“Dare you,” was all he’d said. He’d grinned at me then, that wicked, rakish grin that was so Rafe.
The boy from the past and the man from the present blended together in front of me as Rafe waded into the dark water.
There was enough ambient light out from the stars and moon to see him immediately begin to struggle out of his tux. He didn’t throw the clothes back out, he just pushed them toward shore. I smiled and bit my bottom lip. Mama H would have his head for losing those expensive clothes if they just sunk to the bottom of the lake. Not that she’d chastise Rafe too much. He’d always been one of her favorites. She was a sucker for an outcast, and the secret that few had been able to see was that Rafe was always just as much of an outcast as me, no matter how many friends he had at school.
Because at the end of every day, he had to go back to that cold, unfriendly place. His house. To that family. Where he might as well have been the haint, for all the attention anyone ever paid him.
In front of me, he swam closer, water droplets streaming down his now bare chest.
My stomach clenched at the sight. Jesus, did he have any idea what he did to me? Was this all intentional? Or was he just remembering the good times, too?
I hesitated, not having ventured far from the shoreline, but then he waved me in. “Come on, we need to get that paint off you.”
Oh, right. We’d come to the lake for a practical purpose. They probably didn’t want the blue paint going down the drain into their septic system. After all, what if it stained the antique, porcelain clawfoot tub? We couldn’t have that, could we?
I hurried into the water, feeling silly for hesitating so long at the shore. It was foolish to get lost in the past. I thought I’d put it behind me a long time ago.
The cold water on my body instantly shocked me all the way awake, out of the last of my orgasmic haze from earlier.
God, that was dangerous. He could take me so high I didn’t want to come back to earth. But I had to, because I have a plan. A plan that was very important, to get everything that I—
He swam closer once I was in up to my chest. “Here, I’ll help.”
Then, before I could stop him, he’d begun to rub my back, massaging the paint off my skin. Some of it was dry and flaky, but some was still wet. Combined with the water of the lake, it turned into a sort of blue mud. It covered Rafe’s hands as he continued to wash me.
He moved around from my back to my front, massaging my shoulder as he went.
I’d just been floating there, kind of stunned and moving my hands in the water as if I was treading it even though I was still firmly on solid ground. The sandy bottom of the lake was only a little bit rocky. I was able to stand with ease.
Rafe’s hand crept around to the underside of my breast and about a thousand different alarms went off throughout my body. They were good alarms. Spasms and bright light and electricity sparking up and down my body, back and forth from wherever his hand was, straight down to my cunt.
I squirmed in the water and then finally swam away from him. All that was left was the blue paint covering my chest and my, and my—
I glanced down into the dark water but couldn’t see much of myself. I couldn’t see my pussy covered with the evidence of their pawing. I did manage to stay strong for the actual Trial, but I could only handle so much.
As I swam away, I reached down and began to wash myself. When I felt clean—the freezing cold water helped the illusion—I moved on to my breasts.
A little devil sat on my shoulder, though. Because instead of keeping my back turned to Rafe, I flipped around so that he could see me. Well, see as much as he could in the dark. How well had his eyes adjusted? Could he just make out the outline of me, or not even that? If he could see the outline, could he see the way that I plucked my nipple as I washed the paint away?
From the way he froze and suddenly dipped downwards in the lake, like he’d forgotten to paddle, I thought that maybe he could see me. Or he had a very good imagination.
I knew what I ought to do. I knew what a smart woman would do.
A smart woman would stomp out of this water, grab something to cover herself even if it was only his soaked tux jacket floating near the shore of the lake, and get her ass home before she stirred up any trouble.