swoops. As her fingers massaged his neck, he tipped his head backward and a guttural sound escaped his throat. Her palms, as well as the nerve endings along the rest of her body, felt as if they were instantly on fire.
It grew worse—or better—when he turned and took the bottle from her slippery fingers, ordering quietly, “Turn around.”
She spun from the ardor in his eyes, then felt his long palms pressing a cold mound of lotion against her bare flesh, then begin turning it warm with the friction and contact of skin upon skin. His touch made it extremely difficult to breathe, and impossible to control the tempo of her heart, which seemed to rise up and search out the spots his hand grazed, pounding right through the walls of her back. His fingers curved over her shoulder, up beneath her hair, forcing her chin to drop forward, spreading the essence of wondrous exotic delicacies all about her. He massaged the breadth of her shoulder blades, skipped over the elasticized back strip of her suit, and after taking another liberal amount of sunscreen, his fingertips eased up beneath the strap, running left to right beneath it, from just beneath her left armpit to the same spot under her right. Lower they went, down the delicate hollow of her back, and along the elastic of her emerald green briefs, curving upon the sculptured hipbone, teasing at the taut rubberized waistband that cinched tightly against her flesh. The oils made his hands glide sensuously across her skin, and she shuddered beneath them.
His touch disappeared. She heard the faint sound of the cap being replaced on the bottle, then of the bottle meeting the aluminum tabletop. But she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She felt as if she’d never move again as long as she lived, not unless this fire in her veins was cooled and put out. If it wasn’t, she’d stand there and burn into a cinder.
“Last one in’s a moldy worm,” came the heavy, aroused voice from behind her. Then she was sprinting to the end of the pool—running at last!—hitting the water stretched out full length, just at the instant Brian hit it. The shock was breathtaking. From the heat of a second ago her body dropped what seemed a full fifty degrees. She swam furiously, a powerful, controlled crawl to the far end of the pool, her body temperature stabilizing by the time she reached her goal.
Side by side they swam eight laps, and in the middle of the ninth, Theresa spluttered, waved limply and declared, “Goodbye, I think I’m drowning,” then went under. When her head surfaced, he was treading water, waiting.
“Woman, I’m not through with you yet. Sorry, no drowning till I am.” And unceremoniously he disappeared, came up in the perfect position to command her body in an exemplary demonstration of a Senior Lifesaving hold, with his left arm angled across her chest while he hauled her to the far end of the pool beneath the overhanging diving board.
She let herself go limp and be pulled along in an unresisting state of breathlessness and sensuality. His elbow clamped down on her left breast, and it felt wonderful.
At the pool wall he released her, and they both crossed their arms on the sleek concrete, resting their cheeks on their wrists while facing each other, both panting, feet flapping lazily on the surface of the blue water behind them.
“You’re melting,” he announced with a grin, reaching out a fingertip and running it beneath her right eye.
“Oh, my makeup!” She slipped under the water again and scrubbed at her eyelids before emerging sparkly lashed, and asking if she was still discolored. “Yes, but leave it. It’s very Greta Garbo.”
“You’re a very good swimmer.”
“So are you.”
“As I said before, it was about the only physical exercise that was easy for me when I was growing up. But I kind of gave it up too, when I was in my late teens, because I was afraid it would ... well, build up the muscles all the more, if you know what I mean.” He was studying her wet face carefully. “It seems like there are a lot of things you had to give up that I’d never have suspected.”
“Yes, well that’s all over now. I’m a new person.”
“Theresa, is it ... well, are you sure you aren’t overdoing it, swimming so hard? It worries me, even though you said you’re a hundred percent again.”
As if to reaffirm her full recovery, she caught the edge of the pool and boosted herself up, twisting to a sitting position above him with her feet dangling in the water. “One hundred percent, Brian.”
He joined her on the edge of the pool. She flung her hair back, feeling his eyes following each movement as she wrung her hair out and sent rivulets running down her back and over her shoulder. Beneath them the concrete was sun-warmed, and the water soon joined their flesh to the sleek surface with a tepid slipperiness.
He ran his hands over his cheeks to clear them of excess water, then wove his fingers through his hair, running them toward the back of his head, and studying the umbrella at the far end of the pool as he asked quietly, “Theresa, would you feel self-conscious answering some questions about your operation?”
“Probably. But ask them anyway. I’ve been working very hard on my self-image and on trying to overcome self-consciousness. But if you don’t mind, I’d better have a little lotion on my face and back. I feel like most of it washed off.”
They got to their feet, leaving dark gray footprints along the concrete as they made their way toward the opposite end of the pool. Theresa dried her hair, then spread her towel out on the soft grass and sat down on it while applying lotion to her face once more. When she was done, she flipped over and stretched out full length on her stomach, thinking it would be infinitely easier to answer his questions if she wasn’t looking at him.
His hands ease
d over her skin, spreading it with lotion once more while he asked quietly, “When did you decide to have it done?”
“Remember when I wrote and told you I slipped in the parking lot and fell down?”
“I remember.”
“It was right after that. When the doctor examined my back he told me I should look into having the problem solved permanently.”
“Your back?”
“There’s a lot of back and shoulder discomfort that goes along with it. People don’t know that. The shoulders are especially vulnerable. I thought probably you’d noticed the grooves—they still show a little bit.”
“These?” His fingertips massaged one of her shoulders, and she felt a heavenly thrill ripple through her body before he went on, “I wasn’t exactly looking at your shoulders before, but I see the marks now. What else? Tell me everything about it. Was it hard for you, psychologically, I mean?”
Belly down, on a beach towel, with her cheek on the back of her hand, with her eyes closed, she told Brian everything. All about her misgivings, her mother’s and father’s initial reactions to her decision, her fears and uncertainties, omitting the fact that the feeling had not yet returned to her nipples. She couldn’t force herself to share that intimacy with him yet. If and when the time came, she’d be honest, but for now she glossed over that and the part about being unable to nurse a baby.
When her recital was finished, he was still sitting beside her with his arm circling one updrawn knee. His voice was soft and disarming.
“Theresa, I’m sorry for getting mad at you my first night back. I never understood about a lot of it.”