Summer Swap 4.10

When no one answered, she knocked again. She’d heard raised voices; heard Arlo’s voice, deep and sanctimonious, then Lily’s, shrill and pleading.

This time when she knocked, Scarlet said, “I know you guys are in there. Is everything okay?”

Then, at last, Lily’s voice: “Yeah, we’re good. Don’t come in, okay?”

Scarlet tested the door lever and found it locked. “Are you coming back out? We want to see you guys. Do you want to play a game?”

“Okay,” Lily said, voice tight but trying to sound cheery. “We’re going to be just a little bit.” Then the sound of a choked back laugh she swore was Arlo.

“We’re almost done the dishes. Chey opened another bottle of that Chardonnay you like, Lily. Promise me you’re coming up to play cards.”

“I promise, Scarlet,” Lily said in a light, almost condescending, singsong.

“You better,” Scarlet said, crossing her arms, lingering at the door, waiting to hear what they might say when she was gone. But they were quiet now.

* * *

Arlo held both hands over his mouth and his face, knowing he had gone beet red from stifling laughter. Lily batted his shoulder, saying, “Mr. Graves doesn’t laugh.”

“Sorry,” he said, trying to compose himself.

She said, “Ever. He doesn’t ever laugh.” Now she disconnected the alligator clamp from between her legs, wincing as it came away and the thrum of the current disconnected from her clitoris.

“Mr. Graves is sorry,” he said. Adding, “174-63-1503.”

“Yeah, well, Mr. Graves better be gone after I count to ten.”

“Twenty,” he said.

Lily—now in her surly mood—tossed herself over on the bed, naked, going onto her front, pulling pillows over her head, and counting down into them, starting at fifteen; a compromise.

Arlo jumped back, unplugged his homemade e-stim machine, gathered all his instruments into his briefcase, ran to the closet and shoved it in there. Next was the suit, which he bolted off, crumpled and tossed into the closet on top of the briefcase. Shirt and tie were next, standing there with no pants, his erection upright and wagging side to side in front of him.

Lily had sped up the count, and he called her on it. She slowed a little, kicking her legs up and down, her countdown muffled under the pillow fort surrounding her head. He slid the closet closed as she counted one and leapt around. He’d had no time to pull on his boxer shorts and she caught him standing there naked.

She looked shocked, putting up a hand to block her view of his erect penis, saying in a shocked gasp, “Oh Daddy!”

“I’m so sorry, sugarplum,” he said, coming to the bed as Lily hid her face under the pillows again. “Where are you PJs? Why were you sleeping with nothing on?” He smiled at her antics, running a hand up her bare back.

She turned to face him, her sweet face peeking out from the shade of the pillows. “I’m mad at you,” she said; not his babygirl, and not the tormented subjugate of the mean bureaucrat known as Mr. Graves, nor any of the other characters they liked to role-play. Just Lily.

“And I’m mad at you,” he said.

“Me?” She smiled. “Why?”

“I’ve never seen you brattier in my whole life.”

She chuckled and snuggled up against him, kissing his chest, nibbling on his nipple until he complained and then hiding her face in his collar while he rubbed her back. His hand went lower and patted her naked bottom, still blushing from his spanking.

He said, “Mr. Graves doesn’t ever laugh.”

“Never,” she said, her whisper soughing against his neck.

“I couldn’t remember if I locked the door, and then I pictured what Scarlet would see if she came in.”

Lily chuckled too, picturing it: her naked, a machine with wires clamped on her privates, Arlo wearing a suit, a briefcase full of sex-toys—he’d removed the most vulgar for air travel, then had to stop in the town of Cruz Bay on the island, taking a detour on the cab ride from the airport to the yacht. There was a sex shop in Cruz Bay, and he’d done his best to replace his wife’s favorite items he’d left behind so airport security wouldn’t pull them out one by one and ask him what it was. All that trouble, then to have their secret sex-life blown by Scarlet opening the door? How could he not laugh?

“You wrecked it, though.”

“I’m sorry, little baby. It was Scarlet that wrecked it, not me.”

“You have to make it up to me.”

“You know I will,” he said, caressing a slender arm, cupping her dainty elbow. “What can I do for you?”

“You know the things I like. I don’t want to tell you. I want you to know.”

In her voice he could hear the rising whiny tone of his babygirl. He said, “I work all day to send you to school, to buy you pretty dresses, to send you to ballet and jazz and tap. Your cheerleader uniform cost me almost five-hundred dollars...”

“So?” She squirmed against him, responding to his patronly diatribe with arousal.

“So? You say So? The least you could do is tell me what you want, little lady.”

She grunted and squirmed away from him, her face twisted in the cutest scowl. She grumbled, “Your thing is all big and weird. Why is it like that?” She sneered like she was disgusted, reaching to touch the small of her back and her waist where his penis had been poking her. “Ew,” she complained, rubbing her semen-slippery fingertips together. “Gross, Daddy, there’s stuff coming out of it.”

He got to his knees, laughing, warning her: “We don’t do Daddy sex, Lily. You know that.”

She stayed in character, tempting him. “That machine got me feeling so weird, Daddy.”

He warned her again: “Lily...”

“Right here,” she said, touching the flat below her tummy, her eyes staying on his eyes, getting his heart racing. “And maybe a little lower...”

Now her fingers traced down over her shaved mound and into the sopping pink cleft of her hot sex.

He bit his knuckle at her ability to drive him out of his mind. But rules were rules, and he said a firm and permanent no to Daddy sex. He leapt forward and began tickling her, his cock a long stiff thing nodding up and down and slinging more slippery “stuff.”

Lily squealed and abandoned her sex talk, but staying a babygirl and kicking her legs. Then: his insistent tickling brought from Lily the tiniest, quietest little toot.

They both went dead quiet, him with his clawed hands still on his wife’s ribs. Lily’s eyes were wide, her lips sucked into her mouth. He said, “What do you say, Lily?”

She whispered, “Excuse me.”

He brought his hands to his lap and sighed. “Lily... You know what this means.”

She pouted. “No, Daddy. I’m a big girl. I am, I really am.”

He stood, shaking his head, pursing his lips. “We’re going up to play cards with our friends and I don’t want any accidents.”

Lily giggled and bit her lower lip, cheeks blushing with excitement. “Daddy, I’m a big girl.”

He ignored her protesting, going into the dark of their bathroom and rustling through the Chelsea Pharmacy shopping bags. Another stop they’d made on their journey from the airport to the yacht. He reached in, plucked open the box, and produced a diaper for Lily.

* * *

First thing Byron said when Scarlet came up from the deck below was, “Great, now you guys can tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Sully shot him a serious look and said, “Byron, I told you: they’re cannibals. We have to find a way off this ship before Arlo puts us in a really big soup pot.”

Byron told him to stick it.

Scarlet joined them, looking at her husband like he was a psycho. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Sully laughed, then bumped her shoulder with his shoulder. Cheyenne came in to the clutch, saying, “Everything okay down there?”

“I think so,” Scarlet said. “They’re either arguing or...”

“Fighting or fucking,” Sully said.

Scarlet showed him a dirty look again. Sully held up his hands in surrender. “Too much wine,” he said.

Cheyenne was concerned about Lily and Arlo. “They were fighting?”

Scarlet shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. It didn’t sound good, but when I asked them if they were coming down Lily said they were and she sounded really chipper.”

“So, anyway,” Byron said. “The chit-chat. I’ve been waiting because Chey wouldn’t tell me anything until you got here.”

“Oh,” Scarlet said. Then gestured for Chey to step in. “Go ahead, tell him.”

Chey said, “You tell him.”

Scarlet rubbed her forehead like she had a headache. “Okay, this was Chey’s thought—”

“I thought of it, and I’m right.”

Scarlet looked at Chey sideways, continuing, “See, she talked to Philippe when we got here—Byron, that night with the toilet tube...”

“I remember.”

“And Philippe had said he and Paloma split up, but he wanted to get back together...”

Sully said, “Byron’s not sitting down. You guys made me sit down.”

Cheyenne jabbed through the middle of the group and punched Sully’s shoulder. Sully chuckled to himself, rubbing where he’d been thumped.

“Please, just get to the point,” Byron said.

Scarlet said, “The point is, Chey doesn’t think any of them are being honest.”

“Okay. And?”

“Look, Chey said she didn’t think that Paloma and Philippe looked like they’d spent that much time apart when they were reunited on the boat this afternoon.”

“Seemed okay to me,” Byron said, then looked to Cheyenne. “What makes you say that?”

“It just didn’t seem right.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, okay? It just didn’t seem right. Girls see things different, Byron.”

Scarlet said, “I missed the reunion.”

Chey said, “But you trust my opinion, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What do you mean, ‘uh,’ Scarlet?”

“Nothing,” she said, reassuring her. “I trust your opinion.”

Byron said, “So what does that matter, anyhow?”

Chey turned to him, holding his forearms. “Think about it, baby. Cody rents this big yacht, cuts us all a break on the price, brings us out here to no-man’s-land, a private do-what-you-want-space...”

“We paid our share, Chey.”

She rolled her eyes. “You said yourself, not the full amount.”

“So?”

Sully said, “Cannibals, Byron,” and Cheyenne shot him a look like she’d swat him again.

Scarlet said, “Chey thinks they brought us out here...”

Footsteps stopped her mid-sentence, and she looked to the side. Cheyenne let his arms go.

Paloma entered the kitchen, coming in from the back deck, her dress a brilliant yellow against her tanned skin. Behind her the others were following, Philippe and Cody talking and laughing, Carla smiling knowingly, her eyes on Byron’s. He looked away.

“Look how clean you make it,” Paloma crooned, setting down her empty wine glass. She stood taller than Chey and Scarlet, wearing low heels while the girls wore sandals. “You’re so wonderful.”

“Thanks,” Sully said, like he was smitten, a man under a charm spell.

Chey said, “What are you guys doing in here? We were about to come out.”

Paloma said, “We’ll sit, we’ll sit and talk. Maybe play some games. But we wanted to talk to you first.”

Chey said, “Me?”

Paloma’s gaze traveled across all their faces. “No, all of you, of course. Please, come with us...”

She held out a hand for Scarlet and Scarlet took it and Paloma led her away.

Carla held out her hand for Byron and said, “Come on, Byron, we’re all going to go down to my suite.”

“What for?”

She wove her fingers through his, smiling. “Don’t worry. It’s not going to hurt.”

He swore to fucking god Sully was joking about the cannibal thing, but right now his heart raced and his scalp tightened.