Chapter 19
SASHA
Half an hour later, the three of us—the motliest crew there ever was—are hiking through the late summer. Mid-morning sun shimmers down through the last of the green leaves.
Chester’s singing a tune in front of me, and Griffin’s footsteps crunch a reassuring beat behind me. I think if I could just stay like this, I might be the happiest I’ve ever been.
Then the rush of water sounds as we crest a small hill, and when we emerge from the trees a moment later, my jaw drops. Not a twenty-minute hike up and over the hill behind Chester and Griffin’s place is a spot that looks like some kind of tropical lagoon.
I suck in a breath. “Are you serious?” A small waterfall plummets off a rise up ahead onto a rock, which drains into an oval-shaped crevasse filled with crystal clear water.
The water funnels into a babbling brook on the other side, just to our left, winding its way through the woods.
Trees rise up on all sides, casting dappled shade onto the space, except for an area to our right where the sun shines brightly onto a giant flat rock perfect for sunbathing.
“Ain’t it beautiful?” Chester says. He hefts himself down on a thigh-high rock off to the side of the water, breathing hard.
Concern ripples through me. “Do you need some water?”
He waves me away. It’s then I notice his forearm—he’s got his sleeve rolled up, and a long ripple of scars covers the top of his pale, scrawny arm.
“I’m fine. Just need a minute to catch my breath.”
Chester sees me staring and chuckles, pulling his sleeve down. “Fell in a fire pit years ago. Damn near turned into a roasted hot dog.”
He breathes in on a wheeze.
I glance at Griffin, who’s eyeing Chester carefully.
Griffin pulls out the water bottle he stuffed in a backpack along with our towels and holds it out to the older man. “Drink.”
Chester sighs wearily, unhooking a tin cup from his belt.
Only once I see he’s breathing normally do I slip off my shoes and pull the sundress I put on over my head. I still need some more casual clothes. I love the dress—it’s silky and pale yellow—but it’s not the casual jean shorts and T-shirt that would have been appropriate for a trip like this.
Probably neither is the black string bikini Vivian sold me—the only bathing suit she still had, though she’d warned with disdain that, like the sundress, it was woefully out of season already.
When Chester lowers his cup, he makes a strange choking sound and stands up, whirling around. “My goodness, I—I don’t believe it’s proper for me to see a lady in their underthings, even at a swimming hole. I do apologize, Ms. Sasha.”
“Oh.” I look down. The suit is definitely on the skimpy side. “I could wear a T-shirt?”
“Nope,” Chester shouts to the trees. “I’m going to look over here for a while. I believe I saw a squirrel nest I ought to investigate.”
“What about swimming?”
Chester waves a hand, tromping into the brush.
I look over at Griffin, but he’s in the midst of pulling his shirt over his head via a hand clasped on his back collar.
Good lord. My mouth goes dry as it slides off. Once more, I’m treated to the sight of Griffin’s planed chest and ridged stomach. Not to mention his bulging shoulders and—
I clear my throat as he looks over at me, hopefully turning in time so he doesn’t see me staring.
“He sure took off fast,” Griff says, a bemused note in his voice.
“I didn’t even think about this bathing suit bothering Chester.”
“It doesn’t bother him. He’s just not used to seeing a woman up close, clothed or unclothed.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No, Sasha. It doesn’t bother me.”
The lazy ease of his voice sends a tingling through my lower half. I stare at him a moment too long as he stretches his arms left and right.
I need to get in the water before I do something rash.
Like show him my bare ass again.
The heat spreads lower, along with a jolt in my stomach. I bite my lip, knowing how much it turned me on to do that. I was just playing with him, but damn it felt good.
“Okay,” I say, more to myself than Griffin. I feel naughty again—must be how little clothing I’m wearing and how alone we suddenly are. I stride toward the edge of the water, putting Griffin at my back.
I slide my fingers under the hip strings of my suit to straighten it out, letting them go with a little snap.
Griffin’s silent, but I swear I feel his eyes on me.
I try to hide the smile in my voice. “I’m going in.”
“I recommend jumping in rather than wading.”
I was about to do the latter. “Why’s that?”
“Because it’s cold.”
“You scared of a little cold?” I tease.
Griffin comes up next to me, carefully averting his eyes. “It’s not just a little cold, Angel.”
Somewhere in the brush, there’s a loud snap, followed by Chester shouting “I’m okay!”
I laugh. Griffin’s lips curl up on one side, too, and now I have to look away. God damn that man’s spare smiles.
Griffin stands with his toes sticking out over the edge of the rock next to the deepest part of the water and takes a few bracing breaths.
“I could just push you,” I say. “If you’re scared.”
“You would not be able to push me.” He barely interrupts his weird breathing exercise to lob that one at me.
“No?”
“No. And if you try, be prepared to get wet.” He meets my eye. “You can swim, right?”
That sounds distinctly like a challenge. “I got a lifeguard certificate once upon a time.” Not that my mother let me do any lifeguarding. We also had a pool in the backyard, but I don’t mention that part. “Prepare to get dunked, buddy.”
“Buddy?”
“You heard me.” I begin tiptoeing backward into the dirt. The only way I’m going to get him to lose his balance is by getting a running start.
Once I get far enough back, I gear up, knowing he hasn’t jumped in yet because of me. He widens his stance.
Gotcha, buddy. He thinks I’m going to shoulder check him at the hips—that’s about how high I’m going to come bending over. I hold out my hands as if preparing to do just that.
I start running. But instead of pushing forward, I leap off my feet.
But just as I do, so does he, except he dives sideways, to the left.
With too much momentum to stop, I shriek ungracefully as the ground disappears below my feet and I fly through the air, limbs windmilling.
I arc over him just as he pops his head out of the water to watch, flipping his hair out of his eyes and grinning—actually grinning—as I land in the water with the world’s most ungraceful splash.
For a moment, I freeze. Like literally freeze—this water is so. Freaking. Cold. Then I remember my arms and legs and propel my upper half out of the water.
“THISISTHECOLDESTWATERI’VE EVEROHMYFUCKINGGOD!” I scream in one continuous shriek, madly front crawling back to the ledge. I leap out of the water just in time to see Chester burst back out of the trees, his eyes covered with his hand.
“Miss Sasha! Are you okay?”
I’m barely able to catch my breath. I stand there with my hands on my thighs, breathing hard.
I don’t feel cold at all, not out in the warm air. If anything, I feel exhilarated. Though I’m still trying to grapple with the shock. “Chester. You could have warned me this water’s a barely melted glacier!”
“Why d’ya think I’m not in it?” His eyes are still covered. I crawl over to Griffin’s pack and pull out a towel, wrapping it around myself.
“Coast is clear, Chester. I’m decent.”
“Miss, you’re always decent. It’s these old eyes that just aren’t accustomed to young people’s ideas of fashion. If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to let Griffin take you home. I found a squirrel nest I need to add to my map.”
I don’t pretend to understand that, just smile. “Okay.”
Chester waves and narrowly misses smacking into a tree. A moment later, he disappears into the woods.
I look back at Griffin, who’s hunched over the rock ledge, still half-submerged in the water. “Griffin, what’s wr—” I cut myself off as I see his shoulders shaking. He’s laughing.
At me.
“Oh, I see. The second time I see you laugh, and it’s at me.”
“It was…the legs,” Griffin says, his words coming out kind of choked. He waves his hand around, not looking up. “The arms.”
I drop the towel, fisting my hands on my hips. “I looked funny, did I? Guess who’s gonna look funny when he’s dunked?”
Griffin looks up just in time to see those same arms and legs running toward him. He attempts to dive sideways, but I adjust. I leap into the water, landing next to him in a perfectly positioned cannonball, whooping like a banshee.
It’s cold again, of course, but not the shock it was the first time, and now I have a mission. Griffin drops underwater, swimming away.
But I go after him with stealth precision, my eyes open in the clear water.
Even warped with the water, he looks sexy. His big, strong body looks naturally streamlined underwater as he moves with easy strokes.
He doesn’t know I would have been a varsity swimmer had Mom not insisted the schedule would have overlapped with the social calendar she made for me.
I catch up to him easily, bursting out of the water next to him and wrapping myself around his head like a half-naked attack squid. Not a flattering comparison, and all squids are naked, but I’m trying my best.
“You’re like a damned tree!” I say as I try to force his head underwater with my upper body, my legs wrapped ungracefully around his shoulders.
“Are you done?” he asks under me.
I twist so I’m sitting on one of his shoulders, then freeze. I’m suddenly aware of how close his face is to my…other parts.
For a moment, the only sound is water lapping against my ass.
I feel it there, just like I feel the prickle of his beard against the top of my thigh.
If he turned even a little bit to the side, his face would be pressed right up against the part of my body covered with a single thin swath of black spandex.
When I look down, I’m breathing hard, and not just from the exertion.
“Sasha,” he says, his breath hot on my inner thigh.
Move. Get off his face!
“Sorry, I—”