Page 64 of Red Boar's Baby

“You’re definitely going to need a bath after this,” Diana pointed out.

Costa snorted, turned, and with a delicately placed kick, knocked an opening between the two ponds. Water rushed to fill his newly excavated hole. As the level began to equalize between the two, he shifted back and placed some rocks and handfuls of sand to close off the opening and stop the backwash from their bathing pool contaminating the main pond.

Diana eyed the bathing hole. The swirling water was opaque with silt and sand. It also wasn’t very big, in spite of Costa’s efforts, really more of a shallow mud puddle.

“I’m not sure if that’s exactly what I was picturing,” she said. “I don’t think it’s any cleaner than I am.”

“It’s settling now,” Costa pointed out. Indeed it was, the sediment sorting itself and the water becoming clearer. “You’re welcome to the first bath.”

“How could I turn down such a gentlemanly offer?”

“I’ll even turn my back if you want.”

She did not want, in particular. But she also suspected she was going to be a highly undignified sight while splashing in a mud puddle, not exactly a sexy bathing beauty in a crystalline stream. “If you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Costa said easily, though she thought she detected some disappointment in his tone. He turned to sit on a rock, bare-assed, with his back to her.

“I thought you meant you’d go a little farther away than five feet,” Diana said, stripping quickly out of her sandy clothes.

“There might be dangerous wild animals in the vicinity.”

“Oh, is that the reason.” She dipped a foot in the water, expecting it to be cold, but found it tepid and not entirely uncomfortable.

“How’s the bath?” Costa asked at the splashing noises, as she dipped herself further, trying to figure out how to get herself in past her knees.

“Less terrible than I was expecting. Oh, wait a minute!”

She was missing the obvious. She shifted to a roadrunner and dipped herself fully into the water. Now the too-small basin was a generously appointed birdbath, and the water did not feel cool at all. Roadrunners weren’t bathing birds, but she had seen enough birds in birdbaths to know how it was done. She dipped, splashed, preened, spread her wings luxuriously, and finally clambered out and shifted human again to find herself perfectly clean.

“Done,” she said, running her fingers through her wet hair to smooth out a few lingering grains of sand.

Costa turned around. Somehow, in all of this, it had escaped her notice that he was going to be struck full in the face by the sight of a naked, wet Diana standing a few feet away from him. It was only as the poleaxed expression spread across his face that she realized he was getting a dramatic eyeful.

“Since you were such a perfect gentleman, I’ll return the favor while I dry off,” she said, and strolled past him, with the breeze drying the water on her naked body, to sit down on a patch of grass.

Costa said something behind her that sounded like, “Guh.”

Soon, presumably as his higher brain functions came back online, she heard splashing sounds. Diana smiled and stretched out on the grass. It was very pleasant. The grass was thick enough to keep her from getting sandy all over again, and the coolness by the spring took some of the heat out of the sun. Once her back was dry, she shook the sand off Costa’s shirt, as much as possible, and put it on to help prevent sunburn. She left the jeans for later; she didn’t relish the idea of putting the sandy, sweat-damp denim back on her clean skin.

After a little while, Costa came over to join her, glistening and gloriously nude. Diana was stretched out on her stomach with her hands folded under her chin. She looked up with a smile, drinking him in, his body golden in the sun.

“Is this a private sunbathing spot, or can anyone join in?”

“Both,” Diana said with a lazy smile. “It’s private, but invited guests are welcome. Pull up some grass.”

Costa lay down to dry off, and Diana rolled over and sat up. She hadn’t bothered buttoning the shirt, and although it covered her breasts, technically, there was quite a lot on display. No performative gentlemanly behavior this time: Costa’s gaze followed her.

Diana stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankles. “Enjoying the view?”

“You have no idea.”

“Same here,” she said, inspecting his bare back and the taut curve of his ass.

They remained silent in comfortable companionship for a little while. With proper camping gear and food, Diana thought, the place would have been a peaceful and beautiful location for a weekend’s stay. She plucked at the hem of the shirt laying across her bare thigh.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier,” she said, and Costa propped himself up on his elbows to listen. “About how I could have gone anywhere, but I ended up moving back to a town two hours from where I grew up.”

“I didn’t mean to?—”

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