Summer Swap 4-17

When they’d boarded the yacht, she could never have anticipated walking through it at some point on their vacation naked with Sully, the way they were doing now, Sully with an erection wagging side to side in the lamp light. And yet somehow, they were still the same people—it had only been days-worth of change—like the naked degenerates strutting through a luxury yacht without a stitch had always been there inside them, waiting for an opportunity to be asked if they’d like to come out and play. They hadn’t been transformed, they’d been revealed.

She turned to share the funny observation with Sully, finding him a step behind, his brow furrowed, his right hand up by his mouth and nose.

She said, “Did you just smell your fingers?”

He looked her way, startled. “What?—no. Maybe. What?”

She scoffed, saying, “You’re gross.”

He trotted a few steps to catch up with her, his dick whipping up and down, out of control. He said, “It’s a thing. An animal thing. I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

She said, “You’re right about that: an animal thing. You look like a fucking orangutan, smelling your own fingers like that.”

He waved his hands around, trying to find the words to explain himself. “It’s evolutionary. It’s ingrained.”

Now she rolled her eyes, the two of them crossing the mosaic tile floor, headed to the bar in the lounge. “How?

“You know... Checking for her...”

She turned to regard him. He broke up laughing, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling and shaking his head, knowing how stupid he sounded.

“Say it.”

“Health,” he said, trying to appear mirthful and innocent, shrugging a shoulder. “See if she’s healthy.”

She crossed her arms and stared at him, watching him begin to squirm. “So, Sully... Is she healthy? Is Paloma healthy?”

He shrugged a shoulder again. “She’s pretty healthy.”

“You like the smell?”

“Now you’re being gross.”

“Does she pass the sniff test?”

Now he laughed and waved her away, walking ahead under the glass archway and into the lounge, his perfect little butt flexing as he did. She snickered and went ahead, Sully going behind the bar and her going to the chair side, putting her elbows on it as Sully stooped and opened the under counter fridge, looking for champagne. He said, “I like how you think you could be a swinger.”

“What, ‘cause I think my husband’s a weirdo for smelling his fingers after he put them inside another woman?”

He stood up without champagne, showing her an aloof look, eyes lazy, eyebrows high. He stuck his hand toward her face, reaching over the ice bucket, saying, “It’s not gross. Smell.”

She jerked her head back. “Get your fucking fingers out of my face, Sully.”

“Would you smell them, please. You’re the best, but she’s not bad. Check her out.”

“If that hand doesn’t get out of my face I’ll pop out your eyeballs with those ice tongs.” She nodded to the stainless steel tongs in the ice bucket.

Sully retracted his hand and narrowed his sparkling eyes in challenge. “Good luck, with me shoving my fingers in your nose.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, smirking, pretending to stay heated and adversarial but a real funny warmth blooming behind her ribs for this man. She stood on one side of the bar, like a customer, him on the other, hands spread on the counter supporting his weight, like a naked bartender who was happy to see her. She said, “Come here. Come around to my side.”

Sully stood upright, looking cool, cocking his head, showing her his casual, sleepy eyes. He took a step to come around, went back and grabbed the ice tongs and tossed them into the sink where she wouldn’t be able to reach them, showed her a wary smile and a wink, then came around the bar to join her, putting out his arms in welcome. She moved into his embrace, and they stood together, naked under the chandelier, his erection pressing her stomach.

After a moment enjoying the affection, she said, “Don’t smell your fingers. It’s uncouth.”

“Fine.”

“You can put your fingers where you want. Put your face where you want. Put your dick where you want...”

“But you don’t want to see me smelling my fingers. Got it.”

She pulled her head back so she could see his face. “Where are we at?”

“You and me?”

“Me and you.”

He said, “Me, I’m holding onto the love of my life, having a good time.”

“Why’d you stop us?”

“We didn’t have a talk today. You know, after what we did last night.”

“We didn’t. Not really,” she said, her posture sagging, Sully letting her go.

He said, “And when we did, it was kind of weird. . . . Look, I’m not in this for sex with Paloma, I’m not in it for sex with any other person. I’m in it together with with you, the two of us trying something out.”

“That’s what I’m in it for, too.”

“But you get jealous.”

“I do?”

“Me and Carla.”

“What about you and Carla?” Her tone was more defensive than she’d intended, and she touched her chest like out of embarrassment.

Sully said “What is it about Carla that makes you and Scarlet so jumpy?”

“I don’t like your superior tone, mister. You think you can wield my bad reactions against me, weaponize my own weaknesses?”

“I’m not weaponizing your weaknesses, Scar, baby. I’m curious about them. I like them.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I’m afraid to say. Every time me and Byron say anything about Carla it leads to trouble. Were your sororities rivals or something? Did Carla kill one of your sorority sisters in the Great Sorority War of 2012?”

“No, there are no grudges. No past grievances.”

“It’s how she looks?”

She narrowed her eyes as if angry, caught herself doing it and then laughed. “How she looks and how she acts.”

“She’s like a female Cody.”

“I guess.”

He smiled, the smile warm and friendly and communicating something back to her, something friendly and yet difficult. Her husband had just held a mirror up to her, showing her what she looked like, making her sound out how unreasonable her argument was. Cody was male perfection: wealthy, served his country with extreme bravery, handsome—heck, gorgeous—well connected, good friends, funny, well hung, perfect body, great hair, those goddam swimmable eyes...

She said, “I don’t see your point,” rolling her eyes, stepping close again, looking for a hug. Sully’s arms went around her.

He said, “We’re good, you and me. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then added, “We’re better than good.”

“We’re fucking awesome,” he said.

“That’s it.”

After a long embrace, Sully reinforced it: “We really are.”

Now she patted his bare backside, indicating family time was over and they needed to get back to business. “We have some people waiting on us.”

“We certainly do,” he said, stepping back, his erection undeterred by their brief, heartfelt duologue, pretending to tighten an imaginary tie at his neck.

She smiled, glad to see them united on the same team again—Team Hill—and ready to go to battle. And no word from him of how she felt about Paloma. Paloma, who was just as sexy as Carla, in a whole different way, and whose fortitude was untested and unexplored. The not yet known from Paloma had set her back on her heels, but her husband had just wound her up, turned her key and got her machinations in forward gear. She said, “You’ve just done more than you even know.”

He looked down, in a stupid but honest male sexual preoccupation, thinking maybe he’d ejaculated and not even known it. Then he looked up at her for more information. But she said, “Never mind. I don’t know if I can explain it.”

He looked insulted. “You could try.”

She said, “How about I show you instead?”

Now he was back on track, back to business, giving her curt and official nod, saying, “All right. What’s the plan?”

“First,” she said, “I’d like you to find the best bottle of champagne on board this boat—”

“Yacht.”

“Yacht. Then I’d like you to corral four clean champagne glasses and follow me back to the hot tub.”

“I can do that,” he said, confident, smiling. “Then what?”

“Then, my dear Sully,” she purred, taking his wrist, lifting his hand to her chin. “I want you to follow my lead.” She guided his two middle fingers into her mouth and sucked them, his Paloma vagina-fingers slippery on her tongue, her eyes locked on his, watching her lubricious act turn her husband’s boy brain into lusty lava, his eyes widening, his jaw slackening, his lips parting as he succumbed in complete surrender to his wife’s newfound and intense sexuality.

His Adam’s apple jumped up and down as he swallowed. He licked his lips.

He said, “Oh. Oh wow.”

* * *

Carla lay on the simple bed in the undecorated suite, the same place they’d all gathered to watch Scarlet and Philippe get locked in a closet completely naked. Carla wasn’t dressed as a headmistress, as he’d expected. Nor as a skintight leather-bound dominatrix, as maybe a small secret part of him kind of hoped for. No, Carla didn’t dress like authority. She dressed like him: a student at some pretend high-falutin’ British private school. She lay on her front side, up on elbows, her legs bent, sock feet crossed, reading a hardcover book—a text book—with a chewed pen in her mouth. The same blazer he wore was draped over a chair, the crest rail holding up the shoulders; instead of grey flannel pants, she wore a gray flannel skirt.

When she saw him step into her room her face took on a look of shock; she tugged a white cord that went from one of those old iPod Classics up under her short and shaggy blonde mane, and the ear buds tumbled onto the text book’s pages. She gasped, “What are you doing here?”

Knowing not to stammer or misstep, he played along, trying his best to keep his cool and stay apace with this high-level sex demon, saying, “What, a guy can’t drop by and say what’s up?”

Carla’s hand went to her mouth to hide a smile in a way that made him actually feel like a real private-school bad boy than a guy whose wife just dressed him for play and sent him off to the iniquitous den of another female. Carla backed off the bed, straightening her tight white Oxford button down that could barely contain her fifties-era chest torpedos, adjusting her appearance in a timid and unexpected way, one that suggested she was challenged by his presence. Her voice a breathless sort of whisper, she claimed now, “Boys from Clarke House are never-ever allowed in Pashley House. If the Matron saw you, you’d get kicked out of Shoreham for sure.”

He shrugged a shoulder and put his hands in his pockets, an arrogant young man undeterred by authority. “She didn’t see me.”

“You’re crazy,” Carla said, trotted in socks to him, past him, holding on to the door handle, turning to say, “You have to get out of here, Byron. If... If the matron catches you, you’ll be sent home. And what about me?”

He said, “If you send me out, I’ll run into her for sure, Carla.”

Carla put her back to the closed door, torn between sending him off and letting him stay. Her plump lips sucked into her mouth, and her cheeks showed red (how on earth did she fake that?). The lips plopped free from her nervous bite as she couldn’t stop a devious smile. She said, “Okay, you can stay. But you have to be quiet. When it’s dark”—she went breathless and scared again, scared of being caught—“when it’s dark, I’ll sneak you out my dorm room window.”