And then it was over.
With a low, sated groan he pulled free of her body, leaving her hanging in the manacles.
She’d done it, stuck her toe in the water, but in doing so she knew there was no going back to the life and the world she had known before tonight.
A stranger, this Drake, had shown her that this was where she belonged.
Hot and Bothered
Kat Black
Trapped inside the little timber-board beach villa, the night air is stifling. On the oversized honeymoon bed that dominates the shadowy, driftwood-chic interior I toss and turn, unable to sleep.
Briefly, I consider trying the old sheep-counting trick, perhaps swapping the traditional fluffy animals for the innumerable pillows stacked against the headboard; but settle for hurling most of them to the floor instead. Around my calves the sheet weighs as heavy as a woollen blanket and with a flurry of irritable kicks I work myself free.
Gaining no relief at all for my efforts, I huff and flop over onto my back, picking at the T-shirt plastered to my clammy curves. Glaring up through the dimness at the stationary blades of the fan suspended overhead, I wonder how much longer it can take to restore such a basic necessity as electricity to a luxury holiday resort.
As close and cloying as the humidity is, I have to admit it’s only partly responsible for my state of restless insomnia. Squeezed in the grip of an intense nerve-fizzing, tooth-grinding sexual frustration, I’m way too wired to relax, let alone sleep.
Determined to at least try, I shut my eyes and block out any thoughts likely to further incite my riotous libido. I succeed for all of thirty seconds before my one-track mind is revisiting a sun-drenched beach full of taut, tanned torsos, glistening wet skin and contour-clinging trunks. The fidgeting threatens to start all over again.
Clapping one hand against the insistent niggle of need between my legs, I hold it down over the pyjama shorts covering my pubic mound and press hard. Beneath the pressure of my fingers, the fluttering pulse intensifies to a heavy throb and with a half-strangled sob I begin to rub against it.
If I thought the room was hot, it’s nothing compared to the heat radiating through the flimsy cotton barrier of my shorts as they sink easily into the moist valley between my labia. With each circling pass of my fingertips, the roughened edge of the seam at the gusset catches the sensitive nub of my clit in a way that makes my breath hitch and my nipples twinge. I can’t help but quicken the caress.
This is just what I need. Around and around the pleasure builds, the pressure tightens. Brushing my other hand across my chest, I feel the rigid pucker of my nipples pushing up against my T-shirt and use my nails to flick against each stiff little peak in turn, firing bolts of electric exhilaration back down to my groin. My spine bows off the mattress and my knees draw up, thighs squeezing together to lock my hand in place at their juncture … I freeze as a soft mumble sounds from the pillow beside me. My eyes fly open.
Straining to listen over the pulse pounding in my ears, I lie there for interminable seconds, stiff as a board, still as a statue, mortified as a Catholic. Only when I hear a gentle snore and feel a wash of booze-scented breath drift across my face do I dare risk a peek out of the corner of my eye.
In the semi-darkness, I can just make out slack features and a gaping mouth, and with a sigh of relief I retract my fingers from their compromising location.
At least poor Sara has managed to find a state of blissful oblivion despite the unremitting temperature. If anyone needs the escape of sleep, she does. In the five emotionally raw days since she’d been left standing stricken at the alter by her louse of a groom she’s seemed hell-bent on drowning her sorrows with the aid of every last drop of rum in the Caribbean.
And who can blame her? I lift my head to scoop my hair away from my perspiration-soaked neck and fan the damp tendrils across the pillow. When the jilted bride had insisted on going ahead with the week’s luxury honeymoon, substituting me – her redundant maid of honour – for said missing groom, I’d let her hysteria override my concerns that a romantic couples’ destination would be the type of place more likely to rub salt into her gaping wounds than provide a pampering salve to her torn and broken heart.
If eith
er of us had known quite how sensual the ambience of Eros Cove was going to be, how beautifully and relentlessly seductive the setting, I’m sure we’d have reconsidered in favour of a loud, purgative, girls-behaving-badly weekend clubbing in Brighton instead.
Shifting onto my right side, I pound the pillow into a more comfortable shape and remind myself of the futility of if onlys. For better or worse, here we are; the decidedly odd couple out in a dreamy, magical lovers’ paradise of sun and sea and sex and sand. No wonder Sara’s being driven to drink and I’m being driven to distraction.
And then there are the men! I doubt I’ve ever seen a finer collection anywhere in my life, strutting their stuff across the tinted mini-screens of my sunglasses by day, only to keep my mind on continuous spool half the night. Figures all the good ones would be here in a couples’ resort: tantalising, tempting and taken.
Even more frustrating is the sure knowledge that everyone in the place is busy getting their rocks off as and when they want. I flip over onto my left side and shut my eyes, wondering what I wouldn’t give to join their ranks and to be lying here right now, naked, legs draped over a broad set of sun-burnished shoulders, ripe pink flesh laid open by firm, tanned fingers in welcome of a hungry mouth and a scruff-roughened jaw. Or perhaps sweat-soaked and pinned to the mattress by a smooth, hard body rocking the impressive length of an equally smooth, hard cock into my quivering depths with rhythmic control.
Oh, yeah. After several particularly dry months in the expanding desert of my love life, I could just imagine how good that wet glide would feel as it stretched and invaded, raking my neglected nerve endings with pleasure over and over and over again.
With a gasp, my eyes spring open and I finally admit defeat, giving up any thoughts of sleep. Between my legs, my shorts are damp with more than just perspiration, and the throb of desire is worse than ever, demanding that I take matters into my own hands, now. I’m too paranoid to risk the shared bed again, and the idea of creeping into the pitch-black bathroom to administer a bit of furtive self-pleasuring while my friend snores nearby just doesn’t seem very pleasurable at all. Maybe I should try and cool things down instead.
Sitting up, I slip over the side of the bed. Moonlight shines in through the angled slats of the window shutters, striping the pillow-scattered floorboards and illuminating my path towards the door.
Even as I pull it open, I can feel it’s a degree or two cooler outside than in. Grabbing up my room key, I step out onto the veranda and close the door behind me.
An idyllic vista of white sand beach and glassy, silver-hued sea stretches in front of the villa, framed by tall palm trees. Tiny waves froth at the shoreline, benign and inviting, making my toes wriggle at the prospect of a refreshing dip. I’m tempted, but with the cautionary echoes of the music from Jaws playing in my head, I find myself lured by the appeal of the swimming pool instead.
Half expecting to find the fantastical watery playground full of other overheated, sleepless guests, I’m pleasantly surprised to discover no other signs of life in, on, or around the interconnecting assortment of lagoons, tributaries, mini-islands and bridges.
Ignoring the signs telling me the pool is closed after midnight, I wander over a bridge and onto one of the islands where I come across a semi-secluded grotto constructed of natural rock at the end of a shallow inlet. With no light other than the diffused glow of the moon, I figure it’s a dim enough hideaway to conceal my rebellious presence.