19
When Tiffany returned from her trip, she didn't need Chloe to tell her about her fling with Hunter; she could tell what had happened from the bloom that she wore. When Tiffany heard about his prowess, she had what she immediately identified as a most dishonourable thought, wondering how she could manufacture a scenario in which she could be the recipient of all that the Australian had to offer.
She needn't have tortured herself or wasted time strategising, as her friend very generously offered to share him with her - not, I hasten to add, in the shape of a threesome, but after the manner of a baton change in a relay race. Tiffany was confident that she could hold her end up - there would be no dropping of the baton from her to deny her Gold.
When Briony saw the two older women chatting and laughing with Hunter at the pool (which had become the natural habitat for the oldies, as she called them), she knew what was afoot. With only a couple more nights at the hotel, she embraced a paradigm shift that would see her have the final night with Hunter.
'He'll be leaving the best till last,' she thought, confident in her ability to snag him on the eve of their flight back to England.
The three girls decided at the last minute to go on a half-day boat trip, taking in a visit to a nearby island as well as dinner at a restaurant that had received a recommendation, if not a star, from Michelin. Briony made a point of going over to where he was sitting by the pool and giving him a kiss before she left - in front of the two Americans. As she sashayed away, working her hips overtime, Tiffany knew instinctively that the black girl hadn't had Hunter. Her estimation of him rose considerably, even if the way he reddened noticeably as he mumbled something about her looking for a father figure indicated how excited he must be feeling. Looking down at his swimming trunks, Tiffany could clearly make out the outline of his arousal.
'What a day to choose to wear my Speedos!' thought Hunter, who reckoned he could safely do so when he learnt at lunch that the girls would not be at the pool that afternoon.
After half an hour or so, Chloe said she was going off to a Greek cooking class she had booked. This was the first Hunter had heard about this activity. He attempted to cover his excitement at the thought of being alone with Tiffany by making a joke about what a short class it must be - all Greek cooking consisting of feta cheese and lashings of olive oil. Chloe laughed politely, while Tiffany set her plan in motion. Nothing in it was going to be original, but she thought that might just make it more effective, Hunter being such an old-fashioned sort of fellow.
The first part required him to get up close and personal with her in a non-threatening environment. And what was more natural than asking him to apply a bit of browning lotion? Engaging Hunter in some meaningless chitchat, Tiffany was sure she had Hunter's attention before removing her blue floral beach shawl. She watched his reaction as she revealed her ivory bikini. The tall Australian's eyes nearly popped out of his head.
His first thought was that she looked like Ursula Andress in
Dr No
. He'd really had the hots for her when he first saw the film as a teenager, following it up by renting every film he could find in his local video shop which featured her. There had been
The Blue Max
and
She
, and a whole bunch of turkeys he couldn't remember now. Anyway, he found himself
really
regretting wearing his Speedos as she bent over to straighten her towel, giving him an eyeful of her butt, before laying down and waiting for him to perform his allotted task.
He decided to start with her feet. This both pleased and surprised Tiffany, who thought he would just be doing her back. He was, in fact, unbeknownst to her, on automatic pilot, since he was following the same template he had used for years with Mia. This was the best coping mechanism he could think of with all the stimuli he was receiving, not least from the now very prominent bulge in his swimsuit. He used perhaps more lotion than he needed to, since in his nervous state he kept going to the bottle, which he placed when not using it on the grass, and which, on account of the humps and hollows in the turf, would keep falling over.
'I seem to be all fingers and thumbs today,' he said with something of a forced laugh, as some of the lotion missed its intended target and landed on her sandals.
Tiffany scolded him for his lack of attention and asked him what he was thinking about. If he found the job such a chore, that was okay - she'd do the best she could herself. Hunter assured her that it was no chore at all; in fact, it was the sort of thing he enjoyed doing. Thinking that this sounded a bit pervy, he said that he liked doing things that gave pleasure to women, before realising that he'd dug himself even deeper into the hole.
'Well, you know what I mean, don't you?' he spluttered.
Tiffany replied that she wasn't sure that she did. She had heard from Chloe how sensitive and attentive to her needs he was, but he didn't seem to want to extend the same courtesies to her. Hunter found himself between a rock and a (now very) hard place and decided that the only way forward was to focus on doing a really first-rate job with the lotion. He was now on the thighs and was about to move to her lower back when she told him to do her 'upper thighs'. At this request, Hunter's hands began to shake so badly that a bit of lotion spilled onto her bikini bottoms.
'Oh my god, sorry!' he exclaimed. 'Look! I'll pay for the dry-cleaning.'
'What, now?!' Tiffany responded with pretended shock. 'I don't want to be walking around naked under my wraparound. It's almost see-through!'
Hunter made the best of a bad job by resuming his work on her thighs - going about as 'upper' as he honestly felt he could go without infringing on her privacy. Tiffany lay back and enjoyed the experience, dreaming of the things she would do when she finally got him back in her bedroom. She had just checked her phone and Chloe (bless her!) had told her she was going into town after her cookery class, and would have dinner there.
'Don't expect me back before 9!' she had written with a cluster of winky emojis.
By now, Hunter had moved to Tiffany's back and was feeling much more comfortable. He tried his hardest not to stare at the woman's ass cheeks, but found it very difficult not to, as they filled out her flimsy garment so snugly. When he thought he perceived a wiggling of those fine orbs he put it down to an overactive imagination, but the second time it happened he knew it was for real. This woman was definitely coming on to him. He immediately thought of Chloe and felt he was being unfaithful to her. What he didn't seem to notice was that only a few days ago he felt he was being unfaithful to his beloved Mia. Now, it pains me to say, he didn't give her a second thought.
When he got up to her bikini top, Tiffany asked him to unhook it, so he wouldn't get lotion on it. Remembering his disaster with the bikini bottoms, he wasn't going to take any chances, so he got up, walked to his own recliner, rubbed his hands on his towel and returned to perform the requested operation. This time, all went smoothly until he eased the two pieces of the underband apart. This simple action suddenly assumed disproportionate significance - Hunter's cock being sent into a spasm of twitching, as unbidden images of Tiffanys' boobs being bisected by his rampant manhood sent his head spinning.
To alleviate the tension he was feeling, he applied lotion liberally and rubbed it vigorously into her shoulder blades, this time getting lotion on her strawberry blonde hair, which he'd neglected to sweep away. He could clearly see globules of the ochre liquid starting to matt her hair, but this time he thought he'd got away with it and, as his mother used to say, 'What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.'
'Don't worry about that,' said Tiffany. 'I'll wash my hair when we get back to the room.'
Hunter decided it was time for a dip, and, excusing himself, dived into the water. From her seat, Tiffany watched Hunter with the faint outline of a grin on her face. He was just as Chloe had described him - absolutely adorable! She couldn't wait to get him back to her room and experience what Chloe called his tomahawk for herself.
He was obviously intent on making her wait though, as he went to through his whole repertoire of strokes: freestyle followed by breaststroke, then butterfly (which he probably should have attempted earlier, when he was less tired) and finally backstroke, which was definitely a mistake, as he ended up ploughing into a honeymooning couple. The girl - wearing a black string bikini - took the collision in good part, which is more than could be said for the man, who Tiffany noticed gave Hunter quite an earful. Hunter quickly swum off, but not before the girl had patted Hunter on the arm, while her boyfriend was leaning over the side of the pool to get something.
'He really does have It' Tiffany thought. 'If Clara Bow was the "It Girl", then this man was surely the "It Man".'
When he finally returned to his lounger, Tiffany wasn't there. He noticed that some of her things were still around, so imagined she'd gone to the washroom or back to her room to fetch something. He remembered how Mia, even though she always carried enough stuff to sink a battleship, was always going back to her room to get that essential item which she'd forgotten.
He suddenly realised how much he missed Mia - her common sense, her quirkiness, her irrationality, her quirky sense of humour. And yet he felt sure that she would be looking on approvingly from wherever she was, as he relived something of what they had had together with these other women, even if it was just fleeting and fragmentary compared to their great love.
