I work the thick salve slowly up from your ankles. Medicinal stuff, really. But it doesn't smell that bed. Smeary white tropical cream. To keep your skin from turning into pork cracklings.

I've taken the care of your skin into my hands.

Because of course my back and chest are like red crepe paper. It is no fun wearing the soft cotton shirt I have to keep on--as an extra shield.

I smear the SPF stuff slowly up your legs.

The damn stuff says it's waterproof, but by the time you get around to reading the small print about reapplying after you've been in water, hell, it's too fucking late, now, isn't it?

I will not let that happen to your skin.

Pretty skin, gone the color of toffee from the sun. How the sight of it entrances me! Though it really isn't the golden tones I find so appealing; in the stark dead of winter, the milky white of your flesh makes me lap at you like a kitten.

Last night I was too sun-delirious to make the climb on top of you. And no matter the mattress, there was no way I could take it flat on my back. My initial screams were not of pleasure.

I'm feeling much better, thank you; it is a vested interest: my hands slick upon your skin. Keep you from feeling tonight as I did last night; make tonight a vastly improved version of last night.

As I finish up the backs of your thighs, I've come about to the end of my trip across your body. I nearly want to cry. Because my actual motive isn't a subliminal sort of seduction. It's because of the way your skin thrills my fingertips. The touching of you. The way my love for you is physically translated into electricity--the shock as I make contact, then the flow of current up and down my fingers. With you I am like a person touching high voltage wires: I cannot be loosed without a broomstick.

My fingers decidedly linger.

They want to slip up under your suit and grapple your ass. Your ass that dissatisfies you, in the common way of many women.

"Stop staring at my ass; it's too fat!"

I stop staring, instead moving my hands to squeeze it through the fabric as I lean down to your ear. "What are you talking about? Your ass is fantastic! If I wanted a little boy butt, I'd be chasing after little boys."

"I know, but still. It's hardly the nicest bum on the beach."

The precocious 15-year-old girls, the assured women in their very early twenties. But the way you fill your suit drives me wild. Any wilder and I'd have to be caged.

I don't tell you that. I don't need to tell you that. You know that as a fact. I grope your ass. "You question my taste?" I go faux haughty. "You're the only beachbum for me," I speak, my breath of words a waft of exotic perfume.

You slap back at my hands. "Enough! Back to work. Back to skin." Your slaps are unaimed; as fast as my hands move, you are mostly slapping at your own ass.

I stay away, my fingers sliding downwards to the purity of flesh. You stop your batting and eventually relax, settling against the towel, spreading your thighs enough that I can cover the final few square inches of your bared skin. The tender patches palming your pubis. One hand, two fingers spread, caressing the deep creases where your legs dip then end, the parallel straps of elastic sewn in fabric, the skin underneath sculpting then down to the kiss of lips around your private pocket.

"Stop that," you send a slap back that I wave away.

I go immediately bold, slipping fingers sideways under the band, pushing under cloth, swirling through the curly hairs. Quickly touching cunt. A finger plowing your furrow. You shift away with a grunt, but then push back.

My fingers greasy, the sweat between your thighs, the start of your juices--immediately I've a finger to the knuckle up inside you.

"What do you think you're doing?" you gasp. "Stop that! We're in public."

"Look around," I caution, "then, re-e-lax. I'm the only one who can see what I'm doing."

"And what is it exactly that you think you're doing?"

I slip another finger up your cunt, the knuckle of the first bent and rubbing against your clit. "Paying homage to the only element of perfection in my life."

Instantly I regret the wording, but from what I hear, you haven't taken offense. On the contrary, you settle down into your towel, the sand shifting beneath you as you lower your pelvis all the way, beckoning all of my hand against you.

Once that's decided, you take off, a biplane sprouted a pair of jet engines. The canvas sheds in shreds from your wings; you tilt, then dive to kiss the ultimate crash.

You bite down on the towel, catching a pouch of sand between your teeth.

I've barely begun and already it's upon you, the intensity, ferocity and duration of your orgasm sucking the breath from the both of us. Your hips give a final thrust, then seem to actually deflate. I slip out of you when you collapse. My entire hand glistens with you.

In a way I'm disappointed: I wanted to play with you more than this. As if reading my mind, you recover and rise to all-fours. But just as I'm about to touch you you leave your knees and spring to your feet, your hands on the towel pushing you upright. You scamper to your feet like a freshly foaled colt. Once your legs are steady, you step around to face me. You give me a smile that fades in and out of being a smirk, the very smirk of satisfaction.

I'm still thinking about you standing up. Your magnificent bum racing through its paces just inches from my face.

"Might as well go in for a swim, considering how wet my suit is anyway. Want to come with me?" You give the final sentence the expected emphases. Eyebrows damn well flickering.

I shrug my shoulders, touch my shoulders, then shrug them again. Me and the glare off the water, even with a shirt, is otherwise a bad match.