My eyes opened with a start, and I was no longer alone.

I could write that it was the fervently imagined, mind-blowing licks of Mr. Weston's inquisitive tongue that came to life and expertly supplemented the gentle rub of my fingers as I floated suitless and spread open to the world in his swimming pool.

But that's not what happened.

The pool's owner was fully clothed, fully dry and had just moved into my field of vision. Reflexively I jammed my knees together with a slapping splash, and in a panic, dived for cover.

Obviously, I couldn't stay under long enough for him to forget I was there. I tucked myself as tightly as possible against the ladder, popping up my wet head and snorting out water like a sheepish seal pup.

"I'm sorry I startled you, Fiona." Mr. Weston's calm contrition drifted nearby, but I couldn't see him.

I remained frozen in place, contemplating the glossy tile wall as it was danced upon by blue-lit ripples. The metal railing grew colder under my quivering hands as I continued to cough up the water I'd ingested.

"Here, come and put this on. I won't look; I promise." His tone was bedside manner, but that of a physician, not the would-be lover that stoked my libido a mere minute ago.

I was face to face with his Topsiders and tanned calves, choosing to focus on them while my feet pushed me up the ladder and onto the cool concrete deck. Almost instantly a towel dropped over my shoulders and I wrapped it tighter than a military cadet's made bed.

"Come sit down for a minute. Right here, on the bench." We were side by side, close but not touching under the veranda trellis. “Are you all right?”

I coughed once more and nodded. Could he see the scarlet letters on my cheeks in this light, I wondered, staring downward at anything that wasn't him, waiting for him to speak again. Or was he waiting for an apology?

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weston," I blurted, regressing ten years. "I didn't th-think anyone w-was home."

"No one was," he said lightly. "I just got back from the docks and thought I heard someone splashing about. Just glad it was you and that you were still afloat. Marvelous idea, really. Used to think of taking a birthday suit swim every now and then. Never got around to it, though."

If this was his idea of making me feel more at ease, it wasn’t working. Thermal imaging could have picked up my blush all the way from Perth.

This was my chance to tell him more, but my tongue might have well have been stapled to the roof of my mouth.

"Never mind; I take that back. I've made you uncomfortable enough already. I had no idea... I couldn't tell that you were... until it was too late...Well, what's done is done, and I'm the one who should be sorry."

Yes, done, I thought miserably. At best, he would find a polite way to rescind the open pool invitation, but that was the least of my worries. Maybe he'd go so far as to rat me out to Mom. I felt sick to my stomach.

"Don't be ashamed of anything, Fiona. No one will hear a word of it. If you like, you can get dressed in the downstairs bath and go directly home. If you want to stay, I'll make myself scarce and you are more than welcome to enjoy the pool as long as you wish, with all the privacy you need."

I could sense a window of opportunity sliding shut, and forced the words out. "I was thinking about you, just now," I whispered, still refusing to look at him.

"Ah." He took a deep breath, exhaled, stalled for a suitable approach.

He resumed, keeping the tone easy and conversational. "Haven't been around much this season, but I thought I had spotted you in the company of...” He frowned as his memory searched for the right name.

"Daryl. He's just a friend."

"No boyfriend?"

I shook my head.

He rummaged his shirt pocket while ruminating on recent events I thought had been long forgotten. "I might have guessed something about your motives when you brought over those delicious brownies a few months ago, but after you offered to wash the windows, it was more than a guess."

My heart gave a merry thump at his approval of my culinary labor of love, but he wasn't finished speaking.

"I'm flattered, Fiona. Truly. But this sort of thing can happen to an impressionable young lady like yourself."

Oh great. Here comes the lecture.

He struck the match he had retrieved and lit a citronella candle in its tin bucket. Smoke drifted into my nostrils. I sneezed.

"Bless you. Because I may not get another chance to ask, what did I do to deserve this very generous amount of your thoughts?"

"Well..." I gulped. You can’t come out and say you have the hots for him, but is this the best you can come up with?

Where, oh where were the words, after all, this time, and passion? What was taking so long to find them?

"You're... intelligent, you're kind... and I think you're very... attractive..."

Then some of my pluck rushed back to reclaim ceded territory. "And you're telling me I'll grow out of it, I suppose."

"No, Fiona. I didn't mean to condescend." I heard him sigh. "You've always seemed grown up for your years, and very responsible, just like Adam. He's the right age for you; it's him you should be fancying."

"Did you fancy me, just now?" I seized upon his phrase and met his eyes at last. I saw something in them that gave me courage.

"Do you think that’s a fair question to ask?" he parried, turning away.

"Were you at all inclined to join me?"

"Fiona..." A faltering protest.

"Would you have wanted to?" I persisted.

"Of course not." His jaw set. "It wouldn't have been appropriate."

Emboldened, "I don't believe you. Did seeing me like that turn you on?"

"Fiona, please."

"Then did it at least make you happy?" I bolted into full confession mode. "You might as well know that I've touched myself lots of times just like that," I pointed toward the pool, "thinking about you, wanting you. How does that make you feel?"

"That’s enough.” He whirled in my direction, biting off words. “You want the truth? Shocked, that I’m hearing this from anyone, let alone from you.”

Oddly I found the more agitated he became, the easier it was for me to remain calm. “But that’s not all, is it?”

His profile turned up to the hazy moon and he let out a long, wistful sigh. “Delighted. And at least twenty years younger..."

"Enough to take that skinny dip you always wanted?" I broke in.

He smiled. "Your mother is right, Fiona. Your mind is a steel trap. I have to be more careful what I say to you."

Inwardly I cursed myself. Mother? Now he'd never come near me.

He fell silent, contemplating what he had just said, deciding how best to dismiss me and my disquieting revelations.

I wasn’t beneath some mild emotional blackmail. "It might... make me feel less self-conscious, you know if you did?" The thought that he might actually take me up on it and shed his clothes under the hypnotic moonlight made me weak with desire.

He appeared to consider this but drew a different conclusion. "Tell you what,” he said gently, “why don't we call it an evening. You can go home, settle down and think about it for another week. Would you do that much for me?"

I glanced at his sturdy thighs in the off-white cargo shorts and hugged myself more tightly, prepared to chain myself to that bench, but I was not leaving if I could help it. "I'll still feel the same. That won't change."

His brow knit as he reached the gravel bed of his personal bottom line, and his voice rasped, "Do you really think I could face your mother and father if I so much as laid a hand on you, that way?"

Unfazed by the thickening tension between us, the whir and chirp of distant crickets continued to blend in the timeless, percussive soundtrack of summer nights.

The words came to me as naturally as a cannonball dive. "Then don't."

Our eyes had connected once more. His were asking for a clarification.

I stood up and unwrapped the towel, letting it fall around my feet in soft dune drifts.

“Please put that back on,” he ordered unconvincingly.

“Do you really want me to?”

He tried to keep his eyes on mine, and failed miserably as the twin, high profile swells of my virgin breasts compelled them into their orbit.

"Don't. Lay a hand on me, that is," I recited in a small, hesitant voice. "Watch me. And I'll...watch you...when you're ready."

As it dawned on him what I meant, he allowed himself to look wherever he desired.

I remained perfectly still, basking in his telepathic caresses until he reached for his zipper in defeat.

"Wait," I stopped him, taking his hand. "Before you do?"

“What are you doing to me,” he whispered, shutting his eyes.

I gently lifted it to my face, turned it up, brushed my lips ever so softly over his rigging roughened palm, and set it back down. His skin was redolent of the warm brine and sun lotion of his day on the Sound. I savored him with a deeply drawn breath.

Intoxicated beyond belief, I spun around abruptly and plunged once again into the deep end, surfacing just in time to hear the splash behind me.

To be continued...

***