I broke the surface and swam to the edge, rested my arms on the concrete. “You coming in?”
The booze was making me reckless. Holden, in the pool with me, stripped down to his underwear, was a bad idea.
Or maybe it’s the best bad idea ever…
“I don’t swim,” he said.
“You don’t know how?”
“I know how. I choose not to.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t been in so much as a bathtub in years. Not since Alaska.”
My chest ached and the anger at those who’d hurt him returned with a vengeance, sobering me slightly.
“What happened? Don’t give me the PG-rated version. Tell me everything.”
His lips curled in a faint smile. “I like Drunk River. Drunk River is direct.”
“It helped me to tell you my shit. I want to help you.”
“You can’t help me,” he said sadly. “But it’s nice that you want to try.”
“Tell me,” I said gruffly. “If you’re up to it.”
He thought about it and finally nodded. “Fine. But you’re too far away.”
Swaying unsteadily on his feet, Holden got up from the lounger and lay down on his back, his head at the edge of the pool near where I rested my arms.
“In Alaska,” Holden said, staring at the sky, “there is a lake. Copper Lake. The counselors—and I use this word facetiously—would strip us naked and drag us to the water, submerging us for a few seconds, and then drag us back out. We were there late fall through winter. I don’t have to tell you the water was a few degrees above freezing.”
The pool water around me suddenly felt ten degrees cooler. “Fucking hell. Why?”
“Punishment, mostly. For inappropriate behavior. Inappropriate thoughts they suspected us of having. In my case, they suspected right.”
I didn’t smile. Prince sang about being left in a world so cold.
“It was part of our rehabilitation. To drown unwanted urges. To kill our desire. To destroy the want and attraction and love we might one day give to someone who also happened to be a boy.” He turned his head to look at me, pain swimming in the depths of his green eyes. “Instead, they killed any love we had for ourselves. Shame. Guilt… They beat us with it as surely as they beat us with fists and clubs. They drowned us in it with every trip to the water’s edge.”
I clenched my jaw. Beatings. Submersions. Hundreds of miles away from home.
I couldn’t fathom it.
I hated that he’d endured it.
Holden witnessed my reaction and faced the sky again. “I’m ruining your swim.”
“You’re not.”
“And you’re a good person, River Whitmore.” He rolled over onto his stomach, seemingly unconcerned that his expensive clothes were getting dirty and wet. His fingers skimmed the water. “It’s too bad, really. Feels nice.”
Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I submerged myself to wash them away and resurfaced in front of Holden, our faces inches apart. My heart clanged madly in my chest, but the alcohol broke my thoughts apart, so they couldn’t talk their usual bullshit. Nothing guided me but instinct.
Our gazes locked, my hand came up slowly, like an out-of-body experience, to cup Holden’s jaw. Tentative at first, then my hand slipped further to palm his cheek, leaving a glaze of water on his smooth skin.
“I hate they did that to you,” I said gruffly, my throat thick. “I’d kill them…anyone who tried to do it again…”
The words tumbled out of my drunken mouth. Holden’s eyes widened, that shocked expression coming over him again. As if no one had defended him before, wanting to protect him instead of hurt him.
With my blood thrashing in my ears, my thumb moved over his chin, feeling the curve and cleft, then brushed over his lips wetly. They were soft where his jaw was hard and unyielding, and I wondered what he would taste like.
Holden released a small gasp. It gusted hotly over my thumb that I was now slowly moving back and forth over his full lips. He kissed it and then those lips parted, his tongue venturing out with a soft lick.
I sucked in a breath, and he did it again—a flick of his tongue that sent shards of white heat coursing down my arm, my back, to an intense ache between my legs, and my stiffening cock. Holden’s relentless gaze trapped me as he swirled his tongue around my thumb—wet and soft and warm—before taking it into his mouth with a long, slow suck.
My eyes fell shut and a groan rumbled out of my chest. Touch if you will, my stomach, Prince sang, and beneath the water, my erection was hard as steel and begging for release.
I let go of my white-knuckled grip on the edge of the pool and slipped my hand into my underwear, stroking myself in conjunction with the sucking pull of Holden’s perfect mouth.
He watched my arm’s motion and ground his own hips into the cement once, slowly, his eyes hooded and dark. His teeth grazed my thumb then bit it hard enough that I felt it in my cock that wanted his touch instead of mine. I fought the urge to haul him into the water, to get at his skin under all that clothing and…
Do what?
My eyes flared open and reality slammed into me. I was jacking myself in a pool with my thumb in a guy’s mouth. No caution. No control. Years of discipline falling apart in an instant.
Holden watched the conflict sweep across my face and released me a split second before I pushed back from the wall, surging backward in the water.
“I…shit. I’m drunk. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t…I
