‘You are afraid of your emotions,’ she said. ‘And you have intimacy issues.’
Stephen didn’t really believe her. And he was still depressed. Not as depressed as the day that Elvis had died. But miserable. Especially when he got the bill.
‘You’re tired,’ his mother told him on the phone from Manchester. ‘You need a holiday.’
‘She’s right,’ he said to himself. ‘I should have paid her the five hundred quid.’
So he packed his Paul Smith swimming trunks, bought some Clarins sunblock and departed for the Greek island of Thassos.
The Hotel Herakles, named after the white beach over which it looked, offered ‘spectacular views’, ‘mini-bars’, ‘air conditioning’, ‘syrtaki classes’ and ‘all mod cons’.
These were not the reasons for his choice. The Hotel Herakles had ‘magnificent’ pools. One, split-level, was photographed in the midst of landscaped gardens and tasteful sun terraces with blue-and-white striped parasols. One, a curvaceous lagoon, wound through Japanese-style wooden bridges and had a ‘wet bar’. The third, inside, was of ’Olympian dimensions’ and covered by a plexiglass dome designed by Terence Van Rausing, the architect known to have designed modernist water features for the gardens of one of the wives of the sultan of Brunei.
Stephen’s first three days were bliss. The sun shone hot and dry. He lounged on loungers, read his books, ate salads and felt the aches of a sedentary job leave his body. His dark glasses enabled him to watch people without being offensive and he began to observe the subtle differences of the pool-side scenes.
He was disappointed to note the abundance of thin women with bony hips and ungenerous bosoms who smoothed themselves out on the loungers, iPods in their ears, magazines and water bottles by their side. They rarely swam. They were too weak from hunger.
On the fourth day he pottered about in the lagoon pool. A group of beauty therapists from Stratford-upon-Avon began to stare at him. They had arrived the night before and were slathered in block 25. Stephen knew that, seen underwater, their bodies would be disappointing, involved as they were in a profession whose primary skills involved waxing and electrolysis and many other techniques unfriendly to the conservation of nature’s growth.
He swam slowly to the wet bar. This was in the middle of the lagoon pool. The roof was made out of bamboo and palm leaves. Nico, always stationed underneath it, served a range of wines, cocktails and cold beers. Stephen was pleased to see a generously proportioned Indian woman sitting on one of the stools. She had a gin and tonic in one hand and a Marlboro Lite in the other. Her hair, loose, was a shining raven black, while her red swimsuit offset both the brown tones of her flawless skin and the gold jewellery that she wore on her fingers, wrists, ears and around her neck. She was exotic and gorgeous and, as it turned out, garrulous.
‘I’m Sabina,’ she said. ’I’m spending my alimony.’
‘Well done.’ He smiled. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘I’m OK thanks,’ she said, shaking her cocktail so that the gold bracelets tinkled against the glass and a spectrum of tiny lights refracted from the ice.
‘I’m Stephen.’
‘Are you here alone?’ she inquired.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have a stressful job and needed a rest. What about you?’
‘No, I’m here with my friend Andrea. Cheering her up actually. I’m afraid she lost her son last year – heroin overdose at seventeen – awful thing – she hasn’t got over it, probably never will. The husband, Joe, well, he drank and then he left with a barmaid from Rayners Lane – they live in a caravan in Torquay apparently – anyway he took the shed and that was that.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Stephen.
‘Well,’ said Sabina, ‘life is full of surprises and most of them are unpleasant.’
‘Do you ever go to the beach?’ he inquired, wishing to ascertain her relationship with water and, in particular, whether she enjoyed swimming in it.
‘I’m not a sandy person,’ she replied, ‘and I don’t really swim. I mean I can, but I don’t want to. It makes the hair frizzy, let alone the effect on the skin. I don’t believe in exercise really or all that chat about health they go on about. I mean! Carrots should stay in the ground if you ask me. They are roots after all. And all that water you’re supposed to drink! I had a friend in Cheltenham, Veejay, drank a load of water and had to be taken to hospital – he exploded – literally exploded.’
She stubbed out her Marlboro Lite, drained her gin and tonic, and said, ‘We’ll be around tomorrow – perhaps we will see you then.’
She walked slowly out of the pool holding her handbag over her head. Stephen stared after her with a sense of disappointment. She would have looked magnificent submerged in translucent blue, that beautiful black hair floating in it. He allowed himself to fantasise about her, how she looked in her bedroom, how she would appear unshaved …
The next day Sabina hallooed him from underneath a parasol. She was wearing a white floppy hat and pair of vast dark glasses. The nail polish on her fingers and toe nails was crimson. Her feet were in high black mules and decorated with gold toe rings.
By the side of her, whiter and quieter, was a vision of adipose loveliness stretched out as a mass of thigh, stomach and white bikini. This two-piece structure was built to support, contain and confine. The bra was under-wired to provide a balcony for the FF cup. The high-waisted white pants were cut at the leg in such as way as to allow brown fronds to poke through in the crevices of the inner thigh.
These crevices are ever present in places of leisure and Stephen had long enjoyed them from the safety of his self-containment. Female holidaymakers, relaxed by heat and drink, little realise the porno positions they allow themselves to fall into while lazing in the sun. Having lost their self-awareness their bodies become a permissive display of spread legs and half-covered genitalia whose mirror reflection would mortify them or gratify them depending on their age and ambition.
The two women had commandeered a low table to support their needs. Sabina’s side was a mess of plastic tumblers, glossy fashion magazines and expensive sun lotions. Andrea’s side had an economy-sized Boots sunblock, a Danielle Steel novel and a box of chocolates whose lid described them as Arpeggio – ‘a creamy selection of champagne ganache sandwiches’.
A spasm of lust gripped Stephen for three or four fleeting seconds, taking him by surprise and momentarily risking his dignity. Recomposing himself with subtle effort, he gazed at Andrea with an expression of overt admiration which she failed to interpret as she had never seen it before, especially on a handsome man who was ten years younger than her. Joe, her ex-husband, never looked at her unless he was waiting for his tea and that was if he was there for tea. On most evenings, well, the evenings after … that day … Those evenings he would stagger in from the pub, crawl up the stairs on all fours, and either pass out on the landing or grope around until he found something that he assumed was his wife, though on one occasion it had been the dog.
Andrea dismissed the vision of her husband’s bleeding leg after it had been bitten by their German shepherd and realised that this dark youth had removed his sunglasses and was actually smiling at her. She looked around to see if there was anyone behind her – and turned back. His mouth was full of expensively whitened teeth. A blush seeped down her neck and crept into her cleavage, which further excited Stephen. Mortification was not his primary trigger, but he did like it, it signified vulnerability and stimulated his need to protect. And this, inevitably, made him very very hard.
She was perfect.
He studied her hair. It had received a home bleach and black roots were beginning to reveal themselves as a dark streak. In some positions her face had two chins. Her stomach was huge, her arms fat, her buttocks wide and without muscle tone. He loved them immediately and he knew that they would be awe inspiring when viewed underwater.
Andrea couldn’t believe what was happening to her. This handsome young man actually appeared to be che
cking her out, flirting with her even. She suspected a hidden television camera and determined to be very very careful. It could easily be a joke, or a bet, or worse. Maybe drugs … so that he could violate her like on CSI Miami. If there was one thing Andrea wanted to avoid it was drugs. The death of Seany had put paid to that. She hadn’t taken an aspirin since that day, though the doctor had tried to make her have some diazepam or something to help her sleep. She did not want drugs, she had told him, they had caused enough trouble. If she wanted to sleep she would have a nice cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream and a packet of Penguin biscuits.
That night, to Sabina’s amazement, Stephen and Andrea dined alone on the Sundowner Palazzo Terrace.
Stephen did not pursue the male practice of speaking entirely about himself for a period lasting three courses. He was blessed with some femininity, after all, and this was one of the reasons why he was so attractive. He could commune on emotional levels without losing his male appeal. He complimented her on her apparel – a low-backed lilac chiffon evening dress from Debenhams. This allowed her arms and shoulders to be beautifully exposed and it exhibited the full panorama of her décolleté. Round breasts were immersed in a magnificent cleavage, which was slightly flushed from the sun, and bejewelled with small round plastic beads bought also in Debenhams especially for the holiday.
He noticed the white band where her wedding ring had been but did not know that she had pulled it off her finger an hour earlier for the first time in twenty years.
‘Do you swim, Andrea?’ he asked.
‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘We used to go to the seaside when we were children.’
They drank a lot of retsina.
After dinner he lead her, tipsy and giggling, to the indoor pool which he knew, from prior investigations, would be both lit and empty after 10 p.m. They would be able to enjoy themselves away from prying eyes.
‘I’ve not got m’bathers here,’ she said.
‘Nobody will mind, you can go in your underwear, or naked!’
Andrea had obtained a little confidence from the wine, but, through the heady jollity of this adventure an unwelcome picture presented herself. She knew she was overweight; she wasn’t blind, after all, and, even if she had been, she would have felt her heart beating when she went upstairs. Furthermore she was wearing her Marks and Spencer bra and pants, far from new and far from attractive. These undergarments stimulated serious reservation about the wisdom of undressing in front of a man, who, for unfathomable reasons, had taken it upon himself to take an interest in her.
God she hoped he didn’t feel sorry for her. She had had enough of that. For God’s sake. She had once run her own lawnmower business.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
Stephen dropped his chinos, retained his white Calvin Klein boxers and dived in to the luminescent blue water with the grace of a seal. Then he swam quickly underwater and popped his handsome head up in front of where she was standing, vulnerable and anxious and still fully clothed. The water glittered in front of her.
‘Come on, darling,’ he said softly. ‘The water is wonderful and I want to kiss you.’
Andrea realised that she had to surrender. She had to do what was called feeling the fear and doing it anyway. She had read about it in Best magazine. Moments like this were rare and to waste them would be insulting to the God in whom she no longer believed. She allowed herself to enter the present, to let go of the past misery and drudgery and vast hurts, to forget that she was too fat and her neck was tense and her ankles often swelled.
She pulled down the zip in the side of the dress, smoothed it down over the curves of her round hips and, after a second of standing in her white bra and pants, she walked down the steps that led into the shallow end and launched herself into the warm water.
He caught her and kissed her. She laughed. When had she last laughed? She laughed and swam slowly and with some finesse towards the deep end. Her body moved as a glittering green and white palette of fluid flesh, her buttocks and legs shape-shifted in the water as Stephen followed behind, eyes open, seeing her in the clear blue, seeing everything.
Her hair now looked almost black in the water and swirled as a mist around her head. Her round white arms moved to allow the growth under her pits to poke shyly through. Her buttocks were the sexiest he had ever seen, the white orbs straining to escape from the underwear, full and fat and mobile. He resisted an impulse to place his hand between her legs to feel for himself the full bush whose bristles emerged from either side of the leg of her pants.
He followed her to the end, so hard now he thought he would sink, wanting to fuck her more than he had ever wanted to fuck any woman in his life. He knew that he was almost losing control. If she rejected him he would explode under the emotional and physical pressure of unmet needs.
Slowly she turned around at the deep end and slowly she swam back towards the shallow end.
‘I want you,’ he said, kissing her wet face. ‘Swim back to the steps.’
Andrea, now, was twenty years younger. The essences of youth and femininity were touching her as the memories of the sweet brief fleeting moment when she had turned heads. The blokes had come after her then, there was no denying that. She had had her pick. Her friends had been jealous. Joe had been the one that everyone wanted. A plumber for a start, and they were rich, plumbers. Joe had fallen for her. Hook and line.
Suddenly she was lovely again.
She swam towards the steps in a mental turmoil of happiness and desire, aware that he was swimming behind her, that he was in control and that he would take control at the other end of that Olympian length.
She was lying on the steps as he swam up. He walked out of the pool and lay on top of her, kissing her passionately, his tongue far into her mouth, holding her face, stroking her neck, feeling her wet hair in his fingers.
Then with a strong and expert stroke he pulled down her pants and threw himself face down into the cold wet bristles of her pussy and, underneath the cool wet bush, the warm wet stickiness of passion. She thrust her pelvis up and he buried himself in the rolls of cold wet flesh and tongued her clit until she could have cried.
Silently he hurled his groin into hers and filled her up, filled her up in a way that she had not known was possible. And he, immersed in cold damp ripples of female flesh, plunged again and again into her, losing himself, but sensing her, knowing her needs, fucking her hard, but not coming, not coming until he heard her final surrender, felt the internal twitching that signified release, and allowed himself to go. The cries of their passion resounded around the silent pool as echoes.
They lay side by side on the steps, chests heaving, bodies in the lukewarm water. Andrea, silent, like most women, began to feel the reality of her emotions.
But she was calm, so calm, calm and warmed by the sensation that she knew was love.
She wanted to say so many things, reveal so much, tell all. But she knew she must not. She knew that she would probably never see him again, that she would have to address the ignominy that was the fleeting lust of a stranger. Her psyche started to prepare for defence, while her body? Her body wanted more.
She wanted to splay her legs out for him, allow him to do anything, take her anywhere. Fuck her hard again and again.
Stephen was silent too, but he knew something and he said it first.
‘I love you.’
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9780753520901
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Black Lace stories c
ontain sexual fantasies.
In real life, always practise safe sex.
6
First published in 2007 by
Black Lace
Thames Wharf Studios
Rainville Road
London W6 9HA
Random House
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
Mind the Gap © Mae Nixon
The Art of Fucking © Nikki Magennis
Lust for Glory © Mathilde Madden
A Stranger, and Yet Not © Teresa Noelle Roberts
Barely Grasped Pictures © Olivia Knight
Behind the Masque © Sophie Mouette
A Whole New City © Nikki Magennis
The Highest Bidder © Sarah J. Husch
Wet Walls ©Kristina Lloyd
Perks of the Job © Jan Bolton
Reflections © Maddie Mackeown
Stag Hunt © Elizabeth Coldwell
Vacation © A. D. R. Forte
Fish © Stella Black
ISBN 9780352341051
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Sex with Strangers Page 22
