"Mary?" Bash asked. She could answer. She probably should. Staring at the ceiling would accomplish nothing, and anyway Bash sounded nervous.
"That was nice," she said, realizing belatedly that she should have been more effusive. To make up for it she reached out and grabbed for his arm. She missed – her hand landed somewhere around his diaphragm.
Bash laughed, though, and lay next to her, arm around her waist, face pressed against her throat. "I'm glad."
She could feel him pressed up against her, all along her side, and he was still hard. He seemed perfectly pleased to breathe into her neck. That wouldn't do at all.
He blinked at her when she pushed, but he rolled obediently onto his back, and blinked again when she settled kneeling between his thighs.
"Show me?" she asked.
"Uh?" he said. Mary put a hand just above his left knee and ran it up to his hip.
"You showed me how I could have sex without getting pregnant," she explained patiently, because he looked a little dazed. "Show me how you can."
"I mean, that wasn't the only way," he said. "There's plenty of other ways to have sex without getting pregnant, and really I was having sex as much as you were, I just didn't…"
He trailed off when Mary ran her other hand up his other thigh, knee to hip, so she was leaning forward, bracing herself.
"Show me another way, then," she said.
As if he had no control over it at all, his hand slid across his stomach and down, wrapping around his…
Cock, Mary, she thought. If you're going to touch it, and you're planning on it, you can at least call it a cock.
She watched him stroke up and down, flicked her eyes up - he met her eyes with wide ones, awed like she knew he would be - and, on a whim, dug her nails into the meat of his thigh.
Bash made a choking sound, flinging his head back, hand clenching harder around his cock as his hips jerked. Mary opened her mouth to ask if he was alright in spite of herself, but when she loosed her grip on his thighs his free hand snapped up and pinned one of hers back against his leg.
"It's good," he gasped. "Good, good, you're good."
"Let go of my hand," Mary said, meaning only that she wanted to try something, but it came out firmer than she'd planned and he released her as if she'd burned him, that hand going up to run his hand through his own hair as if he couldn't keep still. His hand was moving on his cock again, faster than before. Mary dug her nails in again and dragged.
The sound Bash made wasn't one she'd heard before, but she liked it. She liked it a lot. She dragged her nails back up, leaving red lines that didn't quite fade all the way.
"You're going to kill me," Bash gasped.
"Not today," Mary replied, feeling more confident than she had in years. "I've barely touched you."
"You could," he said, sounding pleading. "You could, Mary, I - you don't have to-"
Mary caught his wrist, stilling it, and tugged it away from his cock. He went with hardly any resistance, though his fingers flexed as if he wanted to. When she looked back at his face, he watched her, panting, eyes wide and fervent as she wrapped her other hand around his cock.
"I said, show me," she told him, and put his hand back where it had been, now wrapped securely around her own. She felt him flex, saw him heave a breath and slowly, slowly, slowly begin to pull her hand up and down.
"Your grip was tighter before," she said.
"I don't want to crush your hand," he croaked, pulling at his own hair as if to distract himself.
Mary tightened their grip herself, and tighter still when he twitched in her grasp.
"I thought you knew," she said. "I am not breakable, Bash."
His expression changed, from the soft, needy look to something fiercer. She thought he was worshipful before - now he stared at her as if she did not need to conquer, as if she had the world in her hand already and he knew that was how it should be.
"Not even a little bit," he agreed, and tightened his hand over hers, and whispered, "do you want me to?"
"That was the point," she retorted, and he came laughing. She didn't even mind the warm, sticky liquid.