The silence that passed between them seemed to skip a beat with each wave that rolled beneath the catamaran. The words still echoed in his head, as if she had thrown down a gauntlet.
“Did you just issue me a challenge?” he said playfully. This was the Drea he was used to, the one who loved to challenge him and never shied from an adventure.
“Not just you, both of us,” she answered proudly. “We both apparently have things we want to say to them, but are afraid to do so. Didn’t you say that Uncle Gray told you to stop being a chicken?”
“Chickenshit, actually.”
“Well, this is our chance. We do this together.”
He looked at her face as she finished, seeing in her eyes a brightness that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She was making plans for them, and he loved it. For the first time in a while, he was starting to feel optimistic about the whole thing. Maybe it could be as simple as she made it out to be. In all his overthinking and analyzing, he hadn’t considered what having her support would actually mean to him. Man, could he be a dumbass.
“Together. I like that,” he answered, gazing into her eyes.
“Just you and me against the world,” she whispered in response.
“I love that.” He leaned in and kissed her, taking her mouth slowly.
She responded by scooting closer to him. Never breaking the kiss, she positioned herself so their bodies were facing each other head-on, her legs spread, draping over each one of his, straddling him. He reached around her body, running his hands up and down her back. As he came upon the little strings, he took them in his hand and played with them for a moment, before tugging on them lightly. He’d been toying with the idea since he saw her come up from below deck this morning wearing this suit, and he figured now was as good a time as any to make his move.
When he tugged with a little more purpose than before, the strings quickly came undone and the suit top went slack around her breasts. He could feel her smile against his lips, and her body shook a little as she giggled. Leaning back, she broke their kiss and looked down at the fabric loosely hanging from her neck. The top fluttered a little bit in the breeze, teasing her nipples and giving Kyle a glimpse of the beautiful breasts that it had barely contained to begin with.
“Oops,” he said, shrugging one shoulder, a mischievous smile spread wide across his face. It was taking every bit of restraint he had not to reach up and yank it off her neck.
“Nudity isn’t a problem, is it, Captain Kyle?” she replied impishly, mocking Staci’s words from the other day.
“Oh, it most certainly is not!”
The laugh she let out filled the open air around them, sending shock waves through him. It was a big, full sound that packed a serious punch, and he couldn’t have hidden his own smile even if he had tried. She grabbed the bikini top and pulled it over her head, getting the strings caught in her mess of curls. Her breasts bounced lightly as she tugged, trying to free the top. The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to help her untangle the strings, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the beauty that was her cleavage. A couple of seconds later when she had gotten herself fixed, he looked up at her to find her watching him stare at her. He reached out, taking one perfect sphere in each hand.
“I don’t know that I can tell you enough just how perfect these are.”
“Did Dalton really tell you that Staci’s were fake?”
Kyle gently removed his hands from her chest, leaning backward to rest on them, and nodded. He was very curious as to why that’s where her mind automatically went.
“Does he tell you about all the chicks he has sex with?” she asked.
“Not all, but I hear about most on some level. It’s usually not much more than a confirmation that he got laid the night before. But with Staci, he shared a little more.”
“Like her fake boobs?”
“Well, to be fair, one look at them and I could tell they were fake. But yes, it was one of the things he mentioned.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Why are you so curious?”
She shrugged one shoulder trying to act as if it were no big deal, but Kyle could tell otherwise. There was something deep in her eyes that he needed to uncover. The sounds of the water around them filled the silence as he waited for her to answer. He didn’t want to push her, but he knew that he needed to understand what was going through her head. When she hadn’t answered after another moment, he decided he needed to take action.
Grabbing onto her waist, he quickly brushed his fingers back and forth over her sides, lightly tickling her. The action made her squirm and let out a round of giggles. She continued to squirm under his grasp for a moment, before finally taking in a deep breath.
“Fine, fine,” she said, catching her breath. “Because I wanted to know what you two tell each other about girls. So I know how much Dalton is gonna know about at work on Monday.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to him that she would be worried that he would kiss and tell. In fact, thoughts of what he would share with his buddy hadn’t crossed his mind in any way. If she was worried about Dalton looking down on her, she had the situation all wrong. Or maybe she was just worried because she didn’t know what to tell Leona and wanted their stories to match. Even though the two acted like they were only friends due to work, Kyle knew Dalton turned to Leona for more than just help getting his bathroom cleaned.
“Pretty sure I could tell him we spent the entire weekend naked on this boat fucking like rabbits and it wouldn’t change how he looks at you. This is Dalton—the man views having sex like an extracurricular. Ask him what he did the night before, ‘oh, you know, hit up the gym, had a beer, got laid.’”
“Good point.”
“I would bet that Leona asks more questions than he does.”
“Depends on if she’s on or off again with Carlos. If she’s on, then I won’t be able to get a word in edgewise.”
“Carlos? The maintenance guy?”
“Yeah, did you not know that?” she asked. He shook his head in confirmation. “Oh, well, yeah, the two of them have been on and off again fuck buddies for years. Why do you think the ‘light bulbs need replacing’ all the time?” She used air quotes around Leona’s secret code.
“Huh, well, that answers my theory about her and Dalton using each other.”
“Just once, when he first joined the staff. I don’t remember her reason for not making it an ongoing thing, though.”
“Yeah, you and Leona share way more than us guys. Here I thought I was in the know because Dalton slipped in telling me about her thing for Cullen Cruz.”
“Everyone knows about that. What everyone doesn’t know is that she lost her virginity to him when we were seventeen,” she said conspiratorially.
“Leona? Our Leona? Lost her virginity to a sports legend?” Kyle asked, perplexed by what Drea had just told him.
“Well, he was just a regular player then,” she answered, shrugging it off as if it was no big deal.
“Cullen Cruz has never been ‘just a regular player,’ as you put it. He’s been a household name basically since he started.”
Drea just looked at him like he was making a big deal out of nothing. “Well, when he first came here ten years ago, he was just an everyday football player, or so we thought. We knew he was famous, but he wasn’t so famous that he couldn’t walk down the street. One or two people recognized him, but he was able to be pretty anonymous, at least for the first couple of years.”