Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir) (2 page)

He stood for a moment, reluctant to move.
She just gave me the once-over. In
that
way.

Yes, there was no mistaking it. And even if she had nothing more in mind than a little light flirtation with the pool guy, it was going to make this job a hell of a lot harder for Kyle than it needed to be.

Because she was the boss’s wife. A no-go area. Even thinking about her was dangerous.

Kyle blinked away sweat, realizing he’d been staring at the shimmer of the sun on the pool’s surface and was half-dazzled. He reapplied himself to hauling the net through the water.

At least she won’t be able to have a swim till I’ve finished the chemical treatments
, he thought.
I couldn’t deal with that.

*

Her husband, Donna reflected, was living proof that money didn’t necessarily buy you youth.

Blair Thurgood sat in his favorite armchair – the one Kyle had perched uneasily on, four days earlier – in his trademark aggressive slouch, slumped into the back of the chair with his thighs parted. His cigar, the first of five or six he’d smoke his way through before the evening was over, was jammed in his mouth, dead in the centre rather than clamped in one corner like the stereotype of a tycoon, so that he looked to Donna like a baby with a pacifier. His suit jacket was cast aside on the arm of the chair and his top button was undone, his necktie loosened.

He was still a good-looking man, Donna thought, still in reasonable shape at forty-three, but the stogies and the boozing were starting to take their toll. Deep creases furrowed Blair’s forehead and radiated from the corners of his eyes, the result not of laughter but of squinting against the smoke ribboning almost continuously from his mouth. Capillaries like splayed spider-legs were beginning to extend beyond the sides of his nose and creep across his cheeks.

‘Good day?’ Donna ventured.

Blair grunted. He lifted his glass, took a swig of whiskey, winced.

‘A long one,’ she tried.

He stared at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I just mean, you’ve had a long day, that’s all.’

‘No.’ He shook his head, getting that look he had when he made his upper lip disappear. ‘What you
mean
, Donna, is, “Gee, Blair, you’re home later than you said. I want to know why, because I’m a control freak. But I’m too chickenshit to ask you directly, so hey, let’s play these verbal games, just because life isn’t complicated enough already”.’ His voice rose in a grotesque parody of her own. He dropped the whiskey glass on the side table and slumped back again, glowering at the carpet.

And that was the extent of his reply. Donna didn’t know why she bothered.

Dinner was a thing of the past, Blair’s a burnt mess long since disposed of down the garbage chute. Most evenings their cook provided dinner but every now and again Donna liked to try her hand at something. So tonight she’d sent the cook home and prepared a fairly lavish roast beef dinner. She hadn’t expected him to appreciate it, but it was always satisfying to see somebody eating something you’d gone to some trouble to prepare yourself.

As it happened, Blair hadn’t eaten it at all. Ninety minutes after he’d said he’d be home, Donna phoned him. His cell phone went to voicemail. She tried his office. Kitty, his secretary, was cool with her. Mr Thurgood was in a meeting with a client and couldn’t come to the phone, sorry.

He’d come running quickly enough if you went to his door and flashed your tits at him, you little bitch
, Donna thought. She assumed Blair had fucked Kitty, as he’d fucked Jennifer and Selina and Monique before her. It was no coincidence that the secretaries her husband hired were all under twenty-five and looked as if they’d stepped from the pages of
Playboy
magazine.

Donna knew, though, that whatever reason her husband had for being late home today, it probably was related to work. Because currently he was fucking Madison, and she wore a particular perfume which he didn’t bother to shower off himself before coming home, and tonight he didn’t smell of it.

Madison. An intern at Thurgood Enterprises. Nineteen years old, with long straight black hair, strands of which Donna was forever discovering on Blair’s jacket or shirt collar or even once in his underpants. And a couple of weeks ago, when Donna had stayed over at a friend’s in Augusta, she’d returned home to find loops of Madison-hair in the sink of the en-suite bathroom off Blair’s bedroom.

He was screwing other women, he knew she knew, and he didn’t give a fuck.

Well, Donna had had enough. Enough of looking the other way while he went whoring around, enough of smiling and playing the happy CEO’s wife at dinners with clients (Blair even asked –
told
– her to wear high-slit dresses with low necklines to such events, so that his disgusting customers could drool over her thighs and tits like she was in a meat market). Enough of pretending she was happy stuck at home in luxurious boredom, that wealth and a great house and jewelry and a flashy car were compensation for a complete lack of not just love but simple
affection
on his part towards her.

Lately he’d started slapping her. Not hard, just open-palmed swipes across the face, and not enough to knock her down or leave visible marks. He always surrendered afterwards, apologizing in that half-assed way of his, as if he was aware he was on the brink of going too far. There was a time, earlier in their marriage, when she’d have walked out on him after the second slap, maybe even the first. Now, she kept her cool each time. But not because she was cowed, not because she was resigned to this latest of the many indignities he’d subjected her to over the years.

No. She said nothing, didn’t respond, because she’d decided several months ago that it was payback time. And every slap, every humiliation, only cemented her resolve further.

Payback. And she had just the method.

Donna rose and began to get ready for bed.

Two

It was Thursday, and Kyle was trawling the pool with his net, scooping up the pollen and greenfly which had invaded the surface since his last visit three days earlier, when the girl came walking own the slope of the lawn from the house.

He stopped and, despite himself, stared. She was around his age, maybe a year or two younger. Slim, long-legged body, long glossy black hair that fell well past her shoulders.

She was wearing sunglasses and a T-shirt and short-shorts, and carrying a rolled-up towel and a bottle of sun lotion. She smiled – a nice smile, showing brilliant white teeth – and said, ‘Hello.’

Kyle’s voice failed him for a moment, and when it did come it was uncertain. ‘Uh…hello.’

He realised he must look like some kind of weird statue of a pool cleaner, and began dragging the net again. From the corner of his eye, unable to help himself, he watched the girl. Seeming unaware of him, she chose a spot on the grassy verge alongside the pool and bent to roll out her towel. Her back was to him as she did so, and Kyle stared as the cotton of her shorts stretched even more tightly across her taut ass.

Kyle’s slow amble round the pool took him to the opposite side so that he was able to get a better view of the girl. He watched as she crossed her arms across her body and peeled the T-shirt over her head. In doing so she stretched to her full height and Kyle gazed at the flat tanned expanse of her belly, a diamond winking in her navel. Under the T-shirt she wore a lemon-yellow bikini top. She tossed the T-shirt aside and slipped her shorts down her legs, revealing matching bikini briefs.

Kyle had time to wonder just who she was – the Thurgoods didn’t have any kids, as far as he knew, and in any case Mrs Thurgood at least was too young to be this girl’s mother – when she did something that stopped all Kyle’s wonderings. Stopped all his thoughts, dead.

Reaching behind her, the girl unhooked her bikini top and dropped it on the lawn.

Her breasts were small and perfectly round, and so pert that the little brown nipples were slightly uptilted. Kyle caught his breath as the girl lowered herself on to her butt on the rolled-out towel and her bare breasts bobbed with the movement. She reached for the sun lotion and squeezed some onto the palm of her hand, before starting to rub it slowly and methodically over herself, starting with her arms and shoulders.

Just as her hands reached her breasts and began smoothing the cream in, she raised her head. Although Kyle couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, he knew she was looking straight at him. A half-smile played over her lips.

Quickly he dropped his gaze, his face reddening with furious embarrassment. He began trawling the pool with renewed vigor, conscious as he did so that he was being a little too obvious. He was glad he was wearing baggy cargo shorts again. It meant the bulge of his erection was at least partly concealed.

‘What’s your name?’ the girl called.

It gave him an excuse to look up at her again, but he immediately wished he hadn’t. The sight of her tanned body glistening with sun lotion was almost more than he could bear. It didn’t help that she’d stopped massaging the cream in and was now sitting propped up with her arms behind her, her tits on full display.

‘Kyle, miss. Ma’am,’ he managed, cursing himself for sounding like a dick. But how was he supposed to address her? He didn’t know who she was.

She laughed, a bright high sound in the summer morning air. ‘
Ma’am?
Jeez, you make me sound old. Pleased to meet you, Kyle. I’m Madison.’

Kyle waited for her to elaborate, to explain just who she was and how she fit into this scene, but she just tilted her head back as if to catch some sun on her throat. He snuck another glance at her chest, marveling at the firmness of her breasts, at how they barely changed shape even though she was semi-reclining. By now his cock was fully erect and tenting the front of his shorts, and he had to turn sideways and sneak a hand in to rearrange things.

Since the girl didn’t seem about to offer any further conversation, Kyle decided to be bold.

‘Are you one of the family, miss?’

‘Madison. Please.’ She was looking at him again through her sunglasses, amused.

‘Madison.’

‘God, no.’ She swiped lazily at an insect which had wandered across her line of vision. ‘I’m a friend of Blair’s. Mr Thurgood’s.’

Kyle took this in. A
friend
? What did that mean?

As if reading his thoughts, she said, ‘A very
good
friend, if you see what I mean.’ Behind the shades he could swear she winked. The tip of her tongue came out, darted quickly across her lips before disappearing again.

What the hell?
It was all too much for Kyle to take, and for a moment he wondered if the July heat was getting to him, screwing around with his brain. First this girl came out of nowhere and started sunbathing topless in front of him, a total stranger, and now she seemed to be saying she was his employer’s lover. Was this some kind of game? Some joke that was being played on him?

He knew there was nobody else around. Mr Thurgood was at work, and Mrs Thurgood – Donna – had said after he arrived that she was going to be out in town all day. Kyle began to feel uncomfortable. Was this girl coming on to him? If so, why had she implied – hell, forget implied,
admitted
– she was sleeping with Mr Thurgood?

Again she seemed to be able to tell what he was thinking, because she said, ‘Oh, I don’t mind telling you. It’s no secret. Even that cunt of a wife of his knows about me.’

Kyle felt a small shock at the sound of the word. He wasn’t a prude, but he still hadn’t gotten used to hearing women talk like that.

Madison sat up and leaned forward to rub some lotion on her legs. Once again her boobs did that provocative jiggle.

She went on: ‘That bitch is a real ball breaker. Freezes Blair out in bed, won’t open her legs for him or even go down on him. It’s not surprising he has to look elsewhere for his pussy.’

Kyle felt helpless, submerged in a stew of conflicting emotions. There was desire, for sure, a simple animal lust for this sexy, half-naked young woman lying oiled up a few yards away from him. But he also felt a growing anger at what she’d said about Mrs Thurgood. He barely knew Donna, but already he felt a strange protectiveness towards her. She certainly didn’t come across as a ball-breaking bitch. And she’d given him a job.

He continued cleaning the pool. Once she’d finished slathering her legs, Madison lay back on the towel and fell silent. Kyle worked on, longing to plunge into the cool water to escape both the merciless summer sun and the heat within him. After a half hour Madison turned over and Kyle saw her bikini bottom was a thong, the tanned globes of her ass exposed. He looked away.

She sunned herself for another half hour, and just before Kyle himself was ready to finish off she rose, slipped on her bikini top and T-shirt, stepped into her shorts and, with a wave and a smile over her shoulder, she disappeared back up to the house.

*

Donna and Blair had been married eleven years. She’d been a twenty-two-year-old interior designer, fresh out of college, when she’d first met and been charmed by this brash, thrusting young businessman, a decade older than her but still youthful and vigorous and good-looking enough that there’d been other reasons to fall for him than just his money. And in the beginning their marriage had been blissful. Blair was funny, he was kind (in a rough-and-ready fashion), he was generous with his money, constantly whisking her away on trips to Manhattan or Aspen or even once Paris and showering her with jewelry and clothes.