Elizabeth 06: The Honeymoon

Back at their hotel, Jonathan was curled up on the bed in his dry swimming trunks, once again lost in a book. He looked up in mild surprise when Elizabeth appeared above him. Seeing the parcel in her hand, he asked, "So you actually bought one, did you?"

"Do not expect for one moment for me to believe that surprises you, Jonathan!" Elizabeth ordered him, kicking off her sandals. For the second time in twenty minutes she pulled her dress off. "You knew full well I would never shy away from tearing down another wall for ladies like myself, and you also know how much your admiration for me helps me along that way!"

"I cannot deny that," Jonathan conceded, sitting up to enjoy the show as Elizabeth removed her brassiere, followed quickly by her panties. Elizabeth, though tremendously eager to put her new bathing suit on again, paused to allow Jonathan a long look at her body and to enjoy his reaction. His eyes and trunks alike bulging, Jonathan stood up and pushed the trunks down, his hardness springing to attention before Elizabeth.

"Ah, the things I could do with that just now!" Elizabeth teased, opening the box to pull out her new garment. "But first I want you to see me in this."

"I have no doubt I'll adore it," Jonathan said. To further titillate her, he began stroking himself slowly, leisurely. It worked, and Elizabeth was severely tempted to forget about the bathing suit for the moment. But she had made up her mind to model it for Jonathan and enjoy his inevitable approval lest she lose her nerve for the beach, and so she pulled the suit on and posed before him. Once again the astoundingly taboo obviousness of her dark brown pubic hair against the brightly coloured fabric was palpable; and as a result of Jonathan's casual masturbation her hard nipples also made their presence unavoidably known. This, of course, only further enflamed Jonathan's desire, and he began stroking harder as he admired his wife.

After an enjoyable moment of basking in his lust, Elizabeth said, "Oh, very well, Jonathan, do save some of that for me now!" She crossed her arms over her chest and pulled the suit down most energetically, and kicked it over toward the window.

The beach could wait! Elizabeth threw herself at Jonathan, knocking him back onto the bed and collapsing in a joyful heap atop him. Straddling his belly, she reached back and picked up where he had left off: after a playful squeeze, she swirled the head of his cock around her palm until she felt the tell-tale wetness leaving its trail. At that point she slipped both hands around behind his head and leaned down to kiss him passionately, her breasts hanging down just far enough to tickle his chest most enticingly. His own hands soon found their way up to them, and Elizabeth thrilled to his expert caresses as she continued kissing him and rubbing her wet, hairy pussy up and down his belly.

"You'll look so lovely on the beach," Jonathan whispered between kisses. "I can hardly wait to see it!"

"You and I both!" Elizabeth agreed. On that note she sat up and took him in both hands, and slipped him effortlessly inside her. Rocking back and forth slowly at first, she looked adoringly down at Jonathan, who simply gazed back at her in his usual awestruck admiration. "Like the view?" she teased.

"Always!"

Elizabeth began humping harder. Jonathan moaned agreeably but did nothing else. In frustration, she slowed down her thrusts and asked, "Need an invitation, dear?"

"An invitation for what?"

"You spoiled me so!" Elizabeth grunted, and with that she picked up his right hand and guided it to her clitoris. Jonathan had, on their very first encounter, proven himself to be a genius with fingering her into a tizzy even during full-on intercourse; but he was far too stingy in sharing that gift with Elizabeth.

"Oh, of course, dear. Sorry." The invitation having arrived, Jonathan set about rubbing with his thumb as only he knew how to do. Elizabeth did not know or care whether he had been truly unaware of her desire, but it did not matter now that he was well on the way to working her into an explosive orgasm. When the big moment arrived, Jonathan could only thank his lucky stars it was late morning and their neighbours were most likely not trying to sleep, for Elizabeth's lusty screams could have awoken the dead. The absolutely delicious awareness of her pleasure brought him over the edge as well, and just as she came back down off her cloud, Elizabeth was rewarded with the beautiful sight of his face sensing the loss of control as he came.

There was talk of showering in the afterglow, but they both decided against it; they would, after all, be spending most of the afternoon in the water. Elizabeth did give in to her modesty long enough to wear a robe over her bathing suit while Jonathan put on a shirt for the walk to the beach. It was fairly crowded, mostly with other tourists judging from the English they overheard; but they were able to find a recently vacated patch not far from the high-tide waterline where they spread out their blanket. None of the handful of sunbathers in the immediate vicinity took any notice of them, a matter that brought Elizabeth a mixture of relief and encouragement when the big moment had arrived and she opened her robe.

Naturally the world did not stop turning. Elizabeth did not allow herself the satisfaction or embarrassment - or both? - of looking around to see if she had inspired any scandal just yet. Instead, after a moment to savour her freedom, she turned to Jonathan and asked, "Come for a swim, darling?"

"Absolutely!" Jonathan said. Hand in hand they pranced off into the surf, taking no notice of the two sisters who were lounging on a nearby blanket, and who had both chanced to look up at Elizabeth's unapologetic exhibition.

As they watched her and Jonathan run down to the water, they looked at one another in disbelief. "Did I just see..." one of them began.

"Yes," the other confirmed. "What in God's name is she thinking?"

"Is she thinking?" the other added.

Of course Elizabeth's open secret was safe in the water. After a thoroughly enjoyable time spent splashing about and playing together, she forgot all about the matter of what showed and was thus utterly without care or concern when she emerged from the sea. It was, she later told me, just like her pre-bullying memories of when she knew she was different but never imagined anyone would care. Also like that long-ago naiveté, it came to an abrupt end as she was promptly aware of others minding her business. She probably did not notice the first looks she received, as she was not expecting them. But as the beach was now quite crowded, the raised eyebrows and scandalized glances she inspired were impossible to miss entirely.

The first eye-contact came only when she and Jonathan were nearly back to their blanket, when a young man looked up at her with an expression of disgust. But she was already aware by then of others stealing glances, some of them looking hurriedly away while others gazed in fascination, whether positive or negative; and so she knew just what the young man who finally glared at her was thinking. Also thanks to her earlier inoculation, as well as years of putting detractors in their place at the baths in Westfordshire City and at school before that, she acknowledged him only with a shameless smile that made it abundantly clear that she was not sorry. She was a bit hurt; but none of the strangers on the beach could have guessed as much.

For all outward appearances, Elizabeth was thoroughly undaunted when she and Jonathan lay down on their blanket to sunbathe. Her heart was aflutter with the rush of awareness that she was attracting attention, but she calmed her nerves with the knowledge that, here as back home, some of the attention was undoubtedly positive. In any and all events, she reminded herself, it was no one's business but her own. While it felt inevitable that there would be a confrontation of some sort, then, she was in the best possible frame of mind in anticipation of that event.

It was not long in arriving. "Excuse me," came a female voice, and Elizabeth opened her eyes to see a young woman, clad in a rather skimpier bathing suit than her own, crouching down to talk to her.

Elizabeth propped herself up on her elbows. "May I help you?"

"Well," the other woman began. "This is rather embarrassing, but..."

"If it's embarrassing, perhaps you shouldn't say it, my friend," Elizabeth offered.

"Actually, I must. My friends insist." On this note she cast a quick but betraying look to her left, and Elizabeth was aware of a group of several other young men and women clustered in a circle, past whom she had just walked, all of them trying assiduously not to draw attention to themselves from her direction. "You are making them all rather uncomfortable, and they have asked me to come over and ask you to please cover up."

"If I am making them uncomfortable, perhaps they should not look at me, wouldn't you say?" Elizabeth replied.

"That is what I suggested!" the young woman confessed. "And that is why they nominated me to come talk to you."

"Well then, you may tell them you talked to me," Elizabeth said. "But I shan't be covering up, certainly not any more than you or your friends are. I might note you are wearing rather less clothing than I am at the moment."

"That is different!" She stood up straight and gestured up and down with her hands. "I have nothing to hide, as you can see!"

"Neither do I," Elizabeth said.

"But...It isn't appropriate!"

The poor young woman now appeared near tears of frustration. Seeing this, Jonathan piped up for the first time. "Young lady, we have no desire to make you uncomfortable. But it sounds to me as though your friends are doing just that by sending you over here. You can tell them you talked to her; if that is not enough, perhaps they ought to fight their own battles instead of sending you to do it for them."

She looked at Jonathan in silence for a moment, then finally nodded her head. "All we want is for a lady to be a lady," she said as she turned to go. Elizabeth and Jonathan ignored the barb.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Jonathan said, "I know you were perfectly capable of fending her off, darling; I only wanted to help."

"No, that's perfectly lovely of you, Jonathan," Elizabeth said. "Thank you." Feeling oddly invigorated by the confrontation, she took a triumphant look around and was blissfully aware of a heated argument among the friends who had sent the young woman to accost her. She also took note of another woman on a nearby blanket who was giving her an approving look, which Elizabeth acknowledged and returned with a nod and a smile. Feeling even more emboldened than usual about her body, she uncrossed her legs and spread them a bit, thus further scandalizing any and all prudish beachgoers in the vicinity.

She rather suspected that the battle was won but the war was not; and after a few peaceful moments of enjoying the sun she was proven correct. When at last the argument among her new enemies had simmered down, she dared a peek in their direction and saw a young man approaching. "Pardon me, madam," he said in classic too-precise non-native English. "I believe you have met my friend Sarine?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "and we had a lovely little chat that ended with an agreement that if you and your friends don't appreciate my body, you are more than welcome not to look at it."

"Yes, well, to be frank, we are doing our best not to," he said, although Elizabeth could not help but note that his eyes darted back and forth from her face to her pussy as he said it. "Nevertheless, on behalf of everyone who is here to relax and enjoy himself, I feel I ought to let you know you are making many of us very uncomfortable. It really would be better if you would cover up."

Elizabeth managed, against considerable odds, to keep her cool. Once again she was the frightened young girl in the school locker room; but she would not be beaten into submission this time. "This is the beach," she told him with a forced smile. "It's one place where we should never have to cover up. You certainly aren't!" The young man was wearing a short, tight pair of trunks that left very little indeed to the imagination; and it looked to Elizabeth as they were getting tighter as he carried the burden of looking at her repulsive body. He was also, she noted, quite hairy: arms, legs, chest and belly were fruitful with unapologetic forestation.

He looked down at his body, and his face turned red as he realized he was visibly hard down below. "That is different!" he insisted just as his friend had. "Everything that must be covered is covered!"

"And it is for me as well," Elizabeth said.

"But what about..." The poor thing could not even bring himself to say it.

"What about this?" Elizabeth asked with a saucy grin, flicking shamelessly at her exposed pubes with one hand. "If that's what upsets you, perhaps you should have a closer look at all the hair you are exposing!"

"But I am a man!"

"And it's different because men say it is? Welcome to the modern world, my dear. Women aren't going to be your property anymore, and you had best learn to accept that."

"That is not what I meant!" the man insisted.

"Then what on earth did you mean?" came a female voice with an American accent; and Elizabeth turned to see the woman with whom she had earlier exchanged approving looks standing on the other side of her blanket. She also chanced to note Jonathan grinning smugly, fairly bursting with pride; but he said nothing.

"This does not concern you!" the man snapped at her.

"And her body does not concern you or anyone else!" she shot back. "If you want to talk about making people uncomfortable, you and your friends harassing her, that's making us all uncomfortable! She already told you, if you don't like what you see, don't look!"

"Hear hear!" came a voice from a bit behind them, followed by a round of applause from several other revellers who had evidently had enough of the interruption to their sunbathing. Elizabeth noted that her new friend was wearing a modest bathing suit much like the one she had worn on the trip; she had little trouble imagining why.

The young man wasn't quite defeated. Staring embarrassedly down at his feet and the sand around them, he tried one last time. "As my friend said, all we want is for a lady to be a lady."

"I see a beautiful lady here," said the American, "Utterly unashamed of her natural beauty. And I also see a bunch of pathetic kids who just can't stand anyone being different and comfortable with that difference. If you don't like it, you can pack up your little toys and find some other part of the beach. But I warn you, there will always be others around who don't fit your narrow little idea of what's pretty, young man!"

This time Elizabeth and Jonathan joined in the applause, and the man followed his friend's lead in retreating with his tail between his legs.

"Bravo!" Jonathan stood up to shake the woman's hand. "Thank you. I'm Jonathan, incidentally, and this is my wife Elizabeth." He whispered Elizabeth's name, lest the troublemakers overhear.

"My name is Linda," the American said, also shaking hands with Elizabeth, who had scrambled to her feet by then. "And my husband Howard is..." she looked over her shoulder to see he had joined the circle. "He's right here!" she said with a laugh. "Listen, I do hope I didn't horn in too terribly on your privacy there. It's just that I couldn't help overhearing those young louts harassing you, and..."

"No, no, that's lovely!" Elizabeth said. "Really, when I made my decision not to hide my...who I am, you know, well, I knew there would be some trouble over it. But I have found before that if you don't apologize for anything, most people will respect you for it. Even if they don't agree with my grooming choices."

Linda gave her husband a knowing look, and they smiled at one another. Turning back to Elizabeth and Jonathan, she said, "Rest assured, Elizabeth, I do agree with your grooming choices." With that she lifted up the skirt of her bathing suit to reveal overgrowth of her own. While less prominent than Elizabeth's, it certainly would have been visible in a suit like Elizabeth's. "Honestly, dear, I envy your bravery a great deal!" she said with a girlish laugh.

"Well, Linda, I ought to tell you," Elizabeth said. "Today is my first day in this suit. So my bravery is quite newly discovered. And thank you ever so much for helping me through it! It is never too late to join me, you know!"

Linda nodded and looked at Howard again. "I like the way you think, dear. Same time and place tomorrow?"

"Certainly!" Elizabeth was thrilled at the success of her venture.

While the women were enjoying their bonding moment, Howard said to Jonathan, "Aren't we a couple of lucky so-and-sos?"

"And how!" Jonathan agreed.

"Leave it to me to find a man who's perfectly content to just talk!" Irene vented to me the following night at the baths.

"He did ask you out for Friday, didn't he?" I asked.

"Yes and no," Irene said. "He asked, but I rather had to goad him into it."

"Sounds to me like he was only being a gentleman," Maggie said. "Wait until the third date and all that."

"I suppose," Irene said. "It is only that...he looked so perfectly dazzling in that suit, and we do already know one another quite well."

"You know, if you wanted it to move faster, you always could have floated the idea yourself," I pointed out. "That's how James and I got together, after all."

"I was the one who asked him out in the first place!" Irene replied. "I shouldn't have to do all the work."

"I quite agree with her, Agnes," Maggie said. "It ought to work both ways. But Irene, it really does sound to me like he simply did not want to move too fast. A true gentleman never does, after all."

"But I don't want a gentleman!" Irene confessed. "I want some fun, and heavens, I want it soon!" Even she had to laugh once the words were out of her mouth; seeing it was acceptable, Maggie and I laughed as well. "Sorry, ladies, I know I'm whining. I suppose it is just that, seeing such a success story with Elizabeth and Jonathan, and knowing I'm the one who set that in motion in the first place...it's frustrating."

"Now, hold on, Irene," I said. "Do you really think Elizabeth has never known the frustration you're feeling just now? Even with Jonathan?"

"Especially with Jonathan, if the rumours are true," Maggie added. (The rumours were true; Jonathan's lesser desires had caused their share of tension early on in their relationship. But Irene and I did not confirm this; it was none of Maggie's business after all.)

"We have both heard her tell very frankly of the many times the men in her life could not keep up with her desires," I reminded Irene. "Sometimes I think that is one thing about herself she would change if she could." When Irene gave me an extremely sceptical look, I reiterated, "I did say 'sometimes', didn't I?"

Irene nodded. "You are quite right," she admitted. "Courting is ever so very frustrating. But worth it when the stars align."

"And they will," I reassured her, squeezing her hand under the water.

"Speaking of which," Maggie asked me with a grin. "You and James?"

"We had a lovely evening together, which ended with a kiss on the corner," I told her, neither knowing nor caring if she knew what James and I had done at the wedding.

"You too?" Irene asked. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not," I said. "There is nothing wrong with taking things slowly, after all."

"Not if it's what you both want," Irene agreed. And from the glint in her eye, I could see she was not going to be let down again on Friday!