Summary: Murphy's Law strikes with a vengeance when a woman decides to seduce her burly Russian dryer repairman. But just because everything is going wrong doesn't mean that it isn't going right. Entered in Devil Duck's VERY VANILLA contest on Hentai Foundry. (M/F, seriously vanilla)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.
Acknowledgment: Many thanks to MsKrisLogan, whose "Whoops!" post on Tumblr inspired this story.
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Krista was in the kitchen when her two daughters— both tall and slim, with long, straight brown hair like their mother's—descended the stairs from the second floor of their condo, each dressed in exercise clothes and carrying a rolled mat under her arm.
"Mom, you ready to go?" said her younger daughter, Marianne.
"I can't go today. I've got a repairman coming to fix the dryer," Krista replied, leaning against the machine in its alcove in the kitchen.
"But you're all dressed for class," said Marianne, gesturing at Krista's fitted tank top and yoga pants.
"I'm just going to do some stretches here," Krista explained. "You two go ahead."
"I could stay here instead," offered Lily, the older daughter. "I've got plenty of Urban Design homework I could be doing."
"No, no, it's fine. I have plenty to do, too."
"Are you sure? Because- Wait a second," Lily said, her eyes narrowing. "Did you call that burly guy who fixed our dishwasher last month? What was his name? Arky?"
"It's pronounced ar-KAH-dee," Krista replied. "It's Russian. I looked it up."
"Oh my gosh," Marianne interjected as an open-mouthed smile formed on her face. "You like him!"
"Or at least you want to get into his sturdy work pants," Lily added.
"You know," Krista replied, "a lot of daughters are perfectly delighted never to talk about their mothers' sex lives."
"If we didn't talk about your sex life, who would?" said Lily.
"Aren't you two going to be late for class?"
"Okay, fine, you win," Marianne said, holding up her hands and backing toward the front door, Lily ahead of her. Then, after Lily went out the door into the painfully bright Georgia sunshine, Marianne shouted, "Blow him once for me!" and ducked out, slamming the door behind her.
Krista sighed. She missed the days when it was her job to give them a hard time.
She went upstairs with a basket of clean sheets and towels she had washed the previous evening. Once she finished putting them away, she stepped in front of her full-length mirror and took a look at herself. She was in her late forties, just over five foot eight, and quite fit. Her fitted tank top showed off her well-toned arms and shoulders nicely—not to mention the contours of her fairly generous bosom. Her hips were far from slim but had a nicely feminine curve to them. She turned her back to the mirror, craned her neck around, and tsked at what she felt was a somewhat oversized backside, but she'd had that all her life, and she knew that at least some men found it quite appealing. Hence the yoga pants.
Returning to the first floor, she set to straightening up the kitchen, taking care of a few stray breakfast dishes and making sure the area around the dryer was clear. Then she realized that there was still clothing inside the appliance. She opened it and saw that it was all underwear she had dried the night before—more than two dozen pairs of panties belonging to her and her daughters.
Well, that could have been embarrassing, she thought.
She was about to grab the empty laundry basket when a devilish idea occurred to her.
I could just leave them in there.
Once the thought struck, there was no dispelling it. In fact, she set the dryer to run for 10 minutes on its highest temperature setting. With underwear, she normally used the low setting to preserve the elastic, but if Arkady was going to be touching all those panties, it would be best if they were warm.
***
The doorbell rang at 9:30 am on the dot. When Krista opened the door, she saw the man just as she remembered him: a bit over six feet tall and burly, his size accentuated by the thick green work shirt and sturdy jeans he wore. He had a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair, an equally thick mustache of the same color, and blue eyes that seemed to twinkle faintly.
"Hello," the man said, his Russian accent seeming to enhance the manliness of his baritone. "I come to fix dryer."
"Come in," Krista said, smiling just a bit more than politely.
Arkady stepped inside. "I fix your dishwasher last month, yes?"
"That's right. I guess I have bad appliance karma."
"No, no," he said, smiling and shaking his head. "Bad appliance karma means that in next life, you are refrigerator with faulty compressor."
She laughed. She hadn't talked to him enough the last time to notice that he had a sense of humor.
"Now," he said, "dryer in kitchen, yes?"
"Yes," she said, leading him to it. "It still works, more or less, but it keeps finishing before it's supposed to, and then later it will just start up again by itself. And sometimes I have to unplug it and then plug it back in again a few times before it will start. But the worst thing is that it just starts beeping loudly at random times, even in the middle of the night. I've had to start leaving it unplugged when I'm not using it."
"Sound like problem with electrical panel," Arkady mused. "But I should give once-over to whole machine before I start unscrewing things. It good to be thorough."
He briefly checked all of the connections on the back of the machine while Krista gave the kitchen countertop a prolonged and largely unnecessary wipedown. Then she heard him open the dryer door and glanced over at him as he peered inside the machine. His blue eyes widened slightly at the sight of all the colorful unmentionables inside.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, doing her best to sound convincing. "I completely forgot those were in there. Would you mind putting them in here for me?" She put a plastic laundry basket down next to him.
"It no problem, Miss," he said, sounding surprisingly unfazed. Then he scooped the twenty-some-odd pairs of variously sized and colored panties—warm and smelling of vanilla from her scented fabric softener—into the basket and handed it to Krista.
"Now," he said, "let me look at control panel and see if there is cure for dryer's madness."
"All right. I'll be upstairs if you need anything."
When she was about halfway up the stairs, she stole a glance over her shoulder and smiled inwardly when she saw Arkady looking appreciatively in her direction—no doubt checking out her ass. He quickly turned back to the dryer, of course, but it was nonetheless clear to Krista that changing into her yoga pants had been the right move.
***
Up in her bedroom, Krista spent about twenty minutes doing casual stretches while she read some material to satisfy her Nursing Continuing Medical Education requirement. She was having trouble concentrating, though, and she knew that the only cure for that would be to drop by the kitchen.
Descending the stairs, she saw Arkady standing in front of the dryer, leaning halfway over it to examine the control panel, whose cover he had removed. He had also removed his shirt.
Krista stared at the man's back with something approaching amazement. She had guessed that there had to be at least some muscle under the burly Russian's thick work shirt, but she hadn't expected this. The man was built like a powerlifter—a healthy layer of fat over more brawn than Krista had ever seen up close. The last man she'd seen with such a build had been using a chain to pull an eighteen-wheeler across a finish line on cable television.
Involuntarily, she was struck by a powerful vision: Arkady lifting her with those mighty arms, raising her face to the level of his own, and gazing at her with those ocean-blue eyes as he fucked her against the kitchen wall.
That clinched it. She might have been a little out of practice (Okay, maybe a lot out of practice, she admitted to herself, and maybe not an expert to begin with), but she was going to seduce this man before he left her house.
She came down the stairs, clearing her throat audibly. Arkady turned around.
"Oh, sorry, Miss," he said, indicating his naked torso with his chin. "I live in Atlanta eight years, but summer still too hot for boy from Murmansk."
"Oh, it's quite all right," she said with what she hoped was the right degree of sexiness. "That is, as long as you stop calling me Miss."
Arkady's brow furrowed. "You prefer Missus? Sorry—Americans from South have complicated titles."
"Oh, no, no," Krista said, embarrassed by having omitted a key piece of information. "I mean, please call me Krista."
"Ah. Krista," Arkady repeated, nodding. "Beautiful name."
"Thank you. I like your name, too"—she glanced unnecessarily at his work shirt where it hung from one of her kitchen chairs—"Arkady."
"You pronounce correctly," he said, clearly pleased. "Most Americans think I am place for playing video games."
She smiled. "Don't feel bad," she said. "I get called Christine, Kristina, Chrissie...once in a while, I even get junk mail addressed to 'Christopher.'"
Arkady chuckled. "Could be worse, I suppose. We could live in China: one billion people, maybe thirty last names. How anyone get right mail?"
Krista smiled, but inside she was berating herself for letting the conversation go so far off topic. Although she wasn't exactly sure if there had been a topic in the first place. She really needed to choose one. But what innocuous subject could she select that would allow the conversation to end with, "Hey, on that note, how about we have sex like rabid ferrets?" And now that she thought about it, maybe she should come up with something better than "rabid ferrets" before that point in the conversation arrived.
"So, Mi- Krista," Arkady continued, sounding a bit grave, "I am afraid news about dryer is not good."
"Oh, no," Krista said, her mood losing some of its buoyancy.
"Sorry, but control panel on last legs. It probably die completely in month or two."
"Can you replace it?"
"Yes, but...replacing panel cost almost as much as buying new dryer. Not worth it, I don't think, for machine this old."
Krista sighed. With both her girls in school, this was not a good time to have to replace a major appliance. The girls both had part-time jobs, and Krista picked up extra shifts at the hospital when she could, but the economy being what it was, plenty of other nurses wanted those extra shifts, too.
Forcing herself to cheer up, she reminded herself that she didn't strictly need a dryer. In the heat of summer, a clothesline would work almost as well. And it would save on electricity, too.