“Mmm,” she said. “Scratches, bruises. Nothing needs stitches, but this needs a little… attention.” Her fingers made a loose loop around his cock, stroking him once from base to tip.
Neal groaned and couldn’t quite keep himself from thrusting up at her.
“Uh, uh!” said Mary merrily. “Keep still for Nurse Mary, or I’ll have to bring in an orderly to tie you down.”
Obediently, Neal kept himself still as Mary continued to touch his throbbing member, stroking the skin gently, and scratching tenderly at his balls.
She teased him and tortured him exquisitely, until Neal knew that he was going to lose whatever precious control he had remaining.
“You have to… I’m going to… oh…!”
His pleasure rolled over the top, but Mary had slowed her finger strokes down just enough, to just the correct rate, and he had a moment of sheer bliss without actual release.
While Neal was still reeling from that treatment, marveling at the little miracle, Mary straddled him, bringing her hot, welcoming folds around him.
She was no less gentle riding him than she’d been with her hands, keeping her rhythm slow and deliberate, even as she moaned and clutched fingers through the sand beside them.
When she came, crying out in irresistible pleasure, Neal found a second crest of sensation and lost himself, thrusting back, his own cry of pleasure twining with hers.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mary stretched and laughed, feel
ing sated and satisfied to the furthest reaches of her toes.
Her stomach rumbled, a reminder her that one part of her, at least, was not in the slightest fulfilled.
“I have a granola bar left,” she remembered, springing to find it.
The wrapper had come unsealed at some point, and Mary was dismayed to find a trail of teensy ants inside. At one point, not many days previous, she would have shrieked and thrown it away, but she was hungry, and there weren’t that many ants. Mary peeled the granola bar and spent several moments carefully flicking each tiny ant off before she brought it to Neal, who was lying with his hands behind his head, looking up at the clouds skidding through the morning sky.
“I believe they call that a shit-eating grin,” Mary said, handing him half of the bar.
Neal accepted the bar as he sat up, and Mary was relieved to see that although he winced, he moved easily, and his breaths were deep and steady.
“I cannot wait to get back to the resort and take a shower,” she said, squirming. “I have sand in very uncomfortable places.
“We could go for a swim,” Neal suggested—though immediately looked trepidatious, probably remembering Mary’s near panic-attack from just a few days ago.
It seemed like a very long time ago that Mary had been so afraid of the idea of the ocean, and she found herself looking thoughtfully out at the lapping waves.
“I like the idea,” she said, and she looked back at Neal’s upraised eyebrows. “I know! I’m as surprised as you are, but after falling down a cliff and sharing a granola bar with ants, I’m up for all kinds of new adventures.”
She did insist on putting on her underthings before wading out. “I don’t want something swimming up in there,” she insisted, at Neal’s skeptical look.
He laughed, then teased, “Except me, right?”
Mary laughed back. “Swim on in any time, handsome.”
They shared a deep kiss, and Mary only pulled away because one of the waves came higher than the others, startling her with a splash of cool water.
Hand in hand, they waded out into the rolling water, and the sand beneath them fell away until they were swimming. Mary was astonished at the clarity of the water, and the brilliant blue color of it. She dove down and found shells at the bottom, surfacing with a handful of aquatic treasure.
“Oh, look,” she said, sharing the shells with Neal.
He duly admired them, but Mary thought he was really admiring her more; his glance was filled with a tenderness and joy that didn’t seemed aimed at the shells she was sharing.
Then one of the shells sprouted legs, and she shrieked and threw them all away from her. “They have crabs in them still!” she exclaimed, and she was laughing even before they hit the water and began to sink back to the sandy bottom. Neal wrapped his arms around her in comfort, and she giggled weakly against his big shoulder as they half-floated in the water.