Mary Grace rolled onto her stomach, allowing her husband full access to her back.  She even untied the strings of her bikini bra, even though there was no real concern with distracting tan lines.  She didn’t get tan lines.  She used sun screen fifty and the beach lounger on which she lay came with an attached canopy.  She just thought it appropriate behavior that when a woman found herself on a private Bermuda beach with a gorgeous new husband seven years her junior, she should let said husband rub lotion on her flip side.
.        “Lay it on thick,” she said.  “I should slide right off this bitch if I even twitch a pinkie.”
.        “How about staying completely out of the sun rather than grease yourself up like a sixteen-year-old dick on prom night.”
.        She turned her head in his direction, serving a pout that would do absolutely nothing to convey her message or further her cause.  Indeed, Carlson rolled his eyes.
.        “Just because I don’t want to come back from my honeymoon looking like a burnt piece of toast doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel the sun warming my skin or get to swim in these beautiful waters.  Or keep my calves toned with vigorous walks back and forth in the sand to the cabana bar for a fresh dark and stormy.”
.        “No dark and stormys,” he warned.  “I’m only required to carry you over the threshold, not all around Bermuda.”
.        “Please,” she said.  “Drinking ages you.  I don’t indulge but on special occasions.”
.        She leaned up on her arms to plant a single kiss on his lips.  “And an occasion doesn’t get more special than this.”
.        She studied his face a moment longer, his heart touched by her affection even if his libido wasn’t, then kissed him again, deeper, longer.  His response was one of equal fervor, one exclusively for her and not the people around them.  At this moment, this public display of physical contact was meant only for Mary Grace.
.        “You’re making me horny,” she whispered to him.
.        “You’re making you horny,” he said, pulling away.  “Come on now,” he urged her to lie back down.  “Time to work on your lady’s tan.”
.        “The kind you get shielded beneath parasols and an entourage wielding long fans shaped like lily pads, rather than flipping yourself over and over again like a pig at a luau rotating on a spit.”
.        “Don’t forget the apple in its mouth.”
.        “Oh, yes,” she murmured, settling again on to her belly, turning her head away from Carlson.  “Let the pig have its apple.”
.        She closed her eyes and enjoyed the massage, Carlson’s powerful hands kneading the lotion into her skin.  He didn’t have to do that to activate the SPF; he knew she liked massages and gave them frequently.  Mary Grace had the kind of skin that was made to be rubbed and caressed, soft and blemish-free, smooth and milky, supple and silky.   Carlson had admitted on more than one occasion how he enjoyed touching her.  She’d gotten a Brazilian wax for the occasion; maybe if she got him drunk enough she could convince him to go down on her one of these nights.
.        “I’m going down to the water,” he announced when he’d finished.  She heard him through a massage-induced coma and fantasies of his mouth exploring the folds of her pussy.
.        “Can I get you anything?  Your book, a bottle of water?”
.        “Come back with a fruit tray,” she spoke like someone with a mouth filled with marbles.
.        Over half an hour later, after a light nap for her and a quick dip for him, the newlyweds shared a fresh fruit platter dipped in vanilla yogurt and watched the crystal blue ocean roll in with frothy fingers and pull back on reluctant feet, leaving spiderwebs of foam in its wake on the wet earth.
.        “This is so gorgeous,” he said.  “I love it here.  I’d move here if I didn’t have the means to come as often as I like.”
.        “Those same means are what would make it bearable living here,” she reminded him, and he smiled sheepishly.
.        “I know.  But sometimes it’s nice to think of myself as someone who lives moment to moment, eat for dinner what I caught that day.”
.        “Only because you’ve never had to experience either.  Go on Survivor if you want to live off the fat of the land.”
.        After disposing of their trash Carlson went back down to the water, Mary Grace to the latest Janet Evanovich numbers-novel.  Book by numbers, color by numbers, anything by numbers was easy and mindless, put this piece here, that piece there.  Even fast food restaurants and some diners made you order that way now.  “A number three with a Coke” was so much easier than having to put together your own meal.  Hey, idiot, look:  someone did it for you.  At least that meant they couldn’t upsell you anymore.  “You want fries with that?  Oh, wait, it already comes that way.”
.        She pushed the book closed.  She was too distracted to read.  She climbed out of the lounger and went to join Carlson.
.        He was submerged up to his neck, alternating between dunking, swimming and floating.  When he saw her entering the water, he stood to his full height and moved in her direction, the grin on his face as broad as his shoulders.
.        “It’s so beautiful,” she repeated his earlier sentiment, dunking just past her breasts.  He dunked down to her level and pulled her to him.  She wrapped her legs around his waist, draping her arms around his neck as he pulled her out further into the ocean.  She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the muscles flex as he gently paddled them out towards the large rock formation jutting out of the water some fifty feet in the distance.  Several people had climbed to the top for photo ops, arms spread wide in a posture of great achievement, kings and queens of the world, all.  When they’d first arrived at the beach Carlson had told her he climbed it every time he visited Bermuda and memorialized it with a picture.  He’d first come with his family on his sixteenth birthday, and now his gallery spanned fourteen years with a photograph to commemorate each return to the island.  For Mary Grace, it was her first time.  Sure, Wyatt had liked to travel, and in the honeymoon phase of their marriage, when everything was still fabulous and exciting and they were on the same team and she was his sole hippity-dippity partner, they’d gone to many exotic locations.  Destination vacations, people called them, but it was just one body of water after another, this stretch of sand as opposed to that one, getting it doggy style on a variety of balconies while watching the sun rise or set.  But she’d never been to Bermuda.  Carlson loved Bermuda, and she was glad she got to see it for the first time through his eyes.
.        Gliding with him through the water, their bodies pressed together, they looked like any other couple would enjoying their honeymoon.  They looked well-suited, in harmony, in love.  Anyone watching them would have seen exactly what they were presenting:  a gorgeous, successful, enviable man and woman celebrating embarking upon a brand new life together.  She was almost jealous of herself, of the picture she presented.  But she knew better.
.        Mary Grace knew who she and Carlson really were, where they were and how they had gotten there.  It would do her no good to fall victim to the illusion.  The reality was spectacular as it stood; she didn’t need to make it more than it was.
.        But what could it hurt if she did, just for this week?  Like a steamy book or romantic movie, she could lose herself in it for as long as it lasted.  Somewhere inside she would know it wasn’t real, while at the same time suspending disbelief just until the ride was over.  There was no reason why, while she was here in Bermuda, she couldn’t pretend along with everybody else who looked at them that they were the fantasy couple they projected to the world.
.        And so that’s exactly what she did.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

After the beach they returned to the Fairmont Southampton and had a few drinks in the hotel lounge before making their way back to their room, a corner suite on the concierge floor with a wraparound balcony in the bedroom and another in the living room with a breathtaking view of the Atlantic.
.        “I’m taking a shower,” she told him as he flopped on the king size bed.  “Don’t get under the sheets.  I don’t want to feel sand all night.”
.        “I’m not getting under the sheets,” he said, his eyes already closed, the sun and alcohol already taking their affect.
.        “You could take a shower with me,” she suggested, knowing it was not something he was likely to do.
.        “Nah, you go ahead.”
.        She admired his tight, tanned body, sprawled out prone on the bed.  His light brown hair, thick and wavy and just long enough to touch his shirt collars, curled softly on the pillow, enticing her fingers to snake through it.  The broad shoulders, the toned pecs, the Italian Vogue cover-worthy structure of his face.  She wondered what he would do if she stripped off her bikini and straddled that face, suctioned her seeping gash right over his mouth.
.        “Carlson.”
.        When he didn’t respond, she spoke more sharply.
.        “Carlson.”
.        He cracked an eye.  She folded her arms across her breasts.
.        “It’s our honeymoon.”
.        The room was silent while she stared him down, both of his eyes now open and focused on her.
.        “I’m sorry,” she said.  “But we’re here in a tropical paradise, I’ve got some liquor in me and it’s all so romantic and you look so beautiful and it’s all a perfect storm to make me horny as hell.  Come on.  This is a partnership.  I know sex isn’t part of it, but I just want something.  With you.  Anything.  I’ve been diddling myself for months, it isn’t right.”
.        “What about Dimi?”
.        “What?  Are you actually serious with that?”
.        She was raising her voice and he leaned up, putting his hands out.  “Okay, okay.”
.        “Dmitry thinks I’m devoted to you.  That one’s going to take a while, and until it does I need a little human touch.”
.        “We could get someone else.”
.        Her icy glare caused his words to taper off.  “Sorry,” he said softly.
.        He dragged himself up into a half-seated position, holding his hand out to her.  “Come here.”
.        She held her ground.  “I’m not going to cuddle with you, Carlson.”
.        “I understand.”
.        She peeled off her bikini bottoms and stepped out of them.  He stared at her bald pussy and she felt a tightening in her belly.  Like an invisible rope pulling her to him, she walked to the bed, throwing her right leg over his lap and settling her naked cunt over the lump in his bathing suit.  She lifted her left leg, folding it behind her so that her glute rested on her calf muscle.  She wiggled slightly, nestling him within her lips.  She slid herself back and forth slowly, her clitoris tingling and plump from the friction.  When she looked at his face, she saw he was watching her grinding on him and she pumped harder, getting off on the attention.  She took his hands and placed them on her hips, removing her own hands once he got the idea that she wanted him to assist in her motion.
.        She leaned over, popping one of her boobs out of the bikini top, slapping it onto his face.
.        “Suck my tittie,” she demanded breathlessly.
.        He obliged and when he sucked her nipple and areola into his mouth she let out a deep moan.  When she began to feel the beginnings of an erection straining through his suit, she practically begged, “Please, Carlson, let me put it inside me.”
.        His answer was to jerk her back and forth harder on his pop-tent dick, and she came, grinding her clitty on him as pulse after pulse of electric pleasure shot through her core.
.        She collapsed on top of him, heart pounding, panting, feeling him grow limp beneath her.
.        “Can I go to sleep now?” he murmured.
.        She waited until he fell asleep to climb off and enter the shower.  She turned on the spray, the warm water mixing with her tears as she silently wept.