Chapter 7: Beach day
The salt air was a tangible relief, a brisk scrub for the mind. Anya walked a few paces ahead on the packed sand near the water’s edge, her striped tote bag swinging from her shoulder. She’d chosen the minimalist black bikini, the one that was more architectural suggestion than clothing. It held her breasts like an afterthought, the triangles of fabric connected by slender strings. The bottoms were high-cut, elongating her legs and showcasing the full, juicy curve of her thighs Alexey worshipped.
He followed, his eyes tracing the line where her skin met the suit, the faint dimples at the base of her spine. Her hair was up in a messy bun, loose tendrils sticking to her nape in the humidity. Every exposed inch of her seemed to drink the sunlight and reflect it back, brighter.
“You’re staring,” she said without turning around, her voice carrying over the crash of a wave.
“I’m navigating,” he replied, catching up to walk beside her. “Using the lighthouse.”
She snorted, bumping his hip with hers. “Cheesy. And inaccurate. Lighthouses warn you away from rocks.”
“Not this one.” He let his gaze sweep over her openly. “This one guides me home.”
“Ugh, worse!” She laughed, a real, unguarded sound that made a couple passing on rollerblades smile. But her eyes held his, warm and knowing. She enjoyed this. She enjoyed being the spectacle, and she especially enjoyed him being the captivated audience.
They spread their towel on a less crowded stretch, away from the volleyball nets and the blaring radios. Anya sat, then lay back on her elbows, stretching her legs out with a sigh. Alexey sat beside her, forearms resting on his knees, ostensibly watching the horizon. His periphery was a study of her. The soft swell of her stomach, the rise and fall of her chest with each breath, the way the black fabric strained at the apex of her thighs.
He wasn’t the only one.
A jogger’s rhythm faltered for a step. A man further down the beach, pretending to adjust his sunglasses, let his gaze linger. A group of women walking past offered appreciative, subtle glances. Anya absorbed it all like photosynthesis, a subtle vitality tightening her posture, a faint smile playing on her lips.
“See something you like?” she murmured, not looking at him.
“Always.”
“I meant over there.” She nodded almost imperceptibly toward a lifeguard station. A broad-shouldered guy in red trunks was leaning against the white wood, one foot propped up. He had the kind of tan that spoke of hours in the elements, and a build that suggested he took the ‘guard’ part of his job seriously.
Alexey felt a familiar, contradictory twist in his gut. A spike of possessive heat, immediately followed by a cold, curious thread of something else. He studied the man. “He’s checking the water. It’s his job.”
“Mhmm.” Anya popped the cap on her sunscreen. “He’s been ‘checking the water’ in this general direction for about four minutes. Help me with my back?”
He took the bottle, squeezing the cool lotion into his palm. He started at her shoulders, working the cream into her skin with firm, deliberate strokes. Her muscles yielded under his hands. He moved lower, tracing the line of her spine, then out over the swell of her hips, just above the bikini bottom. His thumbs dipped into the dimples there. She arched into his touch, a soft hum in her throat.
“So,” she said, her voice conversational. “Logistics.”
His hands stilled for a second. “Logistics.”
“We need to establish some parameters. Like a project plan.” Her tone was light, but the words were carefully chosen. “I’m not going to just… download Tinder and bring home a random. That’s sloppy. And potentially dangerous.”
“Agreed.” He resumed rubbing, his hands moving slower now.
“It has to be someone… manageable. Discrete. Understands the assignment.” She tilted her head, watching the lifeguard again. “A professional, maybe.”
“A professional what?” Alexey asked, though he knew.
She glanced back at him, a sly glint in her blue eyes. “You know. The kind who gets paid for a certain… skill set. Less emotional entanglement. More… technical proficiency.”
The words were a clinical dissection of the fantasy, and somehow that made them more visceral. Alexey’s mind, trained for systems and solutions, latched onto the framework. Parameters. Manageable. Technical proficiency. It was a way to corral the chaos of the idea.
“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” he said, his voice low.
“Since two-thirty this morning.” She rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin on her hands. The movement pushed her breasts together, creating a deep, shadowed cleavage. Alexey’s gaze was drawn to it, then flicked back to the lifeguard. The man was now looking directly at them. Or, more accurately, at Anya.
“He’s definitely not checking the water now,” Anya whispered, a smile in her voice.
“No.”
“What do you think his deal is? College kid? Aspiring actor? Just a guy who likes the beach?”
“I don’t know.” Alexey’s jaw felt tight.
“Guess.”
“Anya…”
“Come on. It’s a game. People-watching with stakes.” She shifted, the side of her breast pressing against her arm. “I’ll start. I think he’s probably nice. Polite. Calls his mom on Sundays. Probably has a girlfriend, but she’s back in Arizona or something. He’s lonely. Looks at women all day but never talks to them because it’s unprofessional.” She paused. “And he’s packing. Definitely.”
Alexey’s breath caught. “You can’t know that.”
“I have a feeling. It’s in the way he stands. That quiet confidence. Like he doesn’t have to prove anything.” She turned her head, her cheek now resting on her hands, looking up at Alexey. “Your turn. Guess.”
He looked at the lifeguard, really looked, trying to see what she saw. The easy posture, the wide set of his shoulders, the trim waist. His mind, treacherously, supplied calculations. Physics. Proportionality. “Maybe,” Alexey said, the word tasting strange. “Maybe… eight?”
Anya’s eyebrows shot up. A genuine laugh burst from her. “Eight? Inches? Alexey, my sweet, optimistic engineer.” She shook her head, still grinning. “Think bigger. The confidence isn’t just for show. That’s a man who’s been thanked. Profusely.”
A hot wave of shame and arousal washed through Alexey. He was hard, pressed against his swim trunks, thankful for the towel in his lap. The public nature of the conversation, the casual analysis of another man’s body, the sheer audacity of her—it was dismantling him.
“So, what, nine?” he managed, playing along, hating and loving the game.
“At least.” She turned her gaze back to the guard, a speculative purse to her lips. “Probably thicker than you, too. You know, substantial. The kind that makes a woman reconsider her life choices for a second.”
The description was a physical blow. Alexey saw it, vividly, impossibly: this stranger, his hands on Anya’s hips, her face etched with a pleasure Alexey couldn’t give her. The fantasy was no longer abstract pixels on a screen. It had a face, a tan, a red lifeguard trunk. It was standing fifty feet away.
Anya saw the conflict storming behind his eyes. She reached over and laid a hand on his knee, her touch suddenly grounding, tender. “Hey. Look at me.”
He did.
“It’s just a game,” she said softly, but her eyes were serious. “Testing the waters. Seeing what we feel. And you know what I feel?” She squeezed his knee. “I feel like the luckiest woman on this beach because the man I love is sitting right here, brave enough to play this crazy game with me. That’s the real turn-on, Alexey. You. Your mind. Your courage.”
The whiplash was profound. From clinical discussion of another man’s cock to a declaration of love. It left him reeling, disoriented, and fiercely devoted all over again.
He covered her hand with his, lacing their fingers together. “I love you,” he said, the words simple and essential.
“I know.” She smiled, then her eyes flickered past his shoulder. “Oh, interesting.”
“What?”
“He’s coming over.”
Alexey’s spine went rigid. He didn’t turn.
“Relax,” Anya murmured, her voice a low, thrilling command. “Just be cool. Let me talk.”
The crunch of footsteps in the sand approached. They stopped beside their towel.
“Hey,” a friendly, relaxed voice said. “Sorry to bother you guys. You haven’t seen a little white terrier around, have you? Woman up by the boardwalk lost her dog.”
Alexey looked up. The lifeguard was taller up close, his torso a V of lean muscle. His smile was easy, white against his tan. His eyes, a warm brown, went politely to Alexey, then to Anya. They lingered on her for a beat longer than strictly necessary, a flicker of male appreciation he didn’t bother to fully hide.
Anya sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. The movement was innocent, but it accentuated her cleavage. “No, I’m sorry, we haven’t,” she said, her voice friendly and light. “We’ll keep an eye out, though.”
“Appreciate it.” The lifeguard’s gaze dipped, then snapped back up. “Great spot you picked. Best view on this stretch.”
“We think so,” Anya said, smiling back.
There was a moment of suspended silence, filled only by the waves. The lifeguard glanced at Alexey, giving him a congenial nod. Alexey nodded back, his throat tight.
“Well, thanks anyway,” the lifeguard said. “Enjoy your day.” His eyes met Anya’s one more time—a flash of something unspoken, a connection acknowledged—before he turned and jogged back toward his station, his strides long and effortless.
Anya watched him go, then slowly lay back down on her stomach, resting her head on her folded arms. She was silent for a full minute.
“So,” Alexey finally said, his voice rough.
“So,” she echoed.
“What did you feel?”
She turned her face toward him. Her expression was no longer playful or speculative. It was open, raw, contemplative. “I felt a spark,” she admitted quietly. “A tiny one. When he looked at me like that. Knowing what we were just talking about. It felt… powerful. And a little scary.” She reached out, tracing a line in the sand between them. “And I felt you, sitting right here. And that felt… foundational. Like you said.”
She looked at him, her blue eyes clear and decisive. “The parameters are set. I’m not going to chase a lifeguard. But the target profile… it’s clearer now.” She took a deep breath. “I want to do this, Alexey. For us. But I do it my way. On my timeline.”
Alexey felt the world narrow to the grain of sand under his fingers, the sound of her breath, the vast, terrifying agreement stretching between them. He nodded, once. “Your way.”
She smiled, then rolled onto her side, curling into him, her head on his thigh. They sat like that, watching the endless ocean, the fantasy no longer a ghost in their bedroom but a tangible thing walking the beach in red trunks, waiting for its moment to be summoned.
They sat like that until the sun began to dip, gilding the waves in copper. The walk back to the apartment was quieter, filled with the comfortable silence of shared, heavy thoughts. The scent of salt and sunscreen clung to their skin, a fragrant souvenir of the afternoon’s revelations.
Back inside, the cool air conditioning was a shock to their sun-warmed bodies. Anya dropped her tote bag on the floor with a thud. “I’m sticky,” she announced, heading straight for the shower. “And I need wine.”
Alexey heard the water turn on. He stood in the living room, still feeling the grit of sand between his toes, the phantom image of the lifeguard’s easy smile etched behind his eyes. The ‘target profile’ was now a living, breathing template. It made his stomach flutter with a nauseating excitement.
He poured two glasses of Pinot Noir, the deep red liquid catching the late afternoon light. He carried them to the bedroom, setting them on the nightstand. The shower stopped. A few minutes later, Anya emerged wrapped in a towel, her skin glowing and her blonde hair damp. She picked up her glass and took a long sip.
“So,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “We need a real plan. Not just beachside speculation.”
“I thought the plan was ‘your way, your timeline,’” Alexey said, sitting beside her, the mattress dipping under his weight.
“It is. And my way requires intel.” She swirled the wine in her glass, watching the legs slide down the crystal. “I don’t know the first thing about… procuring that kind of service. The idea of vetting strangers online feels gross. And dangerous.”
Alexey nodded, sipping his own wine. The fruity tang did little to calm his nerves. “So, the professional idea is out?”
“Maybe not out. Just… on hold.” She turned to face him, her expression serious. “I think we need a test run. A controlled environment. With someone we can… trust isn’t the right word. Someone who understands the dynamic and won’t make it weird afterward.”
“Who could possibly understand that?” Alexey asked, a nervous laugh escaping him.
Anya’s eyes held his. “Claire.”
The name hung in the jasmine-scented air. Claire was Anya’s oldest friend from college, a whirlwind of a woman with a razor-sharp wit and an appetite for life that bordered on the voracious. She worked in high-end event planning and had a stories-from-the-front-lines dating history that was both legendary and slightly terrifying.
“Clair?” Alexey repeated, his voice tight.
“Yes, Claire. She’s my best friend, Alexey. She’s maybe a slut,” Anya said with a blunt, affectionate shrug, “but she’s a good friend. And she’s had a lot of experience. More than both of us combined, probably.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to talk to her about this.” Alexey put his glass down, running a hand through his hair. “It’s embarrassing. She’ll look at me and just see… I don’t know. Something small.”
“She will not.” Anya’s voice softened. She placed her hand on his cheek, turning his face toward hers. “She adores you. She’s always saying I lucked out. And she doesn’t judge. Seriously. She’s the most morally un-shockable person I know. If I tell her I’m exploring something and I need her help, she’ll ask for details and then immediately start researching the best way to do it. That’s just who she is.”
Alexey imagined it: Claire’s wide, expressive eyes, her rapid-fire questions, her uncanny ability to dissect any situation with surgical precision. The humiliation burned hot in his chest. “I’ll feel exposed. It’s one thing for you to know. It’s another for someone else to know what I… what we…”
“What we want?” Anya finished for him. She shifted closer, her towel slipping a little. “This is my fantasy too, now. Remember? I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing it for us. With you. Claire would get that. She’d be a resource. Maybe even a… facilitator.”
The implication was clear. Alexey’s mind reeled. The fantasy had just morphed from a vague professional to his girlfriend’s best friend. The intimacy of that was staggering, a new layer of risk and vulnerability that made the lifeguard seem like a simple, distant toy.
“I don’t know, Annie.”
“Think about it,” she pressed, her thumb stroking his jaw. “No strangers. No mysterious profiles. Someone I trust implicitly. Someone who’s seen me at my worst and loves me anyway. She’d be doing me a favor. You’d just be… the wonderful, complicated beneficiary.”
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And imagine how much easier it would be for me. To have her there. To help me feel safe. To maybe even… coach me through it. You know she’d have opinions on technique.”
A shocking, vivid image flashed in Alexey’s mind: Claire, not as a participant, but as a director. Leaning against their bedroom wall, arms crossed, nodding approvingly or offering critique. The sheer audacity of it short-circuited his resistance. The embarrassment was still there, a solid lump in his throat, but beneath it surged a darker, more compelling current of arousal. It was the ultimate surrender of control, not just to Anya, but to her world.
He let out a long, shuddering breath, his forehead touching her shoulder. “You’re sure she won’t think I’m pathetic?”
Anya pulled back, her gaze fierce. “She will think you are the most secure, adventurous, loving man on the planet for giving me this space. For trusting me this much. That’s what I’ll tell her. And it’s the truth.”
He searched her face, finding only unwavering certainty. His own desire, confused and contradictory, met hers halfway. The fear didn’t vanish, but it was now woven into the fabric of their excitement, inseparable.
“Okay,” he whispered.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Contact Claire.” The words felt like jumping off a cliff.
A brilliant, triumphant smile broke across Anya’s face. She kissed him, hard and sweet, tasting of wine and resolve. “Good,” she murmured against his mouth. She reached for her phone on the nightstand, the screen lighting up her determined expression. “No time like the present. Let’s see if she’s free for a very, very interesting girls’ night.”