THIRTEEN Early to Rise
ZACHARY
I’m an early to bed, early to rise type of dude, so I’m not typically up at a quarter to midnight. Yet tonight I am. Since tomorrow is my big date with Sadie, I’m running one last check to make sure everything is ready. That’s when I bump into her and Jerome leaving that mother of a personal library.
“Hey guys,” I greet them, but then pull up short. Even though they’re each wearing jovial expressions, it’s obvious that Sadie’s recently been upset. She has all the signs. Red nose and red-rimmed eyes along with a swollenness to her features in general. My gaze lasers in on her. “Everything all right?”
“Excellent,” she responds, cutting a look at Jerome who smirks back at her.
Yeah, there’s an inside joke there somewhere. None of my business. She doesn’t seem the least bit ill at ease. Honestly, she’s as placid and carefree as I’ve ever seen her. Maybe he had her watch a tear-jerker with him or something. And Jerome has his arm draped over her shoulder, too. They look like an established couple. Like the real thing.
It’s a reminder that my shit has to be en pointe with her.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening, then,” I add at the last minute, just as they hasten their pace away from me.
“Night,” Sadie replies without looking, while Jerome raises his hand in a fleeting wave.
Then, they disappear into the kitchen.
Once done with my task, I troop up to my room and sack out. I rise and shine at the crack of dawn like always even though I didn’t sleep all that well. I have no idea how things went on Dom’s date with Sadie but being witness to the bond that’s forming between her and Jerome let me know that I have to up my game if I want to stay in this thing.
I can’t afford to be left in the dust.
With that in mind, I tweak the activities I have planned so that they all specifically prioritize fun. I want to provide whatever amusement or entertainment I can to her.
Since the other guys and I aren’t sharing notes, I have no idea what they’ve already attempted with her as far as agendas go. I don’t have a roadmap for what to include or to avoid. So, I figure I’ll stick to what I’ve already come up with.
If all else fails, I’ll play it by the seat of my pants. Good thing I’m fast on my feet.
Warming up on the treadmill in the gym by myself, I next head over to the pole in the spa room to maneuver through a workout routine I’ve been developing. I need to expend some of this excess energy before meeting up with Sadie. I shower, have breakfast by myself since no one else is up, and try not to explode with nerves as I wait to give her enough time to wake.
Finally, I text her at 10:30.
Zach: Good morning, lovely. I’d like to begin our date in about an hour, if that’s all right.
She replies right back which relieves me from the burden of possibly disturbing her.
Sadie: Works for me.
Zach: Do me a favor and bring your swimsuit. You’ll need it.
Sadie: Showing your hand a bit, aren’t you?
Damn. Can’t tell if she’s kidding or not.
Zach: It’s okay to show your hand to someone else when you’re on the same team. Besides, I’m thinking you’re gonna have a blast on our date.
Sadie: Based on?
Interest piqued? Check.
Zach: You’ll see.
Sadie: You’re promoting yourself awfully hard. Think you can live up to all this hype?
I snort out loud. She’s such a hard sell. But anxious as I am, I know I can deliver given the opportunity.
Zach: Trust me. I’ve got the goods. Meet up with you in the living room. See you soon.
I’m there waiting for Sadie in the large round living space with its two couches facing one another when she trudges in, the long tendrils of her hair styled differently. Half of it is up in this little ponytail thing, while the rest of it remains down around her shoulders, the length of it most of the way down her back.
The style displays how high her cheekbones are and emphasizes the tempting flesh of her slender neck.
“I like your hair like that,” I inform her, not wanting to lay it on too thick.
Sadie takes a lock of all that caramel-brown luxury and pushes it behind her ear. It makes me want to do the same thing.
“Thanks.”
As I escort her over to what she calls the south wing, a part of the chalet that houses the indoor pool, she cocks an eyebrow at me.
“Can’t say the suspense is killing me on where we’re going,” she deadpans, and I tilt my head.
“What? You think I’ve destroyed the mystery?”
“Annihilated it.” She nods. Isn’t she Miss High and Mighty.
But I have an ace up my sleeve.
“Tell me something, lovely,” I use the same nickname from my earlier texts. It suits her, so I’m going with it. “Did you play in this or any other pool as a kid?”
“Sure.”
“And what sorts of amazing feats did you accomplish?”
“You mean like jumping off the diving board?”
“No, more like what types of games did you engage in?” I press. “Did you hop on some other kid’s back and play chicken? Did you see who could hold their breath the longest?”
“I guess when I swam I was less focused on games.”
“What were you focused on?”
“Lessons at first. Then things like doing laps and learning the different strokes.”
I frown. “So, no Marco Polo? No ‘Last one in is a rotten egg?’”
She shakes her head.
“Course, I used to cheat at Marco Polo. I just snuck the hell out of the water.” I grin at the memory. My desire to win has been a cornerstone in my life, even when maybe it shouldn’t have been. “Do you have goggles?”
She blinks. “Yes.”
I let my grin become wolfish. “Well, let’s do this thing, then.”
I shuck my shirt and jeans to reveal my swim trucks, watching to see if she’ll follow my lead. She does, removing her long-sleeved shirt, leggings, and knee-high boots. This exposes portions of her flesh that I haven’t seen up close and personal before.
She’s clad herself in what I at first think is a one-piece, but as she raises her good arm over her head a sliver of her pale stomach makes an appearance. It’s a simple suit in a pale purple shade, but it hugs her hourglass figure in all the right places. It also has this V neckline that displays her smallish assets beautifully.
Not that I’m noticing.
Physically speaking, Sadie is totally my type. Athletic women don’t tend to have size triple D jugs, and that’s fine by me. She has a shapely ass that has just enough for me to grab onto and a narrow waist.
There is a significant amount of scarring, which doesn’t come as a major surprise. I suspected that to be the case, and frankly, it doesn’t bug me in the least. Those scars don’t take away from her curves or how alluring her proportions are.
My only problem is this: Even though I officially joined Elegance a handful of months back, I haven’t taken an assigned gig until now, which means no getting laid. Not for money and not for any other reason. Not for months. So having Sadie sitting on the edge of the pool with all that bare skin right there in view is tantalizing. Enough that my cock starts to feel heavy and full.
Since sex may not even enter into the equation today, I divert myself.
“You ready to get crazy up in here?” I holler at her like some DJ at a high school dance, attempting to get her to smile at me.
Newsflash. It doesn’t work.
She maintains a serious expression as she says, “I enjoy a decent challenge.”
Okay. I can cope with that. I drop any other silly antics.
“How about we start with an easy one?” Without pause, I back up to give myself a head start and race across the short distance of cement. As I leap into the deep end of the kidney bean-shaped pool, hitching my arms and legs close to my torso, I shout, “Cannonball.”
My entry disturbs the formerly calm surface of the water, and the splash drenches several feet of the floor on one side. Once I pop up, I find that Sadie hasn’t moved. She even looks a bit startled.
“And what’s the purpose of that?” she inquires.
“To create the biggest splash. Extra points for pushing water as far outside the pool as possible.”
Uncoiling to her feet, Sadie straightens her spine, squares her shoulders, and holds her nose high in the air. Then, with a slightly awkward gait, she skips forward and copies me, even yelling, “Cannonball,” like it’s a fucking war cry.
I love it.
When she reappears from beneath the surface, that long hair of hers is scattered all over the place until she dips back down and comes up face first. The grin she sends me is not only brighter than I’ve ever witnessed, it’s as if she just conquered a major obstacle. Like she just bested Everest or something.
It’s mesmerizing to see such a transformation occur. Is this how Sadie as a kid might’ve been like?
“That was fun,” she exclaims, and there’s a not-so-tiny part of me who wants to whoop in glee. “What else you got?”
So, I show her.
I demonstrate doing handstands, forward flips, and backflips underwater. We play the aforementioned Marco Polo, but only after she makes me promise her not to cheat. We practice doing different jumps into the water, everything from touching our toes to going spread eagle with our arms and legs all outstretched. Or as close to it as she can get with that paralysis on her left side. It doesn’t stop her, though. She’s actively participating, and I’m in awe watching her.
I’m in awe of her, period.
I know what it is to suffer something debilitating and still be willing to test your body to see what it can do, even if it’s no longer capable of what it once was.
That takes courage.
Yet all I’m feeling from her right now is jubilation. It’s almost like observing a toddler learning to walk for the first time. All that accomplishment and wonder.
Then, with the half-roll of quarters I brought, I introduce our next activity, a race using goggles to search at the bottom of the pool for one specific coin marked with a gold star. To make it fair, the person who throws them has to close their eyes and be spun by the other player before we both dive in for the hunt.
We switch off on these duties, the winning score staying close to even but with Sadie maintaining a slight edge over me. That’s likely from her having the home court—or pool—advantage. But I don’t mind. Instead, I up the ante.
“Change of rules,” I announce, flicking my wet hair from my eyes with a toss of my head. “No more goggles.”
Sadie’s treading water beside me, and my goal clicks with her instantly. Without the goggles, we’ll no longer have the ability to see beneath the surface clearly. We’ll have to stare at the bottom, then dive down and feel our way to each quarter. We’ll only know if we have the gold star after coming back up.
The level of difficulty will increase by a factor of ten. But Sadie is a competitor. She gives me a firm nod, swims to the side to climb out, leaves her goggles behind, and waits for me to do the same. I follow through, then we perform the quarter toss again.
And after several more rounds, she still manages to beat me.
I detest losing, but right now, winning isn’t the point. Having fun is, and we’re having that in spades. In that spirit, I intercept her as she paddles back up with some of the quarters in hand, not to steal them, but to seize her around the waist.
“Gotcha,” I murmur close to her ear once she breaks the surface, but she’s fighting me like a wildcat.
“What are you doing?”
“Improving the game,” I joke, but everything backfires as she flails about, all of her pressed up against all of me.
What was I saying about this not being about sex? Because my cock didn’t receive the memo. Especially not when she quits fighting to get out of my arms and peers right into my eyes at pointblank range.