The heat between her thighs was immediate and embarrassing, and she pressed herself closer rather than farther away because the pretending was over, and she was done with the pretending.

The sketch was on the sand somewhere behind her.

She didn’t look for it.

His hands.

That was the thing.

Both hands were present and accounted for, and both were offering the same unhurried, proprietary attention with the ease of a man who managed plural situations by instinct rather than effort. One palm curved over the swell of Nara’s ass — the thin fabric bunching at the crease, his fingers settling there with the familiar weight of ownership — and she made a sound against his neck that she converted, partially and unconvincingly, into a hum.

The other hand moved to the base of Gia’s spine and then lower, curving, his fingers finding the bottom edge of the rabbit-fur waistband and pressing her hips forward by the barest, most precise degree.

Gia’s jaw set.

Her nails left half-moons in his shoulder.

She said nothing.

Celia, with her face pressed to his chest, felt his heartbeat through her cheekbone, and she was so focused on not being the loudest reactor that she almost missed his lips.

Almost.

They found her forehead — warm, brief, the lightest contact, like a fact stated without needing to be restated.

She stopped breathing for two seconds.

Her whole body went still with the concentrated, animal alertness of something that had been very still for a very long time and had just received a signal.

He pulled back just enough.

Looking at all three of them — their faces tipped up, their eyes different frequencies of the same thing, their bodies pressed against his with the multi-directional warmth of three women who had come a very long way.

The corner of his mouth moved.

"So."

The pause.

The sea breeze moved through all of their hair simultaneously — the dark and the darker and the other dark, all tangled by wind on a beach that smelled like salt and the warm-stone scent of an island in the afternoon sun.

"Should I start eating all three of you?"

None of them answered.

Not immediately.

The answer was obvious to all three of them, had been obvious since before they packed the bag, before the boat, before the shaving they were all very carefully not discussing.

Nara’s thighs pressed together against his leg.

Gia’s fingers tightened on his shoulder.

Celia lifted her face from his chest and looked up at him — at the jaw she had drawn from memory, at the eyes she had been remembering wrong because memory flattened them, and they were not flat. They were deep and dark and completely unhurried, looking at her like she was the most interesting development in an interesting situation —

And for the first time in three weeks, she felt the glass sliver leave her chest.

She breathed in.

"Don’t ask," she said.

Her voice had the very deliberate, very controlled tone of a woman who had prepared something to say and was saying it now.

"Just fuck us already."

He didn’t move right away.

He stood there with the sea foam at his ankles and his hands loose at his sides, and he looked at all three of them the way a man looks at something he finds genuinely interesting — not hungry, not rushing, just unhurried, like a man who knew there was no clock on this.

The corner of his mouth moved.

"Not aroused enough."

All three of them blinked.

The pause was absolute.

The sea continued its indifferent business behind him — the waves, the birds, the afternoon light making everything golden and warm and completely irrelevant to what was happening in the space between four people on a beach.

Then their eyes dropped.

Helplessly. Inevitably. The helpless gravity of it.

His cock was softening.

Not soft. Not limp in the way of something finished. But deliberate, unhurried, like something choosing not to perform — the thick, cucumber-heavy weight of it settling against his thigh like it had decided to wait, the crimson head pointing toward the sand in the completely unbothered way of something that had places it could go and was choosing not to go there yet.

Nara’s mouth opened.

She closed it.

She opened it again.

"I..." She stared, the translucent blue of her bikini doing nothing to conceal the darkening fabric at her center. "It was just — it was erect, just now it was—"

He shrugged. The single, unhurried lift of one shoulder.

"That’s how it is."

Gia’s jaw set.

The competitive thing that lived behind her eyes woke up and sat forward, and she looked at Nara, and Nara looked at Celia, and Celia looked at both of them, and the communication between them was the wordless, three-way kind that requires no language.

They sank to their knees.

The sand was warm.

It shifted and settled under them — the fine, sun-heated grain of it finding the bare skin of their knees, their shins, warm from a beach that had been receiving afternoon light for hours. It didn’t matter. The sand didn’t matter. The birds didn’t matter. The boat, still drifting fifty meters behind them, did not matter.

Nara reached him first.

Both hands closing around the base of him — two-handed, barely fitting, fingers trying to meet around something too thick to meet around, the velvety, warm, heavy weight of him pulsing faintly in her palms.

’He’s this size and it’s — not even — he’s not even—’

She pushed the thought down and opened her mouth and took the wide, blunt head between her lips.

"Mmmf—"

The taste of him arrived immediately. Salt and warmth and the masculine depth of it that her body apparently remembered with the devoted, cellular accuracy of something that had been imprinted on a yacht three weeks ago by an incident she had slapped him for and then fallen asleep still attached to.

Her throat worked.

She sucked. Slow, then harder, her head beginning the bobbing pull of a woman applying genuine effort.

Gia moved to his left side.

Her lips found the weight of his balls — the full, heavy hang of them, the velvety skin — and she opened her mouth and took one in completely, her tongue moving in the slow, deliberate swirl of someone doing this with intention.

"Sluuurp."

Her rabbit-fur bra pressed against his thigh as she worked, the fur soft and absurd and she did not care, her hands finding his hip for balance, her eyes closing as she focused on the task with the concentration of a woman who had decided to win.

Celia took the other side.

Her cheek hollowed. Her eyes were open, looking up at him — the black lace against her skin, her dark hair falling forward, the complete and conscious decision to look at him while she did this because she had spent three weeks not looking at him and she was done with that.

"Sluuurp. Sluuurp."

The sound of it filled the beach air alongside the waves.

Nara went deeper.

She felt his cock filling more of her throat than it strictly had the right to — the thick, warm, pressing weight of it, the way her jaw had to maintain maximum extension around the girth, the watering quality her eyes were developing. She pushed further. Her nose pressing toward the base. Her throat opening around the bulk of him in the swallowing-around-something way that left no room for dignity.

"Gluck."

"Gluck."