The splash of faint blue light across the walls woke Serge from his usual restless sleep, nothing but the empty space beside him to keep him company.
If Sierra was still around, he wouldn't have given it a second thought and rolled right back over. She used to love midnight swims, especially when she was too wound up to sleep. But this was the first time the pool lights came on in over a year.
He rose, nude. No point in sleeping in any clothes, not when the only visitors to his house now were delivering food. Sierra wouldn't have wanted him to starve himself, so he ate, mechanically and without much pleasure. On what had been their date nights, he ordered in, because they always ate out or ordered in on date nights. The tradition was one of the few building pillars left of his sanity.
Same with working out, the hikes, the jogging. All in memory of Sierra, though at least the physicality of it all felt good, one of the handful of pleasures that cracked through his shell of bewilderment at being a thirty-year-old widower.
He went to the big sliding glass doors. Someone was out there, testing the waters with her foot. The curves of her made him suck in his gut on instinct. But it was the finely detailed face that drew him in. The narrow, almost pointed chin. The strong cheekbones. The wide forehead, framed by black hair caressed by the light. Her lips were full, but narrow, small, almost, and she wore heavy, precise makeup that looked professional. It gave her a sultry vibe, especially combined with the pearls she wore around her neck and the long, dangling earrings.
Wispy black lingerie clung to her full teardrop breasts and slung low over her sex. Her dark nipples peeked through the fabric. Closer, and he might have seen the pink of her lips through her panties too, but before he could think to focus his attention there, she raised her hands over her head and dove into the water.
Sure he was dreaming, Serge felt around with his feet for the towel he'd carelessly dropped on the floor after a shower the previous night. He pulled it around himself as the woman reemerged, languidly cutting through the water. She was good. Not as good as Sierra, but there were only thirty or so people in the world that had been faster than Sierra in her prime. The big pool was a huge part of why they bought the place.
He stepped out into the night, and the woman came to a casual stop. She blinked up at him, water coursing down her face. It stripped away some of her makeup, leaving her face looking like some Fauvist painting. Trails of makeup streamed behind her in the water. Serge didn't care.
Without a word, still watching him, she started to swim again, cautious this time, keeping an eye on him. He thought she'd get out of the pool and leave when she came back to the shallow end, but no, she kicked off the wall and started another lap.
The concrete around the pool still held the warmth of the day, but the night had chilled considerably, nearly thirty degrees. Serge shivered, and thought about walking back inside. He didn't think this woman meant him any harm, and even if she did, so what? What could she take? What could she do to him?
As he watched the swell of her ass flexing through the water, he thought... well... why not?
He headed for not for the pool's ladder, but the hot tub occupying a corner of the pool. It was shaped like a seashell, fanning out wider closer to the pool. He didn't get in, not quite yet, but by feel alone, toed the big button that turned on the jets. He plodded back towards the house, this time for the mini-bar built into the stone L under an awning. From a small fridge, he withdrew a bottle of beer, at least a year old, and from a cabinet, a bottle of wine. No glasses out here anymore, but who needed them? He headed back to the pool and knelt, leaving the bottle of wine halfway to the hot tub.
She stopped swimming again, watching him curiously as he headed for the warmer waters. He really should have had the pool shut off and drained, but he kept meaning to go back out there, to swim laps for Sierra's sake. It hurt too much, right up until this very night. She would have had a hell of a laugh at this. A gorgeous stranger, nearly nude, or as good as, and swimming in their pool. She probably would have invited the woman right in, and doubtless would have buried her tongue in the stranger's pussy in all of about ten minutes. Sierra was always adventurous like that.
The woman paddled towards the bottle of wine. She looked at it, then him, and drew in a sharp, audible breath when Serge dropped the towel, revealing his long, thickening prick. He hopped in, and she still watched him even as he ignored her, settling onto one of the stone benches under the water and sighing at the jets burbling against his back. It was a better massage than he could pay for.
A clink. The wine bottle's cap being tossed aside. He turned his head just in time to watch the black-haired woman bring the tip to her lips. They stared at one another as she drank deep, then set the bottle aside, licking an errant drop off her lips.
"Thank you," she murmured.
"Mm hm."
She kicked off again, coursing lazily through the water, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her stomach, sometimes under the water for such long stretches of time Serge wondered if she might not be trying to drown herself. But every time she'd come up, and six or seven laps in, he thought he heard her cry.
He leaned his head back, staring up at the sky. Stars peppered the cloudless night, and he lazily tried to count them as he sipped his beer. Another clink, this one closer, and he glanced over to see the strange woman settling the bottle of wine between them on the stonework between the pool and the hot tub. Gone were the remains of her makeup, save a few splotches of color here and there and her lipstick. She leaned over the divider just far enough that he could see the fine details of her neck, and for an odd moment, he wanted nothing more than to kiss and suck up the moisture there. He looked back up at the sky again.
"I used to dream about this place," she said, almost tonelessly.
Serge glanced over again, sharply this time. With shaking hands, he drank half of what was left of the beer, not daring to breathe. Thoughts of Sierra. Thoughts of one of the last lucid sentences she spoke. I'll send her to you. The forever woman.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Your wife," the stranger said, and Serge's lungs stopped working. "She was the swimmer, yes?"
Yes, he almost said, and the model, and the clothing entrepreneur, and the cookbook writer, and the motivational speaker. Everything they had, everything they were was because of her. He was just the lucky bastard who she liked to serve her coffee until he worked past his butterflies long enough to ask Sierra out.
"Yes."
"I read about her in the newspaper. Her fight, the articles she wrote... it was..." She clicked her tongue, and added, "Beautiful. I come by this house every day. My driver, he knew I was fascinated by the story, and pointed out the house to me. I'm sorry about her."
"Thank you," he said, wondering why he meant it now and not the thousand or so times he'd said it in the last year.
"Can I join you?"
He sat upright, and scooted over for an answer. She walked around the edge of the hot tub to the pool's shallow end steps, and he openly stared at the way her lingerie no clung to her body , nothing hidden. She glanced down, and without a word or a look at him, peeled off her bra and cast it aside, then dropped the panties. Her hair was well trimmed into a thin line, as black as her hair. Her pussy lips hung full and slightly crooked.
She dropped down into the water, and sat near him. Not exactly right beside him, but they could have reached out and easily touched one another, if that was what they wanted. And Serge did. God help him, but he was so hard he ached.
"Your house started to creep into my head," she said, taking the wine bottle off the ledge again. She offered it to him, and he accepted. It was a good wine. One of Sierra's, of course. He had no such taste. "I don't know why. I mean, it's a nice house, but this whole street is full of them."
He sipped again, and handed the bottle back. As he opened his mouth, an engine revved nearby. Someone shouted a name. Evely. It sounded like Eva Lee.
The woman closed her eyes and shivered. Serge listened, half rising out of the water, and the woman laid a hand on his arm. "Don't," she whispered. "Please."
"Whatever trouble you're in, you're safe here."
"Thank you."
The name again, close, and someone else's laughter. The engine revved, and Serge thought about going for the gun in the locked case in his closet. But blessedly, the next time the man shouted, he was distant, and the engine faded.
When he turned back to the woman, she worked at the clasp of her pearls and freed them from her neck. Tears slipping down her face, she offered them to Serge.
"No, it's okay," he said. "I don't want them. I'm not doing this for money, or... or that," he said, feeling like a damn liar, since his hard prick had basically been in her face for a moment.
"I don't want them either," she breathed. Then without a word, she turned and threw them as hard as she could over the neighbor's fence.
* * *
He brought Evely out a towel, and they sat by the pool. She rubbed herself down. A dress he hadn't seen her discard when he woke up now hung over the bar's counter, along with her lingerie.
"Another bottle of wine?"
She considered that. "Yes. But that has to be it. Any more and I'll never stop drinking."
Serge walked to the minibar, still nude, and bizarrely feeling no shame about it. But then again, Evely was nude too. "Do you need me to call the police?"
"No." She sighed. "He gets bored of his toys easily. By tomorrow night, he'll have found someone else to fuck."
He pulled another bottle out, examined it and brought it back. She accepted with a quiet thanks, and He twisted his chair to look at her in the eyes. "Do we need to take you to the hospital? Did he hurt you?"
"No, but he would have. He wanted to... rent me out. To his friends." Evely's laugh was more of a sob. "At least I wouldn't have been cheap. Five thousand dollars apiece."
"Shit, I think I could get five bucks for myself," Serge said. Her laugh this time was much more natural, though still shaky.
They drank the other bottle of wine in near silence. Evely stared at the pool, working something out in her mind. When they settled the empty bottle down on the ground, Serge asked, "Have you eaten anything lately? Can I fix you dinner?"
"It has to be two in the morning. I'll live."
"But you're hungry."
She smiled faintly. "Yes."
He stood up. "Come inside, if you like. Or if you feel safer out here..."
She rose, and before they made it to the door, her delicate hand fell on his shoulder. "I still don't know your name. I should, from the articles. I'm sorry I don't remember that part."
"Serge. And you remember what mattered."
"I think that's only half true," she whispered. He had no good answer to that.
Most of Sierra's clothes, her sister and her mom packed away and gave to churches and Goodwill, but they missed a box. Evely was much curvier than his wife had been, but in the box was a plush rose robe, one of his wife's souvenirs from her world competitions. It even had her initials stenciled on it, and Evely fingered them as she sat at the kitchen table, watching him cook up an omelet, sausage, and toast.
"It's not much," he said, settling it down in front of Evely.
"I haven't had a carb in so long I'm practically drooling," she said, smiling that faint smile. Her words weren't just that, either. She ate everything so fast it left him scrambling for more while she was nearly scraping the plate. An apple. Some granola. A sliver of sharp cheddar cheese, sliced and tossed in front of her with crackers. She ate it all, and when she finally had her fill, he went for the plates.
Her hand went to his cock. Evely looked up at him, and murmured, "I wasn't done yet."
Those small, pouty lips parted for his head, and she stared up at him with her dark brown eyes, still smiling faintly. He ran a hand through her damp hair, and brushed a few strands from her face. Evely tugged him closer, her lips descending to his tip. Without breaking eye contact, she kissed it. Serge shivered in her hands, and her smile widened as her tongue slipped out and licked his sensitive underside.
"Evely," he murmured, and this time, she shivered.
She flicked his underside again, and followed it by slowly devouring his first inch. She sucked him, her eyes finally tearing away from his to stare down his cock. Her hands rose to his root, stroking him slowly as she began to bob her head back and forth, taking her time with it initially.
Though Serge had already seen every inch of her up close, somehow, the sight of her breasts peeking through the gap of the robe was still lewd, still an incredible turn-on. He reached down as she sucked his cock deeper into her mouth. She moaned as he gripped the robe and tugged it off her shoulder. Without letting him go or stopping the blowjob, she helped shrug the fabric the rest of the way off her shoulders, baring her breasts again.
"Fuck, you're beautiful," he breathed.
She came up off him with a slurp. "And you're very handsome."
Evely used the break to spit into her hands, blushing when she saw him watching. She returned her lips to his cock, running them down the side and licking his length while she started to jack his root in earnest. She licked one of his balls, then the other, and sucked that one into her mouth before letting it go.
"You can use me if it makes it feel better," Evely whispered.
Serge stroked her cheek as she rested the other against his length, staring up at him. "No. You're doing great. I'm loving this."
Her grin was honest, wide, and infectious. He found himself smiling back, surprised at how foreign the gesture felt. She devoured him again, this time going for broke, burying her mouth down on him, taking him as far as she could. Given his width and length, that wasn't too far, and there was still at least two-thirds of him out of her mouth. But her hands were taking plenty good care of him there, and besides, it had been so long for him, she probably could have tickled him and made him come in record time.
She slipped off the chair, gripping him and holding him deep in her mouth as she moved and guided him with her. On her knees in the kitchen, Evely didn't look quite so awkward, and sucked him fast and hard, head bobbing, her cheeks caving inward with each deep suck. One of her hands left his cock and he realized with a pleasant start she was sliding it between her own thighs.
He couldn't help thinking of those lips, about tasting them, fingering them, sliding his cock between them and fucking her for all he was worth. Where Sierra had been a slim, tiny thing, well-muscled but no bigger than a minute, Evely was a bombshell. She belonged on magazines, in movies. In pornos, his feverish mind murmured. She sucked him harder and harder, and her hand on his base jacked him faster.
"I'm right there," Serge grunted.
She grinned around him and drove deep down, taking him to her tonsils. She held him there, staring up at him, eyes watering for want of oxygen, and then she was pulling off him, gasping only for a moment before repeating the gesture. But it was when she pulled back and sucked fervently at his tip that Serge lost it. He tapped her head, and she stared up at him, sucking, bobbing, not letting him out of her mouth.
His ass flexed, and he couldn't help a reflexive pump a half inch into her mouth before he came, came, came. His warm sticky ropes hit her tonsils like a cannon, over and over and over again. She swallowed as much as she could before pulling off him, gasping and closing her eyes reflexively. Good thing, too. He painted her cheeks, her eyelids, her forehead. A shot even went into her hair. She frantically fingered herself with her one hand while scooping up his come with the other, sucking it down. If her moans were an act, she was damn good at it.
He pulled her to her feet and hurried with her back to the bedroom they'd come through. He turned on the lights -- had to. There was no way he was going to do this with Evely in the dark summer night.
She crawled up onto the bed and rested on her back, propped up by her elbows. He chased her, stopping first to kiss a foot, noting her glamorously painted nails. Then came her calves, and when he had his fill of them, he threw them over his shoulders, going for her thighs. She cooed at him, sliding three fingers across her pearl as he kissed and licked her thighs, staring up at her before moving his mouth finally to her core.
She tasted like the chemicals in the pool water, plain and simple, but he didn't care. His ministrations to her lacked any subtlety. It had been so long. So very long. Serge wanted to savor every inch of her, but his hunger was too intense. He drove into her pussy with his tongue, making her arch her back, strumming her clit harder and harder.
"Yes, like that," she moaned. "Deep like that."
He reached up with one hand and she grabbed it in hers, bringing it to one of her full breasts. He teased her nipple with his thumb, drawing another moan and a twitch from Evely. Her hand dropped to his head, running through his hair. Her body began to rock rhythmically to meet his tongue, and she whispered his name. The word sent a shiver through him.
I'll send her to you.
Thank you, Sierra.
I love you.
I miss you.
"Lick my clit?" Evely asked. Her tone was shy, breathy. She was so close, he could tell, and he smiled up at her before he moved to do just that, taking her hand in his and pressing it to her stomach. He made love to her clit with his tongue, taking it slow this time even as his other hand dropped from her breast to her folds. He slid two fingers inside her, pumping into her deep. Evely writhed on the bed underneath him, her feet twisting in hard circles, her chest rising and falling.
"Serge, I'm close, I'm so close..." she breathed.
"Come for me," he murmured against her clit, and sucked it into his mouth again, no longer teasing, but flicking her pearl with faster licks, He twisted his fingers inside her and curled them to find her spot. It must have worked.
Her ass thrust up in the air and she howled, "Oh God, I'm coming, I'm... nnnn!"
She kicked up and out, and stretched hard to one side, squeezing his hand on her stomach so hard she'd leave nail tracks in his skin. She gushed onto his fingers, more than he'd ever felt any woman come before, and she slowly settled back down.
"Kiss me," she begged him, "please, I need your lips..."
He rushed up Evely's body to kiss her with all the heat he felt in his soul. Something was there between them, some intangible thing he wanted with all his heart. Maybe it was too soon to call it love. Maybe she was too much of a stranger. Maybe this night was all they had. But for the first time since before Sierra's diagnosis, he allowed himself to hope.
His hardness rested against her thigh, and she reached down to grip him and guide him to her entrance. "I don't have a condom," he murmured, searching her eyes.
"I'm not on the pill," she murmured back.
"I'll try to be careful."
Evely shook her head. "I... don't mind. I want to take something from this night. I'll never ask you for anything, but I feel like I..." She blushed, and kissed him again softly. Tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes, and he slid a hand under her head. "I feel like I was always supposed to be here."
"Me too."
And with that, he slid into her.
