Free Drowning by Jassy Mackenzie

lightly stroking over the thin beige fabric of the borrowed shorts I wore. The action was having the most unprecedented effect on my body. My skin was tingling at his touch, my jaw was dropping open, while my heart was hammering with excitement.
    “Trust me, I don’t often get no for an answer, but when I do, I respect it,” he continued. “But you’re sending me mixed messages. It would be wrong of me not to try to figure them out. To explore the limits of your permissiveness.”
    His voice caressed the last word. The stroking exploration of his fingers had reached the inside of my thigh. I was absolutely paralyzed. My carefully built defenses had crumbled at his touch. The overpowering sense of shame that filled me at what I was allowing him to do—the fact that I could not tell him to stop—did not in any way lessen the deep, hot lust that pooled in the pit of my belly.
    “Eland on your left,” he said gently, as his touch moved up and I felt his fingertips brush, briefly and deliciously, over the crotch of my shorts, the action sending a pulse of liquid pleasure through me. I caught my breath, my brain processing his words far too slowly, and turned my head to see that yes, there was some sort of large antelope standing a few feet from the road and observing the leisurely progress of the Land Cruiser.
    I gripped the sides of the leather seat as his fingers returned to their exploration, stroking over the place where the soft fabric covered the rounded lips of my sex, each small movement of his hand creating a flood of sensation that washed through me. My heartbeat was rapid, my nipples felt tight and aching, but the rest of my body was melting, languorous, utterly incapable of resistance.
    He stroked his hand gently upwards, massaging the softness of my pubic area, before moving it to the waistband of my shorts. Deftly, he undid the belt and eased the zipper down. Neither of us spoke. The only sound was the soft swishing and scrunching of the tires over the mud and the stones, and the rumble of thunder overhead. The air felt heavy and close, as if the clouds were pressing in to cover us, concealing our actions from the outside world.
    With every heart-pounding second that passed, I had the opportunity to consider what my consent meant—both now, and in the long term—but the frantic guilt that was drumming in my brain was smothered and silenced by the boiling desire that the moment offered.
    The waistband of my shorts gaped open now and his fingers slipped inside. His touch felt warm and sure. He caressed the skin of my lower belly and the pulse deep in my groin intensified to a painful throbbing.
    “Almost completely shaved,” he whispered, running his fingers over the narrow strip of hair above my cleft, and then over the hairless skin surrounding it. “You feel so silken smooth. So soft.” His hand pressed gently on my pubic bone, his fingers massaging the tender flesh.
    Crazy thoughts spun in my mind. I should pull myself out of the moment, make a witty comment about the thoughtfulness of him having provided a razor in my bathroom, I should tell him to stop. Each and every one of these thoughts was overridden, as his hand moved lower, by the compelling need of my body.
    Instead, I let out a moan as his finger parted my lips and slid between them; a moan that was echoed by Nicholas as he felt the wetness there.
    “God, Erin, you’re so ready.”
    Ready to accept his most intimate sexual advances? Oh, this was bad. I was bad. As he stirred the tip of his finger lusciously inside the cleft of my moistened slit, I arched my hips towards him, turning to him, my eyes wide, my lips apart.
    “Yes,” Nicholas whispered. Rain splattered onto the windscreen, the storm closing in on us with violence, the flicking of the wipers unable to keep up with its assault. It drummed on the roof and poured over the leaves and grasses around us. The car had become a capsule in a deafening tunnel of grayness. How was he