It had become routine for her, a chore in fact. Each day, from ten in the morning until noon, she lay on the lounger beside the cyan pool, turning every half hour as if she were an exquisite piece of meat to be evenly cooked to perfection.
She and Lawrence did not live in a particularly hot area - indeed, were it not for the nearly total lack of rainfall, temperate would be the ideal description. Her two hours a day kept her erstwhile pale skin a light caramel colour, the only patches the two small triangles that covered her nipples and the larger delta surrounding the delicate flesh of her pussy.
Her hair was naturally rich brown, and her lengthy soaks in the sun had only lightened it imperceptibly. Her skin was acclimatised too, and she had not touched a bottle of sun lotion in years. She hardly even sweated any more, just lay perfectly still and listened to her latest iPod without hint of expression, with no smile or frown to bring life to her face.
There was a time she could no longer remember, when this numbness had not swaddled her so perfectly. Hard to believe, lying here now, that she and Lawrence had been married for almost ten years. In the Swiss clockwork of her life, each moment was catalogued with oiled perfection - but those moments did not sum.
Whatever sins Lawrence might commit in the future, his greatest would always be that he created the first reality television show. It had started about two years before they met and was called "The Apartment". Lawrence had come up with the brilliant idea of taking an aspiring young actress or model and having them move in with an unsuspecting member of the public.
How it worked was they found someone, always a guy and usually a guy in his twenties, who was looking for a roommate and they sent the actress in, with a hidden camera obviously, to try and get the place. Lawrence had once explained it to her. "Guy sees a hot little blonde chick with great tits and a tight ass, who do you think he's gonna pick?" Once the actress had got the room, the technical crew went in and set up hidden cameras all around the house. The cameras in the bathroom proved particularly popular.
They usually kept filming for about a month, which gave them about 16 episodes and a couple of tapes - now DVDs - the biggest seller being the X-rated version featuring the aspiring actress in the nude, showering and once, famously, masturbating furiously in front of the bathroom mirror. All the girls were desperate and none of them had gone on to the glittering Hollywood career they had naively assumed the show would bring them. Carrie LaBelle had been the most desperate.
She had got out of the shower one morning and had slowly dried herself, patting at her full breasts and delicately sawing the small towel she had chosen over the thick blonde hair covering her pussy. Then Carrie had sensuously fellated each of the fingers on her right hand and swirled them around her bush before spreading the lips of her pussy and shoving four fingers inside. She had fucked herself brutally, enjoying the rough contours of her make-believe cock. Her hand was contorted strangely; she managed to simultaneously stimulate her clit and her g-spot. Moments after she had begun, she started to moan and had to brace herself against the sink with her left hand. Her small brown nipples were rocks capping her round breasts and her cheeks were flushed dark red. She began to gasp over and over, "Oh my pussy. Oh my pussy."
Carrie came and - amazingly - ejaculated, spraying the juice of her pussy against the mirror. She collapsed on the sink, breasts swaying on cold porcelain, hot breath fogging the mirror.
Of course they couldn't broadcast it, but everyone knew what was going to be on the video and it sold astonishingly. The girl, Carrie, had also tried to fuck her roommate but it turned out poor research had allowed them to pick a gay man. She went on to increasingly diminishing success in porn films.
The real mystery was why the men the show required as butts of its joke allowed it to be broadcast - Lawrence needed their permission. No-one but the show's makers knew why, though several newspapers had carried stories suggesting that the actress was required to convince her roommate to let the show air.
Before "The Apartment", Lawrence was a nobody producer making low-budget sci-fi and arty pilots that didn't sell. Now he was a multimillionaire whose name was synonymous with reality TV. She had met him when he gave a talk at the college she was attending.
Lawrence had been drunk on success, money coming in all around, his every idea heralded as brilliant the moment it was conceived. He lectured wildly, going off on mad tangents, his language richly allusive. She was eighteen and innocent, and immediately fell in love with him.
After the lecture a bunch of them had stayed to talk to the great TV mogul, but it was her that had caught his eye. She was shorter than he was: tall at 5'11" but Lawrence was 6'6". Her hair was shoulder length, but she kept it piled up on her head, letting only a few strands fall to brush against her cheeks. Her eyes were dark and set back beneath her smooth brow, making her look mysterious. Her nose was wide and her lips plump and pale. They ended up back at his hotel.
She went to the bathroom to undress, her bra and panties scattered pools of colour on the shining white tile floor, her dress hung on the hook on the back of the door. She looked at herself in the mirror and breathed out long and slow before quietly unlocking the door and stepping out. Lawrence had dimmed the lights.
The fluorescents from the bathroom lit her from behind, limning her outline in pale gold, the natural highlights in her dark hair glinting. Her body was slender, slight. Her breasts were broad curves, uplifting lightly from her chest, her inch-wide nipples so perfectly pink and smooth they seemed to shine like plastic. In the light her left breast cast a small shadow over the upper swell of her belly. Her body curved in the Platonic ideal of woman, the swells of her breasts narrowing into her flat stomach and back out, widening at her hips. Her abdomen curved in as it approached her pussy, which was smothered in a thick thatch of tangled dark brown curls. She was 18 years old and the epitome of beauty.
She couldn't move, and Lawrence got off the bed and came to her. He had taken his shirt off, and his shoes and socks, and now wore only his jeans. He kissed her, gently pressing against her mouth, enjoying its rich moistness. With infinite care he fluttered his tongue against those plush lips, which she parted for him. His tongue entered her mouth and slowly lapped about it. He broke the kiss. She moaned in disappointment and he smiled, pressed a finger to her mouth to shush her.
He laid a trail of butterfly kisses down the side of her face and neck, a saliva guide to lead him back. His kisses lengthened and slowed as he reached the taut skin of her chest. When he reached the tops of her breasts, each kiss seemed to last an eternity as he lapped and sucked at her ripe flesh. He kissed his way further down, the flesh giving more and more as her breasts grew fuller. At last, he reached the plumpest flesh, upon which the nipple peaked. Arbitrarily he had chosen to start with her right breast, and as his lips closed on the nipple he marvelled at its brittle hardness. He was bent over her now and as he sucked her nipple, his hands rested on the round swell of her ass, not exploring but just enjoying the feel.
Her breathing was rapid, and her shoulders rested against the wall with it, her body and the floor forming a triangle. Lawrence sucked on her left nipple with all the eagerness and delicacy he had expended on the right one and she thought she would immolate with pleasure. Almost involuntarily her hands buried themselves in his thick black hair.
He was not done yet, though - not nearly done. He continued the march of his kisses, travelling down her body and finally stopping at the upper edge of her bush. He knelt now, hands still cupping her ass possessively, and breathed in the fresh smell of her pussy. For some things there are no metaphor, at least no meaningful one, but to Lawrence the pussy of this 18 year old girl, 10 years his junior, smelled like everything good in life. He breathed out heavily, letting the air blow over her pussy, which was already wet. He knew some men who wouldn't go down on a girl unless she shaved her pussy - he didn't understand that, liked the taste and texture of bush. He kissed her down there then slowly parted her labia with his tongue.
Lawrence, unlike most men, had no concerns about the size of his cock. His concern was the size of his tongue. It was quite wide, but he could only extend it about an inch beyond his mouth. Because of this he had spent countless hours perfecting his technique and few men gave better head than him. He employed all his skill now, bringing her to the very peaks of pleasure without letting her cum. He kept her on that fine edge for aeons, until her pleasure overcame her restraint and she was screaming with pleasure and bucking her hips against his face.
He stood quickly, and picked her up. He carried her to the bed and laid her down, then took off his jeans. She looked with amazement at his cock, the first she had ever seen. It was about as long as her hand and looked, for most of its length, too wide for her to close her hand around it. The last inch was thicker and rounder than the rest and throbbed redly at her. Lawrence rolled onto her and guided the head to the lips of her pussy. He looked at her, all concern, and she bit her lip and nodded. He plunged it into her in one go, and she felt a ragged pop as he took her virginity. They lay like that for some time - perhaps moments, perhaps minutes - and then, as pain fled and pleasure returned, he began to thrust into her, slow long strokes that withdrew his cock to the very mouth of her cunt before burying it within her once more.
As they fucked, his pace increased and she began to moan again. Over and over she moaned his name quietly, breathing her gratitude and ecstasy into his ear. He was groaning now and panting with the effort of their lovemaking. She felt her orgasm building, and though the cunnilingus had been extraordinary, this just felt so much fuller and richer and better. They came at the same moment, his cum flooding her cunt as she screamed her orgasm at the ceiling and scored his back with her nails. Lawrence never wore condoms - he could never cum with that rubber sheath between his cock and the lush flesh of a woman's pussy.
For a month and a half they fucked and dated until finally they just accepted it and she dropped out of college and they got married. The problems started about two years later, when Lawrence's incessant and contiguous string of infidelities began. It wasn't that he didn't love her, though he didn't. Rather it was that he was at the top of his position - no longer just the czar of reality television, but a powerful force across the entire spectrum of the industry. Not only were certain opportunities presented to him, but for the sake of image he was more or less expected to accept them.
She and Lawrence did not live in LA. He kept two apartments there - one in which he nominally lived, in case she should visit, and another in which he spent most of his nights. In the second flat, his most expensive accessory was an 18-year old blonde girl. They had to be tall, though shorter than him, with enormous breasts and empty heads. He kept each one for a year and then, on their nineteenth birthday gave them $50,000, an apartment and a small role on one of his shows, all of which they typically lost within a few months.
She knew of the affairs and the girls of course. Such a thing is impossible to hide, and in any case Lawrence had not touched her intimately for four years.
She had spent the long, measureless years of their marriage slowly eroding away. She had no career, and few friends. Their household was managed by staff, and there were no children to occupy her time. Her one task was to look attractive for a man who didn't touch her and - more and more rarely - to dangle from his arm at awards shows.
She suddenly realised that she was sitting in utter quiet and was amused that her languorous reflections had been interrupted not by unexpected noise but by unexpected silence. She checked and saw that the battery in her iPod had died. That's when she noticed Ramon and, more pertinently, the prominent bulge in Ramon's denim shorts.
