CARSON
Dan hits the water with a splash, and my heart jolts. When I surface, he’s bobbing nearby.
“Talk a big game, dontcha?” Dan grins.
My eyes dart to the dock, where his boxer briefs lie in a little pile beside his shorts. My mind is still on the image of him peeling his boxers down his thighs. In the moment before I submerged, I thought I saw something glinting in the moonlight. It looked like?—
No. It couldn’t?—
“Do you have piercings on your dick?” The question explodes out of me, and I immediately want to sink back under the water, never to emerge.
A devilish little smirk appears on his face. “I do.”
“You have tattoosandpiercings.”
“Yup.”
My mind is whirring, the image of the metal bright in half my brain while the other half spins out, wondering what one is even supposed to do with this information. While not a beginner, I am definitely firmly in the intermediate category when it comes to sex. But dick piercings? That’s advanced shit.
“Do you want to ask me any question?” Dan asks from a few feet away, where he’s treading water.
I swallow hard. “I—uh, did it hurt?”
“Like a motherfucker,” he says, which makes me laugh. I mean, obviously it hurt, but I kind of expected him to be all stoic about it. “There were supposed to be more, but I couldn’t get past three.”
“And what’s…well, what’s it do? I mean, what’s the…point?”
“It provides enhanced sensation, both for me and for my partner,” he says, then laughs quietly. “Plus it looks cool.”
I laugh, but I’m stuck on the enhanced sensation, which I sort of feel like I’m experiencing right now, just imagining it.
“I’m sorry, we don’t need to be talking all about your—” I gesture in a way that I hope conveys what I mean.
Dan swims toward me, stopping just out of reach. Which is especially mean since my fingers are twitching, wondering what it would feel like to have him in my hand. What those metal bars would feel like against my skin. I know he’s trying to keep a respectable distance, but I don’t have any interest in being respectable right now.
“So, how’s it feel? Skinny dipping?” he asks.
“It feels…” I pause, letting myself really experience the cool water pressing against every inch of my body. “I like it.”
We swim in silent, lazy circles for a while, my nervousness unspooling as we listen to the crickets and the rustle of the leaves. I get brave and turn over on my back, staring up at the stars as I float, aware that my tits are pointing skyward. Aware of Dan’s eyes on me.
I take a deep breath and revel in his attention.
I can’t believe I’m floating naked in a quarry with Dan McBride.
I can’t believe I’m floating naked in a quarry with Dan McBride and it’s the most peaceful I’ve ever felt.
Until a distant car horn sends my heart into my throat. Even though it sounds miles away, I still gasp, ducking under the waterlike I used to duck under my covers to avoid monsters as a kid. I hold my breath until I feel like my lungs might explode, my mind conjuring images of Sheriff Woods with his flashlight, ordering us out of the water. Would we get arrested? Would I have to spend the night in the Cardinal Springs jail? Would he let us get dressed first?
When I emerge, Dan splashes me gently.
“I thought the thrill of skinny-dipping is that you might be seen?” he asks with a smirk.
I glance around, but there’s no flashlight, no headlights. There’s no sound of tires crunching over the path, no slamming of car doors. We really are alone out here.
“The threat of being seen is one thing, butactuallygetting spotted is another thing entirely,” I say, trying to slow my pounding heart. “Oh my god, if someone sees me naked out here, I will never live it down. It will definitely get back to my mother.”
“Doesn’t your mother live in Florida?”
