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.
