Page 44 of Trade
“Let me turn you over,” Dalton says.
“No!” I squeeze his hands, searching for the bottom with my feet.
“It isn’t over your head yet,” he says. “Trust me. I’ve got you.”
My feet find the muddy bottom. Yuck. I pluck them back up and kick them clean. Dalton chuckles and slowly turns me, like we’re dancing, until my back is to his front. “I’m going to hold you like this.” He rests his palms under my shoulder blades. “Give me your weight and let your legs float up.”
I twist my neck to squint at him. “You won’t let me go?”
“Never.”
I lean back.
“Relax,” he murmurs.
I let my legs rise. He extends his arms so the back of my head is in the water. I spread my arms out to the side, and I’m floating. Now, the sun shines on my front. Fleeting thoughts of the faint silver stretch marks on my hips and padding on the belly that used to be taut flits across my mind, but they’re almost instantly chased away by the softness of the breeze and blueness of the sky so far above our heads.
“Trust me,” Dalton murmurs again, and I feel his body come unmoored as he draws my back against his chest. He wraps an arm lightly around my ribs and uses the other to glide us through the water.
If I freak out, if I think too hard, I know I’ll tip us over, so I imagine my body is a cooked noodle and let Dalton swim us farther and farther out. He rests the bottom of his chin on the top of my head and strokes the underside of my breast with the thumb of the hand anchoring me to his chest. His hard dick pokes me in the spine.
We’re adrift.
We’re so far out that I can’t hear anything but the gentle shush of Dalton’s arm slicing the water—not the chatter of birds or rustle of leaves or snap of twigs.
There’s no one in the world but me and him, and he’s almost a stranger except I’ve never been closer to a person than I am to him in this moment, alone in the midst of this vast, impossible bounty.
“Thank you,” I murmur. The words aren’t nearly enough to say what I mean.
“For what?”
“Bringing me here.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.” We float along a little farther, and he says, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For asking.” He nuzzles my temple with his scratchy cheek. His facial hair grows slowly, but he’s got some significant stubble now. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Glory.”
“Why?” I risk tilting my head to see his expression, but all I can see is his chin and chiseled jaw.
“Your face when it’s happy is the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” From any other man, it’d be a line. Even from Bennett, when we were young and I think he probably did love me, it would’ve been flattery. Dalton says it like it’s simple fact. Whatever life he’s lived out here, he never learned to dissemble. Or that he’s supposed to.
What would that be like? To say exactly what I mean all the time instead of “perhaps we should consider” or “may I suggest that” or “I can’t help but suspect”? To not twist my words into pretzels trying to make my ideas palatable to men who will do what they want at the end of the day anyway?
Who give me just enough power and authority to make me think I have control over my life so that when they rip it away, they take the foundation of who I am, too?
My whole life, I’ve been an ostrich, and now that I’ve been forced to take my head out of the sand, I don’t know what to do next. How tobe.
Dalton breathes steadily in my ear, sending shivers down my neck. I guess I could take a cue from him. Say the simple facts.
“I’m terrified.”
He hums, unalarmed. Listening.
“I’m ashamed of myself.”
He keeps listening.
