As the scent of coconut fills my nostrils, I watch Jenna walk around to face me.She sprays my chest and stomach at least five times too many and we laugh again as I jump in shock at each one. She studies every inch of my skin that her hands rub across, smoothing the lotion in, and I don't understand how this is both so sensual and so caring. I also don't know why I want to fight the desire I have when I see her eyesdart around my skin like I’m her favourite food and she hasn't eaten for a week. I just don't want today to be only about sex. And I think I’d like for it to be the same for her.
“Your turn,” I say when her fingers are a little too close to the waistband of my shorts.
She reluctantly hands over the bottle and holding my eyes with hers, she reaches down for the hem of her dress and pulls it up over her head. Allowing myself a long look at her breasts in her bikini top, I then notice the shorts.
“Off with them! Offensive denim!” I insist. She rolls her eyes but goes to undo the buttons and slides them down her thighs. Those thighs. Thighs my head belongs between.
Later, Marty. Later.
I then step back and position the bottle like a gun and spray three times on her stomach. She squeals.
“Fuck! That is cold!”
I start massaging the cream into her skin, marvelling at how warm and smooth she is there. When it comes to applying the lotion to her chest and arms, I spray it into my hands first.
“Now you're making me look like a bully,” she says after spinning around. But I don't put my hands or the cream on her body for a moment, because I'm too busy looking down at the flare of her arse.
“Marty?” she says, as if checking I'm still there.
“Sorry, your butt was talking to me,” I say.
“Oh.” She laughs. “What was it saying?”
“Something about how it has plans for me later.” I start to spread the lotion around her back, feeling hard muscle, soft fat, and the ridges of her ribs and shoulder bones, all wrapped in luscious freckled skin.
“It does? What kind of plans?”
“Oh, it was all a bit vague but there was something about squeezing, something about biting, something about spanking. Your arse is going to keep me very busy.”
Jenna doesn't say anything, but I see her move, her hand disappearing and then her fingers are back and her body is turning. She lifts her middle finger to my lips, which are already opening for her.
I taste her. Her heady musk and the sun cream she just applied and maybe even still a bit of honey from the baklava.
“You make me so wet,” she says in a whisper.
And that's it. I've had just about as much temptation as I can stand. I drop the sun cream to the blanket, scoop up the two snorkel goggles and as I straighten up, I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her up and over my shoulder.
“You need to cool off, woman!” I yell as I run to the water's edge, her body bouncing against mine, her laughter-filled screams the sweetest sound in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jenna
There aren't any fish. Not really. But I don't say anything, I just keep swimming, enjoying how clear the blue water is, how it’s cool but not cold, and how we are alone in a small cove that is completely out of sight.
I’ve always loved swimming - even got into the habit of going to a swimming club at London Fields Lido for the first five or so summers I lived in London - but then like most things when work became busier, I stopped making the effort.
Effort.Too often I find myself chewing on this word and the questions it makes me ask. Why did I not make more effort with the things that mattered most - my marriage and my career? Was there more I could have done? Did I become complacent? How much of the marriage’s failure was my lack of effort? How could I have made more effort to keep doing my old job? Why am I so scared to put in the effort and just write a book like I’ve always dreamed?
I’m drifting away with these thoughts, not really looking for fish anymore and certainly not looking where I’m going, when I feel a quick pull on my ankle. I jolt up and lift the mask onto the top of my head.
“Oi!” I say looking at Marty who has also emerged. We tread water together.
“Oi yourself,” he says with a grin. “You were halfway to Turkey.”
“Wrong side of the island, genius.” But I look back to the beach and realise that we are much further away than I thought.
“Still, you were speeding off, Little Mermaid.”
