Page 37 of Never Bound

11

HER

Despitehowrelaxedthevarious substances I’d ingested had me feeling, I couldn’t help the growing knot of anxiety in my stomach and the tingling at the back of my neck as I watched Milagros down her last swallow of wine, put out the burning end of the joint, and rise from her deck chair. There was about to be no turning back, and as much as I wanted it, wanted him, wantedusin every single way we had coming to us, the idea of how things might change still scared me a little. It scared me like the beginning of a journey into a strange, savage, and beautiful wilderness, one I’d waited my entire life to take. I wasn’t a virgin, technically, but I sure did feel like one.

Erica, meanwhile, was almost disturbingly businesslike as she went inside, pointing us toward the spare bedroom, which was across from the bathroom. “Everything you need should be in the cupboard there,” she said with absolutely no trace of embarrassment, even though everyone knew she wasn’t talking about towels.

“Thank you,” we said, almost in unison, though our gratitude was beyond anything worth trying to articulate.

Erica just smiled and went to bed.

And then we were alone, sitting across from each other in the chairs the other two had just abandoned, the vintage jazz record he had put on Erica’s equally vintage turntable, the torches burning low.

I took a frantic gulp of wine, twisting the stem of my glass.

“Well,” he said matter-of-factly.

I looked up in a way I wished hadn’t been so obviously startled.

“I guess the only thing left now is for you to get naked.”

“What?Me?” I sputtered, all my awkwardness replaced by outrage. “Why don’tyou?”

He shrugged. “Okay.” He grabbed his shirt and started to lift it over his head.

“Wait, wait, wait!” I said. “What are you doing?”

He looked genuinely confused. “What you just asked me to do.”

“Iknow, but why are you so eager to take your clothes off?”

“Well,” he began, “A, in my life, I’ve found that trying to preserve my modesty has not generally been a good use of my time. And B, as you’ve probably noticed, being naked generally makes it easier to have sex. Next question?”

“Damn,” I said. “In that case, if we hadn’t been so afraid of getting caught, I would have asked you to undress ages ago.” I looked behind me again, confirming we were alone out here. As if there weren’t zero chance that our hosts didn’t know exactly what was going on and had vacated the pool area exactly for that reason. “That being said, I suggest we do it at the same time.”

“Count of three, then?”

I nodded, although I waited until his shirt was over his head—wanting no false starts—before grabbing the bottom of my tank top and peeling it off, then unhooking my black lace bra, heart already racing. My fingers fumbled on the hooks, trying not to look as clumsy as I felt as I removed it by a strap and dropped it on the nearby chair.

Neither one of us had been wearing many layers of clothing to begin with, so it didn’t take long to strip off the rest. And after a month of caution and anxiety and clock-watching and cold showers and half-clothed longing, there we both stood, bare in the (lack of) moonlight, lit only by the glow of the torches and the wavering turquoise light coming up from the bottom of the pool next to us.

And suddenly, inexplicably shy, I directed my eyes everywhere but where it seemed most obvious to look.

And hadn’t I just been thinking he looked goodinclothes?

The complete body in front of me—hisbody, revealed to me and for me—was so much more than the sum of the parts I had seen. So much more beautiful than my imagination alone could have ever supplied. I didn’t know what to allow my eyes to drink in first: the broad mass of his square shoulders, the toned abs rippling under the skin of the narrow torso, the line of light, baby-fine hair that formed a trail down to the end of the inverse triangle, in an exercise—he’d be pleased to know—in classic Euclidean geometry. And belowthat, well. I’d felt the weight of his hard cock before, my finger muscles having memorized its dizzying mass and density, but in its natural state, it was stunning in a different way. Baser, rawer, more elemental.

And then. I’d seen the scars on his chest—seen the scars just about everywhere. But here, all at once, it too was pure and raw and unrefined, a reminder of who he was and what he was. That I could claim his body, and he could claim mine, but there were other claims that would always,alwayscome first. And they’d carved their initials into him long ago, with blood.

Well, fuck. He’d just caught on to where my attention had turned. My eyes must have been like dinner plates.

“It’s official,” he said, tearing his gaze away from me to glance down at himself. “You’re prettier.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But you’re not far behind.” In case there was any chance he actually thought that any of the scars made him any less beautiful in my eyes.Thathad never crossed my mind for a second.

“I must not be,” he said, “given how hard you’re blushing right now.”

Mortified, I covered my face. If only I hadn’t also been inflamed everywhere else. “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re blushing, too!” Actually, he was, but there was no chance he was even half as red as I felt. Though the desert night wasn’t all that warm, I could feel my temperature rising even as I spoke.

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