“Good morning, Princess,” Caroline greeted softly, bending down to press a kiss to the top of Rhetta’s head before dropping down into the empty chair beside her.
Rhetta turned to face her and smiled, leaning in for her morning kiss. “Good morning, baby. Did you sleep okay? You looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to wake you.”
Caroline chuckled. “A girl needs her beauty sleep, especially when someone keeps her up all night.”
Rhetta’s smile brightened. She put down her coffee cup and clambered onto Caroline’s lap, her arms looping around Caroline’s neck. Caroline smiled and kissed her, holding Rhetta safely on her lap with a hand curving around the back of Rhetta’s tanned thigh.
“So, Rhetta, what’s on the schedule for today?” Caroline asked as Rhetta scattered soft, gentle kisses on her neck.
The tip of Rhetta’s nose nuzzled into Caroline as she murmured, “Surfing, strolling on the beach, good food and drink, and me worshiping every inch of you at each and every chance that I get.”
Caroline purred. Her girl definitely knew her well. It all sounded like her idea of paradise. “Mmmmmm… That sounds perfect, babe.”
“Oh and presents,” Rhetta added, nipping at Caroline’s jaw. “Lots and lots of presents.”
Caroline grinned. “Presents as in plural?”
Rhetta laughed at the memory of the Valentine ’s Day that Caroline had staged for her.
“Yes presents as in plural.”
Rhetta reached down and picked up a large white box from under the table. “This is definitely your big present. Do you want it now or later?”
She knew that Caroline wouldn’t be able to wait. She had been relying on Caroline not being able to wait.
“Now!” Caroline exclaimed, wiggling in her seat and making Rhetta giggle as she clung onto Caroline’s neck to keep herself steady. Not that she would ever have fallen. Caroline’s hand was still firm on her thigh, keeping her safe despite Caroline’s excitement. “Can I? Can I? Can I?”
Rhetta nodded and Caroline immediately lifted the lid on the giftbox, tossing aside the tissue paper and pulling out a wetsuit with a black, patterned body and black and white striped arms and legs. It wasn’t the hottest wetsuit that Caroline had ever seen, but it was the thought that counted and she put on a big smile for her fiancée.
“A wetsuit! Thanks, Princess!”
Rhetta could see the hesitation in Caroline’s eyes and smirked. “Not just any wetsuit. This is a very special wetsuit. One that will keep you and your favourite animals safe.”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “I’m confused.”
“Apparently, according to scientists, this wetsuit will keep you safe from sharks. The dark patterns keep your body hidden and the stripes make them think that your arms and legs are poisonous fishes. So you can surf safely and no shark will get hurt because they accidentally hurt you,” Rhetta explained. She was very proud of this gift. She had searched online for hours for the perfect gift and as soon as she had stumbled across this wetsuit, she knew that she had found it.
“Babe!” Caroline exclaimed, looking at the wetsuit with a new kind of wonder. “This is awesome!”
Rhetta grinned. “Look inside the box. There’s something else.”
Caroline reverently folded up the wetsuit and reached into the box. She pulled out a roll of smooth, shiny plastic with patterns similar to the wetsuit.
“This is a sticker that you can cut and stick to the bottom of your board,” Rhetta explained. “There’s no point in keeping you safe if a shark thinks your board is a seal or something and eats you up anyw-”
Before Rhetta could finish, Caroline was kissing her. “Best. Present. Ever.”
Rhetta smiled brightly. “You like it?”
Caroline put the box aside and cuddled Rhetta into her. “I do. They’re perfect, Princess. I’m so lucky to have a fiancée who knows me so well and cares about what I care about.”
“How could I not care about what you care about when you have such a big, beautiful heart,” Rhetta whispered, laying her hand over Caroline’s heart. “I love that you love people who don’t love themselves. I love that you care about creatures that other people hate. You’re a beautiful person Caroline, inside and out. I’m the lucky one.”
Caroline smiled as Rhetta leaned into kiss her. “Happy Valentine’s Day, baby. Now, why don’t we get you a coffee and head for the waves?”
“That sounds perfect.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
After an hour in the surf, Rhetta was exhausted. Jetlag was starting to take its toll and her underdeveloped ‘surfing muscles’ – the idea of which Rhetta had once scoffed at, but was now convinced of – couldn’t keep up with Caroline perfectly tuned surfer’s body. So Rhetta gave her girl a salt-laced kiss and paddled back to shore to leave Caroline to her Valentine’s Day treat. When she looked back out to the ocean, she saw Caroline sat on her board a little way out, watching to make sure that she got back to shore okay. Rhetta blew her a kiss before peeling off her wetsuit, slowly revealing her bikini clad body to give Caroline a show. When she was done, she let her wet hair loose, swept it back and struck a pose. Out at sea, Caroline put her hand over her heart and made a show of falling backwards off her board.
Rhetta giggled at her dork of a fiancée and settled herself on a towel with a book that she had no intention of reading. Instead, she propped herself up against Caroline’s rolled up towels and watched her fiancée carve up the waves, getting more and more worked up as Caroline’s moves grew more daring with the size of the waves.
There was no denying that Caroline’s ‘swag’ drove Rhetta wild. Whether she was rocking a half tucked in shirt, an oversized snapback or pair of low-slung jeans, she made Rhetta’s heart race. But never did Rhetta feel more under Caroline’s spell than she did when she watched her surf. There was something captivating about the way that Caroline held her body, every muscle tensed and glistening. It made Rhetta’s mouth dry.
After another half hour of watching, Rhetta’s eyes began to grow tired. The sun was like a blanket over her skin and the sound of the ocean slowly soothed her to sleep.
…
“Good morning, R.”
Rhetta opened her eyes and turned see that Caroline had slipped into the wrought metal chair beside her.
It was the morning after their first moonlit kiss and Rhetta had decided to escape the craziness of the team breakfast and take her morning coffee on the hotel’s rooftop terrace. She wanted to think about the night before and knew that being confronted with Caroline for the first time with all their teammates in attendance would only make her panic. Not about the thought of her and Caroline being something more than friends, but that whatever something that Caroline wanted wouldn’t be enough. She was in way too deep to keep it casual and she didn’t think that she could stand finding out that was what Caroline wanted with all of their friends in attendance. So she had told herself to stay cautious, to keep part of herself back. To let Caroline come to her.
But as soon as she saw Caroline that morning, her hair loose and wavy, and an eager, confident smile gracing her lips, Rhetta couldn’t hold back.
“Hey!” she grinned. “You’re here!”
Caroline laughed at Rhetta’s exuberance and lifted up her coffee cup for her to see.
“Seems like we have the same morning routine.” She took a sip and gestured with a nod to the view of the ocean. “It’s gorgeous up here, isn’t it?”
Rhetta nodded, unable to tear her eyes away from the play of the breeze through Caroline’s loose hair. “Yeah.”
Caroline put down her cup and smiled at Rhetta. “So, do I get to give you a good morning kiss?”
Rhetta’s eyes immediately widened at Caroline’s forwardness, but she found herself nodding anyway, her pulse racing.
Caroline’s smile became a lopsided grin at Rhetta’s reaction. When Rhetta blushed, Caroline leant in and kissed her softly, her hand cupping the gentle curve of Rhetta’s jaw.
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“Mmmmm,” Caroline purred. “Now this is something to wake up for.”
Rhetta’s stomach fluttered and she reached out to draw Caroline’s lips back to hers. Her whole body was tingling and suddenly kissing Caroline felt more essential than breathing. But unlike the night before, their kiss didn’t deepen. It stayed soft and slow, like a morning kiss shared between two long-time lovers on a lazy Sunday morning.
When the kiss broke, Caroline’s thumb brushed lazily over Rhetta’s warm cheek. “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since last night.”
Rhetta bit her lip and giggled softly. “We’ve only been apart for a few hours. A few hours when we were sleeping.”
A roguish smile turned up the corner of Caroline’s lips and her hand slipped down to play with the baby hair at the back of Rhetta’s neck. “You might have been sleeping, but I was lying awake thinking about kissing a beautiful girl on the beach.”
Rhetta smiled shyly. “I hope that beautiful girl doesn’t mind you kissing me good morning.”
Caroline chuckled, her eyes full of Southern charm. “I gotta admit, I thought that she might have minded, but she seems to be okay with it.”
Rhetta blushed. “I think that she could get used to it.”
Caroline raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. “Oh, so this is going to be a regular thing, huh, Germany?”
The warm glow in Rhetta’s belly suddenly disappeared, replaced with cold dread that she had already fucked this up. “Oh, I – uh – I didn’t…”
“You mumble, you know that?” Caroline teased. “It’s cute. You’re cute.”
Rhetta’s dread turned to embarrassment. She had always been self-conscious about her mumbling, ever since she had had to recite the alphabet aloud in front of the class in preschool. Add to that the fact that she had already put her foot in her mouth assuming that Caroline wanted whatever was happening between them become a ‘thing’, and Rhetta was awash with embarrassment. Especially after Fenton’s warning that Caroline could be a bit of a player. She should have known better. She should have realised that all Caroline wanted was… Rhetta didn’t even know that.
“So Mumbles, can I take you out on a date tonight?”
Caroline’s question took Rhetta completely by surprise. “A date?”
“Yeah, you know,” Caroline bumped her shoulder against Rhetta’s and smiled. “I take you out for nice meal and try to prove that I’m worthy of another kiss and maybe your phone number by the end of the night. That is, if you meant it when you said that you could to get used to this…”
Instead of kissing Rhetta’s lips again, Caroline touched a polite kiss to her cheek. She had fallen so hard for Rhetta in such a short time and for the first time in her life, she was seeing her future in another person’s smile. Every nerve ending in her body was screaming at her to not fuck it up, so she was going to do this right. Even if it meant an immediate future of sexual frustration and dates over Skype from an ocean away.
The kiss to her cheek made Rhetta forget her momentary embarrassment and she found herself smiling dreamily at Caroline’s effortless charm.
“What about the girls?” she asked, thinking about their teammates and all the teasing that they would get if there were to go on a date.
“I’m willing to suffer through it if you are,” Caroline said softly. Rhetta still looked hesitant and Caroline knew that she had to lay it all on the line if she was going to have a chance with her. Well, but maybe ‘all’ of it. She was pretty sure that Rhetta would bolt for the hills if Caroline told her that she loved her. “Look R, I really like you. It’s no secret that I don’t usually do the whole dating thing, but I really want to try and make something of you and me. I know that we’ve only just met, but this…” she gestured between them “it feels right, you know?”
Rhetta was too busy swooning about the way that Caroline said her name to realise that she had asked a question. But when the silence dragged on, her brain caught up with her ears.
“R?” Caroline asked again.
“I feel it too,” Rhetta admitted, her shyness returning.
Caroline’s smile was tentative and hopeful and Rhetta wanted to kiss her for it. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Rhetta smiled back.
“Is that a yes then?” Caroline asked. “Can I take you on a date tonight?”
Rhetta bit her lip and smiled, nodding. “Pick me up at seven?”
Caroline grinned and picked up her cooling coffee. “It’s a date.”
…
“R.”
“R.”
“Rhetta.”
The shock of cold water dripping on her face woke Rhetta with a start. She opened her eyes to see Caroline’s face hovering above her. Rhetta’s alarm faded and she smiled up at her fiancée. Right up until the point when she realised that it had been Caroline’s wet hair dripping on her face that had woken her up in the first place.
“Caro!” she admonished, trying to push Caroline away with a hand to her chest.
But Caroline didn’t budge.
“Not without a kiss, Princess,” Caroline said teasingly, her lips quirked in a smirk.
Rhetta couldn’t say no to that, so she rolled her eyes good-naturedly and allowed Caroline to kiss her. It started off soft and slow, but soon turned more heated when Rhetta’s arms went around Caroline’s back, bringing Caroline’s toned, wet, abs down onto Rhetta’s sun-heated skin.
Rhetta moaned into Caroline’s mouth at the skin on skin contact, at the contrast of hot and cold, dry and wet. Caroline brought her hips down until they were flush with Rhetta’s, her weight bearing down on Rhetta in a way that turned her moans into a whimper.
“Caro,” Rhetta whimpered, her hands sliding down Caroline’s wet, naked back. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that they were on a beach. A public beach. A public beach that might very well be deserted at that moment, but might not be at any moment. “Caro, please.”
After a moment more of dictating their kiss, Caroline rolled off her and collapsed onto the sand.
“Hey, you can’t blame me for wanting to get hot and heavy with my girl when she’s all laid out waiting for me, practically naked.”
Rhetta rolled her eyes again, but she was smiling as she tried to catch her breath. It was Caroline’s Valentine’s Day and she might have worn a bikini that was a little skimpier than usual for the occasion.
“Speaking of,” Caroline continued, “how about we go pick up some fresh seafood and I can fire up the grill. I don’t feel like having a heavy meal later tonight when there’s better things that we could be doing.”
Rhetta knew where it was going but she asked anyway. “What does that have to do with me being naked?”
Caroline smirked.
“I know how much you hate tan lines and you know that I like a good view when I’m grilling. Something to wet my appetite.” Caroline turned to Rhetta and winked. “I promise to get you all slicked up with suntan lotion to stop you from burning. There won’t be an inch that these hands miss.”
Rhetta could feel her temperature rising as her eyes fluttered closed at the innuendo in Caroline’s words.
“You know,” she breathed, desperate to change the subject before she let Caroline take her then and there, “I was dreaming about our first morning coffee together.”
The lust in Caroline’s eyes was suddenly replaced with a child-like wonder. “Really?”
Rhetta smiled and nodded her eyes drifting closed again as she own desire faded to contentment. “Mmhmm. It was nice to relive it again. You were quite the charmer.”
Caroline smiled and rolled over to press a kiss to Rhetta’s cheek. “Well I did have the most beautiful girl in the world to impress.”
Rhetta’s eyes flickered open and Caroline stared deeply into them, the backs of her fingers training over Rhetta’s bare stomach. “You’re still the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“And you’re still the same charmer,” Rhetta murmured, nudging her nose agains
t Caroline’s before kissing her slowly.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
For the first time in years, meeting Rhetta at an airport was making Caroline the bad kind of nervous.
She stared down at the three hour-old coffee in front of her, swirling the foamy remains around and around the soup bowl sized mug. Beside it lay a book she had read no more than twenty pages of since she had picked it up in the stateside departures lounge. She couldn’t summon up enough of will to care about the words that she was reading. Not when her mind echoed with the cold tone of Rhetta’s last goodbye.
…
As the plane started to descend, Rhetta felt every muscle in her body tense with trepidation. Her eyes stung with the tears that she had refused to shed and her throat was thick with the words she wished that she could take back.
The pilot’s voice rang out through the cabin. His overly jolly voice told them that they were thirty minutes from landing, that the local temperature was a balmy 17oC and that he was sorry for the delay to the flight.
Rhetta shook her head, trying to snap herself out of the ridiculous fear that was gripping her body. She picked up her iPad, determined to distract herself. She had always been good at losing herself in a book. But as soon as she touched the power button, her gut clenched.
The large, glossy screen lit up with the image of Caroline mid-laugh as Rhetta pressed a kiss to her cheek. Rhetta swallowed and touched her thumb to the home button. The iPad unlocked as it accepted her fingerprint and the lockscreen image melted away to show her homescreen – a photo that Sam had taken at their last family wedding. She and Caroline were dancing, pressed close together under a bower of fairylights and paper lanterns. Caroline had just told her that she was beautiful and Rhetta, her cheeks touched by a blush, had tilted up her face to thank her with a kiss.
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