“Why aren’t you making me suck the spinal fluid out of birds?”
Raine shifted back on her heels and made another horrific face as she quickly chewed and swallowed the slim strand of pelican meat.
“I’m still thinking about it,” I told her. “There’s more likely to be other things in a bird’s spinal fluid – parasites, viruses, and shit. Birds are a lot dirtier than fish. I wouldn’t even be eating it, but I’ve looked all over for a drive through and there aren’t any Golden Arches in sight.”
Raine giggled and pushed at my arm. I leaned away with the slight force of her push and let myself rock back until my shoulder hit hers. I gave her the half-smile I had been known to use on a few occasions before and watched her take her lower lip between her teeth and her eyes darken. I licked my own lips and swallowed involuntarily.
“Is that why you went for fish before?”
“I went for fish because there weren’t any birds,” I replied. “If I have to eat raw something, I’d rather eat fish. This shit sucks big time.”
Raine laughed again, and I realized I was starting to say things just to make her laugh. Another feminine laugh filled the ears of my memory, but this time I managed to push it away.
What I didn’t say to Raine, because I didn’t want to get her hopes up, was that pelicans never travel too far from land. Their mere presence meant we were close, but without the means to guide us one direction or the other, we were completely at the mercy of the currents. I glanced over at the wooden paddle where it hung, strapped to one side of the raft, teasing me with its ineffectiveness against the currents.
When I looked up, Raine had a very odd smile on her face that slowly turned into a bigger smile and then a fit of giggles.
“What are you laughing about?” I demanded.
“You’ve got…um…” She started laughing harder.
“What the fuck, Raine?”
“You’ve got pelican in your beard!” Raine’s eyes closed and she rolled over onto her side, holding her stomach and guffawing like the village idiot. I reached up and picked a bit of pelican flesh off my chin and tossed it out the raft opening. Raine continued to wail hysterically. I tried to feel pissed off about it, but it wasn’t really working.
“Why is that so funny?” I asked. Raine attempted – somewhat successfully – to respond between chortles.
“You’ve…got…a…pelican!” she screeched, laughing even harder, “in your…beard!”
Well, I still didn’t get it, but I wasn’t going to put up with any more of that crap. I dove at her, grabbed her, and started tickling her sides. The raft bobbed and rocked with the force, tossing us both around. Raine screamed and tried twisting away, but I held her against my chest with one arm and tickled her with the opposite hand. She slapped at the arm holding her and then tried to grab and hold the hand tickling her. She was not the least bit successful in this endeavor because even when she did get a hold of me, she wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to hold me off.
“Stop, Bastian…please!” she begged. I stopped the tickling long enough to let her catch her breath but kept my hold on her. I swiftly turned her around so she was facing me and wrapped both arms around her middle with her legs straddling my thighs.
“I’ll stop if you kiss me,” I told her.
“Fine!” she cried out, raising her eyebrows at me.
“You have to kiss me right…here…” I let go with one hand and pointed to the spot on my chin where the bit of pelican had been stuck. Raine lost it, started laughing again, and kept trying to squirm out of my grip. We ended up rolling to the other side of the raft until I finally stopped while lying on my back with Raine perched on top of me.
“Do you give up yet?” I asked.
“Yes!”
“Going to kiss me now?”
“Not there!”
“If you won’t kiss me there,” I teased, “you will have to kiss me wherever else I choose.”
“No way!” Raine said. “Who knows what your perverted mind would choose!”
“Actually, it’s probably pretty obvious,” I smirked, raising an eyebrow at her. “I do have a particular fondness for…”
“Don’t say it!”
Raine wrenched one hand away from my grasp and tried to tickle me. I wasn’t particularly ticklish anyway, so she wasn’t successful. I flipped us both over, causing the raft the lurch again, grabbed her hands and pinned them over her head. She tried kicking, but I wrapped my legs around hers, slid my feet down her calves, and pinned her ankles with mine.
She was totally immobile under me, which my dick really, really liked.