Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir)

One

From the moment Donna first saw Kyle Cantrell she knew he was what she needed.

The doorbell had sounded, with its barking-dog noise in the background – Blair insisted on it, though given the elaborate security system they’d installed to protect their home, Donna thought it was a stupid idea – and Donna had hurried to the door in her bare feet. She had been curled on the chaise longue in the conservatory overlooking the lawns, leafing through the latest Vogue without seeing the pictures, bored, bored, bored.

Now she perched on the couch, studying the young man. He was sitting on the edge of the armchair across from her, as if he was nervous he’d dirty the fabric with his jeans if he sank back into it. In fact his whole posture indicated discomfort, and the way he glanced around, slightly awestruck, made Donna think he wasn’t used to such luxury.

‘May I call you Kyle?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

From just those two words, Donna picked up that his accent wasn’t local. He was from somewhere out of state. Tennessee, maybe.

She had questions to ask, but for a moment Donna forgot about those and let herself just look at him. He was quite possibly the most beautiful young man she’d ever seen. Early twenties, maybe even late teens. Longish, dirty-blond hair, a little tousled. His eyes, a startling blue, were offset by his tan, the deep golden brown achieved by long summers spent in the sun and not from a tanning salon. He was tall, she’d noticed when she’d opened the door and found him standing there: six-one or -two. She could see that under his untucked shirt and T-shirt and jeans he was built, and that his muscularity wasn’t the bulky, swollen kind of a gym-freak’s, but rather the sinewy tautness of a man used to regular hard physical labor.

‘Well,’ she said, tucking her legs up under her on the couch, ‘the Delaneys sure speak highly of you.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. They’re nice folks.’ There was a huskiness to his voice as well as a pleasant, almost sing-song rhythm. The kind of voice you could close your eyes and sink into, be swept along by.

Jesus, girl, get a hold of yourself
, she thought. She was aware that her kimono had slipped off her knee, revealing a few inches of thigh. Had he glanced at it? Donna wasn’t sure. He looked a little flustered.

‘So we’re looking for a pool boy two days a week. You’re familiar with the cleaning procedures?’

‘Oh yes, ma’am. And if you use any favorite products I’m not familiar with, I can learn real quick.’ The grin he’d tried on at the door was back now, and for the first time she saw a quick mischievousness in his eyes, shining through the shyness.
My God, kid
, she thought.
You just don’t realize your own charm, do you?

The Delaneys, Donna and Blair’s older friends, had recommended Kyle Cantrell in passing when Donna had mentioned she needed to find a pool cleaner. ‘Don’t go with the agencies,’ Bob Delaney had said. ‘They charge the earth. We’ve got this kid who’s been doing ours now for six weeks. Reliable, polite, a hard worker. I’ll send him round some time.’

And now here he was, this more-than-cute young guy with his shyly courteous manner and killer smile.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘When can you start?’

They discussed wages – Donna thought his request was more than reasonable, and agreed immediately – and settled on him starting on Monday, four days from now. Even though it wouldn’t be Donna’s money paying the kid, she didn’t feel the need to run it past Blair first. Blair left it to her to organize things like decorators and gardeners and pool cleaners. Blair could care less who she hired. Because Blair didn’t give a fuck about anything but his work.

Donna rose, indicating the interview, such as it was, was over. The boy stood too, and she motioned for him to go ahead of her. It gave her the perfect opportunity to let her gaze run down his back. The shoulders were broad under the shirt and tee, the lats slanting downwards and inwards to a narrow pair of hips. Under his close-fitting faded jeans, his butt was small and tight.

She fought a crazy impulse to close in on him and slide her arms around over his chest and press her breasts against his back.

At the door he turned and held out his hand in a way that was oddly formal, yet endearing all the same. She shook. It was the first physical contact she’d made with him and she felt immediate heat rise up her arm, as though he’d somehow transmitted some of the sunlight which had soaked into his skin. His palm was supple yet callused, reinforcing Donna’s notion that he was accustomed to hard labor.

‘Till Monday, then, ma’am,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Monday,’ she murmured, and watched him stroll up the driveway toward the gates.

Over to the left, by the garage, Rooker, her husband’s driver, was washing the Cadillac. He paused momentarily, suds running down his bared forearms, to stare after the young man. Then he glanced across at Donna, tipped his hat with his free hand, and went on soaping the paintwork.

Donna stepped back inside the cool of the lobby and closed the front door. She leaned against it for a moment, drawing in the faint scent of mown grass and musk the young man had left to linger in the air.

Oh yes, Kyle Cantrell
, she thought.
You’ll fit the bill.

*

Kyle dragged the net on a last sweep round the pool, though it was probably more than it needed. He’d apply the chemical treatments next, then leave them to do their work until he returned in the afternoon. The pool wasn’t in bad shape, but it clearly hadn’t had a professional clean for a while.

He gazed out over it as he worked. The pool was colossal, an Olympic-sized expanse of glittering blue which had been artfully sculpted out of the ground so that from one angle its edge appeared to meet the horizon. In reality that side was bordered by the steeply sloping hill of a lawn. On the other side the beautifully maintained grass wove between beds of equally immaculately tended flowers, in a meandering rise up to the house itself, a mansion if ever Kyle saw one. At the far end of the pool stood a chalet which looked bigger than some apartments Kyle had stayed in.

Kyle wasn’t by nature especially nosey about the people he worked for, but when the Delaneys had told him about Blair and Donna Thurgood and he’d seen their home, he’d recognised the name from the signs on billboards and the sides of trucks all around town.
Thurgood Enterprises.
The company was a wholesale supplier to industry as well as producing its own line of textiles. Kyle guessed Blair Thurgood was the CEO, and clearly doing very well for himself.  

There was no gardener to be seen. In fact, Kyle hadn’t seen one all morning, and assumed they came on a different day. Above him, at the noon zenith, the sun beat down, seeming to muffle all sound so that the gentle slosh of the pool water and the low hum of the bees in the flowerbeds and the distant noises of traffic in the city beyond the walls of the property ran into each other.

Kyle was wearing a T-shirt and cut-off cargo pants but still the sweat bunched the material under his arms and in his crotch and plastered his hair to his forehead. It was the hardest time of day to work, and Kyle thought he should probably ask Mrs Thurgood if he could come a little earlier next time, to get a head start on the sun. Still, he wasn’t complaining. He loved hot weather, couldn’t get enough of it. By the time the fall started to make an appearance he’d be headed south already, and he’d probably spend the winter in Texas or even New Mexico or someplace.

But just now, Georgia suited him fine.

Kyle had been in Columbus six months now, and had stuck to the city after a few forays elsewhere into Muscogee County. The city was pretty, the people friendly, and the work plentiful. Then again, he was the kind of guy who’d turn his hand to anything he was offered, within reason. Before his latest stint cleaning swimming pools he’d worked in timber yards, steel mills, on building sites, and briefly on a production line in a plant which manufactured auto parts. He hadn’t liked that job so much. Kyle liked to be outside whenever he could. Pool cleaning was a great discovery, and he wished he’d thought of it before.

He was drifting, had been for two years now. He knew it, and didn’t mind. Back in Knoxville, Tennessee, his parents had been furious when he’d dropped out of college after less than a year. He’d felt bad for them, but he knew it was the right decision. He had smarts, all right. Just not the kind suited to book learning.

And he liked life on the road. He enjoyed the variety of places he saw, jobs he took on. He’d met some great people along the way. Some total assholes, too, but they were a minority. Kyle was a good-natured guy and assumed other people were decent unless they proved otherwise. And usually he found his assumptions to be correct.

There were the places, the jobs… and then there were the women. Ah, the women. Knoxville was an okay place to grow up, and Kyle had had his share of girlfriends in high school, but once he’d hit the road, it was as if a whole new world had opened up before his eyes, one populated entirely by females. Aged from their teens right up until almost fifty (and he was sure there were sexy ladies even older than that who he’d yet to meet). Blonds, brunettes, redheads and various shades in between, with skin ranging from fair as peaches-and-cream to such a lustrous shade of black it was almost purple. Bodies varying from whip-thin and lithe to ripe and buxom. Kyle loved them all, felt at his happiest in women’s company – not just in their beds, but simply hanging out with them.

So his first reaction when Donna Thurgood opened the front door to him had been:
Oh, shit
.

She’d stood there in some kind of clingy silk thing with flowers twining down and round it (a
kimono
, he later remembered it was called). Early thirties, maybe. It was hard to tell because she obviously took such good care of herself she’d achieved agelessness. Her hair was a rich auburn, tumbling in waves down her shoulders. Her face was stunning, her eyes huge and dark – hazel or green, Kyle couldn’t tell which – and her cheekbones high and aristocratic. Below the hem of the kimono her legs, crossed elegantly at the ankle, were slim and tapering, and from the thrust of the front of the robe and the deep shadow in the V formed by its edges, it was clear she was well endowed.

Kyle had been intimidated by the marbled grandeur of the entrance lobby and of the living room into which she’d led him, and that was a relief to him because it took his attention off Donna Thurgood. It was only when they were settled and she began talking to him, asking him about his past work experience, that he’d felt the desire building again, a hot heaviness expanding deep in the pit of his belly and in his pelvis. His swelling cock strained uncomfortably against the confines of his jeans and shorts and he shifted in his chair, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

This morning she’d greeted him at the front door, this time wearing a cotton summer dress and with her hair tied back with a bandana. He thought his reaction to her might be different but no, as he listened to her give instructions as to where everything was, he couldn’t help but stare at her lips as she formed the words, their fullness natural rather than artificially enhanced. He imagined those lips, slick and wet, working down his belly, the tongue darting between them to flick at his skin before her mouth closed around…

No. He dropped his gaze, and that didn’t help because his eyes lit on her breasts, the cups of her dress taut across the firm flesh. She was a tall woman, around five nine or -ten, and he forced himself to look at a point just between her eyes. Still, he couldn’t help but be aware of her closeness to him, the warm physical presence of her within arm’s reach.

When she’d finished, she gave him a smile and, as she turned to go back in the house, her eyes travelled quickly down the length of him and back up to his face. She smiled again, and was gone.