Page 22 of Aim for Love

“Never.” He looks serious when he says that.

And I like hearing it—that I’m the first tourist he’s laid on top of out here. It’s a little hard to believe. Hunter is different than Sophie and Nora think. He’s quiet and thoughtful. But he’s also got a body like Chris Hemsworth and the blue eyes of Paul Hollywood. “What about a local?”

He laughs lightly. “I have never gotten horizontal on a paddleboard with another woman, ever. This is a first.”

“Then I’m a lucky girl.” I’m babbling and he knows it. I swallow my nervousness and say, “Now what are we going to do in this position, Mr. Tour Guide?”

“Well…” He adjusts and his body skims over mine, raising goosebumps on my bare skin. Then he says in his coaching voice, “If you turn your head a little and close your eyes, that means I can kiss you.”

I angle my head to the left.

Close my eyes.

And wait, tuned into the sounds of the birds and the rippling water around us, and the places where his bare skin meets mine. He’s warm, even though he’s blocking the sun, so warm even the puddles of water beneath me are comfortable.

Then he kisses me. His lips are soft—kind, like him—and warm, gliding over my mouth gently until I open my own lips and let him in. It’s beginning to be familiar, this meeting of our skin. Yet it’s still so consuming I tune out the rocking of the board beneath us, the sound of the water rippling.

We spend several minutes or more like that, exploring each other with only the fish as witnesses. Then I start to notice something moving between my inner thighs. I startle, like a dummy, because my first thought is something has made its wayonto the board with us. Then I realize it’s Hunter, growing hard against my leg.

“Oh my, I appear to have caught a big fish,” I say, and he laughs, resting his forehead against mine, because we’re good at being silly together. I’d never say that in front of my friends. Or any of my recent lovers. I can’t imagine being that comfortable with any of them, especially this soon after meeting.

“Don’t worry, it’ll go away if you ignore it,” he says. “I like doing what we’re doing.”

“Me too.”

Then the breeze sweeps between us and I shiver.

“Are you cold?” he immediately starts gathering himself to get up, getting one knee under him on my right side.

“No, I’m OK!” I insist quickly, shifting to grab him greedily back to me. The board rocks to the right when I do and I freeze, clutching him to me chest-to-chest.

“These boards really are stable, I promise,” he tells me, his breath whispering over my lips because he’s so close to me. The board rocks back to center and stops, barely moving on the water.

“I don’t know what I’m afraid of. If we fell in, we’d get right back on the board, right?” I crane my neck, not letting go of Hunter, and check to see whether we’re drifting closer to shore. We’re still in the middle of the lake.

So we make out some more, lazily, drifting along on the board in the sun. I start to relax, forgetting I’m on a board made of air in the middle of a body of water.

That’s when a whistle blasts through the air and makes Hunter leap off me, jumping to his feet. He immediately tips over, tries to balance on one foot to avoid stepping on me, and then falls in. “Fuck you, Scott!” he yells as he goes. Stupidly, I try to grab him, and slide off the board after him in slow-motion,grabbing at the sides as I go. The water is a shock, cold against my sun-heated skin.

I never quite submerge because I manage to grab the board to keep my head above water. It’s icy cold. I’m sure this water comes straight from the mountains. Scott is on a paddle board to our left, laughing his ass off and doubled over clutching his stomach. I blink at him. To go from Hunter warm and on top of me to this freezing lake is disorienting.

Hunter resurfaces and grabs onto the board, which has already regained equilibrium. He’s right, this thing really is stable. “Are you OK?” he asks me. I nod, shivering.

“You guys could’ve seen me coming for the last 20 minutes but I guess you werebusy.” Scott is remorseless.

Hunter looks over at me, and before I can stop myself, I’m brushing the wet hair out of his eyes. My hand trembles when I touch him. “I’m sorry, my friend here is an asshole,” he says. He raises his voice on the last word, looking over his shoulder at Scott, who is still grinning.

“You know, paddleboarding is normally done standing up. I thought you guys had some kind of medical emergency out here. I was worried,” Scott continues, smirking through his deadpan words. “So I came to check.”

“Sure you did,” Hunter replies.

“Plus, you’re not wearing life vests.” He clicks his tongue disapprovingly. Hunter actually looks a little abashed, despite his irritation with the other guide. I know we weren’t actually being unsafe, but Hunter is such a professional about everything that I feel bad.

“In all seriousness, did you notice the wind is coming up?” Scott points at the sky to the west. There are dark clouds moving in rapidly, I realize.

“Oh,” I say.

“I came to warn you,” Scott says. He brushes off his shoulder. “Good thing I was here, huh?”

---