“Well, the thing is,” Helena began, holding up the bottoms. “I'm not sure the...uh...” she looked helplessly at her friend's inquisitive face. “Uh...the shave job that I've done-”
“Shave job?” Zahra screeched, scandalized, looking down at Helena's boy-cut shorts, right at the center of them, as if she could see right through her suit and appraise the very tidy job Helena had worked very hard to achieve.
Helena blushed.
“Don't tell me you shave anything. Dear god.” Zahra held up her hand and tossed a handful of bikinis on the floor. She crossed the room and obtained a phone from seemingly nowhere. She held it to her ear.
“Get me an appointment at the spa. A wax. The moment it is possible.” A pause. “Yes. We'll be by the pool.”
She set the phone back in its sleek cradle. Then she shook her head at Helena. She crossed the room and fished a black bikini top out of the pile of clothing. “For now, just wear this, but...” she tisked. “You are going to have tan lines,” she said, her eyes again moving all over Helena's shorts. “Oh well. Whatever you've done, Antoine can fix it.”
“Antoine?” Helena said nervously. She was evidently in for a bikini wax, and she didn't really want a man doing doing it.
Zahra scowled. “What do you want? Some old Russian woman doing it? Antoine is the best.” She waved her hand at Helena and clickety-clacked out of the room in her high heels.
Not knowing what else to do, Helena switched the skimpy blue top for the even skimpier black one. She gave herself a glance in the mirror. With Zahra out of the picture, she could say with confidence that she looked good. Her stomach was nearly back to its original shape, though her waist seemed a little wider than so many years ago. And her breasts definitely looked better. She had always been a little flat-chested; better off in an A-cup and filling it just a little too much. Now she felt legitimate in a B-cup While most women complained about maternity taking a toll on their breasts, she had to admit she preferred the roundness it had given her.
Her hips seemed more...well, wide. But the effect wasn't all that unpleasant. She turned and looked at the line of her body as a profile. Her ass and legs looked great from running up a hill by their house. She did it twice, running back down and then back up. It had paid off, and she admired her hard work in the form of a small, round bubble of her buttocks and the line of muscle definition from the top of her thigh down to just above her knee. Not an ounce of cellulite marred her legs.
She was no Zahra, but she looked good enough for this bikini.
Not entirely sure what she was in for, she followed Zahra out of the room.
3
“There,” Zahra said with satisfaction. They were back at the house, settling into the lounge chairs by the pristine pool. No one else was there, the sun was hot, and Helena was glad to be back at the pool.
Admittedly, she was also quite pleased with the way Zahra's tiny blue bikini – they had returned to the first one – looked on her. She gave her full breasts a glance, and smiled.
“Not so bad, right?” Zahra said, waving at the slightly red skin in the center of Helena's legs, where the infamous Antoine had waxed her.
“Oh god,” Helena complained. “That was one of the most awful experiences of my life.”
Zahra handed her an amber bottle of lotion seemingly produced from nowhere. Zahra was one of those women who seemed to be toting an invisible alchemy chest behind her wherever she went. “Put this on, it will calm your skin.”
Zahra settled back into her chair and began pouring oil all over her own body from another bottle she had snatched out of the air. Helena watched as her toasted almond skin turned shiny with each sensual sweep of her hand.
“It only hurts the first time,” Zahra said. “I cannot believe you've been shaving so...barbarically...all this time” she said. She held up a finger. “Never. Do that again. And really at some point you should just laser that.”
Helena leaned back in the chair and poured the liquid into her cupped hand. It was thin like water, cool with some kind of alcoholic content. She struggled to get it to her inner thighs, but that wasn't where the real pain was.
It did feel relieving.
“Get it on everywhere,” Zahra said, waving her fingers at Helena's crotch.
Helena stared at her for a moment, looked around the pool to make sure no one was there, and then pulled her bikini bottom away from her skin sheepishly.
“Like that,” Zahra said, impatiently, waving her hand in approval.
Helena shrugged inwardly, and dumped the tonic on her bare pussy. She couldn't even believe it as she looked down at it – it was completely waxed. It gave her an utterly pre-adolescent look. It was honestly a little twisted. But she also liked it.
The cool liquid (for Zahra, in addition to toting an invisible medicine chest around behind her, seemed to magically keep it cool as well) slid over her freshly-bared and hyper-sensitive skin like ice-cold silk. It drained between her folds and mingled with her hot wetness. The cold astringent kissed her clit and she shuddered with a small wave of pleasure. She used her hand to rub the liquid over her skin.
“See,” Zahra said, not asking a question. “Better.” She fanned her fingers out as she waved at her this time, like a witch content with a spell. Then she adjusted her glasses, and wiggled her shoulders, and said no more.
The sun was hot and eventually cast a spell on Helena. She relaxed into that feeling of not knowing how much time is passing, a kind of meditative state.
In the back of her mind though, she was quietly enjoying a little fantasy or two about her summer.
Nothing too risqué. Nothing she would ever really act on. But all the bare bodies, the young, fit men, the summer fun and the carefree parties without kids – it was all very seductive.
And Helena loved to flirt. She had done it at the first party, and remembered how much she liked it. She had remembered that she was pretty, that she was funny and that men liked to talk to her. She had also caught many a guy scanning her body, resting his eyes on her plump breasts.
Something about being around Zahra again brought out even more of this compulsion than ever. Zahra, who flirted with everyone. Zahra, who managed (as far as Helena knew) to keep her marriage intact while she flirted constantly with disaster. She and Reza sort of seemed to get off on it.
It was a dynamic she had always enjoyed watching between the two of them, though she didn't understand it that well. And she would rather die than bring the subject up. She knew she would sound like a silly prude.
Of course, she was married. Of course she would never actually cheat on Steve: she loved him too much for that. And Steve and she didn't have the same kind of relationship as Zahra and Reza.
But she had to admit: she enjoyed a good flirt. A little appreciation from other men. A little bit of male energy around her to get her excited...
“I'm going for a drink,” Zahra said suddenly, interrupting the silence and Helena's slow daydreaming thoughts.
Helena propped herself up on her elbows. She had the overheated sleepiness that came with having sat in the sun for too long without moving, and she felt a trickle of sweat down her spine. Zahra's skin was glistening with a light sheen of sweat, thousands of tiny, sweet droplets shining on the swell of her breasts. Helena watched as a single droplet gathered momentum, formed a small drip, and snaked between her breasts and down to her stomach.
Zahra reached over and tapped her playfully with one hand, and for a second Helena was worried that Zahra had seen her staring. “You stay here. I'll bring it. Tea?”
“Sure,” Helena said, absent-mindedly. She slid back onto the lawn chair.
Zahra returned shortly, with a very cold, tall glass in her hand.
Helena was thirsty, so she gulped the cold liquid.
“Oh my god!” she exclaimed. “This is full of booze!”
Zahra smiled unapologetically and swung her pretty legs up onto the chair, which she had adjusted so she could sit up.
On a Tuesday.
What was the harm?
She set the drink down and adjusted her own chair so she was sitting up. The alcohol was already creeping through her, licking at her from the inside. Already she could feel herself loosening up, ready to flirt.
Zahra smiled.
4
Helena was home already when he came home from work, and she was busily cleaning in the kitchen.
“How was it?” Steve asked. He didn't really have to hear it to know: Helena was relaxed, flushed with the freshness of a day in the sun, and humming a pleasant tune.
Maybe a little too relaxed?
Steve tried his hardest to dismiss the thought. Helena was on vacation, and there was no reason to let his mind wander off thinking accusatory, mean, terrible...erotic...thoughts.
There was something different about her, though. Even from behind, even with nothing more than her back to go on. Her hair was swept up in a loose ponytail, but that wasn't unusual. She was wearing her swimsuit cover-up, a sexy number of black crochet full of tantalizing holes and knots...but he had seen that before.
“Lovely,” Helena said.
She turned around, and the “something” that was different met Steve right in the face: underneath the swimsuit cover-up she was wearing nothing.
Well, almost nothing, he realized as he looked harder. A few blue strings criss-crossed her skin and came together in a knot at the top of her neck, and he could see little patches of blue fabric beneath the cover-up. Very little patches. Mostly her saw the curve of her flesh as her breasts rose from her chest. Her abdomen was bare, and he couldn't see lower than that because of the counter, but if the top of her swimsuit was anything like the bottom, well...
It was a long way from the tankini she'd modeled for him a month ago, before she knew she'd be spending every day at “Palace Tehrani.”
He stared, and his mind went to the Tehrani's house. He wondered if the usual consortium of men were there, watching Helena in her tiny bikini. Lusting after her. Looking at the underswell of her breasts.
It made him both aroused and bitter to think about it.
She looked down at where his eyes were planted and smiled. “Oh. Yeah. Zahra made me get a new suit,” she explained, as if the explanation were of the sort that one could not argue with or ask questions about.
Which really, if anyone knew Zahra, they knew it was true. If it occurred to Zahra to “make you” get a new suit, then there wasn't much you could do about it.
“It's...” Steve said. It was hot. Fucking hot. Hotter than he had seen Helena dress in...well, ten years. But the another, competing emotion got the better of him.
Jealousy. Before he could even think about what he was doing, he heard his voice saying:
“Did you...drive home like that?” he said. Or go somewhere else? he thought. A shudder flashed through him as he pictured his wife slinking through the grocery store in that get-up.
He instantly regretted it, and he knew he had it coming when Helena's eyes flashed at him in anger. “And what if I did?”
She turned around and began to place dishes angrily into the dishwasher, her body rigid. Steve, instead of trying to save himself, craned his neck to get a better look at the bikini bottoms.
Dear god. Definitely a Zahra creation. At the very least, they were not a thong. They barely met that distinction, however. Only a tiny triangle of material covered the sweet hollow between her buttocks, and the tiniest portion of her rounded butt.
“No. No,” he said quickly. “You look great. You look fantastic. Just...it's very...you know. Risqué.”
Helena dropped a dish into the dishwasher carelessly. “Right. Risqué. Too risqué to drive in a car with tinted windows from one place another?”
Steve rolled his eyes skyward. Dear god, he wished his brain would catch up to his mouth one of these days. Just a one-second lead would do it.
“No, you're right. I'm sorry I said that. I just...it took me by surprise...” He was flailing. Desperate, he flung this at her:
“Your ass looks great.”
She dropped another dish into the dishwasher without saying anything, but he felt like she did it more humorously.
Somehow, he could feel a thaw.
“You need a filter,” she said, finally.
Relief.
She turned toward him and tapped her fingers on the counter. “And my ass does look great, doesn't it?”
“Yes.”
Helena took a step toward the counter, and Steve felt like pinching himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming, because she seemed to do it sexily, and she seemed to be flirting as she leaned on the counter toward him. Her breasts pushed together to make a full, poofy ledge of fleshy pillows, and the motion pushed her skimpy bikini down, revealing the tops of her nipples. Not only that, she seemed to know that's what she was doing. She smiled provocatively.
Now it isn't to say that Helena never did this sort of thing, she just didn't do it usually at seven pm on a weekday.
“And that's not all,” she said. “Zahra made me do something else, too.”
Like any man would, Steve felt a rush of lust pour over him like a cauldron of boiling oil. The things that went through his head, naturally, were of the dirtiest kind, and Steve had a whole bank of images that included his wife and Zahra, ready-to-go since the Tehranis had told them they were moving back to the area. The first one that flashed through his mind was of Zahra's long, sharp tongue sliding expertly along the very wet inner folds of his wife's cunt.
It went on from there.
“Did -” Steve coughed. His voice was coating the back of his throat like syrup. “Did she?” He punched himself in the chest.
Helena smiled. And it was very evident, from the type of smile that she smiled, that she was smiling at the dirty thoughts she seemed to know had just gone through his head.
Unusual.
But like any man, Steve wasn't going to spend too long remarking to himself on how unusual it was or pondering what was going on.
No, Steve was marching bravely forward to whatever dirty, bad thing Zahra had made his wife do, hoping it was as dirty as he imagined.
Of course his wife hadn't been splayed on Zahra's lounge chair, getting her pussy licked while she sucked Reza's cock.
And yet...
Just before she pushed herself away from the counter, the black crochet sliding over her bare skin and the scraps of blue fabric, she seemed to...
She did, didn't she?
Wink at him?
“Let's go out in the sunroom,” she suggested suddenly. On her way out of the kitchen she snatched two wine glasses and a bottle of wine – sitting there ready – from the counter.
“Sunroom” was a tender euphemism for a strange porch the previous owners had tacked on to the house, and enclosed, but not insulated. Only two of the windows worked, so it was hot as hell in the summer and cold as hell in the winter. They had optimistically maintained a small table and a lounge chair in the space, for the two weeks a year it was actually pleasant.
Steve followed Helena to the sunroom. Her cover-up slid from one shoulder and exposed a swatch of her skin. Faint, summery smells wafted to his nose as he followed her: chlorine, coconut, and then some other, expensive-smelling shampoos and soaps.
It was a little too hot in the room this evening, but Steve didn't care. Helena set the glasses down and poured two glasses of wine. Then she stretched out on the lounge chair.
Seductively.
Steve sat down next to her in a poolside chair. There were big, waterproof cushions on the chairs, and they seemed to be from the seventies. It was always a little uncomfortable balancing on them.
“So?” he said casually. His eyes moved up and down Helena's body. Damn, she looked g
ood.
She brought the wine glass to her lips. “So,” she said. She smiled. Her eyes were playful.
Steve felt his cock filling, his whole body pulsing with interest. He wasn't sure what to do. He didn't want to jinx his good luck.
He watched in both fascination and shock as Helena tipped her head back and pretty much downed the whole glass of wine. Then she leaned back onto the lounge chair, her hands above her head, her whole body elongated in a feline stretch.
Steve almost choked on his wine.
“Do you want to see what Zahra made me do?”
Part of his mind raced to find a clever thing to say, but most of his mind and all of his body were paralyzed. Helena was already sliding the swimsuit cover up and over her body. For a moment Steve had a sinking sensation that Zahra might have told her to get a tattoo or something. Who knew?
The bikini looked insanely hot on her, once she was freed from the cover-up. Her new curves, layered over her wiry frame, were taut and inviting. The crochet top of the suit barely covered the round hills of her breasts, so the delicious swipe of her skin where it rose from her flawless chest was completely exposed. He drank the sight in.
But not for long, because she moved her hands down the sides of her body, dragging his eyes with them. Her fingers slid along the gentle, firm curve of her waist and then her hip, and tangled themselves in the spaghetti straps of her bikini bottoms.
She was grinning seductively as she twisted the straps in her fingers. They tied together at the crest of either hip, with frail knots that he was silently begging her to pull on his mind. She seemed to know how much he wanted that very thing, and she teased him for several moments, pressing her fingertips together on the tips of the strings and making it look as though she was going to pull on the fabric. Instead, she let the string slip from her fingers as though she were only stroking it, the way he longed for her to stroke his cock.
A Summer Vacation: A Wife-Swapping Novella Page 3