She felt she ought to protest, but the precursor of a smile hid behind her cheekbones.
“This is no time to be thinking about sex.”
“What? I’m lying on an island in the sun with my nearly naked, gorgeous woman. When would be a better time to think about sex?”
Vanessa gave the side of his head a light smack.
“I’ve probably got a load of river bugs in my knickers. Oh, God. Ugh. And there are creepy-crawlies everywhere.”
Ben’s fingers scrabbled up her shin, then down her thigh. She shuddered with cold and tried to pull away from him.
“Don’t!”
“Honestly, Ness. You need to loosen up. And if you’ve got river bugs in your knickers, there’s an obvious solution to that. Take them off.”
“That’s your obvious solution to everything.”
“Yeah. Works, though. Look, the ground here’s dry. You aren’t going to get muddy or anything. And we can always wash ourselves off in the lake afterwards.”
“Ben…”
“What else are we going to do for three hours? Play I Spy?”
His fingers were making mischief around her bra clip. Soaked and shivering as she was, Vanessa loved those talented fingertips, no matter what he did with them.
“What if people see us?”
“There are no people.”
The clips pinged undone, releasing her breasts. A sliver of slippery green stuff—some kind of river weed—was stuck in her cleavage. She fished it out and flicked it at Ben.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he advised. “If you want a weed fight, I can give you a weed fight.”
She laughed, despite her chattering teeth.
“You’re a lunatic.”
“Crazy for you,” he said. He pushed her down by the shoulders and straddled her, growling and snapping his teeth like a predatory beast.
Vanessa wriggled inside his thighs. Already the sun was drying the lake water onto her skin. It felt a little tight and sticky, but she was warming up—except where Ben’s underpants and her knickers pressed wetly together.
“You should take your pants off,” she suggested, while he kneaded and massaged her breasts.
“Yes. I should.” He spent a couple more minutes caressing her nipples, then he rose to his knees and began to peel the pants slowly down. They made damp smacking sounds when the elastic stretched, then recoiled. Eventually, he had to stand to get them off the end of his foot. Vanessa smi
led up at his erection.
“How long has that been going on?” she asked.
“Since we got in the boat and I got a flash of your knickers. Speaking of which…”
He bent and tugged at the aforementioned garment.
Vanessa wasn’t sure she could cope with her bare bottom on the grass, but nothing seemed to crawl onto her, so she held her nerve until Ben placed the knickers on the bush with the other drying clothes.
“Now then, my open-air boating beauty,” said Ben, dropping back down and covering her body with his. His demonic grin made Vanessa giggle.
“I just don’t think I can do it,” she said apologetically. “I know I did it that time in the park but…”