Kai spread his arms in the water.“Well, first you let me give you a swimming lesson,” he explained, then paused.
“Okay, and...?”I prompted.
“And afterwards you get to bend me over, oh, I don’t know...”He glanced to the side.“Over that lounger maybe, and pound me like I know you’ve been imagining for weeks.”
A beat.I swallowed.
“Breast stroke or front crawl?”I asked him.
#
Ten minutes later,I’d started to reconsider how quickly I’d acquiesced.Ten minutes after that - the muscles in my arms and legs screaming, yet Kai showing little sign of slowing down the pace - I was about ready to call it quits and sacrifice any further physical intimacy between us.What good, I asked myself while gasping for breath, was open-season on his body when I suspected I wouldn’t be able to stand under my own power for at least a week?
He was a relentless teacher but, I had to grudgingly admit, a good one.Motivational when it was most effective; coaxing when I was flagging; demanding at the times in-between.Any further admiration, though, was put on the back-burner, since I had extreme physical discomfort to focus on instead.
By the time he’d decided we were done, I was about ready to sink to the bottom of the pool like an exhausted stone.
“That’s it,” I gasped, “that’s all the exercise I ever have to do for the rest of my life, right?”
Kai chuckled.“More like I was letting you have an easy first time, so as not to put you off.”
I may have been tired, but evidently my face was still capable of expressing the sense of outraged horror I was feeling inside.
“What?”he asked, grinning.
“I hate you,” I told him, deadpan.
He shrugged.“A hate-fuck can be just as fun, I always say.”
And just like that, at least one part of my body was feeling re-energized.
Paddling, weakly, to the edge of the pool, I watched as he pulled himself out of the water.Thigh flexing like a sculptor’s model as he levered his body up onto the wooden deck.
I opted for the ladder instead, and didn’t really care if I looked pathetic for it.Not like pride would’ve contributed sufficient strength to do anything different.
Taking the towel that he held out to me, I awkwardly rubbed myself down.I could feel the heat of his gaze, as it raked my flesh.Tried to suppress the shudder of discomfort as my self-consciousness spiraled.
“I still don’t...”I started to tell him, then stopped.Not sure what the words were that I was looking for, only knowing that they would encapsulate this sense of confusion I couldn’t drag myself out from.Questioning why a hot guy like Kai would be interested in someone eminently-average at best, like me.
“Are you going to be self-deprecating again?”he asked me, not pausing from his own brusque toweling.
Somehow I managed to create a whole new, even more awkward gesture, as I both winced and shrugged at the same time.
He rolled his eyes.“Look, did you cum last night?After I had to leave, did you jerk off?”A grin, as I shook my head.“Neither did I.And oh fuck, did I want to.I was in bed, my dick like a flagpole in my fist, just desperate to cum.But y’know all that I could think about?”
“What?”I couldn’t help but ask, the curiosity cutting through my anxiety.
Kai took a step closer to me, the volume of his voice dipping in tandem.“I couldn’t stop thinking that it would be a fraction of the orgasm I would have with you.Couldn’t stop thinking about the way you knotted your fingers in my hair and reamed my throat out, and the taste of you.I wanted to cum so badly, Tate, but I knew it wouldn’t be anywhere close to satisfying compared to doing it with you.”
I think my mouth had fallen open at some point.Even so, no words came out of it.
Kai filled the silence himself.
“So I really, really need you to quit it with the self-doubt stuff, okay?Because if there’s one thing I’m looking forward to right now, it’s us getting off together, and anything that takes you away from being in that moment with me is gonna risk it being a wasted opportunity.”
I chewed my lip.What he was asking of me felt like overturning decades of routine: years where my go-to was reticence and paranoia, and taking the safe route lest I put myself out there and get rejected.It had started from a place of self-preservation, I knew, of the sense that if I began by rejecting myself, it would hurt less when someone else inevitably did it.Along the way, though, it had stopped being caution and simply become the status quo.
I had a choice, then.Accept Kai’s words at face value, or second-guess them and miss out on something that - although maybe ill-advised - I’d kick myself later for turning away.
