Orange moon above the hills behind the town, icicles decorating every tree and garden lattice, miniature snowdrifts in the ornate pathway down the hill from the Morrisons' house to the guest cottage where Maura had lately been banished, a dazzling cold white afterglow on every surface in the December night, the stray snowflakes dotting her coat and her hair, the bustle of the impending Christmas party in the house behind her but not a soul in sight ahead...Maura was chilled to the bone, but she was elated. If one had to spend Christmas Eve alone, there couldn't be a more bucolic setting for all she had in store!
Sharon's stern "We've had all we need of
your
help for the day!" was still ringing in Maura's ears as she unlocked the cottage door, but she didn't begrudge her boss at all. Sharon and Bill may have been Maura's one and only failure to date in her bizarre but rewarding self-styled career, but they had also taught her a great deal about how lucky she was to have embraced her own free spirit so completely. She did, though, feel sorry for their son, Lee, up there all alone now with his insufferable parents until their even stuffier friends arrived for the party. For that reason and that reason only, she had accepted Bill's invitation to come back up the hill to join the party once it was underway.
Lee's parents reminded Maura entirely too much of her own parents. But she was safely beyond the reach of their judgmentalism and everyone else's in her hateful little hometown, and soon enough Lee would be able to say the same. Thank heavens.
Now, as she flipped on the lights and stepped into the cottage -- small and cold as an icebox until she could get the fire started, but it was home -- Maura could feel her resolve about the party slipping. It would be so much easier to curl up on the couch before a roaring fire and enjoy her own company all night long -- her fingers were more than willing! But Lee needed her. He was only eighteen, and he still had the spark of a bright future in his eye that she had never seen in either of his parents, and she just couldn't leave him to fend for himself with that crowd on Christmas Eve! She chose, though, not to dwell on that for the moment. The next hour or so was hers alone and she intended to make the most of it. After removing her coat despite the chill and plugging in the lights on the Christmas tree, it was time to light the fire.
After dropping two lit matches into the waiting firewood, Maura held her cold hands over the hearth in urgent anticipation. A long, stressful day of perpetual arousal was finally over, and her insides were ticklish with the knowledge of what she planned to do with those hands once they and the cottage were warm enough. Was it the chill that had her nipples hard as diamonds, or was it her plans for the immediate future? Or was it simply that it was nearly Christmas, a time of year when she had always seemed to get wound up more easily than ever?
Probably all three, she mused, deliciously aware of the warm, wet sensation between her thighs against the chilly, dry air and enjoying the sweet torture of not giving in just yet to the arousal that had been teasing her all day.
After a few uncertain moments, the bright crackling of the pitchwood gave birth to a small but sturdier flame from the big oak log, putting an official end to Maura's long work day. Satisfied now that the entire guest cottage would soon be the toasty oasis she had been envisioning all day up at the Morrisons' house, she turned on the radio and took a moment to admire the dazzling rainbow of Christmas lights and their fleeting illumination of the gloom outside the window. While it wasn't yet warm enough to get down to business, Maura was already feeling overcome with the holiday mystique that had christened her panties repeatedly throughout the day, and was once again doing so now. As they were now feeling absolutely sopping and the air was still quite cold, Maura reached under her skirt with both hands and pulled them down. Pleased but unsurprised to find them damp to the touch, she laid them out on the hearth next to her boots to dry.
As she returned to the front door to turn the overhead lights off -- the tree and the fire now offered a much more fitting glow, after all -- a last look out the window and up the hill to the Morrisons' once again tempted her to forget about the party. Now that the little room was warming up quickly, it was ever so tempting to continue undressing! Maura knew full well that if she removed her bra, the battle would be lost. That always was the moment that meant she was in for the night, after all. Of course, she realized with a chuckle as she gazed out at the wind-driven snow, she could always go to the party braless. Lee would no doubt love that, at least, and she rather suspected Bill would as well. But it was already a minor miracle that Sharon hadn't fired her, and given what a terror she'd been all day today, Maura didn't care to push her luck any further. And so she left the rest of her clothes on for the time being.
Amidst the crackling of the fire, the radio's latest offer -- of Frank Sinatra singing about 'greetings from relatives you don't know' -- only fueled Maura's sense of holiday joy as she reflected on all that she had escaped back in her hometown. When the Wallaces had hired her as a housekeeper and tutor out in California the summer after college, she had fully expected it to be just a summer reprieve before plunging into the real world. Certainly she hadn't for a moment imagined a career as a hands-on marriage counselor of any sort -- was there even such a thing beyond herself?! But that one daring decision to walk naked from the shower back to her bedroom in full view of Mr. Wallace had changed everything. It -- or rather she -- had saved the Wallaces' marriage, and had led through word of mouth to other families where she had worked her magic again and again. The Weinzapfels in Palo Alto, the Lorays in Chicago, the Parkers in Dallas -- Mrs. Parker was the first and only woman Maura had been intimate with, and although she was straight, she had found it surprisingly enjoyable -- and a few shorter-term jobs along the way, always leaving them a lot happier than she'd found them.
Until the Morrisons.
With them, Maura's usual approach had only gotten her kicked out of the big house and banished to the cottage. They likely would have fired her but for her remarkable success in getting Lee's studies back on track, which was only one of a dozen or more things she adored about Lee. He had, for example, been such a sweetheart through the very long day that had just ended, putting up so well with his mother's worse-than- usual nastiness and concentrating on their lessons together. Maura only wished she could have snuggled with Lee throughout the afternoon lessons rather than just sitting across the dining room table from him, both of them doing their best to ignore his mother's horrible mood, and reassured him that Christmas wouldn't always be so stressful.
She could, of course, always tell him that should they get a moment alone at the party. But that thought only served to remind her that her time alone in the cottage was fleeting.
When "Sleigh Ride" ended and the radio cut to a commercial, Maura was shaken out of her worries about Lee long enough to notice that the fire was doing its job nicely. Time to get down to business! At last she lay back on the couch with her legs over the side and let her skirt ride up around her hips, just as she'd spent the day looking forward to doing. She wiggled her back against the cushion to get things rolling; if she was stuck in her bra for now, at least she could make the satin caress her nipples a bit, and it felt delightful as always. But not nearly as delightful as her fingers, still a bit chilly but not too bad, as she parted her vulva with her left hand and moistened three fingers on her right hand with her own arousal.
"Mmmmmmmmmm." The first noise she made out loud -- even she could hear the deep contentment that came with the first luscious strokes about her lips and clit as she teased them just a bit to get started. If the room was only warm at this point, Maura was hot. That she couldn't see her pussy from her angle on the couch only added to the pleasure of it all; the idea that in theory someone could see it from outside (having made a career out of her exhibitionism, she had never given any thought to drawing the curtains) made her positively giddy with arousal. Such exposure was not new to Maura!
Although Maura had a wild imagination and didn't lack for old-favorite fantasies stretching well back into her teenage years, her unorthodox career path meant she rarely had to bother with fantasies anymore. She could just recall the real-life situations she had created and participated in. From that first poolside encounter with the Wallaces to the way Mr. Loray always gazed so endearingly at her bush as if it were a magical creature to the thrill of teaching Mrs. Parker to masturbate -- to say nothing of Maura's deep admiration for Mrs. Parker's mature yet sleek body -- and most of all, the thrill of putting herself on display for one and all, Maura was spoiled for choice. Tonight, she made no effort to bother trying to choose, but simply allowed a slide show of her greatest hits to meander across her mind as her fingers meandered across her womanhood.
Maura was prodded back even further when "Marshmallow World" came on the radio. She slowed down her stroking but kept her fingers nestled gently in her bush as she gazed at the ceiling and remembered letting that song turn her to mush when she was younger. How she had looked forward to being someone's favorite girl...and how many times she'd had to listen to that line before hearing it correctly! For the longest time she'd been sure Dean Martin was calling for "a walk with your figury girl". Though Maura had always been fairly sure "figury" wasn't a word, hearing that line back when she was still trying to get used to having breasts and curves of her own had made her think it certainly ought to be a word! If she wasn't yet anyone's favorite girl, she could always be their figury one, and even then she'd learned how thinking that way could get a young woman into the most delicious sort of trouble -- the same trouble that had inspired her to get the hell out of town as soon as she was old enough. Now she found herself prouder than ever of how she had chosen not to care what the popular girls had whispered behind her back in those days -- nowadays, they were the ones she got paid to coax back into bed with their husbands, after all!
