Chapter 19
Xander kept his distance the rest of the day.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to make another move.
Not after I’d already shut him down once—twice, if you counted the whole trash-bag debacle.
If I wanted something to happen between us, it was going to be up to me to get past whatever was holding me back. And go for it.
He was out on the deck, engaged in his daily rejuvenation ritual in the Jacuzzi. Bundled up in my sweater coat and my shearling-lined moccasins, I opened the back door.
“Knock, knock,” I said as I ventured outside.
Xander looked over and smiled. “Who’s there?”
I smiled back. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Do I mind if I join you who?” he asked.
I laughed. “No,” I said. “It’s not a joke. It’s an actual question. Do you mind if I join you out here?”
“Oh!” he said. “Not at all. Please.”
As I followed the path I’d shoveled earlier today from the back door over to the spa, I figured Xander was expecting me to sit on the ledge of the hot tub, as I had before.
So, when I took a deep breath, toed off my moccasins, and shed my coat to reveal I was wearing only a swimsuit underneath, his eyes widened in surprise.
Good God, it was cold!
There was no time to second-guess my plan. Acting on sheer survival instinct, I stepped into the hot tub and submerged myself in the steaming water. Xander’s impressive tail swished aside to make room.
“Oooh,” I sighed, sinking into the warmth. “That’s better.”
I squirmed a little on the bench then, tugging at the bottom of my swimsuit.
The one-piece racerback tank was at least a decade old—one of the suits I’d worn for swim competitions back in my high school days—and now, it dug and pinched in places it hadn’t when I was a teenager.
But soon enough, I got comfortable and settled in across from Xander.
He was still goggling at me—but in a good way, I thought.
I hoped, anyway.
I sank deeper into the water. Already, the jets were easing my muscles, sore from all the day’s shoveling. “I’d forgotten how nice it feels in here,” I said.
“You haven’t been avoiding it because of me, have you?” he asked, sitting up straighter. Under the water, his tail twitched, drawing my attention.
I didn’t know if it was because of that monster romance I’d been reading or what, but I had the sudden urge to reach out and run my hand over the glimmering scales, to see how his fins might respond to my touch…
Suppressing the impulse, I lifted my gaze to his face. “Oh, no,” I assured him, shaking my head. “Not at all. Actually, I—I haven’t used the hot tub in years.”
“Years? Really?” he asked. His posture relaxed a bit. “Why is that?”
Hesitating, I tried to think of a joke—a water joke or a hot tub joke, some way to laugh the matter off. Only, I came up blank. My reason for avoiding the Jacuzzi wasn’t really a joking matter. It was the same reason I didn’t have a swimsuit that was less than ten years old.
I didn’t like to discuss what had happened ten years ago with anyone. Only, this wasn’t anyone. This was Xander.
“After, uh…after we met that first time,” I said, assuming he’d get my meaning, “I didn’t really enjoy spending time in the water anymore.”
“Ah,” he said after a moment. “I see.”
Having said it out loud, I was beginning to see something too.
Back then, obviously, I’d let my fear of drowning become a generalized fear of the water.
That was hardly a revelation. But over time, had that fear perhaps morphed and spread and become even more generalized?
Again, I had to wonder if my near drowning had affected me more profoundly than I’d ever realized.
“I should have made myself get back on the horse,” I said, mostly to myself.
Xander looked at me, a little puzzled. “What horse?”
“What?”
“You had a horse?” he asked.
“No, sorry,” I said with a shake of my head.
“It’s just a saying. Like, if you fall off a horse, yes, it’s scary, but you shouldn’t avoid things that scare you.
You should confront your fear. You know, get back on the horse.
” I sighed. “But after I almost drowned, I stopped swimming. I quit the swim team, and I never went back in the water. I never got back on the horse.”
“But you’re in the water now,” said Xander.
“Yeah,” I said with a small shrug. It wasn’t the ocean or even the pool, but it was something. “I guess I am.”
“So, you’re back on the horse?” he asked.
“Not entirely,” I said. I gave him a half smile. “Maybe one foot back in the stirrup, though.”
We fell into a companionable silence. But I didn’t squeeze my ass into my old high school swimsuit and join Xander in the hot tub in the freezing cold so we could be buddies.
“Xander,” I said softly. “About last night…”
“Yes?”
“I—I fucked up.”
Xander eyed me, brows drawn together. Maybe the magic seashell didn’t do expletives?
“Sorry,” I said. “Do you know what ‘fucked up’ means?”
“That you bungled a situation badly?” he asked.
The translation charm spoke potty mouth. Good to know.
“Right,” I said. “I bungled a situation. Badly.”
“No, that’s not true,” he said. “I don’t think you bungled anything. The Sunny Side—”
“I’m not talking about the Sunny Side,” I said. “I’m talking about…us.”
He shifted a little in the water. I held my breath, waiting to hear his reply.
“When you pulled back from me last night,” he finally said, “I thought you wanted to keep our situation platonic.”
“That’s what I bungled,” I said.
He shifted again, and his tail swept lightly against my calf.
I gasped. Despite the relaxing heat of the hot tub, a delicious shiver zipped through me. My nerve endings all snapped to attention.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, gliding his tail away.
“Don’t be,” I told him. My voice sounded husky. “I’m not. And I—I don’t want to keep our situation platonic.”
There it was.
Across the hot tub, our gazes met. And locked.
“So,” said Xander, “does that mean you want us to…” He lifted his brows in question, and the suggestive gleam in his eyes said everything else.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “Badly.”
His grin was wonderfully wicked. Without taking his eyes off me, he moved his tail through the water. His fin grazed my outer ankle, then snaked around to caress the inside of my calf. It felt different, yes, but not strange. Not strange in the least.
“Yes?” asked Xander before going any further.
“Yes,” I replied with an eager nod.
The hot, silky length of him slid up my leg to my inner thigh, and a flood of desire rushed through me.
I’d been touched on the thigh before, of course.
But never like this. And never by Xander, never with him watching me so intently with those eyes that were so, so green.
It was making me achy and needy and so wet that, even if I wasn’t submerged in the water, my swimsuit would have been soaked through.
He paused at the top of my thigh, tormenting me with featherlight flicks of his tail. “Yes?” he asked me again.
He had no idea. “Yes,” I answered, nearly breathless.
His tail fin brushed between my legs, skimming across the material of my swimsuit. I practically saw stars. And just like that, this little dip in the hot tub became a very adult swim.
“Yes?” he asked before he proceeded.
I swallowed. This time, it was all I could do to nod my consent.
Still staring at me, Xander pressed his fin against the swollen, sensitive folds of my flesh, massaging me on top of the fabric of my suit. He was so tuned in to me, so tuned in to my body’s responses. So focused on bringing me pleasure. That alone practically sent me over the edge.
Eyeing him back, I spread my thighs wider and wriggled in my seat, rubbing myself against him. Jesus, I was close. So close. If he could just… I just needed… I—
Just then, the tip of his fin teased at the elastic of my bathing suit bottom.
Xander’s gaze on me was wild, almost feral, as he raised his brows again in question.
I was aroused almost to the point of incoherence, but somehow, I found my voice. I certainly didn’t have any doubts about what I wanted, and I didn’t want him to have any either.
“Yes,” I told him.
And to make sure he knew I meant it, I reached my hand down to touch him, to help guide him underneath my suit.
At the skin-on-fin contact, he growled at the back of his throat.
Smiling at his reaction, I stroked him. Beneath my fingertips, he was warm and smooth and muscular.
Again, he felt different, but not strange.
In fact, he felt the opposite of strange.
This was Xander, after all. Even when I couldn’t remember him, he was familiar to me.
And now that we were here, like this, together…
it seemed only natural. Inevitable, really.
He slipped his fin under my swimsuit, and—
Oh.
Oh my.
As he explored me, teasing and torturing, pulsing and probing, the sensation was a little like a finger and a little like a tongue and a little like the best battery-powered sex toy ever.
I gave myself over to him completely, and tension coiled in my belly.
Throwing my head back, I held on to him with one hand and clutched at the edge of the spa with the other. I was right on the cusp.
“Hannah?”
At the unusually raw, guttural sound of Xander’s voice, I lifted my head again. He was still watching me—and, dear God, the way he was watching me.
My orgasm hit hard. Suddenly, there was no time or space or place. Only pleasure, absolute and without bounds. As big as the ocean.
When my senses finally returned, and I lay—relaxed and sated—across the hot tub bench, I knew two things for sure. One: Xander and I had officially departed the friend zone. And two: For the first time in ten years, I’d enjoyed myself in the water.