'If you take off one more stitch, I swear I'll go in the house and lock the door and call the police to tell them there's a naked man using my pool without permission.'
Her threats bounced off him like the moon's reflection from the surface of the pool. His fingers lazily worked their way down his shirt buttons, and she sensed him grinning at her out of the deep shadows. She had a flashing thought about the wisdom of occasional tumult, but if Tommy Lee continued what he was doing, it would be more tumult than was advisable. He'd already half shrugged out of the shirt when she appealed in a desperate voice, 'Please… please, don't.'
He stopped in mid-motion and flipped his palms up. 'Okay, you win. I'll leave the rest on.' But he casually removed the cigarettes from his shirt pocket and set them aside, then strode lazily toward her. As he advanced she sensed the feral gleam in his eye and retreated.
'Tommy Lee…' she warned.
But he kept coming, deliberately, unrelentingly.
'You're the one who said you wanted to cool off.'
'Tommy Lee, you wouldn't.'
'Oh, wouldn't I?' He was a mere foot in front of her when she reached out a hand to fend him off. In the blue-white smile of the moon she saw his devilish grin a second before he lunged.
'Tommy Lee Gentry, don't you dare!' she squealed, but he clasped her beneath her knees and armpits and headed for the steps of the pool.
'Kick your shoes off, Rachel, if you don't want them to get wet.'
'Gentry, you hellion, put me down!' She was still squirming as his feet splashed into the water.
'The choice was yours-with our clothes on, you insisted.' The water touched Rachel's derriere. Her hips bucked, and she squealed and grabbed his neck. 'Mmm… nice. Do that again,' he teased, lowering her again until the water soaked six more inches of underwear and her toes went under.
'My shoes!' Her knees straightened like a switchblade, sending a spray of droplets scintillating across the surface of the pool.
'Too late now. You should have taken 317 them off when you had a chance.'
Down she went again, deeper this time, until the water's cold fingers slipped between her thighs. A shudder pelted across her skin, bringing a chuckle from Tommy Lee as he nuzzled her neck. Then he licked her skin with his warm tongue while bobbing her lower and lower and lower into the water.
'The chlorine's going to ruin my dress,' she insisted, but with waning urgency.
Against her neck he mumbled, 'Send me a bill.'
She stopped fighting him then, hanging suspended and helpless in his tight grip, feeling the water lick up and down her thighs with a faint suction and slap each time she was drawn free, then plunged beneath the surface. The shivers were steady now. Goose bumps sprouted up and down her arms and across her bare shoulders. Her breasts-dry though they were-had puckered up like a pair of gum drops.
'Tommy Lee, you're crazy… crazy.' But the words came out in a breathless murmur as her knees relaxed and her shoes trailed in the water.
'I know-crazy white boy who builds crazy houses, and dreams crazy dreams, doing crazy things because he's got his woman in his arms at last and he doesn't want to let her go.'
He kissed her fiercely, the contact so warm when contrasted against the cool seeking water swashing between her thighs. Her arms twined about his neck as she went pliant and welcomed his probing tongue, which sent a new, different set of shivers up her spine. He started nipping her-sharp, enticing tugs between teeth that knew exactly how hard to bite, and where.
'Crazy…' she whispered, letting her head loll back.
Her eyelids slid closed and the water seemed to grow warmer as Tommy Lee turned them both in a circle. One of her shoes drifted free and sank somewhere in the water. But she no longer cared. Riding weightlessly in his arms, she felt the cool caress of the night water slithering along her skin. It pressed the wet nylon tight against her calves, then shimmied along her thighs to make the dress cling, then unfurl as he reversed directions.
The scent of her-woman and perfume-drifted
through the night, released from garments and skin 319 by the water. She opened her hands on his tensile shoulderblades, then drew back to meet his eyes, which reflected the moon and a wealth of desire. He came to a halt, his shirttail drifting in a pinwheel on the surface of the water.
His voice was gravelly, intense. 'I want to make love to you. I want to do all the things we were too ignorant to know how to do back then. For twenty-four years I've wanted it.'
His head blotted out the moon and his lips were summer-warm as they opened over hers. She kissed him back with delight, which swiftly changed to impatience, seeking out each changing texture and mood of his mouth as it demanded more, then less, then more again. The wrist beneath her knees slipped away and the water bore her weight for a moment before she was drifting down, down, until her toes settled on something stationary and she found herself standing waist deep in water, fully dressed, kissing Tommy Lee Gentry, their bodies coalescing, half dry, half wet, but all aroused.
He gripped her hips, drew circles on
them with his own, swaying, kissing, losing his balance and righting himself again as the water nudged them. His hands slipped deeper, cupping her buttocks, holding her securely as he rocked against her. The next moment she flinched and gasped as he brought both palms up, dripping, and clamped them over her breasts. Her nipples cinched tighter as the wet fabric clung, but soon the warmth of his palms eased through as he teased, caressed, heated. His hands rose to skim the straps from her shoulders, drawing the flimsy dress down to her waist.
Then his open mouth possessed her breasts, one and then the other, and her head fell back, eyelids closing, blocking out the moon. He dipped lower, and the shocking sensation of heat and cold sent renewed shivers through her limbs as the water lapped near his lips. She drove her fingers through his hair and clasped his head tightly against her stomach.
'Oh, Tommy Lee… it was inevitable, wasn't it?'
He straightened, and their eyes met in a moment of surrender. She slipped her hands inside his shirt, spreading it wide to kiss his chest, his collarbone, his neck, his chin. His mouth. Ah, his
warm, long-denied mouth. Her hands rode 321 his shoulders, divesting him of the garment, which soon lay adrift upon the water. Moments later it was joined by her dress and a brief scrap of white they had together shimmied from his loins. Her pantyhose came next, followed by an even tinier scrap of white as he grasped her beneath the arms and held her buoyant while she kicked free of her panties. Before the garments drifted to the surface, Rachel's legs were clamped tightly around Tommy Lee's waist.
He waded toward the steps, his mouth communing with hers, then laid her down on the concrete, still warm from the day's sun, her feet trailing in the water, while he rested on one hip beside her. The moon shimmered along her wet limbs like a rich silver garment while his hand followed its path, relearning the curves of breast, stomach, thigh, and mons.
'Rachel,' he managed throatily, 'I've loved you since we were fourteen years old- maybe even before that. There were times when I thought I'd die without getting the chance to tell you again.'
She raised her arms in welcome and he came to her, pressing his length to hers as she caressed his back and buttocks, whispering, 'Oh, Tommy
Lee, none of us can ever quite get over our first love, can we? And you were that for me. I loved you so much… so much. And some of that love has always stayed with me, no matter who either of us was married to or what was going on in our lives.' She felt him shudder and gently pushed him back to delve the dark mystery of his eyes. 'I feel it still, and it grows stronger each time I see you.' This was the supreme surprise, that she should at last recognize the love lying fallow within her heart, untouched, untarnished all these years, and be so eager for it to be nurtured and brought to bloom again.
A stab of wonder pierced his heart, and she saw it in his eyes, realizing fully what this moment meant to him. And she was suddenly filled with the need to give him back a thousandfold all the happiness he had missed in life.
She kissed his eyelids, held his face in both hands. 'When I saw you tonight, walking to the door… this feeling started then. You looked so devastatingly wonderful to me, as if the past twenty-four years had never happened.' She praised his sleek shape with the brush of her hands and felt him shudder.
He kissed her eyelids, uttered her name in
