The water holds us in a circle of possibility, sunlight fracturing across the surface like the universe is showing off.
Jake moves first.
His hand slides from my hip to the small of my back, pulling me toward him through the water with a gentleness that contradicts the heat in his steel-gray eyes.
When his mouth finds mine, it's soft at first, almost questioning, and I answer by threading my fingers through his wet hair and pulling him closer.
Oscar doesn't wait for permission.
He presses against my back, his lips trailing down my neck, his teeth grazing my shoulder in a way that makes me gasp into Jake's mouth.
The sensation of being caught between them, skin against skin with only thin wet fabric as a barrier, sends electricity sparking down my spine.
Then Konnor's hand cups my jaw, turning my face toward him, and he kisses me with a deliberateness that leaves no room for misinterpretation.
His tongue slides against mine, thorough and unhurried, like he's memorizing the shape of my surrender and planning to use it against me later.
I lose track of whose hands are where.
Someone palms my breast through my swimsuit. Someone else traces the curve of my waist. Mouths trade places, and I'm passed between, each kiss different, each touch a new language I'm learning to speak.
Konnor breaks away first, his dark eyes heavy-lidded and hungry.
"Float," he commands.
Before I can ask what he means, his hands slide beneath my back and shoulders, lifting me until I'm horizontal in the water, staring up at the cloudless blue sky.
The lake cradles me, cool against my overheated skin, and I feel impossibly exposed, spread out before them like an offering.
Oscar positions himself between my thighs.
My breath catches as he drapes my legs over his shoulders, his honey-colored eyes holding mine as he lowers his mouth to the thin fabric covering my center.
The first press of his lips is gentle, almost chaste, but then he breathes hot against me, and my hips jerk involuntarily.
I sink.
Water floods my ears, my face submerging for a terrifying second before Konnor hauls me back up, his grip firm on my shoulders.
"Relax." His voice is maddeningly calm. "You're tensing. That's why you're sinking."
"I'm tensing because Oscar's mouth is on my—"
Oscar chooses that moment to press an open-mouthed kiss against my core, and I choke on the rest of the sentence.
The heat of his tongue through the thin fabric sends sparks shooting up my spine, and my muscles clamp down involuntarily.
I go under again.
This time when Konnor pulls me up, I'm sputtering and furious.
"This is impossible," I gasp. "I can't relax when you're doing that."
"That's precisely the point." Konnor's thumb traces soothing circles on my shoulder, but his eyes hold no sympathy. "You need to learn to let go."
"Think of it as therapy." Oscar's grin is wicked from his position between my thighs. "Very wet, very thorough therapy."
Jake floats a few feet away, watching. His arms are beneath the surface, and the rhythmic movement of the water around him suggests exactly what those hands are doing.
The knowledge that he's touching himself while watching Oscar pleasure me sends a fresh wave of heat flooding through my body.
Oscar's tongue finds a rhythm through the fabric, teasing and retreating, building sensation without giving me enough to crest.
I force myself to breathe.
The sky above is so blue it hurts to look at. I focus on it, on the warmth of the sun against my face, on the gentle lap of water against my ears. I try to release the tension in my shoulders, my back, the desperate clench of my stomach muscles.
I sink anyway.
The frustration boils over as Konnor lifts me again.
"Just take me to shore," I demand, water dripping from my hair into my eyes. "We can do this properly on land where gravity isn't actively conspiring against my orgasm."
Oscar laughs, the sound vibrating against my inner thigh in a way that makes me shiver.
"Not a chance, Kelly Bird." He presses a kiss to the sensitive skin just above my knee. "We're not done with you yet."
"You want control." Konnor observes. "That's your default setting. Right now, your job is to surrender it."
"I don't know how to do that."
"Yes, you do." Jake's voice carries across the water, rough and low. "You did it with me in the truck. You let go then."
The memory floods through me, and with it, a small loosening in my chest.
Oscar resumes his ministrations, his tongue tracing patterns that have no business being as effective as they are through a layer of fabric.
My hands float at my sides, fingers trailing in the water. The sun warms my face. Konnor's steady presence anchors my shoulders.
I try something new.
Instead of fighting the sensation, I let it wash through me like the water itself. Every stroke of Oscar's tongue becomes part of the lake, part of the sky, part of the warmth seeping into my bones.
My thighs loosen their death grip on his shoulders. My back releases its rigid arch.
I float.
Oscar notices the change immediately. His tongue presses harder, more deliberately, finding the exact spot that makes my nerve endings sing. The pleasure builds without the desperate edge of before, a slow rising tide rather than a crashing wave.
I'm still floating.
The realization sends a thrill through me that has nothing to do with the physical sensation and everything to do with the miracle of surrendering control and not drowning in the process.
The wave builds steadily now, each stroke adding to the last, and I feel myself approaching the edge with something close to wonder.
Konnor's hands tighten on my shoulders, supporting me as my body begins to tremble.
"That's it," Oscar murmurs against my center, and the vibration of his voice pushes me higher.
Jake's breathing has gone ragged somewhere to my left.
I can't see him, won't turn my head and risk disrupting the fragile balance I've achieved, but I feel his attention like a physical weight, his desire adding fuel to the fire building in my core.
The orgasm approaches with a gentleness that surprises me.
Not the violent crash I'm used to, but a swelling warmth that expands outward from where Oscar's mouth works against me.
My fingers curl in the water. My toes point. But I stay afloat, buoyed by the lake and Konnor's steady hands and the impossible trust I've somehow learned to extend.
Then Oscar's tongue curls in a way that rewrites my understanding of physics, and the wave crests.
I reach for Konnor blindly, my hand finding the back of his neck and dragging him down through the water until his mouth meets mine.
I come against Oscar's tongue while kissing Konnor, the dual sensation overwhelming me, my cry of release swallowed by his lips as pleasure ripples through every cell of my body.
The lake holds me through the aftershocks.
When I finally open my eyes, three men surround me in the water, their expressions varying shades of hungry and satisfied.
"Now," Oscar says, licking his lips with theatrical appreciation, "we can go to shore."
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