Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir) (4 page)

He saw the open door as he headed up the driveway and turned his truck along one side of the semicircular graveled forecourt, intending as always to park a discreet distance away from the house. A man - Blair Thurgood, clearly - was halfway through the door, in conversation with somebody back in the lobby.

Over on Kyle’s right, by the garages, Mr Thurgood’s Cadillac Eldorado stood waiting. The uniformed driver was behind the wheel, no doubt ready to take his boss to work.

Kyle killed the engine of the pickup and stepped out, just as Donna Thurgood appeared in the doorway behind her husband. They were arguing, Mr Thurgood’s loud baritone cutting across Donna’s higher, lighter voice. Thurgood was in his early or mid-forties, Kyle reckoned, a burly man who must’ve once been trim and athletic but who could now afford to lose a couple-ten pounds. His dark hair was graying at the temples and receding a little in front, an effect that was exaggerated by the way he wore it slicked back with gel like a movie mobster’s. His suit was navy blue, its cut boxy and aggressively American.

Kyle caught snatches of what Thurgood was yelling at Donna: there were plenty of
goddams
and
Jesus Christ
s in there. Beyond Thurgood, Donna’s eyes were flashing. Kyle could see she was pretty riled, too.

He stood next to the pickup, embarrassed as anybody would be to witness a public fight between two married people, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Glancing across the forecourt at the Caddy, he saw that the driver was watching the argument himself with apparent interest.

Donna said something Kyle didn’t catch, and abruptly Thurgood fell silent.For a long moment the air was tense with the menace of a storm about to break. Then Thurgood lunged back through the doorway. There was the sharp crack of a palm against a face followed by Donna’s cry, and Thurgood was striding over to his car, his face a mask of fury.

A few yards from his car he seemed to become aware of Kyle standing next to his truck across the gravel. Thurgood stopped, looked over.

Kyle gazed back levelly.

Thurgood said, ‘The fuck you looking at, asshole?’

Kyle said nothing. Thurgood held his gaze as he climbed into the rear of the Cadillac, the driver holding the door for him. As the driver slammed the door and opened his own, he too looked at Kyle.

There was a smirk on the man’s face.

Kyle watched the car pull away and turn past him up the driveway. The driver glanced through the window at him again as they passed. In the back, Thurgood appeared to be brooding and didn’t look up.

His face burning, his heart hammering, Kyle crossed the forecourt to the front door. Violence against women was something he couldn’t stand, never had. The door was closed and he rang the bell.

When a minute passed with no response, he rang again. This time he heard footsteps approaching from the other side, and Donna’s voice, muffled by the thickness of the door, said, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, ma’am. Kyle. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine, Kyle.’She didn’t sound like she was badly hurt. He waited, then called, ‘Can I help at all?’

There was silence for a couple of seconds. She replied: ‘Thanks, Kyle. I guess you... heard that. But I’m good. Why don’t you just go on down to the pool and get started?’

‘Okay.’ If she wasn’t hurt then it was none of his business, and he had no right to pry.

But, walking across the lawn down the slope to the pool, Kyle found himself thinking, as his fists clenched and unclenched:
you prick. You arrogant, wife-slapping prick
.

*

Donna hurried to the mirror and peered closely at herself. God, that had been a hard one. She bared her teeth. There was no blood. Apart from the angry red imprint on her left cheek, she was unmarked.

Bastard.

For once she didn’t care personally about the damage Blair might have inflicted on her. Because today was... well, it was
the
day, and she didn’t want anything to ruin it.

The argument had been even more trivial than usually. Blair had woken in a pissy mood, hungover after a night’s carousing with the boys at work, and had been late for a board meeting. Donna had had the temerity to ask him if he could give her some idea when he’d be home that evening as they were having friends round for dinner. On the way out the door he’d suggested she buy a dog if she wanted something to keep on a leash. Donna had been unable to stop herself and had said she might get more loving from a dog than she was getting from him these days. That was when he’d popped her. Kyle had seen it and Rooker, the driver, had. Rooker was a pig, like Blair his boss, and would probably have thought she deserved it; Donna knew Rooker thought she was a stuck-up bitch. But Kyle was different. Kyle wouldn’t have liked what he saw. And he’d shown it, by coming to the door and asking if she was okay.

Anyhow. Enough about Blair. He was gone for the day, and therefore so was his driver. The maid had been given the day off, and the cook had been persuaded to come in only late that afternoon to prepare the evening’s dinner. The gardeners had been rescheduled for tomorrow. Donna was alone with Kyle.

On the way upstairs Donna paused at the window in the hall and looked down towards the pool. Kyle was there, already set up and dragging that long net on its pole through the water. She smiled to herself.

Ten minutes later she was walking down the grassy slope to the pool. Kyle was kneeling by the side with his back to her as she approached. Once more, she studied his shape from behind, the clean muscular lines of his back and neck and thighs - he was in his customary T-shirt and cargo shorts - and the tight neat package of his butt, emphasized by his squatting position.

He appeared absorbed in scraping something off the side of the pool. Not wanting to startle him into falling into the water, Donna made sure she was still several yards away when she said, ‘Hi, Kyle.’

He looked round, his mouth opening to return her greeting, but the words didn’t come. She watched his eyes -
God, the blueness of them against his tan!
- and felt a small fist of triumph punch up inside her chest. He was staring, unable to speak.

She’d put on a white bikini which was just a little too small for her. It was one she’d bought on vacation in Acapulco the previous summer, and though she’d been disappointed when she’d discovered it didn’t quite fit, for some reason she’d hung onto it, and she was glad now she had. Destiny had been whispering in her ear, perhaps. The bikini top stretched tightly across her breasts, not entirely cupping the undersides so that a curve of flesh was visible underneath. The tautness also delineated her nipples, making them stand out even when they weren’t erect. The bottom half of the bikini had effectively become a thong and rode up in the cleft of her ass, the front so low-cut that if she hadn’t taken care to wax, a line of hair would be clearly exposed on top.

Kyle stood, a reflex of his, Donna thought; he was the kind of well-brought-up young man who automatically stood when a woman came into the room, or in this case approached the side of the pool. He’d have touched his cap if he’d been wearing one. His eyes lit on hers, determinedly, though for a moment, just a moment, they’d roved over her body, lingering fractionally on the three expected areas. 

‘Another hot one today,’ she said, and the innuendo-laden cornball remark almost made her collapse into a fit of giggles. He seemed to sense the mood because the side of his mouth twitched.

‘Some like it that way, ma’am.’

On an impulse Donna said, ‘You like that movie?’

‘
Some Like It Hot
? Mrs Thurgood, I’ll watch anything with Marilyn in it. Over and over again.’

And for an instant his gaze dropped to her breasts, then flicked back up to her face. He shifted his weight on to his other leg.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘don’t let me keep you.’ And she turned away up the slope, unfurled the towel she’d brought, and lay down.

She sunned her back first, to give him a chance to recover from the awkwardness of seeing her so nearly naked (and to allow him to check out her ass at his leisure). Paging languidly through a copy of
Cosmo
, she felt thirsty, and wondered if she should offer him a drink. But it would mean going back up to the house, and she didn’t want to slow the momentum.

Donna rolled luxuriously onto her back, relishing the heat of the mid-morning sun on her belly and legs. She closed her eyes against the glare, but cracked them open a fraction to peer at Kyle. From where she was lying he was limned against the hazy azure sky, a vision in gold. The silhouette of his thighs as they emerged from his shorts made her realize for the first time just how ripped they really were. The kind of quads and hamstrings and abductors a woman would like to feel nudging her own thighs apart, just before the first delicious plunging insertion.

She began to sense from Kyle’s movements that he was just about done with his cleaning, but was finding reasons not to pack of his things just yet. So he trawled a little more here, probed at the filter there.

As naturally as she could, Donna sat up, clasping her arms around her knees. She said, ‘Looks good. The bluest I’ve seen it in a long while.’

His grin was delightful, that of someone genuinely pleased to receive a compliment. ‘Thanks, ma’am. You have a beautiful pool here.’

‘Kyle, for crying out loud. It’s
Donna
. Not
Mrs Thurgood
or
ma’am
.’

‘Sure. Sorry... Donna.’ He said it as if he was trying the sound of it on for size, and liking it.

‘Are you finished?’

‘Just about, m’am. There wasn’t much to do today.’

‘How about a swim?’

‘Sure, you can go in now if you like.’

‘No. I meant you. Aren’t you hot? Wouldn’t you like to cool off?’

He looked flustered. ‘Well, I... thanks, ma’am - Donna - but I haven’t brought my trunks.’

‘No problem.’ Donna thought of offering him a pair of Blair’s trunks, but Blair’s butt was a lot bigger and they wouldn’t fit. ‘Swim naked, if you want.’

There. She’d said it. He looked as if he’d been sucker-punched, the redness visible even under his deep tan.

‘I... can’t do that, Donna.’

‘Why not? I do it all the time. Look,’ she said with a smile, ‘if it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll swim naked too. Level the playing field.’

Now he seemed to stop breathing. His mouth worked soundlessly as he stared at her.

Donna pressed home her advantage and stood up, the movement straining the harness of her bikini top dangerously so that his eye was drawn there once more.

‘Oh come on,’ she said, teasingly but not, she hoped, scornfully. ‘I’ve seen a naked man before. And you’ll have seen a woman’s body.’
Plenty of them
, she thought. ‘I tell you what. ‘I’ll go get an extra towel in there -’ she inclined her head toward the chalet - ‘and you get in the pool. That way I won’t have to see  anything you don’t want me to.’

Without waiting for his reply Donna walked round to the chalet at the end of the pool. She put a little wiggle, not too much, into her ass as she moved. Despite her light-hearted nonchalance her heart was hammering inside. Would Kyle go along with her suggestion, or was he too embarrassed? Offended, even? She decided to come out in a robe, just in case.

Donna had never actually seduced a man. The guys she’d been to bed with, in high school and college, had always pursued her. Even with Blair it had been pretty clear soon after they met that they were going to be together. So this was all new to her.

In the cool of the chalet she took off the bikini top and panties and studied her nude body in the full-length mirror on the wall. Yes, she was in damn good shape for any woman, let alone a thirty-three year old. Her breasts were heavy but still firm, and though she might consider a nip and tuck in four or five years time when the first hints of sag began to creep in, surgery wasn’t anything she’d remotely needed to consider yet. Her waist was pleasingly small, flaring to a nicely curved pair of hips, and her belly was taut and flat. Hours of punishment in the gym had left her ass and thighs toned and supple. She’d trimmed and waxed her pubic mound but had left a neat triangle of hair, believing that not as many guys went for the totally bald look as the current fashion tried to make out.

If this didn’t get Kyle’s juices flowing, he must be made of stone.

Donna slipped on a thin robe, belted it and, after a final check in the mirror, stepped outside into the heat again.

Kyle was in the water, in the deep end at the far end of the pool as thought deliberately and politely keeping his distance. He immediately averted his eyes when Donna emerged but, seeing she was wearing the robe, looked back at her. She couldn’t see anything of him under the water, but one look at the cast-off pile of clothes by the side told her he’d stripped off s she’d suggested. She felt another small thrill of triumph.

Smiling, she walked to the water’s edge, dropped the towel she’d brought for him on the ground, and unbelted the robe, letting it slip from her shoulders.

Kyle instantly looked away again and just as quickly looked back, as if his gaze had been pulled to her by some involuntary mechanism. She saw his eyes widen. Almost pop out, in fact. Donna didn’t stand and bask in his gaze, just walked to the side of the pool and lowered herself into the water, conscious that her breasts were bobbing as she did so.