Chapter 80: Swimming Lessons [II]
He asked it so casually, so naturally, that it took a full three seconds for her brain to process the words.
When the meaning finally registered, the playful smile vanished from Priya’s face, instantly replaced by a massive burning blush that rushed all the way to the tips of her ears.
Panic flared in her chest as for a moment, she even considered it.
Priya violently scooped up a massive double-handful of pool water and shoved it directly into his face.
"Those two times were mistakes!" Priya stammered loudly with her voice cracking as she quickly paddled backward, desperate to put distance between them and reclaim her moral high ground.
Wren let out a loud, genuine laugh.
He didn’t try to argue or press the issue.
He simply reached out and sent a heavy wave of water crashing right back into her, splashing her square in the chest.
"Wren... I’m soaked." She said with a cute pout as the cool water slapped her skin, and within seconds... the pool had turned into a chaotic splashing war.
For a few brief minutes, they weren’t complicated adults tangled in a web of relationships and hidden agendas; they were just two kids from the same hometown, messing around in the water.
Once the splashing died down, they actually got to work.
For the next twenty minutes, Wren genuinely tried to learn.
He was a fast learner with his athletic body adapting to the mechanics of the water quickly, but he was still fundamentally out of his element.
’I mean I could buy the skill of course from the shop but I genuinely want to lear—’
"You just want Priya to touch you, forshame you perverted Host." Nyx immediately canceled out the thought in his head and he felt like punching her.
But Nyx wasn’t lying
Priya stayed close. She corrected his posture, showed him how to cup his hands, and kept a steadying grip on his arms whenever he started to sink.
"Alright, keep your shoulders relaxed..." Priya instructed with her hands hovering just inches from his ribs. "Push off the wall with both feet. Don’t tense up and just glide."
Wren nodded. He sank lower, letting the water rise to his collarbone, planted his feet against the submerged blue tiles, and pushed.
Wren drifted forward through the clear water with his frame displacing a heavy wave.
He surfaced a few feet away, slicking his blond hair back.
"I see the appeal now," he admitted with his deep voice carrying over the gentle lapping of the pool. "This beats baking on the sand... The humidity out here is ridiculous..."
"Right?" Priya smiled, effortlessly treading water as she followed him toward the center of the pool. "It’s totally different from the summers back home. Harlow gets hot, but this is like trying to breathe soup..."
She gestured downward. "Keep kicking your legs in a slow steady rhythm. You’re trying to walk on the bottom, Wren so let the water hold your weight."
Wren adjusted his posture, his legs kicking up small splashes.
"The food makes up for the heat, though," he noted casually. "I had a steak last night that probably cost more than a car."
Well he was exaggerating but room service with a movie here was insane.
Priya let out a bright laugh.
"I know! Dani ordered this... gold-flake dessert thing yesterday. It felt illegal to eat. Honestly? It was too rich... I’d kill for a greasy double cheeseburger from Sal’s Diner right about now..."
Wren chuckled. "Sal’s? You think they’d deliver to a private island?"
He honestly hadn’t been to Sal’s back in Harlow.
"Maybe if you tipped them a million credits," Priya joked as she swam directly into his space, needing to correct his form. "Here, stop paddling like a dog."
She reached out with her small cool hands pressing flat against the hard, wet muscle of his stomach to stabilize his core.
She swallowed hard, forcing her brain to ignore the heat radiating off his skin.
"Cup your hands a bit more... Like a shovel and pull the water past your chest."
He mirrored her movement, his large hands pulling the water back.
"Thanks... so abou–"
Teaching required proximity. Every time Wren tried to execute a breaststroke and his knee accidentally brushed against her thigh underwater, the conversation would stall for a millisecond.
Every time Priya had to reach out and place her hands on his bare, muscular waist to correct his alignment, her fingers would linger just a fraction of a second too long.
’Why does he have to be so tempting?’
Wren noticed it all, but he didn’t push.
"Alright..." Priya finally announced with her voice a little breathless as she wiped a wet strand of black hair from her forehead. "I think you’ve got the basics down. If you fall off a boat, you at least won’t sink to the bottom immediately."
"High praise..." Wren joked with his chest heaving slightly from the exertion.
"Let’s take a break," she suggested, swimming toward the shallow edge of the pool.
Wren followed her, his feet finally finding the solid textured mosaic of the pool floor. They waded over to the edge, both of them pulling themselves up out of the water.
The tropical sun beat down on the private garden, instantly warming their chilled skin.
They sat side-by-side on the smooth stone coping with their bare legs dangling over the edges as their calves were submerged in the cool rippling blue water.
’Uh...’
Priya pulled her knees up slightly, wrapping her arms around her shins.
She stared down at the water, watching the distorted reflections of their legs side-by-side.
Wren leaned back, planting his hands on the warm stone behind him. He stretched his long legs out with the water lapping at his shins.
He turned his head with his gaze sweeping over her profile.
The wet, dark hair clung to her back... The forest-green one-piece swimsuit was simple, it was simple but it hugged her soft curves perfectly.
"You look really pretty today," Wren said.
Priya’s breath hitched. She tightened her grip on her shins with her knuckles turning white.
The sincerity in his voice hit her harder than any practiced pickup line ever could as she slowly turned her head to look at him.
The sunlight caught the water droplets trailing down his neck, highlighting the rugged masculine lines of his jaw and the broad expanse of his chest.
He was intimidatingly handsome.
"You look..." Priya swallowed with her voice dropping to a shy murmur. "You look really handsome too, Wren."
The words hung in the humid air.
Priya unclasped her arms from her legs with her hands dropping to her lap.
She clutched her fingers together, her nails digging slightly into her own palms as her heart began to pound a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
This was the moment!
She had been agonizing over her feelings for days...
’Even though this will be the third time I’m trying it... I’m confident I can do it this time!’ Priya thought.
Derek was a good guy... He was sweet, he played video games with her, he always texted her back, and he made her feel safe...
He was the kind of guy a girl was supposed to settle down with but that didn’t mean Wren wasn’t one too, he was amazing but she just needed to focus on her own relationship and make it work.
She needed to fix this... She needed to draw a line...
Priya took a deep, shaky breath, preparing the speech in her mind.
She was going to tell him everything.
She was going to admit how much she had liked him back then, how he was all she used to think about. She was going to lay her feelings bare, and then she was going to tell him that they had to leave it all in the past.
She had to tell him that she chose Derek and that she needed closure.
Priya turned her body slightly, squaring her shoulders as she prepared to deliver the hardest words she would ever have to speak.
She looked up, meeting his eyes.
Wren was just watching her as the sunlight caught the dark strands of his wet hair.
Priya opened her mouth to speak.
The words died.
All the logic, all the rationalization about Derek being a safe choice, vanished from her mind.
The guilt that had been suffocating her all morning was suddenly drowned out by a desperate ache in her lower stomach.
’I’m a really bad person.’
She didn’t want closure... She just wanted him.
Wren saw the exact moment the fight left her eyes. He saw the tension in her shoulders melt, replaced by a soft vulnerability so he didn’t hesitate.
Wren shifted his weight, his hand leaving the warm stone behind him. He leaned in, closing the few inches of space between them.
Priya didn’t flinch... She didn’t turn her head as she simply let her eyelids flutter shut, her breath shuddering as she tilted her chin up to meet him.
Their lips crashed together.
SMACK!
It wasn’t a gentle tentative brush like how their kisses usually started..
It was a heavy collision.
The second his mouth molded over hers, a jolt of raw electricity shot straight down Priya’s spine.
"Mmmm..."
She let out a soft, helpless sound with her hands flying up from her lap to grip his wet, muscular shoulders as if he were the only solid thing left in the world.
Wren’s hand found the back of her neck, his thick fingers tangling in her wet, dark hair.
He tilted her head, deepening the kiss with his tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she gasped, opening for him willingly.
He tasted like tea... an intoxicating flavor of it that made her mind go entirely blank.
SMACK! SMACK!
The kiss escalated rapidly as Wren shifted his body.
He moved his other hand to her waist and then Wren gently but forcefully pushed her backward.
Priya didn’t resist.
She yielded to the pressure with her spine meeting the sun-warmed mosaic tiles of the pool edge.
"Wren~"
She lay back against the stone, half her body still dangling over the water. Wren followed her down, leaning his heavy torso over hers, caging her in.
Instinctively, Priya shifted her hips, lifting her bare, wet legs from the water and wrapping them tightly around his waist, pulling him flush against her center.
’She really likes doing this...’ Wren thought with a smug look on his face.
The feeling of his coarse swim trunks against the thin fabric of her one-piece sent a dizzying spike of heat straight to her insides.
It was amazing... It was terrifying... It was everything she had been trying to deny...
"Mmmh~"
She moaned directly into his mouth as her fingers dug into the hard muscles of his back, tracing the slick wet scar that was there.
Wren’s hand slid from her waist, moving slowly and deliberately up her side.
His calloused palm dragged against the wet clinging spandex of her forest-green swimsuit.
"Mmmh..."
His hand traveled upward, his broad palm landing heavily over her right breast.
’No...’
A residual spike of guilt flared in Priya’s chest.
The reality of what she was doing... lying on her back, wrapping her legs around another man while her boyfriend was on the same island hit her.
She twitched with her hand dropping from his shoulder to catch his wrist. She wanted to make a movement to push his hand away, to stop this before it went past the point of no return...
The exact second her fingers brushed his wrist, Wren flexed his hand and gave her breast a firm deliberate squeeze.
Her weak resistance shattered instantly.
"Mmmmh~" Priya moaned with the sound muffled against his lips. Her grip on his wrist dissolved as her hand fell uselessly back to the wet tiles.
The squeeze sent a shockwave of pleasure through her system, completely overriding her guilt.
She arched her back slightly, pressing herself deeper into his palm... They finally broke the kiss since the need for oxygen became too great.
"Haah... Haah..."
Priya’s head fell back against the stone with her chest heaving as she gasped for air.
’That was amazing...’
Her face was flushed a dark red, her lips were swollen and shining with saliva as she stared up at the tropical canopy overhead.
Wren hovered over her and his blue eyes were dark, tracking the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
He didn’t move his hand...
His palm remained firmly planted over her breast with the heat of his skin bleeding through the cold, wet fabric of her swimsuit.
A smirk curled the corner of Wren’s mouth as he pushed his weight, pressing his hips a fraction tighter against hers.
"You aren’t wearing a bra under this... you know?" Wren asked and the question sent a fresh shiver down her spine.
Before Priya could even process the blunt statement, Wren shifted his hand.
He pinched the wet fabric between his thumb and forefinger and deliberately, sharply flicked the hard, sensitive peak hidden beneath the spandex.
"Haaangh~"
The breathy gasp tore from Priya’s throat before she could stop it. Her back arched violently off the warm tiles with her hands balling into fists against the stone.
The sudden spike of pleasure was so intense it made her vision blur at the edges... She was really sensitive around her nipples.
"W-Wren..." Priya stammered. She tried to catch her breath, staring up at his handsome face. "I’m... I’m really sensitive there."
She said the words like a warning... a plea for him to stop but her body language betrayed her entirely.
Even as she said it, her thighs tightened their grip around his waist, squeezing her hips upward, silently begging for more of his touch.
Wren’s smirk deepened. He lowered his head with his lips hovering mere millimeters from hers. He was about to close the distance, ready to drag her completely under.
CLICK!
Wren froze and Priya’s entire body went rigid beneath him.
They both snapped their heads toward the source of the noise.
Standing just a few feet away, partially concealed by the broad leaves of a towering fern, was Dani.
The short energetic girl was holding her smartphone up, the camera lens pointed directly at them.
The visual was damning.
Priya was lying flat on her back on the pool edge, her legs wrapped intimately around Wren’s waist, while his large hand was planted squarely on her breast.
Dani slowly lowered the phone with an incredibly smug smile stretched across her face.
"Hehe~" Dani singsonged. "I’ve caught you two. Ch~ea~ters~."
