Page 72 of Kiwi Gold
Exactly how noble was I required to be here?
She’s had a hard day,I told myself.A bad day. And she doesn’t know what she’s doing.It wasn’t working, though.
She rose as gracefully as she’d gone down, pushed her already-neat hair back with her hand, laughed, and said, “That’s better. It’s been a long day.” Exactly as I’d thought. Then she looked at me, laughed again, possibly a bit nervously this time, and said, “What? I can’t believe that you’re more shy than I am. You must strip down all the time in front of women. But you’re still wearing your shirt. Why?”
“No reason,” I said, “because I’m not doing it anymore,” and dropped my duffel. Then I got both hands on the hem of my T-shirt and pulled.
* * *
Laila
I could say that it was because I hadn’t seen a man’s unclothed body for more than a year and a half—at least before I’d seen Lachlan’s last Sunday—but I knew it was a lie. It was that I’d never seen one with all … all this happening.
It wasn’t just that he was muscular, or that he was athletic. I’d been married to a world-class climber. Kegan, like most climbers, had been built on compact, wiry lines, but he’d had every bit of muscle that women drooled over. Practically literally. I’d seen him more than once at a sponsor’s event, dressed in a hoodie and jeans, signing photos of himself clad in skin-tight climbing trousers and a tank top, jamming a hand into a crack in order to haul himself up by it, sweat glistening and every honed-down bulge of muscle straining. He’d signed those photos for men, but for women, too. I’d seen the hungry look in their eyes, but I’d swear Kegan hadn’t. His body had been purpose-built for his sport, not for a woman to appreciate, and that was how he used it, if that makes sense.
Ever since I was a girl, I’d heard that men wanted sex. My lifeexperiencehad been that men wanted sex, and that women did, too, judging by the famished way my dad kissed my mum when he came home, and the way she’d look at him over dinner, her eyes soft and her lips parting. The way he’d look back, too, as if the spark between them was about to leap across the table and ignite. It was like I wasn’t even there, sometimes. With Kegan, though … he didn’tnotlike it, exactly, but he hadn’t been what you’d call passionate about it. Sex, I mean, but especially the part that wasn’t really sex. Hand-holding. Kissing. He did it, the kissing and so forth, when I initiated it, but he never seemed like he cared that much, and after a while, I’d stopped trying. It felt too foolish. Or it felt pathetic.
Lachlan was taller than Kegan, and broader across the shoulders, but … but after that, I wasn’t comparing. He pulled off his T-shirt, and it took a while. He had heaps of torso, and it was all right there. Some light-brown hair on his chest, arrowing down his belly, and more on his legs. Those two diagonal lines of muscle that a fit man showed you, low on his abdomen, because his togs did ride low. He looked at me, and something in his expression caught me, and held. And I couldn’t breathe.
Thatwas the part that was different. The way he looked at me, like that spark was about to ignite. That was the part that was new. Icouldn’tbe wrong.
He said, “Do I tell you what I think now? Or wait until we’re walking?”
It wasn’t hot outside anymore, not this late in the evening, but I was too warm anyway. I said, “Tell me now.” The thunder of the waves’ approach, the sibilantswishof their retreat, told me,Do it now. Take your moment. Be free.
Well, freer.
No. Ride the waves like you used to. Let go.When I’d come out here with my mum and dad and a boogie board, and hadn’t been afraid at all. I’d been more like Amira, once. Where had that gone?
He said, “Right,” and blew out a breath. Then said, “Changed my mind. Let’s get in the water.” As if he felt what I did. But that wasn’t possible, was it?
I said. “All right.”
He took my hand, then asked, “Still good?”
“Uh … yes.” I was so confused. He’d held me, back in the car. It had been a tendermoment.Now, it was … what? Wasn’t that heat coming from him, too? Or was he embarrassed by what he’d seen from me? I couldn’t tell. If dating school was about honest feedback, it wasn’t working.
Right. We’d swim, cool our heads, and be honest.
I stepped into the clear, cold water, felt my toes sink into the firm sand, and splashed my way out there. When the frigid water reached my thighs, I shrieked, then laughed. I couldn’t help it. Lachlan said, “Maybe we won’t go all the way in, eh.”
“What?” I asked. “Scared?” And shoved my way out, pushing against the water’s resistance, until I could dive under the approaching wave, which was a monster.
The force of the water rushing over me, hurtling toward shore. Being carried with it, and ducking under it, all at the same time. The salt in my nose, the shock of the cold, the tingling exhilaration in my blood.
I came up gasping, hauling oxygen into my lungs, and found Lachlan right there, grinning at me. I laughed, he did, too, and I dove again. Over and over, caught up in the sensation, and enjoying the sight of Lachlan’s long body porpoise-diving into each curling wave, with no fear and no holding back. The noise of the surf was everywhere, the air practically crackling with salt spray and negative ions, and the tension of the day was leaving me at last.
I was so cold, it felt more like burning, and my more tender parts were icy hot by the time I came up one last time and said, my teeth all but chattering, “Right. I’m going to call that swimming and be done with it.”
“Works for me,” he said, sluicing back the longer part of his hair, showing me his bicep and the darker hair under his arm as the water slid down his hard body and molded his togs to his thighs. “Tide’s on the turn anyway, and it’s running strong.” And took my hand.
He threaded his fingers through mine, each of them sliding into their slot like my hand had been made to fit with his. And that was my stupid breath hitching again, or maybe it was my heart line throbbing. Or my Mound of Venus, because that was where his thumb was resting.
The one on my hand, of course.
You ache for the pleasure a man offers, and wonder if it’s even real. You long for the sensuality he might release, yet you turn away from the chance.
Icouldn’t.He was the wrong man. He’d said so.
