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"Sure." He gave her that look that made her stomach do a somersault like a happy squirrel. "Hold your hair off your neck."
She turned her back to him. As those capable hands started smearing the block on her skin, a deep sigh welled up. Part pleasure, part other. "I don't know what's allowed, Noah."
He paused. "What do you want to be allowed?"
She looked at glittering water and green shoreline. A heron fished in the shallows of the cove. "I want to do whatever I feel like doing with you. But I don't want to do anything to offend Lyda. Or take advantage of how you are."
"And how am I?" His teasing tone reassured her. Then he slipped the back strap of her bikini top. When she caught the front, he tapped her gently between the shoulder blades. "There's no one here but us. A lot of women get burned at the edges of their swimsuit because they put the block on while they're wearing it and they don't want to get the swimsuit messy. You can do the front part if you like, or I can do it."
She shook her head. Spoke with a catch in her voice. "I want you to do it."
His breath was on the back of her neck. Without saying anything further, he released the neck strap as well. Reaching under her arm, he slid his fingers beneath her grip to give the top a gentle tug, telling her he wanted her to let it go. She did. It left her sitting in her shorts and bottoms only. She heard him squirt more of the sunblock into his hands. The faint quiver of the boat suggested he was rubbing his hands together, making it less cold. She was still holding her hair up on her neck, and now she added the other hand, moving both arms out of his way.
He slid up behind her, adjusting so one leg was aligned with her hip, the other angled so his foot dangled off the boat, though his thigh pressed against her, keeping her between his legs. When he leaned forward, his bare chest brushed her back, making her aware of the faint stickiness where the sunblock was drying.
As his hands closed over her bare breasts, she drew in a breath. They rose in his hands like bread dough responding to heat. Chloe, their passionate baker, would laugh at that comparison. Gen looked down at his brown hands against her pale flesh. He rubbed the sunblock into the area the edge of her swimsuit would follow. The deliberate omission of the area closest to her nipples made them tighten, beg for touch.
"You didn't answer my question, about 'how I am'," he murmured against her throat. She laid her head back against his shoulder, turned her face so her nose brushed his jaw. He was gazing down, eyes intent on his task, on her breasts.
"I'm still learning everything a male submissive is, and Chloe keeps insisting you're all different. My exposure has been to Brendan. Doing things Marguerite or Chloe ask him to do brings him pleasure, the service. But I think there's a tendency for a woman to think it means...that she can treat you like an unpaid prostitute."
His hands stilled. "I know that's not what you are," she added quickly. "But I would be really, really upset if you let me do that anyway, simply because you knew I was too ignorant or driven by my hormones to know better."
She was very cognizant of how he cradled her breasts, simply holding them, but she forced herself to focus on the importance of the topic. "Your feelings are important to me, and I can't get a grasp on them. Or Lyda's, for that matter, in a lot of things. It's hard to get a handle on anyone when you've just met them, let alone two people who are part of something I really know so little about."
"You know everything you need to know. In your head and heart. In your body." He put his mouth to her neck, shifting his grip so her nipples pushed into his palms. The contact made her moan, a soft sigh.
"Lyda thinks you're good for me, Gen," he said. "And I like being with you. All you have to do is follow your own needs and desires. You don't have to think about it more than that, because I know you have a good heart. I'm not worried about what you'll do to me, only about what you'll allow yourself."
Nothing in life was ever that simple. Yet when he resumed massaging the cream around her breasts, she couldn't think of anything else to say. Not when he occupied himself with kissing her neck, slow, sucking kisses that awoke erogenous zones all the way to her curling feet. Her backside pressed into the fiberglass in tiny, coital movements.
"If we don't start sailing, there's going to be a lot of bare places on me where you'll need to apply sunscreen," she muttered.
"You say that like it's a problem."
She chuckled and wiggled to put some space between them, despite the incredible difficulty of finding the willpower. She retrieved her swimsuit top and gave him a narrow glance. "I was promised sailing lessons."
He smiled. He also helped her put the swimsuit top back on, fastening the back and the neck piece, smoothing his hands briefly over her breasts, solemnly informing her it was to ensure everything was covered properly.
When he finally began her sailing lesson, she realized he never really had answered her question, unless deflecting it back on herself was an answer. The man was like the sunlight glittering off the water. He wasn't the water or the sun, but some sparkling reaction between the two, part illusion, part reality.
He shifted gears well, though. After about forty five minutes, thanks to his excellent teaching skills, she could handle the mainsail lines while he handled the jib of the small craft. She had them tacking well together, leading them in the duck beneath the boom. He'd been right about the privacy of the cove. They were undisturbed.
"Only shallow craft can get through here," he explained. "With it being off the main channel, a good distance from the marina, only your most experienced sailors navigate to it. Plus it's a weekday. Ready to try the channel again?" he asked.
"I'm not ready to solo yet."
"We'll do it together until you tell me you want to solo. And I'll be right next to you when you finally do that. We're going to practice capsizing as w
ell. In here," he added at her alarmed look.
They were at rest again and he'd turned fully toward her, one leg bent, the other doused in the water up to his knee. "Aren't we supposed to avoid doing that?"
"Yes. But if it happens, you need to know how to right the boat. Say if I was hit on the head, or whoever you were sailing with was less experienced, you should be prepared. But you should never sail alone."
"You do."
He shrugged. "I've been doing this a long time. I really don't ever want you to sail alone, okay?"
