“I’d have said that anyway,” Declan cuts in, holding her gaze. “You’re pretty spot on. About everything.”
“Oh. That’s great,” it escapes her. Whatever else is she supposed to say to that? “Wow, that’s a relief. I guessed right.”
“And,” Declan starts, blinks at her, swallows and then continues, “in case anybody asks, you like being ordered around a little bit?”
She can answer that, right? No harm in that. Quid pro quo, so to speak.
“Yes, sort of,” she replies. “I like being told what to do. Then I can’t mess anything up.”
“Karin,” is all he rasps for a reply and she is intrigued as to what warranted the use of her full name, what would have come on the other end of that sentence but then a sharp knock bursts into their bubble, making them almost physically jump apart.
“Hey you two, are you both ready?” Gorman’s voice blares through the thin hard plastic door separating them from their camera guy. “We just got great light!”
Just like that, the topic at hand is dropped and Karin isn’t sure that she ever wants it to be brought up again. But then of course it will be, because she really can’t catch a break there, can she?
“Today was great, wasn’t it?” Declan asks her that night as they settle into bed. After the dive, they got taken back home and spent the evening eating spinach salad and watching a rom com in the TV room with Kaidan and Kaelan and not much else. They’re both exhausted from the exertions of the day and the explorations of the crystal blue seas surrounding their islands. It’s a good kind of tired though, the kind that is earned and falls onto you all nice and warm, like an embrace.
“Yes,” Karin hums, contentedly.
“Those sharks!” He sighs, lost in happy reminiscing. “Sorry, I’m still obsessing about it.”
“That’s fine,” she smiles. “It’s cute.”
He hums. Then is quiet for awhile before taking a deep, rattling breath and turns around to look at her. “Alright, so I have a follow-up question from earlier,” he begins. “But I don’t know if that’s a can of worms we want to open tonight, if that would be smart.”
Something about that last word triggers something in her, low in her gut, but she can’t quite put her finger on why it does.
“Try me?” She says on a shallow breath.
“Is it fine if we talk about,” he pauses. “Sex? In general. Or is that strange?”
“Is that the question?” She asks him and the king sized bed feels a lot smaller and he much, much closer suddenly.
“That’s the question before the question,” he replies. Alright. “We never really talked about it before, have we?”
“It wasn’t necessary, was it? But yes, I suppose it’s fine,” she muses, trying to get some more oxygen into her brain. She feels a little light-headed and sweaty. Her light cotton pajama shorts and shirt feels like chainmail on her, smothering and too hot. “For the competition, it’s probably best, even. So, what do you want to know?”
“Alright. So, you said you’re kind of submissive, right?” He angles in. “Exactly how submissive would you say you are?”
“Are you asking if I’m into S and M?” Is that what he’s doing?
“No,” He says but it sounds like a question, too. “I don’t know, maybe?”
“I really have no idea,” she answers sincerely and focuses on the rim of the lampshade at the ceiling above her, very glad that they have already turned the lights off so he can’t see how she violently blushes in the dark. “I never trusted anyone enough to go anywhere beyond getting spanked.”
“You like getting-” he stops again and then his voice drops to a strangled whisper. “Spanked?”
“On occasion,” she replies and then he goes so quiet for so long, she thinks he might’ve had a stroke. “Are you into S and M?” She asks, just to see if he’ll still answer because she doesn’t dare to look at him to check if he’s still breathing. “Or are you really kinky? Do you let them call you ‘Daddy’?”
“No,” he mutters. So he’s still there. “That’s not for me. But ‘sir’, sometimes, maybe, I think, would be nice.” He’s still watching her; she can feel it prickle her skin. “I’ve never asked anybody to do it, though.”
“Sir,” she repeats, rolling the word down her tongue. “That’s better than Daddy.” She never understood that ‘Daddy’ thing, which is not to say she wouldn’t call him that if he wanted her to. Not that she has given this much thought or anything.
“Yes,” he says, like he’s miles away.
“It’s like they’d go: Please, sir, can I touch you? Or something?” She has no idea why she keeps talking, only that she kind of likes the way it feels to be talking to him about this. To hear the way he sounds when he answers, all short of breath and trembling. It makes her feel fuzzy and warm low in her belly and she’s a little too self-indulgent to stop right now.
“Please sir, can I touch myself,” he offers by way of answering her question and it makes a jolt of punctuated heat shoot right down into her toes, pausing to pool in some other places, all sharp, throbbing edges. “That kind of thing.”
“Oh,” she says, swallows hard and realizes that she sounds practically exactly like him now. “Alright.”
“Too kinky?” He asks after she’s been quiet for a while, trying to not do anything stupid like wince as her body reacts to some very graphic, unbidden images involving him and especially him watching her touch herself while calling him ‘Sir.’
“No,” she says and scrambles for a better answer. “I’m just cataloguing this.”
“What for?” He asks.
“To have a comprehensive picture of you,” she shrugs, making a veritable effort at nonchalance. “I should have asked you about this.” For all the times she asked him about the minute details of his life, she had never thought or dared to ask him about what he liked in bed.
“I see,” he perks up and for a second she thinks that she’s overstayed her welcome on the topic. It seems like Declan isn’t that eager to move on yet, either. “Do you want to know anything else?” He murmurs. “For the profile?”
“What’s your favorite part of sex?” She blurts out quickly, before he can change his mind.
“Oh, good question. I think it’s a tie. Between just before actually having sex and a little way in when there’s this moment when you just look at each other and think, ‘Yes, this is happening, we’re pretty close now’.” She can hear him think for a second before he adds: “I like being close.”
She wonders briefly what he means, if it’s physical closeness that he’s after, pressing up close chest to chest and skin to skin, or if he likes to dangle on the precipice of release, edging closer but not quite getting there until it blows his mind. She chooses to believe it’s both those things.
“And just before?” She asks, trying to keep him talking.
“Just before is exciting,” he replies. “The build-up. I like that tension, the anticipation, you know? That moment when you feel like you’re going to crack open from wanting the other person so much. How about you?”
She’s having such a difficult time processing how his words are making her feel exactly what he describes. She’s so hot and bothered - enough to snap and do something truly stupid - that she doesn’t filter herself at all before she answers.
“For me it’s the first moment when, you know,” and this is when she stops herself and finds she very much should have filtered her thoughts before, because she ends up finishing the sentence with: “When the thing goes in.”
Instantaneously, Declan blares out a hollering laugh that is much, much, much too loud for the tense intimacy that has fallen over them, much too violent for the soft blue shadows gliding gently up and down the walls, and she thinks they’re actually shuddering, like the bed does under his cackling.
“When the thing goes in?” He repeats, hysterical, and all the sensuality is gone like it’s been slapped off. “Are you kidding me? Come on, Rinny. You
’re twenty-four years old, you can say it.”
“It’s crude to say,” she whines defensively.
“The moment when the guy’s cock thrusts inside you for the first time, that moment,” he says shamelessly and perhaps the sensuality isn’t all the way gone. “There you go. I said it for you, and I didn’t turn to dust.”
“I would never say that,” she breathes, scandalized, ridiculously turned on but too shy and too frigid to say it.
“Cock,” he says.
“Stop it,” she orders, cringing. He just keeps laughing at her.
“You’re ridiculous,” he wheezes. “It’s just a word.”
“I know it’s just a word,” she says.
“Come on, Rinny. Just try it,” he teases and a sharp finger lands in her side, making her jump a little. “Say ‘cock’, just once and then you can sleep knowing you’ve grown up a bit today.”
“No,” she insists.
“Say ‘cock’,” he insists, too.
“Go to sleep, Declan,” she groans and tries to duck away from his finger which just keeps prodding her in the side, tickling her.
“Cock!” He repeats mercilessly.
“Shut up,” she begs.
“Cock, cock, cock, cock, cock,” he chants and scoots closer until finally, he adds his head to his poking fingers and rubs it into the crook of her neck and against her chest like he’s a stubborn kitten while she erratically tries to get away from him.
But he doesn’t let off. He teases and tickles her relentlessly. She giggles because he’s being silly and she’s ticklish and they’re playing like children and he laughs like he’s delirious and she joins in because she’s delirious too. She laughs so hard, she thinks she might pee. That is, right up to the point where he has worked her half-under him and stops short. His sudden stillness and the silence of it hits her like a ton of bricks, right in the groin.
He’s panting above her, short of breath and flushed, and if nothing else between them has ever been a moment, this one is. Karin is petrified, lying beneath him with her heart frozen solid in her chest. A while into the eternity of the next couple of seconds, Declan clears his throat.
“I’m going to grab some water in the kitchen,” he says like he’s just run a marathon. “Do you need anything?”
“No,” she shakes her head dumbly. “I think I just need to sleep now.”
“Yes, alright,” he says and climbs off of her. “Sleep tight.” Then he gives her a shaky wave and ducks out of the room.
By the time he gets back, Karin feels so strange, she pretends to be asleep.
The next day, they act like nothing has happened. It’s an off-day and the production has set up a tennis workshop at the nearby courts for all the couples. So they learn how to play tennis, go back home eventually, have dinner together, and are Karin and Declan who are mildly more touching than usual. Karin counts five kisses over the span of the day, each curt and sharp, no tongue and no passion anywhere to be found. But it seems that whenever she turns, he’s been looking at her for a while. He’s watching her and she knows it, but she’s not sure what to make of it.
For evening entertainment, Courtney suggests playing Werewolf, which is a card game that’s remarkably like their show, because by drawing a card, two people in the group become werewolves and then have to conspire together to be the last ones standing and “kill” everyone else. Anybody who drew a human card has to try and snuff out the wolves to save their own skin. There is even a bottom two each round that need to plead for their lives in front of the villagers’ jury and might end up getting “executed” for being wolves if they are bad at lying.
Without needing to talk about it, Karin signals to Declan that she will tank the game to make people believe she’s a bad liar. When by the end, Kaidan exclaims “Wow, Rinny, you can’t lie to save your life, can you?” She is very pleased with herself.
“No, I can,” she argues, trying for stubborn. “I can.”
“No, that was abysmal,” Bobby laughs.
Karin throws Declan a very brief glance across the table and he smiles, just for the fraction of a second. This is going exactly as planned.
On Friday, they’re filming talking heads segments all day, and as Karin and Declan sit together in their bedroom, their interview set, Harry and Sally style, Declan makes her laugh by ad-libbing on the lines they wrote for them until they’re both hoarse from laughing. Saturday is off, and the friendships in the house blossom despite the constant scrutiny between the couples. Declan plays some more beach volleyball in the yard with the guys, Karin tries to teach a very resistant Courtney how to make poached eggs and starts a book-club with Aileen because they’ve coincidentally brought the same novel to the island. It’s warm and pleasant, the constant breeze from the ocean making the heat bearable and the villa is a total dream. It’s an amazing week. Even if every night sleeping next to Declan is bringing her a down little bit and they haven’t really talked about anything meaningful since that night since which she sometimes catches herself looking at him and thinking ‘Sir’, it’s still fine.
Beneath it all, they’re still Karin and Declan. They’ve been best friends for years, and they function as such. They laugh, they enjoy each other’s company; it’s simple. When she feels like it, she goes to cuddle him or kiss him on the corner of his mouth and when he feels like it, he kisses her back for real. It’s nice, commonplace. It’s not like that night, not constantly at least, and not as mind-bendingly tense and exciting - enticing, more than anything. Before Sunday night, that is.
On Sunday night, they film their celebrations for having made the first round. Marietta has told them that the first cut of the first episode that will see Savannah and Iver leave the competition - a fact that already seems like it happened months ago instead of days - has lacked a proper ending upon review, and that due to this, they have decided to end the episode with each of the couples quietly celebrating their moving on to the next round in various settings among the villa. The aim is to even further endear audiences to each and every pair. Karin and Declan are assigned Gorman because she’s quite certain they’re his favorite and the hot tub, which is in the ground right next to the guest condo and has been bubbling happily away for them for a while now.
As the lights are being set for the night shoot, the other three units are filming Courtney and Bobby in their bedroom, Aileen and Rickard on the beach and Kaidan and Kaelan in the TV room while Grace and Mimi wait for a camera to free up and get them on their second floor balcony. It’s all very cheesy but Karin isn’t complaining. There are worse places to work than the hot tub. On Declan’s lap, which she later learns.
Gorman is motioning them to get into the tub and Karin eases into the warm water, letting it seep through her bones and relax her, leisurely watching Declan climb down into the pool with her, his grey swim trunks blackening as they get wet, her eye catching just for the fraction of a second on his private parts as he sits down.
“Alright, so, Declan, can you just sit there and Rinny, can you sit on him, face to face?” Gorman says absentmindedly from where he lies on the ground because the pool is at ground level and he has to film them on his belly. “I’m just going to get a little b-roll but I need a good angle, so I need you close together. You won’t be mic’ed but we’re going to take the audio from the camera, so you can just talk to each other at a normal volume about the experience and so on, and mention that you’re looking forward to swimming with the sharks, because it’s “Tuesday” now, right?” He makes an effort at air-quotes for ‘Tuesday’ but it doesn’t really work with the camera propped on his shoulder. “Just talk for awhile.”
And since that’s all the direction they seem to be getting, Karin does as instructed and climbs on Declan’s lap.
“I don’t have you in the frame yet, Rinny,” Gorman mutters from behind the lens as Declan’s arms land on her hips under the water, the bubbles giving her goosebumps. Maybe that’s Declan, she’s not sure. “Can you sit a little cl
oser?”
Karin nods and follows the order, rocking closer against Declan’s stomach and inevitably, happens on, well, her old friend, his semi-hard length, there. Her first instinct is to scoot back and apologise but then four fingernails dig into her skin on either side of her back and her head snaps around to lock eyes with her best friend. He swallows hard, squeezes her tighter, and Karin stays right where she is.
“So I just talk now?” She asks Gorman, her eyes still on Declan’s.
“Yes, don’t think too much about it,” their cameraman says.
“You excited for the sharks?” She asks Declan then, which is the first and possibly dumbest thing she can think of to say, but she’s not very coherent right now because of the fact that she is sitting on his dick that she can actually feel getting harder underneath her, and yes, this is happening. How is this happening and why isn’t she more mortified?
“Mostly excited to get to stay here for a while longer,” Declan touches her hair softly, looking up at her in a way that makes her forget Gorman and the show and the villa and the lying and everything else she’s ever done, as her whole world folds in around them, leaving only Declan and her, in a Jacuzzi at the end of the earth, all alone in the universe.
Then Declan adjusts her position, pulling her closer so she sits firmly on him now, legs spread wide over his hips and his erection is trapped between them, just there at the apex of her thigh where she craves friction more than anything. She knows he’s been trying to rearrange her to get it out of the way but she’s not a big fan of that. So when Declan pulls her in by the hair to kiss her neck, which is just his cover to whisper “I’m sorry” in her ear, she rolls her hips into him slyly. As subtle as she can so that the camera doesn’t catch it but Declan will.
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