The cove was half a mile from the hotel, a private crescent of sand. A sign at the path said GUESTS ONLY, SWIMSUITS OPTIONAL. By noon on the third day Marisol had stopped pretending she was there for the sun.
She lay on her back on a faded blue towel in a small red bikini. Her sunglasses were on and one knee was bent, and she knew exactly where he was. Forty feet down the sand, under a striped umbrella, a man in a white linen shirt had put down his book. He had not picked it up again in twenty minutes.
They had met that morning at the top of the path. He had been polite and a little shy. “I’m Anders,” he said.
“I’m going to sit down the beach and read. You may prefer to have the cove to yourself. Say so and I will go to the other end, no hard feelings.”
“Stay,” she had said. Then she felt brave and went on. “You may look.
Only if you want to. I will wave my hand like this. Then you look at your book, and you mean it.”
“Understood,” he said, and he went pink to the ears.
So she lay in the sun with a secret agreement in her pocket. The watching sat on her skin like warm oil.
She lifted an arm over her head and stretched slowly, arching her back. She felt his eyes travel the whole length of her. A flutter ran through her belly. She turned onto her side, facing him, and let one hip rise and the red cloth ride a little higher.
He did not move. That was the thrill of it. He gave her nothing but attention, and attention, it turned out, was all she wanted.
She reached behind her back and slid a finger under the strap of her top. She left it there and waited. Then she let it fall off her shoulder. She heard her own breath, thin and fast.
She lifted her hand to adjust her hair, and the other strap went. The red cups loosened. She lay back with the sun on her throat and the whole bright afternoon holding its breath.
She untied the knot at her back and drew the cloth away. The sea air touched her breasts like a mouth, and the heat that rushed through her went straight down. Her nipples drew tight. Her kitty throbbed, slick and swollen inside the tiny triangle that was all she had left on.
She turned her face toward him, behind her dark glasses. He had taken off his own. He was looking straight at her, his lips parted, one hand pressed flat against his thigh. It was exactly where he had promised to keep it.
She slid her fingers beneath the waistband, a little, and stopped. She smiled. He lifted his chin, just slightly, a question. She nodded.
She did it again, a little more. Her hips rolled up off the towel as though the sun itself were lifting her. She let her knees fall open to the warm wind. He saw it all, the dark flush, the glistening lips, and the slow circles of her fingers around her button.
She heard a sound from his direction like a man being pulled underwater.
She came with her head back and her mouth open, in the glare of noon. The surf laughed at her feet. A man she had invited drank in every shudder from forty feet away.
She could breathe again after a while. She propped herself on one elbow and lifted a hand to him, a small, grateful wave.
He lifted his book and held it up like a flag of surrender.
“Tomorrow?” he called, across the sand.
“If I feel like it,” she called back, grinning. “I will let you know.”