A Summer Vacation: A Wife-Swapping Novella Read online

  A Summer Vacation

  A Wife-Swapping Novella

  By Arnica Butler

  *********

  Copyright 2016 by Arnica Butler

  All rights reserved. No duplicating and no resale, but

  feel free to share with friends or family.

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those that are clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, companies, organizations, events, or products, is purely coincidental.

  All characters depicted in this story are 18 years or older.

  Cover characters are models. Image(s) is/are licensed from:

  Wavebreakmedia / DepositPhotos

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  Other Novels by Arnica Butler:

  Human Interest 1: A Lead-In To Wife-Watching

  Human Interest 2: A Wife-Watching Exposé

  Ela's Performance: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

  A Well-Laid Trap 1

  A Well-Laid Trap 2

  The Hobby Job

  Not Black And White: A Hotwife Novel

  A Gamble: The Making Of A Hotwife

  The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel

  The Hotwife Summer

  A Dark Place: Cuckolded in Lagos

  The Hotwife Tattoo

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  You can also follow Arnica Butler @ArnicaButler on Twitter.

  Please drop me a line! I love to hear from readers.

  *********

  To The Reader

  A Summer Vacation was originally intended to be a short story in a collection (to be published soon, by five of the best authors in this genre). My own story got a bit long, and a few other things happened along the way, so I've decided to publish A Summer Vacation as a standalone novella.

  My last two series were prolix, and very heavy, and very complex. This book is a drastic change from that tone; for me, it was a much-needed breather after such dense writing. This is a light-hearted story, mostly intended to capture the erotic excitement of summer.

  As always, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for your continued support.

  Arnica

  1

  “Jesus,” Steve said. “This place.”

  Helena placed her hand on his shoulder. “They have a lot of family money,” she assured him.

  He had always known that, but for some reason, ten years out of school, there was more of a sting to their friends' opulence. Maybe because it contrasted so starkly with his own mediocrity.

  Perhaps because that mediocrity itself seemed less likely, at this stage in life, to be temporary.

  Helena and Steve were standing on a stone porch. A woman wearing jeans and a t-shirt but who nonetheless appeared to be a maid of some kind had led them through a labyrinth of marble-floored rooms, oozing with Persian rugs, ornate vases, and expensive-looking art, to stand here, overlooking the garden.

  They had passed under a dramatic stone archway and into what Reza had referred to as “the yard.”

  When Reza and Zahra had invited Steve and Helena for a barbeque at the new house they had moved into, they had described the place a little differently.

  “It has a nice little pool,” Zahra had said.

  “I made an outdoor kitchen,” Reza had told them.

  And, in their most accurate statement:

  “It has a lot more space than our last place.”

  These were the non-palatial descriptions that had led Steve to believe he was going to be standing around on a nice wood deck, in a large yard with a good patch of grass. Because Reza and Zahra were reportedly “well-off,” he had expected some expensive landscaping and a decent pool.

  Like Steve's rich clients in Cherry River.

  This was more like fucking Versailles. It was not more than half an hour away from Steve and Helena's modest home in a nearby suburb, but it was a different world.

  The stone porch where they were standing ended to either side of them in two stone staircases that curved around and let out, meters below them, facing each other. More stone pavement expanded toward the pool, which was not a typical residential pool, but a spectacular one, more suited to a five-star hotel than a residence. The floor of the pool itself was made of an expensive stone, and it stretched away for an improbable distance until it fell away at an edge, an infinity pool. Part of the pool curved around to a cavernous area with a waterfall tumbling down the same expensive-looking stone. Beyond the edge of the pool, below whatever man-made cliff was there, the immaculate coiffed trees and landscaping of an estate stretched away. It was all very wet, all very fountain-filled and green.

  And this, in the middle of what was essentially a desert.

  “Hullo!” Zahra's nearly-flawless, boarding-school English accent rang out from below, and Steve looked down to see Helena's old college friend (the couple were really Helena's friends, more than Steve's) waving from a deck chair.

  It had been almost ten years since Steve had seen Zahra, and evidently the time had done nothing to her. At least from where he stood. Her raven-black hair shone in the sun like polished ebony, still quite long. Enormous black sunglasses, very glamorous, covered her eyes, resting on her petite nose, which she never hesitated to explain was “doctored.” Her full lips, painted so red that they could be seen from where they stood, moved beneath her glasses as she spoke quietly to a woman next to her. The woman Zahra spoke to was quite fit, and probably pretty, but next to Zahra she looked dull and dumpy, even with a mane of pretty brown hair and a pleasant figure.

  Zahra's skin was an extraordinary toasted almond color, and it was everywhere: the bikini she was wearing seemed made of little more than strings. Her slender Persian frame was long. Her torso stretched between the small scraps of bikini, smooth, without a trace of fat on it; her legs were even longer, and they were firm but did not bear the tone of exercise, which Zahra hated. She was thin and fit by good birth. Evidently a long lineage of beautiful women, and her own insistence on rarely eating, had maintained her in pristine condition all these years.

  Her legs were crossed at her slender, sexy ankle. She had not removed a pair of strappy heels that wound around her skin, faintly reminiscent of bondage and incredibly alluring. Steve's eyes were drawn to them, and he felt a flutter deep and low in his abdomen, stretching down into his balls. A submerged memory gripped him: Zahra's slinky walk, always in the highest heels she could find.

  And she was about to do it in a bikini.

  She rose from her lounge chair, and began to slink toward the staircase. Her olive-brown limbs glided sexily and sent Steve's pulse through the roof. She paused after a few steps, and without gesturing or saying anything, made it evident, in the way that Zahra made all things evident, that she was not going any further. They would come to her.

  Helena went to the left, and so, feeling theatrical, Steve went to the right. Helena was scowling at him when they rounded their respective staircases and were facing each other. He took her hand and squeezed it.

  He knew Helena was excited to see her old friends, but she was also filled with a certain amount of insecurity. Seeing Zahra in her stunning bikini, untouched by the effects of child-bearing, was probably stressing her out.

  Women. Such strange relationships with each other.

  Zahra had her hand on her hip, and she was biting her lower lip. She took off her sunglasses to better inspect them. With the brash honesty that marked he
r personality and which she claimed to be cultural, she delivered, deadpan:

  “Look at you two. I expected you to be fat and gray like everyone else.” Then she screamed, without taking her eyes off of them: “Reza!”

  But the godlike Reza was already moving toward them, already in mid-stride. A similarly inky black head of hair, somehow thicker with age and without a single gray marring its raven-color, rested atop his hard-edged face. There was a certain regal quality to Reza's appearance. (He had been scouted by a casting director once for a role as an Arab prince, which he had declined as a matter of Persian pride.) He had a devastatingly handsome face, and a muscular body, also unchanged by time, that he was showing off without a shirt on. His chest was broad, but an adolescent leanness pervaded everywhere else on him. Effortlessly masculine and gorgeous, a perfect complement to his effortlessly feminine and gorgeous wife.

  The pair gave off an air of good breeding. However classist and un-American it might have been to think such a thing, that thought always surfaced in Steve's mind when he was around them.

  Steve gave a quick glance at Helena. She was smiling rigidly at Zahra.

  But Steve knew. He knew Helena had taken a good long drink of Reza and his devastating body. He used to catch her doing it all the time.

  He knew she looked at Reza. He would love to know what she imagined.

  Zahra gave Helena a kiss on the cheek. Zahra wasn't a hugger, nor was she one of those women who squealed eight octaves above her regular voice when she saw female company. Zahra, in fact, always moved with a rich woman's liquid slowness. She was there to be looked at, her every move seemed to say.

  What was more, she wanted to be looked at.

  Reza went right for Helena, and took both of her hands and held them up. It looked like he did it to better display her body for his perusal. He seemed to drink her up, just as slowly as Zahra moved. Then he pulled Helena to him, and gave her a sensual hug.

  Steve stared at Reza's bare skin against his wife's body. He had a sweet and errant thought, and looked away to avoid letting it get out of control and reveal itself in the form of an erection.

  A college-aged kid, who looked like some kind of caterer, came by with a drink. Zahra took it without looking at him. She said something out of the corner of her mouth that sent the boy scurrying to a bar on the side of the pool.

  “We're so pleased you two could come,” Reza said. He always talked like this for a bit, overly formal, and then eased into his “casual” friendliness. “Do you want something to drink? Let's talk about old times.”

  Zahra rolled her eyes. “You sound like Count Dracula.” To Steve and Helena: “He sounds like Count Dracula, he's taking the piss.” She rolled her big brown eyes, thick with dark, long eyelashes, in Reza's direction. “Stop it. I already sent Thad for drinks.”

  Steve felt the familiar sensation of disquiet that he had always felt around Reza and Zahra stirring inside of him. It was an unusual feeling. In part, the presence of these two exotic and sophisticated beauties never failed to make his own life seem dull by comparison, and some of that feeling turned into a sour sense of inadequacy inside of himself. It mingled with an allure, an attraction, and a host of dirty thoughts. The combination made him feel seasick.

  Zahra was now bringing an ice-cold drink, sweating with condensation, to her lips. She closed her full mouth around the straw, and Steve felt his cock twitch. He looked away, and unconsciously put his hand on Helena's elbow.

  Zahra shook her glorious mane of inky hair after she had sucked the sticky red daiquiri liquid into her mouth. “Mmm,” she said, and reached out a slender arm to put her hand on Helena's. Her fingers brushed over Steve's as she did. A burning sensation passed through him from the outside of his pinky finger, down his leg, and back up to curl inside his balls.

  “I have something to show you,” Zahra declared. She pulled Helena toward her, and the two of them walked away toward a cabana. Steve let his eyes fall on Zahra's tiny ass. The scrap of bikini she was wearing slid over her almond skin with each fluid step she took, revealing, in waves, more and more of her luscious bottom, until finally she swept a finger beneath the fabric in a quick, practiced movement, and stopped its ascent.

  As soon as the tantalizing display ended, he realized what he was doing and quickly looked at Reza. He was surprised to find that Reza was also watching the two women walk away, with a similarly lascivious expression on his face.

  Steve felt a familiar pang of guilt, and his cheeks flared with a hot blush as he remembered “the thing,” from so many years before.

  “Helena looks fantastic,” Reza said, rubbing the tip of his thumb against his lower lip. “She hasn't changed at all.”

  This was only partly true, but Steve wasn't going to point it out. Helena hadn't changed much in appearance, and she had worked hard after each child to get her body back to its original shape: lean and athletic. But in spite of her efforts, she had curves where she had never had them before: a fullness in her breasts, a wider sweep from her abdomen to her hip, a slightly more rounded ass.

  In truth, Steve liked her figure better this way.

  She was taller than Zahra, even with Zahra in her heels. Helena's Swedish heritage made her a much larger person. But she was stunning: naturally blonde, though her hair was a shade darker from being inside so much, and pretty blue-green eyes. She had cut her hair to a shoulder-length bob, and was now, to Steve's relief, growing it out again. She was very pretty, Helena. No one would ever call her beautiful they way they would Zahra (people use that adjective about Zahra in hushed tone: “beauhtifuhl.”). But Helena was, in the grand scheme of things, a very attractive woman.

  And Reza's compliment – as strange of a thing as it was to say, so forwardly, and while running his eyes all over Steve's wife's ass – gave Steve a cheap thrill. Helena was still wearing a conservative sundress, and not the slinky high heels-and-bikini combo that Zahra was, but she was quite stunning in her own right.

  Then Reza clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “Let's get you a cocktail, shall we? And then get caught up.”

  His regal, “Count Dracula” act was gone. He started to walk in the direction of the bar, and Steve followed.

  There were a number of other guests there already. They seemed quite at home, unconnected to each other, and were strangely not mingling much. Steve remembered this kind of odd vibe from a few of the couple's friends back in their school days. There seemed to be some kind unwritten rule among the ultra-wealthy that you don't have too good of a time at a “party.”

  Also in keeping with their strange wealthy friends from long ago, Reza did not introduce Steve to anyone.

  The boy who had gone to retrieve drinks at Zahra's request was walking toward them with a tray. He looked confused. Steve looked at the tray. A daiquiri, evidently for Zahra, and a small dark-colored drink that must have been intended for Helena, who liked rum and Coke, and a light brown liquid on ice that appeared to be whiskey for him.

  He marveled at the way that Zahra, after all these years, seemed to have remembered their favorite drinks. Reza took the whiskey and handed it to Steve and waved the boy on to the two women on the other side of the pool.

  “Thanks,” Steve said, and he felt sort of lame.

  Reza took a sip of his drink. “So,” he said. “How are things? I think the ladies -” He cut himself off, and held his drink midway to his lips. His eyes were trained on another guest, arriving on the immense staircase at the back of his house. He placed a hand on Steve's arm, and the regal, “Count” act washed over his posture and face. “I apologize. I have to attend to this guest.” He knocked back his drink and set it on the table.

  Steve watched Reza approach his guest, hands extended in that very mafia-like, Middle-Eastern way, ready to clasp both hands over one and hug at the same time. Then he looked around the pool. Zahra and Helena had disappeared in a cabana halfway down the immense length of it. The other guests seemed to be asleep with their eyes open.
>
  As always, he felt invisible.

  And somewhat inadequate.

  He asked Thad for another drink.

  Steve was quite loopy by the time Reza, Helena, and Zahra clustered around him at the poolside table where he had taken to drinking by himself and watching the pretty women who were lounging around the water. Even though many a skimpy suit abounded, not many of them dipped into the pool, which he had to admit was disappointing. After all, he loved his beautiful wife, but he enjoyed a good view of bare skin gliding through the water, emerging dripping wet. Luckily, a few women had settled on the edge of the pool to swing their pretty, sculpted legs in lazy strokes in the warm water, their swimsuit covers creeping up their thighs, patches of bright fabric between their legs the only thing stopping Steve's eyes from getting a full view of whatever was there between them. He guessed from the well-manicured nails and hair that whatever was there was either tidy or fully waxed.

  And feet, which he didn't go so far as to fetishize, but certainly loved: bare, slender feet, gliding through the water, pretty toes painted to match their swimsuits.

  So there was no need for the gang to cheer him up when they all sat down, though they seemed to believe he was sitting there, dejected.

  They chatted about what they had been doing for the past ten years, but Zahra had evidently stayed in touch with Helena sufficiently that she didn't need to explain much of anything. It was funny; Helena rarely mentioned Zahra. When she had announced that the pair were moving back home, Steve had been surprised; it had seemed out-of-the-blue. Now he could see that the two stayed in touch quite often, and still shared that girlish half-speak that close female friends had.

  Since there seemed to be no need for catching up, the conversation quickly turned to old times and places they had visited, and Steve felt the same sinking sensation and flush on his cheeks when the memories of his fantasies resurfaced. He tried to submerge them, and wondered if any of the three of them noticed his hot face, or his erection, or the queer look that had to be playing out on his face.