Page 48 of Most Likely to Match
“You just want to float here?” he asks, like he’s surprised that this is enough for me.
“We could play a game, if you want.”
He laughs again. I’m probably imagining it, but his dark eyes find every fractal of light from the satellite-stars, the residual gleam fromneighboring backyard spotlights, his own little night skies. “What? Like Marco Polo?”
I push away from him. “Close your eyes.”
“Chloe.” He rolls his eyes. “Come on.”
“You’re it,” I insist. “Maybe spin around a couple times, too. Make it challenging.”
He huffs. There’s a tattoo beneath his clavicle, two faces in profile, mouths open, about to kiss. It expands with his skin, then disappears under the water. With another sigh, he closes his eyes and turns in the water, his movements jerky then smooth, jerky then smooth, as he spins around the deep end. “Good enough?” he calls.
I’m not falling for that. I keep my mouth shut.
Finally, facing the general direction of the shallow end, his eyes squeezed closed, Dean says, “Marco.”
“Polo,” I call back.
He turns toward me immediately. A shark again, on the hunt, his smile hidden beneath the water unless he’s ready to call for me again. He almost corners me against the stairs, but I slip past his reaching fingers. I bump into the wall underneath the diving board, and he homes in on me when the rough cement along the edge grazes my shoulder and I hiss.
“Are you okay?”
But I still only answer to Marco.
I can see Dean roll his eyes behind his closed lids when he hears my answering silence, and so it starts again. But after a few minutes, I let myself answer a little louder. I don’t try to cover the sound of my movement through the water. Eventually, I don’t move at all when he calls Marco. I hold myself against the edge, halfway up the deep end, my fingers gripping the deck behind me.
He finds my foot first, floating out in front of me. “Marco,” he says quietly.
“Polo,” I answer.
His other hand finds my knee.
“Marco.”
His hand lands on my inner thigh.
“Polo.” I can barely breathe the word.
He keeps his eyes closed, our faces close, noses almost touching. “Marco.”
I kiss him, lips cold with the vague taste of summertime. “Is that okay?” I ask, feeling suddenly shy, even with his body between my legs, his arms gathered around me.
“As long as I won.”
I nod, and he kisses me again, our mouths open, sucking tongues and water. He wraps my legs around his hips, pushing off the pool wall, letting the water hold us up so we can focus on what’s most important, touching each other in as many places as possible. We float to the sound of dripping water and sharp breaths. His hands on my bare ass, pushing me together and spreading me apart. I remember reading inCosmoonce, how pool sex isn’t good for you, something about chlorine and UTIs, but that’s the thing about sex. Or maybe that’s the thing about sex with Dean. I’m willing to overlook a lot— like getting caught in the library stacks, or by a cop, or hisparents— if it means he’ll put his hands on me, in me. If it means he’ll spread me open in so many ways, pull me apart until I’m made of pieces for him to consume. A heart and a cunt, skin and lips, blood and nerve endings, but still good enough, still valued.
Still loved.
That’s what his attention, his care have always felt like. Like being worthy of him, even if we both know I am not.
“I want to lick your pussy, baby.” His words shiver through him and me as he rubs his knuckle over my clit.
“Yeah. Please,” I say, desperate.
Dean walks us toward the edge of the shallow end again and reaches for my towel on the pool deck. He lays it out flat, half hanging down the side of the pool. “Up,” he says, tapping my hip with an authoritative index finger. I lift myself onto the deck, perching my ass on the edge, and Dean adjusts me. He pushes my legs wider, hikes the t-shirt up my tummy. I lean back on my elbows, look up at the sky as his fingers trace the creases between my thighs and lips, his tongue and mouth following the path. It’s never really dark in the suburbs,and I should be scared of being caught, of someone glancing out a window, of their horrified reaction or, maybe worse, of a high-res camera phone.
I should be nervous, but how can I be ashamed ofthis? Of being eaten so thoroughly by a man who cares for me? I have to bite the back of my hand while gripping his wet hair with the other. What is there to scold about using the privacy of your backyard for the most private, most intimate, most domestic of acts, of making each other feel good?
