her swimsuit was no more than four inches across at the thin waistband, and tapered to a narrow strip before passing between her legs.
“Hardly enough to cover her crack,” Cowboy muttered.
“I sure wouldn’t mind trading places with the guy,” Jeremy said.
The guy was kneeling beside her, squirting suntan oil onto her back. She shivered as the stream licked her skin. Her smooth buttocks trembled slightly. The guy set the plastic bottle aside and began to spread the oil around. He wasn’t just lending a hand, he was caressing her. Jeremy could almost feel her sun-heated skin, smooth and slick under his own hands.
He hated to leave the scene behind, and Cowboy must’ve felt the same way. After walking past the couple, Cowboy stopped and looked back. Jeremy, grateful, did the same.
The guy was squirting onto one of her buttocks. The oil, glinting silver in the sunlight, streamed down her cheek. He started rubbing it around.
“Kind of wish she’d turn over,” Cowboy said.
“Yeah, turn over and forget her top’s untied.”
Cowboy grinned at him. “Welcome to Boleta Bay.”
“I do believe I like it here.”
“If you like it now, wait’ll you lay your eyes on Tanya.” With that, he started walking again.
Jeremy looked one more time, saw the guy sliding a hand down between the backs of her thighs, then turned away and hurried to catch up with Cowboy.
“Who’s this Tanya?” he asked.
“Nate’s gal. Wait till you see her. Guys’ve drowned themselves just so she’d pull them out.”
“Huh?”
“She’s a lifeguard. And head cheerleader at school. You see her bouncing around the sidelines…it’s a sight to make a blind man juice his skivvies.”
“You got the hots for her?”
“Show me a guy that doesn’t, I’ll show you a queer. I know gals who’ve got the hots for her.”
“But she’s Nate’s, you said?”
“The rotten dickhead. I reckon I’d lay waste to him so I could free her up, but he’s my best bud.”
“Liz might not approve, either.”
“Well, it ain’t about to happen. Nate or no Nate, only way I’d ever stand a chance with Tanya’s if maybe I grew six inches and got me a new face.”
“Maybe you could drug her.”
“Haw! Drug her?” Cowboy swept off his hat and whapped Jeremy across the arm. “Get out of here! You think I’m some kind of pervert? Christ, I don’t believe you! Sick! What kind of drug would it take?”
Jeremy walked beside him, beaming. If Cowboy had started suspecting he was a wimp and a dork, the remark about drugging Tanya had put a stop to it. He’d won the guy over, for sure.
“Can’t wait to see what she looks like,” Jeremy said.
“Don’t have to.” With the last of his cone, Cowboy pointed at a lifeguard station a short distance ahead. It was a white-painted shack on stilts, wooden stairs leading up to a deck on the ocean side. A girl stood on the deck, leaning forward a bit, hands on the railing.
“Is that her?” Jeremy asked.
“You got it.”
They walked closer.
Her head was turned away, so he couldn’t see her face. Nevertheless, she looked awesome. Jeremy guessed that she must be nearly six feet tall. Her bare legs, bronze in the sunlight, looked shapely and powerful. She wore red shorts, and a white T-shirt that wasn’t tucked in.
Neither the shorts nor the shirt was tight-fitting. Though the shorts were loose, the way they bulged in the seat told of strong round buttocks. The wind rippled her shirt against a flat belly and the high, thrusting mounds of her breasts. Her hair, in a ponytail, shone like gold.
If her face was any match for the rest of her…
“Yo! Tanya!” Cowboy called from the foot of the stairs.
Her head turned. She looked down from her high station. She had sunglasses on. They hid her eyes.
But what he could see of her face was even better than Cowboy had led him to suspect. Not just beautiful, magnificent. Hair like a thick curtain of golden threads drifted and shimmered across her high brow. Her cheekbones and jaw were prominent. Her skin was so deeply tanned that her teeth seemed starkly white, almost as if they gave off their own bright light. Her mouth was wide. Her lips, only slightly darker than the skin of her face, were full and luxurious. They looked like the softest part of her. To the magnificent beauty of her face they added something that seemed both slightly vulnerable and powerfully erotic.
“Hi there, Cowboy,” she said. Her voice was much as Jeremy might have expected, low and clear.