Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

directly into her brain to softly stroke at the plea sure center there as surely as palm and fingers would stroke the soft mound between her legs. Shayla gasped and arched involuntarily.
    “It’s really quite warm,” said Tony Harod.
    Shayla ran her hands over her face, touched her eyelids with something akin to wonder, and then ran her palms down her neck, across her collarbone, and stopped with her fingers pressing flat against her chest where the pale flesh began. She could feel her pulse fluttering in her throat like a caged bird. Then she slid her hands lower, arching again as her palms slid across her suddenly painfully sensitive nipples, lifting her breasts as Dr. Kemmerer had taught her when she was fourteen, but not examining them, merely pressing, pressing against herself with a pleasurable pressure that made her want to scream.
    “There’s really no need for a suit at all,” whispered Harod.
Did
he whisper? Shayla was confused. She was looking right at him and his lips had not moved. His slight smile showed small teeth like sharp, white stones.
    It did not matter. Nothing mattered to Shayla except getting free of the clinging maillot. She pulled the material lower, tugged it over the slight swell of her belly, and raised her buttocks to slide the elastic from under her. Then the suit was only a clinging fold of fabric on one leg and she kicked it free. She looked down at herself, at the inward curving arc of thigh and the vertical, not quite V-shaped line of pubic hair that rose toward the demarcation of her tan. For a second she was dizzy again, this time with a distant sense of shock, but then she felt the stroking begin inside her once again and she leaned back on her elbows.
    The Jacuzzi frothed warm water at her thighs. She raised a hand and slowly traced a blue vein where it pulsed under the white skin of her breast. The slightest touch brought fire to her flesh. The soft mounds of her breasts seemed to contract and grow heavier at the same instant. The noise of the pool seemed to synchronize and then syncopate with her thudding heartbeat. She raised her right knee and dropped her hand to the inside of her leg. Her own palm slid higher, disturbing the water droplets that gleamed on the thin, golden hairs of her upper legs. Warmth infused her, filled her, controlled her. Her vulva pulsed with a plea sure she had known only in that guilty twilight before sleep, known before only with a filter of shame now missing, and never known with this overwhelming sense of heat and urgency. Shayla’s fingers found the moistened folds of her labia and she parted them with a soft gasp.
    “Too warm for a suit,” said Tony Harod. “For either of us.” He took a final sip of his grapefruit juice, hoisted himself up on the tile, and set the glass far back from the edge of the pool.
    Shayla slid around, feeling the cool tiles under her hip. Her long hair tumbled around her face as she crawled forward, her mouth open slightly, using her elbows for leverage. Harod was leaning back on his elbows with his feet kicking idly at the water. Shayla paused and looked up at him. In-side her mind the stroking intensified, found her core, and slid slowly along it in teasing strokes. Her senses registered only the ebb and flow of oiled friction. Shayla gasped and involuntarily clenched her thighs together as wave after wave of preliminary orgasm rippled through her. The whispering grew louder in her mind, a teasing sibilance which seemed to be part of the plea sure.
    Shayla’s breasts touched the floor as she leaned forward and tugged down Tony Harod’s swim shorts in a frenzied motion that was somehow both violent and graceful. She pulled the bunched fabric down over his knees and into the water. Black hair marched down from his belly. His penis was pale and flaccid, slowly stirring in its nest of dark hair.
    She looked up and saw that his smile was gone. Harod’s eyes were perforations in a pale mask. There was no warmth there.