by Tara Sivec
“Ready to have your kidneys harvested?” Baker asks me with a joking wag of his eyebrows as the door slowly creeks open by itself.
“Jesus, you’re a tool,” I hear muttered from the other side of the door, which reassures me it didn’t just open on its own.
“Ember, this is Dax Trevino,” Baker introduces.
When the door opens wider for us to enter, I get a good look at Dax as Baker and I walk through the door he holds open. I’m guessing he’s in his late thirties, but he hides it well with one of those short, lumberjack beards, the sides of his head shaved, and his thick, dark brown hair on top long enough to push back away from his face. Once we’re in the door, Dax starts walking in front of us, leading the way down a long, brightly-lit hallway.
“Haven’t seen your pretty face at the gym the last two weeks,” Baker says to Dax’s back as we walk, his hand still clutching mine, when we take a right at the fork in the hallway.
“Been busy,” Dax grunts, as he pushes open a door in the middle of the second hallway, leading us back outside.
We stop a few feet away from the door, and I look around at where we are. A brick wall that easily stands around twenty-feet in the air encloses the small outdoor area off the building, housing a small, rectangular, crystal blue pool built into the ground. Cement takes up the perimeter of the pool and goes all the way from the edges of it to the brick wall.
There are a few small solar lights built into the bricks every so often to give off a soft glow of light around the area, and all along the interior wall of the pool are a small handful of spotlights under the water, lighting up the water.
“Dax started studying for his degree in zoology after he was discharged from the Army, and got a job here at the aquarium at the same time,” Baker explains to me as I continue looking around, seeing a bunch of rubber water toys like balls and little rubber animals littering the cement area around the pool. “For the last few years, he’s been working with the animals you’re about to experience. He was also a police detective back in the day, before all of that, if I remember correctly.”
“Oooh, fancy,” I tell Dax.
“Yeah, I’m pretty amazing, and I’ve done a lot of amazing things in my short life,” Dax says in a gruff, bored voice. “If you guys want to go ahead and get your suits on, the bathrooms are the two white doors over there.” He points to two white doors next to a black one.
“I’ll just go get them ready.”
With that, Dax turns and walks away, disappearing through the black door.
“You’re not going to tell me what he’s getting ready for us, are you?” I ask Baker as we walk toward the bathrooms.
“Nope.” He smiles, pausing in front of one of the white doors to lean down and give me a quick kiss on the cheek before disappearing inside.
See? Just because this is an official first date, doesn’t mean anything. You don’t get a peck on the cheek when you part to go into the bathroom on a first date. That’s a casual, “I like you because I’ve known you long enough, and I don’t want you to forget about me while you’re in there getting naked” thing.
As soon as I get inside my own bathroom and lock the door, I drop my bag on the ground, rest my hands on the sink, and stare at myself in the mirror. Satan himself must have been the one who invented first official dates, because even with the kiss on the cheek, I’m still in hell.
I have to walk out there in front of Baker, in a bikini.
We get to see Baker wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, with water dripping down his muscular chest.
But I have to walk out there in front of Baker, in a bikini. I should have packed a respectable one-piece.
You should have packed nothing but nipple tassels. We’re trying to get laid here, remember?
Grabbing three more Altoids from the tin I shoved in my bag, I suck it up and get to work undressing. Where I absolutely do not get tangled in my jean capris, and almost trip and fall over when I start thinking about Baker right on the other side of the wall from me, getting naked.
Baker was already in the pool when I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, so luckily I was able to walk calmly over to the edge of the pool without him noticing, and I didn’t need to decide if I should walk slow and sexy, concentrating on not tripping, or run as fast as I could and do a cannonball.
Unfortunately, my feet stutter to a stop right at the edge by the stairs when I get close enough to get a better look at Baker. The water stops just below his waist, and he’s leaning with his back against the inside ledge of the pool, his arms stretched out on either side, resting on the cement. I can see he’s wearing black, board-shorts-style swim trunks, and they’re resting low on his hips, where I have the most glorious view of the indents in his waist, and a wet, happy trail that goes down from his belly button and disappears in his trunks under the water. He looks like he’s getting ready to shoot the cover of Sports Illustrated. Water droplets bead against his ripped ab muscles, and I want to lick every last one of them off of him.
“Jesus Christ,” I hear Baker mutter, blinking out of my fantasy to see that he’s pushed away from the wall, and he’s now standing in the middle of the pool, staring up at me.
My red bikini isn’t anything crazy. It’s just a halter-style top that ties around my neck, with a matching red pair of bottoms that tie on either side of my hips. I might have picked this bikini because the halter-style pushes my boobs together and makes them look out of this world, but whatever. I also maybe had a slight fantasy when I shoved it in my bag that I’d walk out here and Baker wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off me. Which seems to be exactly what’s happening now, as I stand here at the edge of the pool with his eyes slowly moving up my body until they reach mine.
Working on a farm all my life kept me in shape. When I moved here, after a few disastrous gym attempts, I just started doing workouts in the comfort of my own home, with YouTube videos. I’m in pretty good shape. And considering Baker took a super long time to blatantly scan my body, I think he agrees.
Does that mean he wants to have sex with me?
You brainless twat, of course it means he wants to have sex with you. Judging by the look in his eyes, it won’t be sex. It will be a nice, hard fucking.
But it’s our first official date! It’s too soon!
Jesus Christ, here we go again.
“I can’t believe it’s so hot out here,” I suddenly blurt, saying the first thing off the top of my head to get my brain to shut up.
Jesus, just get in the pool and stop trying to talk.
I slowly walk down the stairs and into the pool before I say something else stupid. The water that stops at Baker’s waist comes up to right under my boobs as I wade to the middle of the pool and stop in front of him.
“Dax needs us over against the wall, with our arms out in front of us,” Baker tells me as he starts walking backward in the water to where he’d been lounging when I first came out here.
I do everything I can to avoid staring at his chest and licking my lips as I follow him.
The nice thing about this pool is that the shallow end is separated from the deep end with an incline. When Baker leans against the inside wall of the pool, I stand next to him on the shallow-side and at the top of the incline, which brings my head up closer to his.
Which brings my mouth up closer to his. Which I suddenly realize when he turns to look at me, his wet, bare shoulder brushing against mine.
“Put your arms out in front of you, palms up, just under the surface of the water,” Baker instructs softly.
God, he’s been so quiet. Does that mean he’s bored? Am I boring him with my nervous weirdness?
I do as he says, our eyes still locked on each other. I know it’s early May, and the pool water is heated, but Jesus, whenever he looks at me, it feels like the temperature goes up fifty degrees. I thought I had it bad with the want and the need before Baker kissed me, but now that I’ve had his tongue in my mouth, now that I know what he tas
tes like and what his body feels like against mine, it’s all I can think about.
What if Dax is going to set sharks loose in this pool? Sharks can smell arousal. Or is it just blood? Whatever. They’re both bodily fluids, one of which I am currently producing as Baker glances down at my lips, and I remember that thing he did where he sucked my tongue into his mouth. This pool is where I will die… without experiencing a Baker orgasm.
“Just stand there and let them get used to you!” Dax suddenly shouts, my eyes moving away from Baker’s to see Dax poking his head out of the black door. “When they start crawling all over you, they’re used to you.”
The door slams shut and his head disappears again.
Do sharks crawl? Oh, Jesus, there are so many things that could be about to crawl all over me, none of which are making me feel good right now. Spiders crawl. Rats crawl. Motherfucking snakes crawl!
“Should I be afraid right now?” I ask Baker, turning back to look at him with my arms still out in front of me. My muscles shake with how tightly I’m squeezing them to hold as still as possible so as not to spook whatever animal is about to crawl all over me and eat my face. “I don’t exactly have a good track record lately with animals liking me.”
Baker looks over my shoulder, and a smile breaks across his face as he nods in that direction.
“You definitely have nothing to be afraid of.”
All of a sudden, I hear the clickety-clack of a bunch of nails against the concrete floor, followed by a chorus of what can only be described as a sort of squeaky honking.
“Oh my God!” I scream in excitement, my head turning just in time to see no less than ten little brown otters scrambling across the concrete floor, tripping over each other as they race toward the pool.
A few stop long enough to grab rubber toys in their mouths before every single one of them gracefully dive into the water and disappear underneath, their bodies undulating as they zip through the pool, like little, brown, furry dolphins. It doesn’t take long for a few of them to swim right up to Baker and me, climbing right onto our hands and crawling up our arms.
“They’re like puppies!” I laugh when one scrambles right up my arm, and I hold it against me as it squeak-honks, sniffing every inch of my face and sticking it’s little wet, cold nose in my ear.
I can’t stop giggling and smiling as the otters take turns climbing up into our arms before jumping off of us to dive back under the water. After we’re sure they all like us and they’re okay with us being in the water with them, we move away from the wall, watching a few of them flip onto their backs, their little webbed back feet and tails moving them around in circles as they float.
We spend the next two hours watching the otters swim, letting them climb all over us, and laughing hysterically when Baker challenged me to race him in a lap. Two otters wouldn’t get off his back the entire time he tried to swim, and I had to keep stopping when several of them kept swimming in front of me, blocking my path. They really were like puppies, and they loved to play fetch with the rubber pool toys. Which then started a competition between Baker and me to see if we could get to the toys faster than one of the otters. Baker underestimated my throwing and my swimming skills, and I beat him by three.
“All right, my babies, it’s time to dry off and get to bed,” I hear Dax announce, right before my I suck in a deep breath and my head disappears below the water.
Baker was in midthrow of tossing me across the pool when Dax came out, trying to prove to me for the last fifteen minutes that he was still a man, since I kicked his ass in ball-retrieving, and Ember-tossing was a great way to show off his masculinity.
Which backfired, since every time he’d get in position and squat down until his shoulders were under the water, all ten of the otters would climb him like a tree. They’d be on his arms, his shoulders, his back, and two would even squeeze on top of his head. Which would make both of us laugh as I stood with my back to him. He’d grab my hips and try to launch me into the deep end. The laughter and the otter tails hanging down in front of Baker’s eyes made it impossible for him to throw me more than a few feet each time.
Just like every other time Baker has tossed me, as soon as I go under, I turn and open my eyes, bubbles floating out of my nose when I laugh, watching all the otters dive off of Baker and swim toward me under the water, lit up with the spotlights. I push off the bottom of the pool, swimming up to the surface, breaking free with loud laughter when I come up with three otters clinging to me.
“Let’s go! Time for bed!” Dax says a little louder this time.
The adorable, well-trained animals all start swimming over to the edge of the pool toward Dax, climbing out and squeak-honking like crazy as they sniff his legs and try to climb up them. He bends over and gives each of them head scratches before pointing over to the black door that I see is now propped open.
“Bed.”
Baker and I swim over to the edge of the pool where Dax is standing, resting our elbows on the ledge as we watch our new little friends scamper away, their nails clicking against the concrete as they clamor all over each other to get inside the open door.
“This was the best night of my life,” I tell Dax. “You get to do this every day? Frolic, and laugh, and play with the most adorable animals on the planet?”
He nods.
“I do. Best job in the world.”
“Are you single?” I ask, watching out of the corner of my eye as Baker’s head slowly turns to look at my profile, and I bite down on my bottom lip to stop myself from smiling. “Because this guy is kind of a dud. No real redeeming qualities.”
“I honestly don’t know how you can stand looking at him,” Dax says with a straight face.
“It’s a chore; let me tell you.” I sigh dramatically.
“You’re doing the Lord’s work.” Dax nods.
“All right, eat shit, both of you,” Baker finally mutters, making me laugh. “Thanks for sneaking us in here after hours.”
Baker lifts his arm up and holds his hand out toward Dax. “I think we’re even now.”
Dax hesitates for a minute before he bends over to grab Baker’s hand, shaking it once before dropping it and taking a step back to shove his hands in his pockets.
“We’ll never be even. I’m alive, because of you,” Dax says.
“You’re alive, because you pulled your head out of your ass,” Baker replies, the two of them having a stare-down, which indicates they’ve had this conversation before. “We’re even.”
When we first got here, Dax had been wearing black athletic pants and a long-sleeved, high-neck, black swim shirt. Now, he’s wearing a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a T-shirt. Both of his arms from where his T-shirt ends, down to the tops of his hands are covered with tattoos. I can also see some ink peeking out of the edge of his shorts on one leg, and the entire calf on his other leg is also covered with vivid, colorful markings.
“God, now you made this weird and all emotional,” Dax complains. “I’m not hugging you.”
“Good. You get too handsy when you hug anyway,” Baker tells him, as Dax starts walking backward away from the pool.
“I’m heading home in a few minutes after I put the kids to bed. The door you came in will lock on your way out. Take your time. I’ll see you at the gym this weekend.” Dax holds two fingers up to his forehead and gives Baker a salute before turning and disappearing inside the building, the heavy black door slamming closed behind him.
My chin is still resting on my hands on the edge of the pool, as I lazily kick my legs out behind me, not ready to leave this private little oasis just yet.
“I don’t know if you remember,” Baker speaks, mirroring my pose, our elbows touching as our legs gently glide through the water behind us. “But Dax was in the ring the first day you came to the gym.”
I think back to that day, and I can’t believe I didn’t recognize Dax as being one of the guys I saw boxing. I’m assuming it was probably because it was the day I met Baker fo
r the first time in person and found out he wasn’t just a brainless gym rat. I was more than a little preoccupied.
“He holds the gym boxing title. He’s a beast when he gets in there.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t always the case,” I reply, knowing that since they met at The Barracks, Dax has a similar history to Baker in regards to being wounded in action.
“Definitely not. It took a lot of months for Dax to get his shit together and realize he could be just as much of a badass now as he could before he got too close to a roadside bomb. Those tattoos aren’t there just because he likes colorful skin. And honestly, him joking with you like that, even if he did it with absolutely no humor, was a fucking shock. Dax doesn’t make jokes. I don’t even think he knows how to smile. But that’s a story for another time. He’s a stubborn asshole, which is why he still thinks he owes me.”
“Well, if his owing you means we get future otter playtime, I say let it be.”
Baker chuckles at me as I put my feet on the bottom of the pool, standing up until the water is at my stomach. As soon as I place my hands on the edge of the pool, I feel Baker move up behind me. His arms come around me and he rests his hands on the edge of the pool on either side of mine, caging me in. He’s standing close enough that I feel the heat from his chest against my back, but he’s holding himself just far enough away that we’re not touching.
For the love of God, touch me already!
“Are you done being nervous around me now?” Baker asks softly, his lips right by my ear.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I whisper, a small whimper coming out of me when his lips suddenly press against the side of my neck.
He opens his mouth, grazing his teeth gently against the skin there before reattaching his lips, his tongue swirling around that spot against my neck that I had no clue led right to my vagina.
“The car ride here proves otherwise,” he speaks against the flesh of my neck, trailing kisses down to my shoulder, his arms still caging me in, and the rest of his body having no contact with mine. “I think you held your breath the entire way.”