He looked up and put his book aside. His teeth shone brighter than the sun, glinting below his sunglasses. He must have them professionally whitened, I thought.
‘You’re a little bit late,’ he greeted me, patting the rug beside him.
I sat down, feeling suddenly guilty about the Will encounter.
‘Am I? Sorry. I thought I left the house in plenty of time. What are you reading?’
‘Don’t change the subject.’ He dropped the book into the picnic basket and wagged a finger at me. ‘We are discussing your punctuality.’
‘Oh, dear. Are we?’ I tried to look appealing and penitent.
‘Yes, we are. And after discussing it, we are addressing it.’
‘So I’m in trouble?’
‘The best kind of trouble.’ He smiled and the little edge of fear I’d been nursing fell away. He was such a good actor; it made all the role-play rather too realistic sometimes. ‘First, you need to take off your dress.’
‘Really?’
His only answer to that was a hard stare.
I took off the dress, baring myself to the lakeland wildlife. And … I looked swiftly back to the woodland. Had Will really gone? What if he was still there, watching us? He would see me sitting naked next to the fully clothed Jasper. The thought lent a strange urgency to my arousal. I straightened my spine and pushed back my shoulders, wanting Jasper to know that I was doing my best to look good for him.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘But the sun’s pretty ferocious today. You’ll need some lotion.’
He took a bottle of factor 30 sunblock from the basket, poured some into his palm and began slathering it over me, starting with my breasts.
I sat, patient and still, while he massaged the pale unguent all over me, with special attention to my nipples.
‘Don’t want sunburnt nipples, do we?’ he said, when my breath began to shorten, my body screaming for him to just jump on and take me.
‘No,’ I breathed.
‘That would be quite terrible.’ He rolled them gently between finger and thumb, making the most of their slipperiness. I smelled of holidays and it made me reckless.
‘I want you,’ I said.
He smiled, but made no reply, simply increasing the pressure on my poor nipples until I gasped.
He had me turn around and kneel with my elbows on the blanket while he attended to my shoulders and back and then my bottom. He was especially thorough in applying a great deal of lotion to my bum cheeks, even getting it nice and evenly spread between the furrow, as if the sun’s rays might penetrate into that darkest of places. I twitched when his massaging fingers came closer and closer to my anus, then pressed down on it, smothering it in cream, but I didn’t protest. My body was his.
His lotioned hands slid in between my thighs, coating them completely.
‘I wonder if anyone’s ever had a sunburnt clit,’ he said idly, sweeping his thumb swiftly but with devastating effect over mine.
Oh, I wanted him to touch it again, but he wouldn’t.
‘It seems a bit silly,’ he said, grabbing me suddenly by the hips and positioning me over his lap, ‘to put all that cream on your bottom to avoid sunburn when I’m going to get it bright red anyway.’
‘Oh,’ I mewled, on high alert. Even though I’d been expecting this, it still came as a shock somehow.
‘I’m afraid the lotion might make it sting all the more,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you’ll think of that next time you’re running late.’
His hand smacked down and he was right – it did hurt quite a lot.
I let out an uninhibited yell. On the lake, some water birds wheezed and quacked and feathers flapped.
‘You’re getting off lightly,’ he informed me, continuing the spanking at a brisk pace. My punishment was being observed by a gaggle of interested ducks and I imagined Will’s eyes in the bushes, watching Jasper’s hand fall over and over, hard and strong, on my rapidly heating arse.