"Bracing."
"That's what cold people say when they don't want to admit it's cold."
He pulled his pullover over his head and stood up in his undershirt, and I lost my train of thought, which was happening with an inconvenient frequency these days. He caught my expression and the corner of his mouth pulled.
"Coming?"
I pulled off my jacket and my tank top. Stood there in my sports bra and hiking pants, and his gaze tracked down my body with a directness that made my skin warm in places the sun wasn't reaching.
"Pants too," he said. "Unless you want to hike back in wet clothes."
"How convenient for you."
"Pure logistics."
I held his gaze and stripped down to my bra and underwear. His eyes went dark in a way that had nothing to do with logistics. He shed his shirt and jeans and we stood on the ledge, mostly undressed, the sun on our skin and the valley below, and neither of us was looking at the view.
He jumped first. I heard the splash and his sharp inhale. I followed, and the cold hit me everywhere at once, sharp and stunning, and I came up gasping.
"That is not bracing," I sputtered. "That is assault."
He laughed. Water ran off his shoulders. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his eyes lighter in the sun, gray rather than steel, and it made my stomach dip.
"You're beautiful," he said, and the laughter faded. He was treading water two feet away. "You know that?"
"I'm hypothermic."
"Beautiful and hypothermic." He reached for me under the water, his hands finding my waist, and pulled me to him. The heat of him in the cold was its own shock. My legs wrapped around his hips, his hands spreading across my back. I could feel every inch of him: the hard muscle of his stomach, his thighs, the growing press of him between my legs. My breath caught.
He kissed me. Slow. Not the urgent kiss from the counter or the first night; this was deliberate. His mouth moved over mine with patience, his tongue tracing my lower lip before sliding into me. I sank into it because I had nowhere else to be and no plan that mattered more than his lips on mine.
We drifted to the shallow end where the rocks were warm and the water was waist-deep. He sat on a submerged ledge. I straddled his lap. We kissed until kissing wasn't enough, until Iwas rocking into him and his hands were pulling me closer and the friction through wet cotton was making me dizzy.
"I want you," I said into his mouth. "Here."
"Here." His voice was rough. His thumb traced my jaw. "You sure?"
"I don't care about the ground. I care about you."
He lifted me out of the water and laid me on the warm flat rock beside the pool, and I pulled him down over me. The sun was on my skin and the stone solid beneath my back and his weight settled between my thighs and I reached up and traced the line of his jaw, his cheekbone.
"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi." He smiled, and the openness in it was so complete I felt my chest crack.
He unhooked my bra. Slid it off and ducked his head and kissed my collarbone, the hollow of my throat, the space between my breasts. He moved lower, lips tracing the curve of each breast, his tongue circling one nipple until I arched into him, then the other, slow and attentive, as if he had all afternoon and intended to use it.
"You're taking your time," I managed.
"I'm savoring." He kissed the underside of my breast. "Different thing."
"You always have a distinction ready."
"I'm a slow reader. Need extra time with the material."
I laughed, and he kissed me again while I was still laughing, and the kiss deepened, and his hand slid down my stomach, over my hip, to the waistband of my underwear. He peeled the wet cotton down my legs and tossed it aside. I was bare on sun-warmed stone in open air, his gaze on my body, the waterfall loud enough to cover the sound I made when his hand slid between my thighs.
He touched me with the same deliberate patience. His fingers parted me, stroked up through the slick heat, found my clit and circled it with a pressure that made my hips lift. He watched my face while he touched me, gray eyes intent, learning what I needed the way he'd learned every other thing about me: by paying attention.
