We’ve gone too far, that’s for certain. Whatever Emmett’s aim in pursuing a friendship with me, we’ve crossed a boundary I’ve been careful to protect. There’s no way people haven’t noticed us together. Last night on the yacht, wearing his suit jacket felt like I was wearing his varsity letters. I might as well have had his promise ring twinkling on my ring finger. My grandmother wasn’t pleased.
I’m careful the next day. I avoid him, totally. I eat breakfast tucked between Florence Carmichael and my grandmother. I accept an invitation to go out in a speedboat with Royce and a few others, and then I slip away from dinner quickly while most everyone else moves on to the sitting room for late-night drinks. I don’t look at Emmett once the entire day. It’s my sole mission to take account of where he stands in a room and avoid that area like the plague.
I’m exhausted by the time night falls, but I can’t sleep. I lie on top of my blankets with the window open, the soft autumn breeze rustling the drapes.
My grandmother went to bed ages ago, and when I stand up and go over to listen at the door, I hear the sound of her soft snoring.
This room gives me the odd feeling of being trapped, just like my room in Boston. Only here, I have no balcony. I can barely pace. From wall to wall, it’s only a few strides.
I move over to the window and stare down at the twinkling lights in the distance, at the serene water, and at the lone figure sitting on the edge of the pier.
Emmett.
I’m wearing a pale pink slip as a nightgown, but I worry if I take the time to change, he’ll already be gone.
I don’t even bother with shoes.
I rush over and take the doorknob in hand, carefully turning until I feel the latch give way. A faint creak spikes my blood with panic, but my grandmother sleeps on, undisturbed.
On tiptoe, I sneak past. It’s exhilarating and silly. I shouldn’t be made to feel like a deviant teenager just because I want to go out for a nighttime stroll, and yet I can’t shake the feeling. I peer over at my grandmother’s sleeping figure once more before I carefully open the door that leads out into the hall, and then I slip out.
Not everyone is sleeping. Voices carry from downstairs; the night’s festivities haven’t ended. I race down the central staircase, holding on to the banister as I scurry along the cold marble floor, and then I make a break for the door that leads to the backyard.
I’m aware that I could be watched. Quite a few of the villa’s bedrooms have views of the lake and pier and gardens, but I suspect everyone who isn’t drinking down in the sitting room is already sleep. Except for Emmett.
My bare feet are quiet on the grass as I curve around the topiaries and the gravel path, then I follow the slope of the yard down toward the pier. He’s sitting in his bathing suit, one knee bent up so he can rest his elbow on top of it.
“If you’re trying to scare me, it won’t work. I heard you coming a mile away.”
I freeze.
He turns slowly over his shoulder, lazily dragging his gaze down my short nightgown and bare legs.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“No one else would dare to bother me at this time of night.”
“If it’s a bother, I can go…”
His sincere gaze captures mine.
“Don’t make me ask you to stay. I will, and it won’t make either of us feel good.”
He turns back to the water. I hesitate for only a moment before I pad on bare feet until I make it to the end of the pier, right beside him. I bend down and take a seat, draping my legs over the edge of the wood so my feet dip into the cold water, barely up to my ankles.
“So you stay away all day just to visit me at night?” he asks, knocking his foot against mine under the water’s surface.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I never can.”
I kick my feet back and forth in the water, watching the ripples.
“Were you going to go for a swim?”
“I was thinking about it. I’ve been doing laps in the pool this week, but I can never resist the temptation of swimming in open water.”
“You’re not trying to cross the whole thing, are you?”
He laughs softly. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s too far. Though I did used to swim across the lake back at St. John’s.”
I know, I want to say.
Instead, I merely nod.
Then he pushes to stand. “Get in with me.”
An incredulous laugh spills out of me. “Absolutely not. It’s freezing.”
“Hardly.”
“This is a deep glacial lake.”
He looks unimpressed, but I don’t care.
“Have your swim. I’ll stay right here.”
“What an appropriate metaphor, you always sitting right on the edge of life, never quite brave enough to enjoy it.”
I bristle at his assessment, aware of how close he is to hitting the bull’s-eye.
“Save the reverse psychology. It won’t work on me.”
“Have you ever gone swimming at night?”
“No, and I’m doing perfectly fine, thank you.”
“What about skinny-dipping?”
My eyes widen. “No! Because unlike you, I don’t succumb to peer pressure.”
“You’re such a bad actress, you really shouldn’t bother trying. I see you, remember? The quiet girl who sneaked out into the woods to spy on my friends and me. You want to misbehave so badly…why don’t you give it a try?”
A dark blooming need starts to build inside me, but I resist with everything I have, trying to lighten the mood with my reply.
“Because I know how skinny-dipping would end. You’d take one look at my naked body and pass out from the sheer pleasure of it. It’d be a pain trying to call for an ambulance out here in the middle of nowhere.”
It’s one of life’s simple pleasures watching Emmett’s smile unfurl across his handsome face.
“I could push you in.”
“I’d never forgive you,” I say with mock seriousness.
He rolls his eyes.
“Fine. Then sit there and sulk.”
And with that, he takes aim and completes a smooth dive into the water, transitioning easily into his measured strokes. I’m catapulted back in time; watching him from the pier, I could be thirteen again, spying on a young Emmett as he tries to swim his anger away. I’m not surprised he still does this, the laps, the unending search for peace at the end of a long day. Just like him, I haven’t solved my problems either.
The methodic strokes are as mesmerizing as they always were. I swirl my toes in the water as I watch him disappearing into the distance. Worry edges in as he starts to grow smaller, but if teenage Emmett with his boyhood body could swim the length of St. John’s lake twice over, the Emmett I know now, with his menacing height and broad shoulders and hardened muscles, can manage just fine out on Lake Como.
Eventually, he gets too far for me to watch, and I’ve given up on worrying he’ll be mowed down by some boat racing past. If he wants to put his life at risk, it’s his prerogative.
As for me, I want to lie back on the wooden pier and look up at the night sky to see what constellations I can discern from out here. It’s not as dark as I’d prefer it, but we’re far enough from major cities that I can see much more of the night sky than I usually can back in Boston. I’ve never been camping, but I imagine this is what it would feel like, alone in the middle of nowhere. I trace the stars with my eyes, trying to draw upon long-dormant names of stars I might have known when I was younger. Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia…the only one I can make out for certain is the Big Dipper, and that doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment.
I’m busy staring up when I hear Emmett’s distant strokes slicing through the water, growing louder on his return journey. I don’t bother sitting up as he approaches. He thought I would be here sulking with loneliness, and I’m determined to show him I’m not.
Look, see? I completely forgot about you.
He finishes his swim and I feel the pier bow slightly under his weight as he grabs ahold of it. I can’t help but surrender to the swoop of excitement as he hoists himself up like a creature from the depths. He’s breathing hard, and when I look down, he’s sitting back on his heels, staring at me as he tries to slow his racing heart. His hair is slicked back and wet, inky black. The peaks of his cheekbones look severe in the moonlight. I meet his gaze head-on, accepting whatever challenge he’s laying at my feet. A wickedness sets in, the devil in him responding to my unwillingness to bow to him. He pushes forward onto his hands and knees, like a tiger at my feet. He crawls forward, coming over me slowly as water drips down onto my nightgown…down onto my skin. A cold drop hits my clavicle and rolls along the center of my chest, disappearing into my nightgown, and Emmett watches it, hovering over me with his midnight eyes. His breathing is still heavy from exertion.
Goose bumps bloom across my skin as a breeze rolls over us.
I shift, putting forth the most feeble effort imaginable to get out from underneath him. “You’re getting me wet.”
He smiles, enjoying the double entendre. “Isn’t that the point, petite souris? Since you weren’t going to get in, I had to bring the lake to you.”
He’s sopping, which means now I’m sopping.
A water drop hits the peak of my left breast, and my lips part. Everywhere, the fabric begins to stick to my skin, going transparent from the wetness.
Despite the chill in the air, a deep warmth settles over me, the kind of heat that needs kindling if I want it to grow.
I could lift my hand and touch him.
He could touch me.
I’m caged in between him and the wooden pier. There’s nowhere to go unless I want to push him off, and I don’t. I would never tell him no if only he’d ask.
Impatience gnaws at me as I curl my fingers, my nails biting into the wood.
He holds perfectly still, taking me in with such astute eyes that I feel like he’s seeing it all, down to the marrow in my bones.
Another drop of water falls just below my mouth, and I arch up instinctively, yearning for something he seems unwilling to give me. I crave him with a vengeance that feels so consuming I shake with the exhaustion of trying to fend it off. My chin tilts up, and, trying to save myself from the overwhelming need and the embarrassment licking at my skin, I let my eyes flutter closed.
But without that sense, everything only grows headier: the sweet scent of the night on him, the warmth radiating from his body, the sound of his steady breaths as he lowers himself down further, his exhale passing over my lips like a soft caress.
I almost say his name. I almost beg him with a throaty moan.
But he knows. Emmett waits for me to gather courage, and when I finally open my eyes again, he bends down, tilts his head…hovers there for a brief agonizing moment…and then rewards me with a kiss.
I’m arrested in place as his mouth slants over mine, a chaste peck quickly dissolving into more. I’m mostly to blame. I respond to his kiss with a hunger I don’t recognize. My hand slides up and around his neck, and I take it deeper. I peel my back up off the pier to press our bodies together. For a brief moment, I’m the one dragging us further past the point of no return. But then his bare chest meets mine and he pushes me back down as his mouth presses possessively into mine.
He kisses with a skill I’ve never experienced, but then, he knows that.
I divulged to him just yesterday that I’ve never kissed someone passionately and now he seems intent on fixing that, on giving me a kiss that will ruin me from this day forward. If I’m ever asked about my first kiss, my first real kiss, it will be this moment on the pier that I’ll remember. What an arrogant bastard to brand himself on my memory like that, to ensure that he’ll always linger in the periphery of my fantasies.
He props his elbows on either side of my head and his wet body pins me down. A moan escapes me, but I’m too lost to care about restraining my need. He obviously feels the same. The weight of his desire presses against my thigh, impossible to ignore as he shifts over me, pressing onto one arm. Our kiss deepens, our lips parting in unison, his tongue sweeping across mine. Fire builds inside me, taking my oxygen and my good sense.
Up until this point, he’s kept his hands off me, but he lifts himself just enough to allow his free hand to slide between our bodies. His warm palm elicits a swarm of butterflies as it covers the side of my stomach before teasing upward, drawing the wet silk of my nightgown up with it. Higher he goes until his fingers brush the underside of my breast. He feels the pleasure rack through me and does it again, running the back of his finger up over the peak of my breast, tantalizingly slow and then back down, toying with me as he goes.
Cool air hits the tops of my thighs now that my nightgown is tugged even higher. I’m about to spread my legs in invitation, to see where this dark night will take me, when peals of laughter carry over the quiet breeze. I flinch. It could be nothing, just the group in the sitting room having had too much to drink back at the villa, but it feels like we’ve been caught, like if I open my eyes, I’ll find them all standing at the foot of the pier, watching us.
Panicked, I turn and slide out from beneath Emmett. Rough wood scratches at my thigh and upper arm as I try to get away as fast as I can. I scramble to stand up, already covering myself with my arms, already regretting my stupidity as I keep my head bowed and hurry back. If Emmett calls out after me, I’m not dumb enough to listen.
