Chapter 21
Kelly produced three soft cotton bathrobes from the hall closet and handed them out (“Colt thinks it’s pretentious having these for guests, I call it civilised”) alongside a stack of thick towels.
Ellie went to get changed in to her swimsuit and when she came back out Becca and Kelly were waiting on the porch, robes tied loosely, towels over their shoulders.
Ellie knew that Becca hadn’t been into the room to get her own swimsuit, and she could tell from the way they both had their robes loosely hung that neither of them was wearing anything underneath.
Becca caught her eye and gave her a small, mischievous smile that confirmed it.
“Love you,” she mouthed.
Ellie simply grinned and blew her a kiss.
Kelly handed them each a large torch. “You’ll be grateful for those later,” she added, then led them down a path through the oaks towards the watering hole.
The sun was low now, the sky turning amber at the horizon and deep blue above, and the air was still plenty warm enough that the robes felt like a little too much rather than not enough.
The watering hole in the fading light was even more beautiful than it had been that afternoon.
The water was a dark mirror, perfectly still, the sunset reflected in it so that the surface looked like liquid gold.
The flat limestone rocks around the edge were pale and warm from the day’s heat, the oak trees reaching overhead.
Kelly laid a towel out on the flattest stretch of stone near the water’s edge before, without hesitation, dropping her robe and walking naked into the water.
Becca’s robe followed a second later, laid next to her towel on the limestone, and she waded in after Kelly, gasping as the water hit her waist. “Oh my God, it’s perfect.”
“Told you.” Kelly was already up to her shoulders, her hair piled into a messy bun. “Ellie, get in here.”
Ellie dropped her robe and, slightly self-conscious that she was the only one wearing anything, walked in, the water closing around her ankles, then calves, then thighs, warm from the day’s sun and not as harsh as swimming pool water…
more natural, more alive. She waded out to where the water was chest-deep and let herself float, spreading her arms, looking up at the sky where the first couple of stars were beginning to appear.
For a while it was just that. Three women swimming as the sun set, the pure relaxed pleasure of it, the laughter when Becca splashed Ellie then Kelly joined in.
They floated, they talked and they swam through the warm dark water while the sky turned from amber to violet to black above them, the stars emerging slowly at first and then all at once.
“Ruins every other sky for you,” Kelly said quietly to Ellie, visible in the light of the rising full moon floating on her back nearby.
“You weren’t wrong.”
The transition between Becca and Kelly happened naturally.
Ellie felt it before she saw it, as much as anything a change in the quality of the silence.
She’d been floating, her head back and looking up at the stars, and when she tipped her head forward and her feet found the bottom again she saw them, standing a little way away, shoulder deep, close together, Kelly’s hand on Becca’s face.
She watched as Kelly kissed Becca, and it was different again to all the kisses that had come before… not alcohol fuelled like their two previous encounters, it was slow, tender, both women kissing each other as if they had all the time in the world.
Becca’s hands went to Kelly’s waist under the water, pulling her closer, and they pressed together, skin against skin, the kiss deepening and their hands beginning to move.
Ellie watched, her feet on the sandy bottom, both necklaces floating against her shoulders, and let the loop do what it did…
the quiet creep of jealousy, the arousal braiding in behind it, the slow build that the setting seemed to absorb and amplify at the same time.
They stayed like that for a long time, an age it felt like to Ellie but only in a good way, kissing, hands moving below the water, the sounds soft and intimate…
small gasps, whispered words, the gentle disturbance of the water around them.
Kelly’s hand looked, from the way her arm was moving, like it was between Becca’s legs and Becca’s was between Kelly’s, their foreheads pressed together, breathing each other’s breath, and Ellie edged closer to watch the slow mutual build from close enough to hear every sound but far enough to give them their own space.
They came at to as close to the same time as not to matter, Kelly’s climax starting sooner but lasting longer, gasps and moans coming from her shaking body, Becca’s a sharper peak that made her cry out once into the night air, her body shuddering hard, and then they held each other, breathless, the sound carrying across the still surface of the water and mixing with the crickets and the whisper of the faintest of breezes.
After a while Becca turned her head and looked over at Ellie, her eyes bright in the starlight, and smiled. “You ok over there?”
“Very ok.” Ellie smiled at her and saw Becca’s happy smile back. I love you, keep going.
“You know,” Kelly said, her tone kind yet teasing at the same time, “that swimsuit is very sensible but very unnecessary.”
Ellie laughed but shook her head. “I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” Kelly grinned at her own joke, and Becca groaned and splashed her. The tension broke into laughter again, the three of them floating in the warm darkness.
As the moon rose further over the trees at the edge of the property, nearly full, the light it cast transformed everything: the water went from black to silver, the limestone glowed pale, the trees threw long shadows across the rocks.
It was so beautiful it felt theatrical, as if Kelly had designed the lighting specifically for them that night.
“Come with me.” Kelly took Becca’s hand and led her out of the water towards the flat rocks at the water’s edge, where she’d laid the towel earlier.
Becca followed, water streaming off her body as she stepped out onto the stone, and Kelly helped her down gently, showing Becca exactly where she wanted her.
“And Ellie, stay in the water… trust me, it’s worth it. ”
Kelly rolled up one of the towels as a sort of pillow and Becca lay back, her head cushioned with another towel under her. “They’re warm,” Becca giggled in surprised, her skin wet and gleaming in the moonlight.
“Not my first rodeo,” was Kelly’s response. “The rock keeps the heat from the day.”
Kelly knelt beside her and kissed her slowly before moving down her body, her mouth seeming to chase the water droplets on Becca’s skin, and when she settled between Becca’s legs the two of them were in perfect silhouette against the moon near the horizon…
Ellie smiled to herself, Kelly really did know what made for a good view.
A part of her wondered who else there’d been here, whether she’d watched Colt with someone from the spot where Ellie was standing with the water up to her shoulders.
She could see Kelly’s shape kneeling over between Becca’s legs, almost like a position of worship, Becca’s back arching slightly away from the stone.
The outline of them together was like a painting that Ellie wanted to stare at forever.
Their sounds carried across the water to her.
Soft moans, sharp breaths, the occasional whispered word that Ellie couldn’t quite catch, all mixing with the crickets and the gentle lap of the water against the rocks.
Ellie let herself float in the shallows, watching, and the arousal that had been building all evening was now something she couldn’t ignore, a physical ache, insistent, demanding, her body responding to what she was seeing with a need that went beyond what she’d felt each time before.
She’d never touched herself during an encounter.
That had never been part of it: the discipline of watching without her own release was part of the dynamic, the stored energy that powered the reclaiming of Becca afterwards.
But tonight, in the warm water, under the stars, with the silhouette of her wife being slowly taken to higher and higher levels of pleasure on the moonlit rocks, she thought why not?
Nobody can see, I’m in the water. And I want to… God do I want to.
She slipped the swimsuit off under the water, the fabric sliding down her legs and away, and threw it to the shore.
It left her with a vulnerability she hadn’t expected, an openness that changed everything about how she was experiencing that moment.
It felt naughty, transgressive… as if what they’d done so far wasn’t.
Her hand went between her own legs, and she didn’t fight it.
She touched herself slowly, her eyes on the silhouette of Becca and Kelly on the rocks, the sounds washing over her, the warm water holding her, and it felt like the most natural thing she’d done yet…
not a departure from the dynamic they’d been building but an evolution of it, the watcher becoming more fully part of what was happening.
On the rocks Becca was close, Ellie could see it in the way her body was tensing, could hear it in the way her moans were climbing, and Ellie felt her own climax building in sympathy, her fingers moving faster, the water rippling gently around her.
Becca turned her head, some instinct pulling her gaze towards the water, and she saw Ellie.
Even in the half-dark, even from that distance, Ellie could see the moment Becca realised what she was doing…
a flicker of surprise, then understanding, then something that looked like joy spreading across her face as her own climax started to hit.