Northern Proposals (10 page)

One lap, and I hadn't given up any noticeable lead.

At the back again, I got my breath, and I saw her feet kicking. She had gained a few feet on me, and the race was half over. I was going to win.

I wasn't sure I wanted to win.

At the front, when I looked, I didn't see her at all. She had gained at least a body length, but there was only one lap left, and going around me on such a short course would give her a longer trip.

As I turned towards the back of the boat for my last lap, I felt her brush my foot. She was right behind me. We bumped briefly again on both of the turns at the back of the boat. I was getting tired. If
the race had been four laps, she would have easily beaten me. It was going to be close.

As we swam the last length, I could tell she was slightly ahead of me, but she would have a more difficult turn around the front of the boat. We began the turn together, leaving it very close, then just one more stroke and it was over.

I stopped, grabbing the boat, panting, and turned to her. She wasn't even winded.

"It was close," I said, panting. "I don't know if you won."

"Tie?"

I smiled and nodded.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded
again. "Ready to climb out though."

She hovered around me, clearly worried about me, but I was fine. I climbed onto the boat, still panting,
then grabbed a towel and lay down on the front deck. Jessica climbed up after me, settled her own towel next to mine, and lay down.

She let me catch my breath and said, "I've never convinced anyone else to do something like that."

"Agree to a wager?"

"Oh, I do wagers all the time. And this one has a really tame reward. But
I've never gotten anyone to agree to a wager about something like swimming or a foot race." She looked at me pointedly. "I'm trying to tell you something."

"Your past girlfriends haven't engaged
in athletic activities with you?"

"I could get a few to go walking."

"And this is important to you."

"Yes."

"I'm enjoying it, too, Jessica." I paused. "You're a much better swimmer than I am, but that was fun."

We
lay for a while, not talking, just soaking up the sun and letting the summer warmth dry us off. A few boats drove by, but none buzzed us. It was perfect.

"You're throwing yourself at me," she said.

I turned away from her, not responding. I was, and I didn't understand why. I was straight. What was it about her that meant I was throwing caution to the wind? What was it about her that made my heart pound every time she touched me?

I wasn't at all sure I wasn't going to feel like a fool, and a complete tease, and perhaps a bitc
h, on Monday when reality set in.

I turned my head back to face her and told her all that.

"Your heart pounds when I touch you?" she asked me.

"Yes."

She smiled at me. "Then I'm not going to stop touching you until you ask me to stop."

I returned her smile
, my temperature rising a little bit higher.

We didn't talk about it anymore. We both knew where this was going, at least for the evening.

We sunned ourselves for a while longer. With my dark complexion, I didn't have to spend a lot of time lying in the sun for a tan, but the warmth felt good. While lying there, I realized I wanted her to propose more of her wagers. I was having fun. I wanted to win a massage. I liked the idea of being blindfolded by Jessica; it felt deliciously naughty. I wondered how I could encourage her, but bringing it up myself was far more direct than I wanted to be.

She must have read my mind. "I want to propose another wager."

I smiled. "What did you have in mind?"

"Want to swim some more?"

"Not another race, but swimming sounds good."

"You will dive into the water and swim somewhere on a single
breath of air. I will count to five and dive in after you. If I can touch you from where I surface, I win."

"What if I want you to dive in first?"

"I thought perhaps you enjoyed being chased."

I smiled. She was right.
"What do we each get to win?"

"If I win, I get permission to touch you however I want for the rest of the weekend."

"Oh, a big wager." I thought about it. "I'm not ready for the most intimate of what that could mean. And no tickling. Hmm. The entire weekend is a little intimidating to me.

"All right," she said. "
Until nine tonight. If you win, you get to touch me however you want, no restrictions, but I don't have permission to touch you yet. And no tickling."

"I could
still tease the crap out of you." I thought about it. "All right."

"No climbing back out of the water," she said. "When you surface, you can tread water or float, and no swimming further away."

I smiled then thought about my strategy. There were two basic choices. I could simply try to swim as far away as I could and hope I could swim further on a breath than she could and possibly lose her besides. Or I could try to trick her. I decided to try to trick her.

I climbed to my feet, took two deep breaths, then held the third and dived into the water, as straight down as I could. I swam straight down into the cold water then turned and swam under the boat. As soon as I was under it, I turned again and began swimming towards the back of the boat.

I heard the splash as she dived in after me. I didn't waste time turning around to see if she was following me. If she didn't see where I was going, the faster I got away from her, the less likely she'd see me through the water and know which direction to go.

I swam in a straight line directly back of the boat until my lungs were burning before rising to the surface. I
lay on my back in the water, floating and panting madly for air.

I felt her hand cup my ass as she surfaced next to me.

I grinned at her as we lay on top of the water, panting for air. Finally she said, "You played to win."

"Of course. I think I'm going to enjoy having lost."

"You didn't fool me when you went under the boat," she said. "The water is clear enough I was able to see you slip under it. I almost lost you after that though. You were right at the edge of visibility when I went in after you and turned the right direction."

"I would have won if there was a
longer pause."

"Probably, but it had to be possible for both of us or it isn't any fun."

She was treading water next to me while I was floating, her hand slipping inside the top of my bikini bottom in back, her fingers resting there.

"Let's swim for a bit?"

I nodded. We swam slowly around the boat. She lured me under the boat. "Hold onto the boat and wrap your legs around me," she said. I did what she told me to do. She let me pull her very close to me, then slipped one hand around my waist and into my bikini bottoms again. Her fingers cupped my bottom while her other hand pulled my mouth to hers.

She kissed me for a long time. She tasted of lake water, and I was looking forward to doing this again when we were both dry. Her hand on my bottom felt nice. Her hand slipped out of my bikini and began tracing a line up my spine. That felt nice, too.

I was breathless when she relinquished my mouth. We stared at each other.

"Am I going to freak out on Monday?" I asked her.

"Jade, I don't know. You're the first virgin I've kissed. But I'm not worrying about it anymore."

"I'm not a virgin," I told her.

"You are to this."

"I've never had so much as a passing thought about another woman," I told her. "Not even a single 'I wonder'. I've never even been remotely curious. It was all boys, all the time."

"When is the last time your heart pounded for a guy?"

"Is your heart pounding?"

She nodded. "You're my dream woman, Jade. Other than not knowing how you're going to feel when you wake up from this fantasy, you are exactly what I would describe. I can't begin to tell you how hard it is not to rush this so fast it would scare you."

She didn't wait for me to respond but pulled me into another kiss, one hand behind my head, the other running slowly up and down my side, brushing against the side of my breast.

I wanted her to do to me whatever she wanted. But I realized that while I wanted her to do whatever she wanted to me, and I had some ideas what that meant, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do to her.

The kiss was amazing, and when she tried to break it, I reached behind her head and pulled her back, hungry for more. She giggled briefly into the kiss, but joined fully into it.

We broke the kiss by mutual consent, and I stared at her.

"Jessica, I am having no end of thoughts about what you're going to do to me."

She grinned. "Good."

"I'm not having any about what I'm going to do to you, except more kisses. I don't think that's a good sign."

She thought about it, then her smile broadened. "You will. Besides, I'm a seventy-thirty girl."

"Seventy-thirty?"

"Seventy percent of my fantasies are about what I'd do to you. Thirty percent are about what I'd make you do for me."

"Make me?"

She nodded.

My heart began pounding harder. I squeezed her more tightly for a moment.

She whispered into my ear. "Do you like the wagers?"

"They're fun."

"Want another?" I nodded. "If I win, I get to watch you shower. What do you want if you win?"

"You have to answer any question I ask between now and when the dinner dishes are over. What's the competition?"

"I bet that you can't dive down to the bottom of the lake, but that I can."

"How deep is it?"

"I'm not answering that."

"But you know?"

She looked around for a minute. "We've drifted a bit. We're not over the deepest point anymore. I can't reach the deepest point."

"Do I have to bring something up from the bottom? I bet it's gross."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Deal."

"We start away from the boat," she said. "No kicking off the boat."

She pulled away and we swam out from under the boat a few feet. "When you come up, have your hand over your head like this," she said, demonstrating by waving her hand in the air as if she were asking a teacher for permission to talk. "It makes sure you don't hit something coming up."

"Who goes first?"

"You do."

"If I make the bottom or you don't, I win."

"Right."

"Okay." I took two deep breaths, held the third, then flipped, my feet waving in the air for a moment to give me an extra push towards the bottom. I swam hard, and after a few seconds, I could no longer see anything. Below me it was black and a little intimidating. I swam as deeply as I could, but I never saw the bottom.

My ears were hurting from the pressure. I turned around and began swimming for the surface. I came up a dozen feet away from Jessica. She turned to me when she heard me surface and swam over to me.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded, breathing hard. "Ears hurt."

"Still?"

"No. I never even saw the bottom."

"I suppose this is where I tell you that I'm a scuba diver."

"No air tanks."

"No, but I know how to stop my ears from hurting. Be right back."

She backed away from me a little, took her own breaths,
then dived under the water the same way I had. She was gone for a long time, long enough I started to worry, but then she came to the surface, panting. She raised one hand out of the water and let some muck fall from her hand.

"
Eww," I said.

She laughed. "A little.
It's just mud. It washes off." She rinsed her hand in the water. "A little more sun, then head in?"

I nodded. We swam to the boat, and she put her hands on my ass as I climbed out of the water. I turned around and laughed at her.

"Helping," she said with a grin.

I grabbed a towel and dried my face before lying down on the boat deck. She joined me, both of us lying on our stomachs, our heads turned to face each other.

"If we bought the cabin, I want Internet access," I told her. "And a pontoon boat."

"Or permission from Jon to use this one?"

"I'd feel weird using it if I'm here without you."

She thought about it. "We can work that out later. I agree on the
Internet access. I bet we could get our bosses to let us work one day a week remotely."

"Drive up on Thursday night?"

"Yes. Or come home Monday night. Do you have half a down payment?"