by Gabi Moore
It was too much. She gave you the feeling of a fruit that’s just slightly too ripe, or heady white flowers that are so sweet and fragrant they nearly nauseate you. Her breasts were full on the bottom, and swung gently, and she had graceful lines from her sides down over her flat belly and into the narrow V in between her legs. Without anything on, I felt a brief pang of longing for her, as I remembered her, years ago.
She saw me and froze. Her nipples were the most singular shade of dusty pink. I could see she had been crying.
“You’re supposed to be in Switzerland,” she said, as though I was a ghost she was trying to explain to herself.
“Yes, well, I didn’t go. Clearly.”
She looked around the room, a little startled, and then took a few steps towards me. She seemed so comfortable naked. In fact, I felt naked on her behalf. She looked down at the tabloid magazines, and then at me, out of work clothes for a change.
“Why?” she said, big eyes scanning me.
I shrugged and laced my fingers behind my head.
“Well, let’s just say you were right. I am working too much these days. So I took a day off.”
She eyed me suspiciously and perched on the edge of the lounge chair. I could scarcely believe that this same woman had less than 24 hours ago stared straight into my face, dress hiked up to her waist, getting fucked by the hired help. But it was her. I had seen it. It was burned into my memory and now I couldn’t stop from seeing it. Somehow, though, I had trouble reconciling the woman in front of me with that burnt-in image.
“Come sit down with me. Want some coffee?” I said, and started to pour her a cup.
She came over and took the steaming mug from me, then pressed her lips to the rim without drinking.
“Last night…” she started, doing everything with her eyes except making eye contact with mine. She stopped, waiting for me to finish for her. To jump in, no doubt. To chastise her. But that wasn’t what I was going to do.
“Yes, you shouldn’t have done that,” I said casually.
She shot me a look, eyes as big as saucers.
I took a sip from my own cup and then looked out over the pool water, noticing the silkiest, faintest little ripples put there by the breeze.
“I can understand that you weren’t fond of the dress I picked out for you. But I still wish you could have worn something a little more flattering to your figure.”
Another sip.
She stared at me dumbfounded. I was enjoying this.
“So …you’re not angry…?” Her whole face a question mark. She was hunched over, a little girl in the principal’s office, and her gorgeous tits hung low and ripe between her crossed arms.
“Angry? Psshh! Of course not, how could I be angry?
“But…”
“I’ve just never been a fan of pink, that’s all. Nothing to get angry over,” I said, and her face was priceless. She looked like a child who’d been given an ice cream cone only to have it snatched away again. We sat in silence. She looked out over the pool with me, and everything was still for a moment.
“I’m going for a swim,” she said at last, and rose to walk toward the pool.
“Hey, Natty?”
“Yes?” Her hair was almost translucent in the sun.
“Do you always swim naked?”
A look I don’t think I’d ever seen on her before flitted strangely over her face.
“Yes,” she said simply, after thinking about it for a while.
“It’s kind of naughty, don’t you think?” I asked, smiling easily at her. She said nothing.
“I just mean, there are so many cleaners coming and going, and with the construction going on next door …you’d think you’d be in quite a bit of danger of being seen.”
I loved seeing her off-kilter like this. Loved watching her face go quiet as she tried to piece things together. With a little thrill, I realized how immensely she was turning me on. Her nipples, the warm air, the way her hair made a little halo around her naked face. I wanted her. I was madder at her than I had ever been in my life. And yet…
To my surprise, she shrugged and smiled right back at me.
“It is a little naughty, you’re right. But I just love the water on my naked skin, you know? It’s just the nicest way to start the day.”
“Oh?”
“Absolutely. And anyway, even if someone does see me…” here she paused and then lowered her voice a little, “to be honest I kind of like the idea” she said and then smiled coyly.
I looked at her carefully. There it was. I could see it clearly now. That naughty glint in her eye that had attracted me to her all those years ago, drawn like a moth to an atom bomb. It was the first look that had punctured me to my core, made me forget myself. The look that had made me want to marry her within a month of meeting her, and whisk her away for crazy whirlwind holidays filled with quirky gestures of love and promises that yes, we were crazy to do it all, and yes, we didn’t care one bit.
I swallowed hard, becoming aware of the stiffness in my pants. She giggled and turned, slinking towards the pool, one bare foot on the warm tiles after the other. She balanced on the edge, contemplating how to get in: one big splash, or one goosebump inducing step at a time.
“Do you remember the fashion shows you used to do for me?” I said. I had no idea where that came from. I never planned to say it. I just blurted it out. She wheeled around and grinned at me. How could she ever forget? The game was that she was always naked, hence it was the most useless ‘fashion show’. She would have fun parading around naked in front of me, and I would pretend to be a very serious fashion connoisseur, and the in-jokes were endless. I don’t remember when we made our last in-joke. Our last ‘fashion show’.
She could tell that no matter what else was going on here, she was turning me on. She could see it.
She raised up on her tiptoes and began walking up and down the edge of the pool, her impromptu catwalk. Her steps were exaggerated and slow and sexy, and when she reached the end she turned around and came back again with a toss of her main. She raised both arms up above her head and held them loosely there. God did her tits look amazing.
For a brief moment, I reconsidered. I thought about going back on my plan. About forgiving her and absolving her of everything. I loved her so much it hurt me. And to see that flicker in her eyes? That twinge that was just as maddeningly beautiful as it was the first time I saw her? Well, that certainly made things harder.
But I would not forgive her. She had no idea what was in store for her. I held onto the idea and it let me get a grip on myself, no matter how hard I was getting just watching her slink up and down like an alley cat.
I stood up and went to her, and I swore her nipples tightened and pointed as I approached. She stopped pacing and turned to face me, but couldn’t lift her eyes up to meet mine. Fine. I wanted to drink in the sight of her anyway. Up close, she smelt like sleep and shampoo and stale perfume. She noticed my dick. I inched closer. Close enough to feel the heat off her, to hear her breath, however shallow it had suddenly become.
“I have a friend, and you know what he told me the other day?” I said suddenly, and she shot me a quizzical look.
“He said that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.” She looked away again. I almost detected a note of fear. “And I thought that was such a disappointing thing to hear from a man like him, you know? I know a lot of those guys aren’t what you’d call faithful, but I still found it shocking.”
I watched her chest rise and fall as she listened intently, me an inch from her body and her balancing on the smooth white pool edge.
“I could never be unfaithful to my spouse, personally. Even though I’ve had plenty of opportunity to do so, of course. Lots of women push themselves at me. And I mean a lot. But you know why I never go for it Natasha?” I leaned in a millimeter closer and she was like a trapped bird, all heartbeat and breath and panic.
“Why?” she said eventually.<
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I smiled and said, “Because I like to do the pushing,” and with one sharp movement I pushed her. She wobbled a little as she tried to regain her balance but instantly flew backwards, splashing inelegantly into the water, a look of horror on her face. In a second she dunked under and back up again, slick as a seal pup, her blonde hair gone dark in the water.
She sputtered and glared up at me standing above her on the pool ledge. I put my hands in my pockets and watched her trying to figure out whether she should swim towards me or stay where she was and tread water. Once I was sure she had nothing to say, I smiled and turned to leave.
“You make swimming look so good right now, but I think I’ll head out and go for a drive or something.”
“You’re not going to work?” she asked. She looked so small without her blonde crown. I was going to enjoy toying with her.
“Nope. Day off. And tonight I’m taking you somewhere fancy for dinner and we’ll spend the evening together.”
I could see her pale breasts bobbing somewhere under the surface of the water.
She opened her mouth to say something but I cut her off quickly. “And for God’s sake, wear the black dress. You won’t embarrass me again,” I said, gave her one more glance and left.
Chapter 6 - Natasha
I’ve always had complete and utter control over men. Even the smart ones. Because when it comes to their dicks, men are unable to control themselves, whether they’re dropouts or have multiple PhDs.
It’s something like a universal law, and it was one I first found out about when I was around 14 years old. Almost overnight, at roughly the same time I could no longer conceal my budding breasts, I realized there seemed to be a different set of rules for beautiful people. For hot people. Within one summer, it was like a hidden world suddenly opened up to me: one made of secret transactions, smiles and sex …or even better, the hint of sex.
I found this hidden web pulsing underneath everything. Why bother with all the mundane things in life when you could just cut to the source? I discovered the strings underneath every action, every word, and the bald face of men’s true, hidden desires. Men seemed to me like puppets, and learning how to pull their strings myself became my top priority. When my teenage brain tried to make sense of the new attention I received, I soon saw that it wasn’t fate, or merit or class or luck or even money that determined people’s paths in life. It was sex. Everything was sex.
My first few boyfriends were, in hindsight, an embarrassment. I had overestimated the effort it would take for a precocious blonde teen to lure anyone. In fact, my first mistake was aiming too low, and being disappointed to find that teenaged boys needed no ‘seducing’ at all, and can be lured by anything warm with a pulse, or if needs be, without one.
So, I set my aim higher. In my town, people never leave. They grow up poor, they stay poor, they have poor children, and then they die poor. Once in a while, someone strikes it lucky and breaks away, but that was rare.
Me? I was rare. I left. I pulled myself up by my suspenders and found a way out. People at home had opinions about me, sure, but at the end of the day, they were poor, and I wasn’t. A less intelligent woman may look at my false eyelashes and mini skirt and write me off. But it was a uniform I used to sneak into a corner of society that those women weren’t even aware of. It was armor that protected me from a life of ugly drudgery that they themselves had fallen into without realizing it.
What I’m getting at is that in this world, power comes in many different forms. I’ll admit that my style and my choices aren’t to everyone’s liking. Fine. But they’re powerful.
By the time I was twenty-three or four, I knew men inside out. I knew how they ticked, where their soft spots where and what I needed to do to get what I wanted from them. It was easy. Almost too easy. Until I met Todd.
At first I recognized in him all the small things, things that only other people who’ve grown up poor will notice about one another. His accent wasn’t perfectly smooth on some words, and once or twice he’d slip up with a word I hadn’t heard used since my aging, toothless grandma used it when I was a child. He wasn’t like the other men. And I wasn’t like the other women. But oh, we were like each other.
When he proposed, it was the first time since I was a little girl that I relaxed and gave someone else control. I was used to getting gifts from wealthy men. But Todd gave me something else. He had all the hallmarks of the men I’d learnt how to manage and manipulate …but only on the outside. On the inside was someone playful and unpredictable and indescribably kind.
Like I said, I don’t know what happened between us. Years went by. I stopped thinking of myself as any kind of expert on men and what they really want. I was married, in any case, which took the fun out of things in ways I hadn’t expected. He worked. I got bored at home. He worked. I soon wished I had never married him. He worked. I had my first affair. Nothing changed. He worked.
So, the tables were turned. I suddenly understood the desperate hunger I had seen in all the eyes of the married men I had seduced as a teen, eons ago when I was still young and plucky and full of hope that my life would only keep improving. I found that special loneliness that only married people feel. And, as you already know, I started sleeping around. A lot. More than I even thought possible. Todd worked.
You might be wondering why I’m mentioning all this now. Ordinarily, I’m a straightforward gal; you know, the past is the past and all that. But here I was, alone in an exclusive restaurant, waiting for him. Nothing to do but think. I checked the time. He was now a full 20 minutes late.
I had never been to Les Principaux before. Somehow, he had gotten us a reservation, and when the driver dropped me off, I was whisked immediately to the VIP lounge and given champagne. Fifteen-year-old me would have fainted to get a glimpse of the inside of this restaurant, and to know the cost of the designer black dress I was wearing. But twenty-seven-year-old me was bored already.
I was seated at my table and took a sip, my long, bare arms looking pale against the black tablecloth. I chose not to wear the stupid gloves. He could throw me into any body of water he wanted – those gloves were for a woman far older and more cynical than me, and I wasn’t going to wear them, no way no how.
I scanned the restaurant. A sequined chanteuse was singing something breathy into an old school microphone, and the lights were dim. People were dressed extravagantly. To the side was a fish tank filled with dangerous looking tropical fish swimming round a broken urn. Drapes, gleaming silverware and a thick pile carpet underfoot. And so on. I yawned.
My watch told me plain as day: he was now 25 minutes late. My little scratch of irritation was turning into full anger. It was a good thing I was curious about what all this was about, otherwise I might have been angrier a hell of a lot sooner. I browsed the menu and tried to decipher all the pomp and bullshit. Poulet à la bretonne was just chicken. Rillettes with fennel panzanella and fougasse? Basically a spam sandwich with greens.
I ordered the wine from the very bottom of the list, knowing it would cost him an arm and a leg, folded the menu and waited some more. He wasn’t at work. So what was he doing? Making me wait on purpose? To punish me?
It was obvious he was angry about the incident in the kitchen alley. But behind that hard, masculine face, I couldn’t tell what kind of angry he was. One thing was for sure: it wasn’t an out of control anger. It made sense, I suppose, that the man I finally married was one of the few who wasn’t ruled by his dick. One of the few men who was in complete control of himself. And possibly me, if I’m dumb enough to wait here for him for almost half an hour.
I decided that when the 30-minute mark was reached, I’d get up and leave, end of story. I quietly resolved to think about the next man I would fuck, while I waited. I scanned the restaurant, floating my gaze around and seeing if any opportunistic young men caught the bait and let me reel them in. But I kept looking down at my watch. It had now been 31 minutes.
I cursed under my breath and
got up to leave, just as I saw him walk in. I froze. He was taking his time, smiling and shaking the hands of some people on their way out, then chatting to the hostess. The fucking nerve of him.
He caught sight of me and sauntered over, like he had all the time in the world. It was probably also no mistake that the man I chose to marry was single handedly the hottest man in the room right now. He was in a three-piece suit, inky black, a steel grey tie and hair that looked recently clipped and styled. A few heads turned to see him enter, and I thought with a pang, back off, he’s mine.
I quickly searched my mind for something witty and biting to say as he approached, but his smile caught me off guard
“I’m so glad you didn’t give up on me and leave – I’m disgustingly late, I’m sorry,” he said and seated himself. Onto the table he gently placed a small gift bag but made no further mention of it. I smiled and waved off his apologies, but he grabbed my hand, kissed it, stared into my eyes for a moment and then picked up the menu and inspected it.
“You couldn’t have chosen a more ritzy place,” I said and crossed my legs. He raised his steely eyes to mine and smiled.
“Yes, well, I seem to remember how much fun you are in a places you’re meant to be on your best behavior.” He returned his eyes to the menu. An old in joke. “I can never take you anywhere” he’d say. And I’d laugh and try to embarrass him in front of his uptight colleagues. I smiled to myself, recalling the memory of us, when his money was still something novel, and my beauty was still something worth celebrating.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked.
He set the menu aside and gave me a naughty look. He looked like a younger, more excited version of himself tonight.