The Pool Boy

by Penny Wylder

  James

  “Man, are you crazy?” Mike asks me as soon as the door closes behind us. “What on earth are you doing with Vera Caldwell? You trying to get me fired?”

  “Don’t worry. Your job is perfectly safe,” I say. “And I don’t know what to tell you. It just…happened.”

  “How does that just happen?”

  I give him a look. “I’m not going to give you the dirty details.”

  Mike shakes his head. “I thought you weren’t into screwing the rich chicks after what happened with Briana?”

  “This is different,” I say.

  “How?”

  I glance through the window in the door, seeing Vera and Mr. Willis laughing together. I have no doubt they’ll be fast friends. There’s no one I can think of that doesn’t like Mr. Willis. “It just is,” I say, shrugging. “There’s something between us. I can’t explain it.”

  “So she was the something that came up?”

  I clear my throat. “I don’t want to say too much because it’s her business, but she had a fight with her father. The kind of fight that impacts the rest of your life. So she’s staying with me for the weekend.”

  “You took her to your house?” I think Mike might collapse from shock.

  I look away from him again, watching Vera through the window. “Yeah, I did.”

  “Does she know that you never bring anyone to your house?”

  “She knows my family history if that’s what you’re asking.” I shove my hands in my pockets.

  Mike takes his turn looking through the window and into the room. “Yeah, but does she know you’ve never brought a woman to your house?”

  I roll my eyes. “It’s not a conspiracy, Mike. It just never felt right.”

  “Then you’re right,” he says. “There is something between you two.”

  “Yeah.”

  He stretches, his full body extending, and I can hear the bones in his joints crack. “Okay, fine,” he says. “I’m still a little weirded out, but just tell me. How much do you like her?”

  I look over at him. “I like her.” I’m not sure how much I can get across with just those three words, but I try, hoping that he understands.

  He looks at me for a second. “Okay. Then I’m happy for you, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So those tools you left sitting out…”

  I sigh, “They’re in the back corner of the property. I’d bet a large amount of money neither of the Caldwells will go back that far on the grounds in the next couple of days.”

  “Fine.”

  “But Mike,” I say, “When you do go back, maybe don’t mention me.”

  “Because you slept with the boss’s daughter?”

  I grin. “Yep.”

  He shakes his head. “As long as I’m not fired, I’ll say whatever you need me to say, or not say.”

  “You going to be free this week to come work on the Masterson house?”

  “Should be.”

  “Good,” I say. I pause, unsure how to phrase this. “Seriously, Mike. I know it sounds like I’m glad your father needed surgery—I’m not. But I’m glad that you asked me to cover for you.”

  “Because you met her?” he asks.

  “Because I met her.”

  He laughs, “Man, you’ve got it bad. And don’t tell my dad. If he realizes that he’s responsible for you two being together he’ll never let us forget it.”

  “Vera may have already told him.”

  Mike looks through the window. “Then let’s go back in before your girlfriend gives it away and my dad has a chance to tell her every bad thing you’ve ever done in your life.”

  I laugh under my breath. “No kidding.”

  We spend a couple of hours exchanging stories about each other for Vera’s benefit, laughing ourselves hoarse. She was right to make us come here. It’s been good for both of us, and I can see Mr. Willis’s mood lifting as we speak. Whatever small nervousness I had about bringing her here has flown out the window. She fits in perfectly, joking along with us and contributing a few funny stories of her own.

  When visiting hours are finally over we take our leave, with Mr. Willis giving me a small wink and a thumbs-up as I leave the room. Together, we walk with Mike out to the parking garage and say goodbye. It feels like no time at all before we’re back inside my house.

  “That was really fun,” Vera says. “Thanks for letting me go.”

  “Are you kidding? Thank you for making me take you. I wanted to stay, remember?”

  She comes over and wraps herself around me. “It was good. I like them both.”

  “They like you too,” I say as I lean down to kiss her.

  “Thank you for bringing me here, too,” she says. “I don’t know what I would have done in that house with him for two days.”

  The anger I feel toward her father boils up in me and I have to force it back down. I’d like to give him a taste of the kind of pain he caused, illustrated by my fist in his face. But I don’t think Vera would want that. “You’re welcome,” I say. I try to kiss her again but she pulls away, a devilish smirk on her face.

  She pulls me into the living room and sits me down on one of the couches. “I know a way to say thank you that I think you’ll really like.” She drops down and fits herself between my knees. My cock instantly hardens in my pants.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say. I’m going to have her naked in my bed soon enough, and as badly as I want her mouth on me I can wait. After today, I just want to make sure that she’s all right.

  “And if I want to do it?” she says, looking up at me.

  I have no answer for that.

  Her fingers make quick work of my belt and the zipper, pulling my jeans down. Then Vera leans in and presses her face against me, and I can feel her teeth graze the head of my cock as she takes my underwear in her mouth and pulls it down. My cock springs to attention as she pushes me and I lean back into the couch. She smoothes her hands up my thighs, her fingers circling in a way that sends whatever blood I had left straight to my cock and balls.

  I can already see the tip of my cock glistening and Vera does too, licking across the top and sending a burst of sensation through me. She takes me in her hand, tipping my cock back so she can lick along the bottom in one smooth stroke. “I didn’t get to explore this as much as I wanted to that first day,” she says.

  Her fingers flick along my length, teasing for a moment before she circles me with them, stroking. Her fingers barely touch my skin, and still a deep satisfaction rolls through me. Then Vera leans down, taking my balls into her mouth like she did on that first day, and I groan. God it feels so fucking good. She sucks them both into her mouth, and I feel how full her mouth is with them. Her tongue sweeps across them, and I shudder. “Vera,” I say, unable to stop myself.

  “You like that?” she says, letting go.

  “Fuck yes.”

  “Good.” She seals her mouth over the head of my cock and sucks. All my muscles twitch and I swear I could come right now. I watch her work her way down my cock, pushing me deeper until her mouth is full of me. The sight of Vera’s mouth stuffed to bursting with my cock is easily one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen. She continues to suck, creating a vacuum in her mouth and I close my eyes. Every time she sucks it’s a bolt of pleasure along my nerves. I grab the couch in order to stay still. My body tightens as I fight for control to not fuck her mouth until I explode.

  Vera retreats and takes a breath, stroking me with her hand. I keep my eyes closed, and I feel her mouth close over me again, sliding downwards. Down and down, and she doesn’t stop. Suddenly my cock is at the back of her mouth and she still doesn’t stop. My eyes fly open as the head of my cock pops into her throat. And she still doesn’t stop, sliding me further and deeper as her mouth comes to rest at the base of me, lips pressed against my stomach.

  “Fuck.” It’s the only word that I can think of.

  I feel her tongue reach out, caressing the
bottom of my cock as she bobs her head up and down. She’s sliding me up and down, but never releasing me from her throat. I reach out and thread my fingers through her hair, wanting to feel her rhythm in my hands. Vera hums and swallows, and I curse as her throat constricts around me. She releases me entirely, taking a deep breath and giving me a slow smile.

  “I don’t want to swallow,” she says.

  Her hand is still moving on me. I blink, trying to focus. Fuck. “You don’t have to.” She can do whatever she wants as long as she puts her mouth on me again.

  She gives me a long, slow, lick and locks her gaze onto mine. “Let me be clear. The reason I don’t want to swallow is because you’re going to be so far in my throat when you come that I won’t have to.”

  My cock jerks against her hand, and I freeze, the visual of her words flooding my mind and sending me straight to the edge. She takes me into her mouth again, moving rhythmically along the shaft until I’m too deep inside to see straight. My hips are moving now, pushing into her even as I try to keep still. Vera works me with her throat, bobbing quickly. She hums and uses her voice to tease me and I am so close to coming.

  She pulls me out, back to my head, sucking on the tip before plunging it as far down as it can go, her tongue touching my balls. Again, it’s the sight that drives me crazy, and I cry out as my balls tighten and I release into her. I feel my cock jerking in her throat as I come, sending everything I have deep inside her.

  Vera sucks my cock hard, keeping her mouth sealed and not letting a single drop escape. Finally releasing me, she licks her lips. That devilish smirk is back.

  “That was fun,” she says lightly.

  I can only groan, words still out of the realm of possibility.

  She raises an eyebrow at me as she stands. “I hope that didn’t take too much out of you,” she says. “Because I’m going to be naked in your bed very shortly, and I expect you to fuck me. Thoroughly.”

  I watch her walk toward my bedroom as she pulls her shirt over her head. I’m already getting hard again as I contemplate all the things we can do together, how I can really make her scream my name. I’m fully naked before I reach the bedroom, and as I walk through the door, I see that she is too.

  16

  Vera

  The weekend passes like a dream. James and I are never separated, and even when we’re not having sex we’re touching. We are constantly entwined with each other, and I still just can’t get enough of being with him. And we talk. We talk about the silly little things you might find out from each other on a first date, and we share things like our firsts. Mine was sloppy and awkward, and so was his. I feel at ease sharing these moments with him, in a way I have with no one else.

  Then there’s the sex. He does make me scream. He challenged himself to make me come as many times as he could using only his mouth in only an hour—that left me seeing stars. Then we burned our lunch because we ended up fucking on the kitchen floor. His store of condoms is running dangerously low.

  By the time Sunday night arrives, I’m not sure how much more my body can take, even if it feels like I’ll never stop wanting it. And on top of that, my own reality starts to leak through.

  I’ve managed to mostly not think about my father this weekend. But tomorrow is the deadline, the day I report to my first day on the new job, and dread steals the heat from me and pools in my stomach like a weight. I put on one of James’s shirts and wander out to the kitchen where he’s cooking. Pasta, I think. I smile at the fact that he’s making me Italian.

  I lean against the archway of the kitchen and watch him. His back is to me, and I let my eyes wander, examining the way his shoulders move and the way the muscles of his back disappear into his sweatpants. He turns and sees me staring. He smiles. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah, fine.”

  He turns away from me briefly to stir the pasta. “That doesn’t sound fine.”

  “I’m just—” I sigh, shaking my head. “I’m thinking about tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  I watch the water bubble for a minute. “What do you think?” I ask.

  “About you and your dad?”

  I nod.

  His face closes off. “That’s not really my call.”

  “I know, but I want to hear your opinion.”

  He starts to get dishes out from his cupboards even though the food isn’t ready, and I get the impression he’s trying not to look at me. “I think you should walk away,” he says.

  I knew that’s what he thought, but it’s still a shock hearing him say it out loud. “You think I should volunteer to be disowned?”

  “No,” he says. “I think you should respectfully tell your dad that you need to go your own way for a while. And then go. I’ve seen your designs, Vera. You’re good. I think it’s very possible he’ll come around.”

  “He’ll make sure I don’t get hired anywhere else, though.”

  The timer beeps and James turns it off. “Your father isn’t all powerful. And Rebecca loved you—you think she really wouldn’t hire you if you explained that it was a misunderstanding?”

  “I don’t know. Two million dollars is a lot of money,” I say. “Plus, he’s right. I have nowhere to stay.”

  “You’d find a place.” James drains the pasta. “You would get a temporary job, get an apartment. You don’t have to have a place to go—make your own.”

  “Yeah.” It’s not a bad idea, but it is terrifying. The prospect of leaving the safety of what I’ve always known is daunting.

  “You could start your own company. A non-profit,” James says.

  I laugh. “No I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have no money of my own to start a non-profit. All I have is my savings, and since it’s just the money I made while I was doing my work study job at school, it isn’t enough to start with. Big donors don’t write checks to nobodies.”

  James carries two full plates into the adjacent dining room. “You’re not nobody. You’re Vera Caldwell. Your name doesn’t have to work against you.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” I say, following.

  “Not easy, I don’t think.” He pulls out a chair for me and I sit. “But it is simple.”

  “Would you contract with my imaginary non-profit?”

  He smiles. “Of course I would. We’d be an unstoppable force.”

  We talk about other things for the rest of our meal, but the idea worms its way into my brain. Can I really just walk away? I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to just start my life over. I know James did it, but he was forced into it. Choosing that feels very different. But I do like the idea of running my own non-profit. Being in charge of what I do and imagining all the ways I can help people? It sounds pretty perfect.

  It’s getting late, and together James and I retreat to his bedroom like it’s the most natural thing to go to bed together. I take off his shirt, and he takes off his pants and we lie together in the dark. It feels wrong to have any barrier like clothing between us right now.

  “I don’t want this to end,” I whisper.

  “It doesn’t have to,” he says, but I know it will. This magical weekend is almost over and all of reality is about to come flooding into the little bubble we’ve made with each other. He doesn’t understand that I just want to stop time and stay here. Now. God I want to not deal with any of the shit that’s going on anywhere else.

  Or maybe he does understand, because he kisses me. It’s slow and heated. Everything about this is slow and soft and deep. He touches me everywhere, using his hands to massage my entire body until I’m wet and gasping. But still, we don’t speed through it. He rocks into me slowly, moving his hips just a little at a time until he’s fully inside me. He takes my hands, pinning them to the bed under his.

  Our mouths are together, and I feel like we’re breathing each other in. Our bodies move together, never separating. His hips roll with
mine, slow and steady, and the building of pleasure takes its time. From the pit of my stomach it flickers, spreading until I can feel it in every part of my body. We’re not kissing now, instead I can see him. We’re staring into each other’s eyes, foreheads touching, and breath mingling.

  We don’t stop moving, and we don’t speed up. The orgasm builds in me, and when I go over the edge it’s not an explosion. It feels like I’m drowning, surrounded by pleasure as my body shudders under his.

  It’s only moments later that I see his pupils dilate, feel him come. I’m still coming, and I can’t look away from him. I’ve never felt this close to any person before, and I know that I’ll always remember this moment. We’re not moving anymore, instead just being. We kiss, and at some point we fall asleep tangled in each other.

  The first thing I feel is warmth. I open my eyes to see James’s face close to mine, our bodies still pressed together. My heart lurches at the sight of him and the memory of last night. I think something may have changed for us in that moment, and I don’t want to spoil it.

  I don’t want to face this morning. I want to stay in this bed forever. But I can’t. I have to go. I start my new job today. With my father. My stomach roils at the thought, but I can’t do what James said. I can’t just walk away from my life and my family. I’m not strong enough to do that.

  Slowly, I move out from underneath James’s arm. I’m careful not to wake him. I brought some work clothes with me and I retrieve them now from my bag, along with my makeup, and then retreat into the bathroom for a shower. While imagining myself showing up at my father’s office in pajamas with no makeup and terrible bed head gives me some pleasure, it will only make things harder for me in the end.

  James is awake when I come out of the bathroom. He’s sprawled across the bed, beautifully naked with an impressive hard-on. If I didn’t have to go I would take advantage of it. I take a moment to call a cab from one of my apps.

  His eyes travel up and down my body, taking in the suit and the makeup. “I thought you might change your mind,” he says.