What I Discovered with Carolina at the Nude Beach

Carolina and I had chosen that beach because it was the farthest from the hotel area. A strip of golden sand between two cliffs, with barely twenty people scattered over towels and a small group of boys and girls a few meters away from us who wore their swimsuits like someone wears a hat: out of habit, not necessity.

“What are you doing?” she exclaimed in horror when she saw me take my hands behind my back and undo the bikini top.

“Topless,” I answered naturally, letting the fabric fall onto the towel and leaving my firm, tanned breasts bare. “As you can see, I’m not the only one.”

I nodded toward the group next to us. Three girls with their nipples in the sun, two boys in swimsuits so tight they left little to the imagination. No one was staring at anyone in scandal. No one was really staring, except Carolina, who tore her eyes away from my breasts as if they had burned her.

My friend was still covering her gorgeous body with a one-piece black swimsuit that her grandmother would have considered modest. But the Lycra was so taut against her skin that, instead of hiding anything, it marked every curve as if they had been drawn with a fine pencil. Full breasts, narrow waist, rounded hips, thighs that brushed softly when her legs came together.

I had wanted her in secret since the last year of high school. She didn’t know. She probably didn’t even suspect that I was bisexual, though by now I had told almost everyone else. With her, I stayed silent. With her, I was afraid of breaking something I couldn’t afford to lose.

Her blond mane fell down her back until it nearly brushed her ass. She had pale skin, speckled with tiny freckles that only appeared in summer, and a small, fleshy mouth she bit when she concentrated. That afternoon, she bit it a lot.

I lay face down on my towel beside her. The tiny bikini bottoms wedged between my ass cheeks like a thong, and I knew perfectly well that from her position she could see almost everything: my nearly bare ass, the side of one breast brushing the sand, the hardened nipple that wasn’t hard from the cold. It was thirty-two degrees.

“You’re crazy,” she murmured. “They’ll see you.”

“I hope so.”

I regretted it as soon as I said it. Too blatant. Carolina opened her mouth to answer and closed it again. She rolled over on her towel until she was face down too, her face resting on her crossed arms, and then I saw that her eyes hadn’t moved. They were still fixed on me.

“And you?” I said in a tone I intended to sound light. “You came to the beach and you’ve practically got nothing showing. At least take off the straps.”

She hesitated so long I thought she was going to say no. But in the end, with a slow, almost ceremonial movement, she slid the straps off her shoulders and pulled her arms free. She didn’t bare her breasts. She held the Lycra with one arm crossed over her cleavage, pressing it against her body. Even so, her nipples showed through the thin fabric, two small hard bumps betraying her.

“Better?” she asked.

“Much better.”

I took the sunscreen bottle out of the bag and shook it.

“Do me a favor. Put some on my back. I can’t reach.”

She took a while to move. She did it with the awkwardness of someone trying too hard to seem natural. She sat up until she was kneeling beside me, always holding the swimsuit against her chest with her elbow, and began to slide her hands over my back. The lotion was cold. Her hands weren’t.

“Lower,” I asked when she got near the edge of the bottoms. “And on my legs. I don’t want to burn.”

Her fingers moved down my lower back and stopped just at the fabric. I waited. She waited. Then, very slowly, as if crossing a border she shouldn’t cross, she slid her palm over the top of my ass, over the cotton, to the side of my thighs. I felt a tiny tremor in her pulse.

“Inside too,” I said without lifting my face from the towel. “Under the bottoms. Don’t want that part to burn.”

Three long seconds passed. Then her fingers slipped under the edge of the fabric, barely a centimeter, just enough to spread the lotion over a strip of skin that normally never saw the sun. She did it twice, on each side, with almost surgical concentration. When she finished, she left her hand resting for a moment on my lower back, as if she had forgotten to take it away.

“Now me,” I said, sitting up.

She lay down without protesting. Face down, still with her swimsuit bunched beneath her breasts, arms at her sides, head turned toward the sea. I took the bottle and started with her feet. I slipped my fingers between her toes one by one, massaged the soles with my thumbs, went up her slender ankles, her calves, the inner side of her knees. Every inch of her skin was softer than I had imagined in five years.

When I reached her thighs, I slowed. I moved very slowly up the inner side, not touching anything yet, just letting the heat of my hands precede contact. Carolina was breathing very still, her face against her arm. When I caressed her just below the swimsuit, in the curve where her ass separates from her thigh, she let out a small, almost imperceptible sigh. I heard it because I was listening for it.

I kept going up. I put lotion on her waist, her sides, where the bunched-up swimsuit left two inches of skin exposed that nobody ever saw. And then, without asking, I pulled the swimsuit down a little. I shifted it toward her waist, leaving her breasts trapped against the towel but revealing the beginning of the cleft of her ass. I waited for her to say something. She said nothing.

I went up her back. I massaged each vertebra with my thumbs, felt the tension gathered beneath her shoulder blades, worked the knots loose one by one. By the time I reached the nape of her neck, her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open.

I lay down beside her on my side, pressing one breast against her arm. I kept tracing slow circles on her back with my fingertips, pretending it was part of the massage. Carolina didn’t move. She didn’t cover herself either.

I brushed a strand of hair off her neck and kissed her earlobe. It wasn’t a casual kiss. It was a long, open kiss, with the tip of my tongue.

“You’re beautiful,” I whispered. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for years.”

She didn’t answer. But her hand, the one closest to me, moved to my thigh. It traveled up the inner side unhurriedly, as if she had all the time in the world, until it stopped just above my bottoms. She stroked me over the fabric. I was soaking wet. She noticed. She pulled her hand away for a second, surprised, and then put it back in exactly the same place, this time pressing with two fingers.

I bit my lip to keep from moaning. We were on a public beach, with a group five meters away and beachgoers walking along the shore. Carolina opened her eyes, looked at me directly in the face for the first time all afternoon, and then sat up.

She sat up fully. The swimsuit slid down to her waist. Her breasts were left in the sun, full, round, with pink nipples hard as little stones. She didn’t cover herself. She didn’t look around. She only leaned over me and kissed me on the mouth.

The kiss was sweet for the first few seconds. Then it stopped being sweet. Her tongue entered my mouth with a determination I hadn’t expected, and mine answered with the same. One of her hands found one of my breasts and pinched my nipple between her index finger and thumb. I moaned against her lips.

The group next to us had gone quiet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two girls turn toward us and watch without trying to hide it. A boy propped himself up on his elbows. I didn’t care. Carolina didn’t seem to care either.

“Let’s go in the water,” I murmured against her mouth.

She nodded. She got up, letting her swimsuit fall to her ankles. For a second she stood completely naked in the middle of the beach, without shame, without haste, showing her body to the sun and to anyone who wanted to look at it. Then she picked up the swimsuit, pulled it up over her hips, left her breasts bare, and held out her hand to me.

***

The sea was warm, but not as warm as we were. We walked until the water covered us to the waist and there, far from the shore but not so far we couldn’t be seen, Carolina lunged at me. She grabbed me around the waist and kissed me as if she’d been wanting to do it for five years. Maybe she had.

Her fingers found the edge of my bottoms under the water. She moved them aside. She stroked my shaved mound, went down to my lips, spread her fingers, and found my clit with a precision she shouldn’t have had on her first time with a woman. Or maybe it wasn’t her first time. Maybe she had been thinking about it for years just as much as I had.

“More,” I whispered in her ear.

Two fingers slid inside me. I clenched my legs around her wrist and let the water hide my movements. Above the surface we held each other like two friends laughing among the waves. Below, her fingers brought me to the edge with every thrust.

I took advantage of the fact that she still had her swimsuit bunched around her waist to slip my hand behind her. I grabbed one ass cheek, dug my fingers in, slid my thumb between her cheeks to her asshole, and stroked it with my fingertip. Carolina buried her face in my neck and moaned against my skin, a muffled, long moan only I could hear.

“I can’t anymore,” she whispered.

I lifted her thigh and hooked her leg around my hip. My free hand found her breast under the water, I pinched her nipple, twisted it gently. She was still inside me with two fingers, and I had lowered my other hand to find her cunt, her clit, her own wetness mixing with the sea water.

We came almost at the same time. She first, biting my shoulder so she wouldn’t scream. Me seconds later, gripping her hand between my thighs. We stayed wrapped around each other, panting, while a small wave pushed us toward shore.

I was never going to be able to look at her the same way again.

When we got out of the water, the group next to us had packed up their things. I didn’t know whether out of discretion or excitement. The two girls who had been watching us had walked off together toward the dunes.

We lay down on our towels again, this time very close together. Carolina no longer bothered pulling up her swimsuit. She stayed there with her breasts in the sun, her wet hair stuck to her back, a small smile I hadn’t seen in years.

“Ten days of vacation left,” she said, looking at the blue sky.

“I know.”

“We won’t be able to do anything in the shops. They’re all packed together.”

“I know.”

“We’ll have to go back in the water.”

“Every day.”

She closed her eyes, smiling. I ran a finger along her side, over the curve of her waist, over her hip. She shivered.

Ten days. Ten days of furtive caresses that would only fan the fire already burning between us. Ten days to discover everything the sea had left unfinished for us. Ten days, and then a whole term ahead, and then a lifetime.

I was already counting the hours until the next morning.