Chapter 311

[ 1,092 words ]

Katia’s POV

I surfaced eventually to clear my mask, and when I did, Julian surfaced beside me, water running down the planes of his face, his dark hair slicked back from his forehead. He looked at me for a long moment, treading water easily, the kind of effortless strength that made everything he did look unfairly simple.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “I like watching you down there. You forget to be careful p>

“I am always careful p>

“Not down there,” he said. “Down there you just look happy p>

I did not have an answer for that, so I let the water carry the silence between us instead, and after a moment he reached over and pulled my mask gently back down over my eyes, his fingers brushing my temple as he did it, and dove back under without another word.

We swam for what felt like hours, though it was likely closer to one, until the light overhead began shifting into the deeper gold that signaled the afternoon was starting to turn. By the time we made our way back toward the shallows near a small outcrop of rock that broke the surface a short distance from the reef, my limbs had gone pleasantly heavy with exertion, the good kind of tired that came from moving through water rather than fighting against anything.

Julian found a ledge in the rock just below the surface, shallow enough that we could stand on it with our shoulders above the waterline, sheltered from view by the small formation rising around us.

He pulled his mask off and set it on the rock beside us.

“Come here,” he said.

I went to him, the water buoying me, weightless in a way that made the distance between us feel smaller than it actually was. He wrapped one arm around my waist, anchoring me against him as the current shifted gently around our legs, and looked at me with an expression that had none of the urgency of the jet and none of the careful patience of the sandbank. This was something else entirely. Lighter. Easier. The look of a man who had simply decided, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, that he wanted to kiss the woman in front of him and saw no reason to wait.

He kissed me slowly, the salt of the ocean still on both our mouths, his hand sliding from my waist down to my hip beneath the water, pulling me flush against him until I could feel every line of his body pressed to mine, warm despite the cool water surrounding us. I let my arms wrap around his neck, my fingers finding the wet strands of his hair, and felt him exhale against my mouth, a low sound caught somewhere between a laugh and something far less casual.

The water made everything slower, every movement carrying a kind of weightless drift that turned urgency into something closer to inevitability. His mouth moved to my jaw, then lower, to the curve of my throat where the water had cooled my skin, and I felt the contrast of his warm mouth against it sharply, my breath catching against his shoulder. He thrust two fingers inside me, and I gasped. Before I could protest, the fingers were replaced by his big fat cock. He thrust into me slowly and softly. His mouth never leaving mine.

Not long after, he emptied his seed inside me.

We stayed there a long while, sheltered by the rock, the reef stretching out beneath us in colors neither of us were looking at anymore, the current rocking us gently as the afternoon light shifted slowly toward evening above the surface of the water.

Eventually he pulled back just enough to look at me, his hand still resting warm against my hip beneath the surface.

“We should go back,” he said, though he made no move to actually do so.

“Should we,” I said.

He laughed, low and genuine, the sound of it carrying easily across the quiet water, and pulled me back against him instead.

The light kept shifting above us, the gold deepening toward the orange that meant evening was no longer far off, and neither of us moved toward the boat. There was something about standing waist deep in water this clear, sheltered by a rock that probably did not even have a name, that made the idea of returning to anything feel unnecessary. The villa would still be there in an hour. The staff would still bring dinner whenever we decided to ask for it. None of it required us to rush back to it.

“Sam called me three times today,” I said eventually, my cheek resting against his shoulder, the water lapping gently around us.

“Did you answer?” Julian said.

“No p>

“Good,” he said. “Whatever it is, it will survive until tomorrow p>

I thought about Sam at her desk in Brooklyn, almost certainly assuming the worst about my silence, and felt a small twist of guilt that did not last long enough to actually move me toward the boat. There would be time for Sam tomorrow. There would be time for everything tomorrow, the dinner with my mother, the careful dance with Jude.

None of it reached this far out.

“What happens when we go back?” I asked, the question slipping out before I had fully decided to ask it.

Julian was quiet for a moment, his hand moving in a slow circle against my hip beneath the water.

“I do not know,” he said finally. “I have not let myself think past Saturday morning yet p>

“That is not like you,” I said. “You plan everything p>

“I plan everything I can control,” he said. “I am beginning to understand that whatever this is between us has never been one of those things p>

I lifted my head to look at him.

“Does that frighten you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation, which surprised me more than the answer itself did. “It frightens me considerably p>

“Good,” I said. “It frightens me too p>

He smiled at that, a real smile, the kind I had only seen a handful of times since I had known him, and pulled me close enough that the water between us disappeared entirely.

We stayed there until the sky turned the deep orange that meant the sun had nearly finished its descent, and only then did we finally swim back toward the boat, slower than the crossing out had been, neither of us in any hurry to reach the shore.

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