The Wrong Bikini

Eighteen Months Ago

Everyone at Kingley University knew that the ski trip was about sex, not skiing. The Ski Club had three hundred members and at least two-thirds never did any skiing. In fact, I'd never been skiing before in my life. But if you weren't in the Ski Club, you couldn't go on the ski trip, and no ski trip meant no sex. And ski trip sex was legendary. Last year, a hot guy named Harvey Wang had fucked three girls in the same bed at the same time. Five years ago, a girl named Josie Polder, who was now a journalist and sometimes appeared on the TV news, had been gangbanged by

nine

guys. I couldn't even imagine it.

Actually, I was busy imagining it when my housemate, Lucy, snapped me back to my senses.

"You're away with the fairies," she said after tapping my shoulder repeatedly, shaking her head. I looked around, my entire body except my head submerged in the heated spa pool, convinced I must have a guilty look on my face. Luckily, if I was blushing, it was hidden by the low evening lights that gave the spa room its relaxing glow.

There was a sign on the wall that said 'Strictly no alcohol in the pool' in English, French and German, but the array of empty glasses lined up along the edge of the tiles was testament to how little the hotel staff cared when British university students came to stay. "Are you getting more to drink?" I asked, hopefully, watching my other housemate, Millie, getting out of the pool, her bikini stretched over her big tits, dripping water. The three of us had shared a house in Kingley for the past three months; a two up two down with my bedroom converted from the downstairs sitting room. The single shared bathroom was inevitably a disaster zone of toiletries and makeup, especially as the three of us were on the synchro swimming team, which necessitated daily showers and untold hair washes.

"Probably," Millie confirmed, as Lucy climbed out after her. Where Millie was curvy and booby, Lucy was slim and toned, and I was somewhere in between.

"I'll come, I'm thirsty," I said, standing up and feeling the cool air go straight through me.

"I'll bet you are," Millie grinned.

I rolled my eyes. "Har har."

"Thirsty for Nathan," Lucy added, making eye contact with me and then making a blowjob gesture with her hand by her mouth.

"So what if I am? I don't see either of you getting a shag tonight." Out on the side of the pool, I picked up a fresh hotel towel from the stack and began drying myself.

"In my case, that's because apparently every girl on this trip is straight," Lucy said. Lucy was a year older than the other two of us and had been the one who'd recruited us for the synchro team; she'd later admitted that she'd hoped that we were into girls so she could seduce us, but unfortunately for her, both Millie and I were completely straight. "But I don't know what Millie's problem is," she finished, giving Millie a wicked look.

"I'd be happy to take my knickers off if another Harvey Wang came along," Millie said, and we all took a moment to picture sexy Harvey. Well, Millie and I did; Lucy just looked disgusted at our desire for a hot guy.

"Are we going back up to the room to get changed?" I asked, putting a hotel robe over my bikini once I was acceptably dry.

"I wasn't going to bother. The bar will be shut in less than an hour," Lucy said.

"Well that's okay for you, but if I lean forwards in this my tits are gonna fall out," Millie said, cupping her boobs through her robe.

"Oh no," Lucy said in a sarcastic tone as we began walking out of the pool room. "My giant udders will fall out, whatever will I do? Maybe you could ask one of the hundred dudes who can't stop staring at them."

Apart from a handful of unlucky guests staying on the top floor, basically the entire hotel had been taken over by the ski club. As we walked through the lounge towards the bar, you could hear people speaking English everywhere, and the atmosphere was heavy with desperation. Nobody wanted to miss out on the doubtlessly wild sex that everyone else was having. I saw a couple snogging in a shadowy corner and felt a pang of jealousy just from that.

"Tequila, six shots," Millie said when we got to the bar. "You can charge it to room three-twenty."

"No, some guy's put his card back here and he says to charge everyone's drinks to it," the barman said in a heavy French accent.

"Oh, nice," Lucy said, picking up the first tequila shot and downing it before the others had been poured. "Wonder who it is?"

"It's Wesley Coles," I said, impressing both of them with my knowledge. "I overheard him saying he was going to do it earlier."

"Ladies," Wesley said, coming over from a nearby table with a drink in hand. "Did I just hear my name?"

He was one of those guys who thought he was God's gift to women because he had a lot of money, but in reality he was a gangly, pasty blond with teeth too big for his mouth. Millie and I just smiled politely, but Lucy openly scoffed and began to walk off. He pretended not to notice.

"Thanks for the drinks," I said, trying to smile just enough to be civil but not enough to encourage him.

"You're welcome." Just the way he said those words was somehow creepy. "I'm trying to get a little game going, if you're interested?"

"What kind of game?" Millie asked, guardedly.

"A card game," he said, chuckling to himself like he knew there was a catch but he wasn't going to tell us.

"No, thanks," I said, and we both turned back to the bar to pick up our drinks and follow Lucy.

"I don't know why, but he always gives me a weirdo vibe," Millie said, once we were out of Wesley's earshot.

"One day the police are definitely going to find someone buried in his garden," I said, and Millie laughed.

"Oh, here she is. Paige, I was just talking to your biology pal," Lucy said, loudly, when she saw us approaching. I looked to see who it was, then averted my eyes and tried not to blush when I saw it was Nathan.

"Hi," I said, feeling like an idiot.

"Hi Paige," he replied. He was leaning with his back against the wall, one hand in his pocket and one hand holding his drink, his hair pushed back on the top of his head, exposing more of his face, which suited him. I often idly wondered whether our kids would have his dark hair or my blonde hair, and his deep, brown eyes or my blue ones. Really I should have known about inherited characteristics, but human biology was my least favourite topic. Nathan was also taking biology, but like Lucy, he was a year older than me, so we only shared one class. He was handsome but with a kind of unkempt look which drove me crazy. Then I realised I'd been gazing at him like a schoolgirl with a crush for far, far too long and I suddenly looked away again. Nathan laughed.

"I haven't seen you around this evening much," he said, starting the conversation with ease.

"We've been hanging out at the spa pool," I explained.

His eyes slid down to my robe, guessing what I must be wearing underneath. "Oh, cool," he said, returning his eyes to my face. "I haven't really tried out the pool here; I'm not much of a swimmer."

"You're talking to the wrong girls, then," Lucy quipped.

"Paige was telling me about your synchro team. Sounds hardcore," Nathan said, glancing at Lucy again before giving me a sideways look.

"Don't get her started on it," Millie advised him. "She could talk for hours about the university championships."

"Well, as much as I'd love to hear that," Nathan said, taking his hand out of his pocket, "I'm supposed to be joining in some kind of card game." He was holding the deck of cards in his hand and he waggled them to prove his point.

"Not with Wesley?" Millie asked, full of scorn.

"Why not? Do you think he'll try to hit on me?" Nathan asked, giving me another look. I laughed more than the joke deserved.

"Suit yourself," Millie said.

"Paige, you in?" Nathan asked, turning to face me for the first time.

"Yes," I told him, fully aware that I had just turned Wesley down not two minutes ago. But now I knew Nathan wanted to play, things were completely different. Fuck, he was so hot. Hot in the way that made you want to blow his mind by being a complete slut for him, because you knew he'd never say a word to anyone. The filthy things I could do for him... do to him...

"Babe, are you okay?" Lucy asked, fixing me with a look of concern. "You keep zoning out."

"Oh, yeah, no I'm fine," I said, quickly, to cover up.

"We'll see you back in the room?" Millie said, as Nathan took a step in my direction.

"Yeah, will do," I told her, turning so I could walk with Nathan. Did he know I fancied him? I was doing a terrible job of hiding it, but guys were usually so dense about these things.

"I didn't know you were into skiing," Nathan said to me as we walked back towards the bar.

"I'm not, really. I just wanted to come on the trip," I explained. Did that make me sound slutty? After all, the only reason to go on the trip was to have sex, unless you actually liked skiing.

"Oh, right."

"What about you? Do you like skiing?"

"Yeah, my parents taught me when I was about five and we've been every year since," he told me.

"That's so cool," I enthused. "I've always sorta wanted to learn."

"I can teach you a bit this week. If you like."

Personal skiing lessons from hot Nathan. Yes.

Falling on my arse on slippery snow, strapped to giant planks in front of hot Nathan. No.

I hedged. "Maybe."

The other people Wesley had dragged into his card game were mostly either too drunk to really know what they'd agreed to, or got easily distracted by other conversations. Two girls I didn't recognise, who were the only other women there, disappeared within two minutes because of a text one of them got, and I was really only hanging around to flirt with Nathan. He hadn't even dealt the first hand when a couple of lads dropped out to go back to the bar, which only left Nathan, Wesley and I, and Wesley at least had the sense to know when he was third wheeling.

"Well, now it feels like going up to my room to get these was pointless," Nathan lamented, shuffling the cards absent-mindedly.

"We can still play," I insisted, doing my best to smile cutely at him.

He noticed, and smiled. "Oh, yeah? Do you know how to play poker?"

I shook my head. "Can you teach me?"

"I think so. It's not that complicated, when you know how. The complicated part is all the betting."

With a deft hand, he dealt out ten cards, split into two rows of five. "This is my hand," he said, pointing to the ones nearest him. "And this is yours."

"Why are they face-up?" I asked, looking at my row of five.

"Just so I can teach you, at first. Okay, so, there are three main types of hands you're trying to get using your five. Straights, which are a run of cards in number sequence, like two-three-four-five-six or nine-ten-jack-queen-king. Flushes, which are five cards all of the same suit. And then there's four-of-a-kind, three-of-a-kind, and a pair. You can also get two pairs, and a full house is three-of-a-kind plus a pair. With me so far?"

I nodded. "So you already have a pair, right?"

"A pair of kings, yeah. My other cards don't really make anything useful, so I'm going to hold onto my two kings and discard the other three, to see what I get." He put his three cards to one side and drew three more. "There, now I have a pair of twos, too. That's two pairs."

"And I've got... nothing?" My cards were a jumble of numbers and suits.

"Well, you've got three clubs. You could discard the other two, and hope to draw two more clubs for a flush."

I gave him the two cards and he dealt me two more. "Nope, both diamonds," I said.

"Yeah, but now you have a pair of fours," he pointed out. "My two pair is a higher hand, since it's harder to make, so I would win that hand."

"I get it. Is a flush higher than two pairs?"

"Yeah. Don't worry too much for now." He scooped up all the cards and, after a brisk shuffle, dealt them back out. I looked at him: absorbed in the process of moving the cards around, and lit by the soft bar lights, I thought he was even more good-looking than ever. His eyes suddenly flicked over to me and we made eye contact, and we both laughed, nervously.

"Okay," he said, trying not to sound flustered. "Now you've got four hearts, so you should definitely try and get a flush."

We exchanged my only non-heart card for a new one. "Spade," I said, examining it.

"I've got a pair of nines, so if I discard three... still just a pair of nines. It beats your hand, which is just a queen-high, since you haven't got any pairs or anything."

"This is harder than it looks," I said, trying to elicit sympathy.

"Don't worry, it's all luck, really. The skill is in knowing when to bet and when to fold. Ready to try without the cards face-up?"

As much as I was enjoying this crash course in poker hands, I was more interested in Nathan himself. "How about we play best of three?" I suggested. "Winner gets to choose a dare."

Nathan looked at me, and I kept my gaze steady in return. There was a very clear implication, which he picked up.

"No way. Decide the dare first, then we compete. Loser has to do it."

There was a bit of steely determination in him that I hadn't encountered before: in our biology classes, he'd always been kind and accommodating. I liked him even more for it.

Casting my mind around the hotel, I tried to think of something challenging but not cliché. "How about... the loser has to jump off the high dive."

Nathan scoffed. "What are we, eight?"

"Alright, then. Loser has to jump off the high dive, naked."

I have no idea what made me say it. It just came to me in a little bubble of annoyance when he made his dismissive comment.

He eyed me, not sure whether to smile. Clearly he had the advantage here, but there was always a chance...

"Okay. Let's do it."

I smiled. "I'm trusting you not to cheat, though."

"I won't," he said, grinning as he dealt the cards out.

In the first hand, I forgot that the cards all needed to be the same suit for a flush. I thought they just had to be all-red or all-black. But the second time, he dealt me three sixes straight away, and my three-of-a-kind beat his pair. It was the first one I'd won and I celebrated while he sat back and smiled, tossing his losing cards across the table theatrically.

"Beginner's luck," he said, teasingly.

"Watch me win the next one, too," I hit back.

This time I had another jumble of suits, all different numbers plus a jack. I studied them, wondering if it was allowed to discard all five, but then I realised that I had three, seven, nine, ten, jack. If the three was an eight, I'd have a straight. Carefully, trying not to look excited, I got ready to give him the three, but then I paused. He looked at me, his eyes on me, trying to judge what decisions I was making. I thought about the dare. Fully naked, jumping off the high dive. I had to admit that actually, I wanted to do it. And I wanted to have the 'dare' as the excuse to do it in front of him. It would definitely lead somewhere fun. I gave him the three, and the nine. Then handed me another two cards. I peeked at them. Eight of diamonds, king of spades. If I hadn't given him the nine, I would have won..

"Well, I've got two pairs, again," he announced, turning his cards over. "What about you, Paige?"

I giggled. "Just a king... I was trying to get a straight."

There was a definite tension now, as he shuffled the deck together and put it down in a neat pile between us. "So," he said.

"So," I replied.

We looked at each other.

"Time to put up," Nathan said, "If you're not going to back out. Is the pool even open at this time of night?"

"It was supposed to close hours ago, but nobody seems to care," I told him.

He seemed to be waiting to see if I was joking, or to see if I was really going to go through with it, but then he accepted it. "Okay. Lead the way."

As there was nobody in the pool complex, the lights had gone off, and they flickered back on when I inched the door open, making me jump. It was eerily quiet with a loud echo, and Nathan's shoes made a racket as he followed me across the tiled area, around the main pool to the end with the diving board. It wasn't excessively high or anything, only five metres, and in the calm, quiet pool it actually looked a bit inviting.

"I'll climb up," I told him as we reached the stairs at the base, taking off my robe. "Then I'll take off my bikini at the top and throw it down to you, so you can give it back when I've dived in."

I wasn't sure if it had sunk in, fully, because Nathan was trying not to look at my boobs now I was only wearing the bikini. I just smiled, turned, and climbed, leaving him to watch.

The brightly lit pool wasn't exactly the most romantic place to undress in front of someone for the first time, but my heart was pounding as I reached the board, standing halfway down it, my fingers playing lightly with the catch on the back of my bikini top. He was looking up at me, expectantly, so I smiled back and gave him a wave. Then I looked straight ahead; looking down at him would make me lose my nerve. My whole body felt jumpy and excited, and with a big rush of adrenaline I undid the clasp of my bikini top, letting it fall over my shoulders, and threw it off to the side for Nathan to get. Then I pushed down my bottoms, too, and stooped down to throw them the same way. Wasting no time, I took two steps forwards to the edge of the board, tried to remember the bits of training I'd been given years ago when I'd learnt to dive, and jumped.

I was in the water in what felt like no time, the sound of bubbles fizzing in my ears. Being underwater was familiar and I was calm, kicking my legs gently so I'd float to the surface. It actually felt liberating to be swimming completely naked, instead of squeezed into a tight-fitting costume, and I spread my legs experimentally before I broke the surface, taking a big breath and flicking my wet hair out of my eyes.

"Woo!" Nathan cheered from the side, clapping his hands and filling the room with echoes. I smiled and gave him a wave again, treading water, then kicked my way over to the side of the pool nearest him, taking hold of the tiles and looking up, keeping my body submerged and out of view.

"Here you go," he said, putting my bikini down on the side just next to me. "Do you need a hand getting out?" He had a smirk on his face and I laughed.

"I'll manage. Turn around."

When he had done as he was told, I heaved myself up and out onto the side, squeezing my hair to get the worst of the water out and pushing it back out of my face. I stood there naked for a moment, looking at his back, revelling in the feeling of being exposed like this. All he needed to do was turn his head... The cool air on my nipples was causing them to get hard, but the fact I had no clothes on right next to Nathan wasn't helping.

Then, on an impulse because this was the ski trip and it was all about wild, uninhibited sex, I left my bikini where it was, lying on the ground, and walked off towards the spa pool. Which, happily, meant walking right past where he was looking.

Turning my head and looking over my shoulder at his surprised expression, I smiled. "Are you coming?"

The glass door to the spa pool still wasn't locked and the whole area was exactly how we'd left it earlier, complete with empty glasses strewn everywhere.

"Someone had fun here," Nathan commented, closing the door behind him.

"It was us," I admitted. "At least half these glasses are probably mine."

He laughed. The enclosed spa room was a lot more intimate than I had expected, and I sat on the edge of the pool for a minute, sticking my toes in to see if it was still warm. It was.

"I didn't bring any trunks," he said, from behind me.