THE SKINNY-DIP
PART I
Gina Hill pulled nervously into the Kroger parking lot and scanned the available spaces. Within seconds, she entered one that seemed ideal. It was a hot day even at 11 in the morning outside Atlanta and she left the engine on in order to preserve the air conditioning. She didn't want to get sweaty, at least not yet!
Her car was parked pretty far from the front door where shoppers were busily entering and leaving. That was critical to reduce the likelihood that she would be seen. But she was also close enough not to stand out and be noticed all alone in an empty section of the parking lot.
Her car could be left here for hours without attracting attention. And, most importantly, there was no car in the space to her immediate left, just as she had been instructed. David would be able to pull in right beside her, allowing her to climb into the back seat of his car and lie down, hopefully unseen.
She removed her sunglasses and gazed at herself in the rear view mirror. Would she really go through with this? "Yes," she whispered aloud, shoving her doubts to the inner recesses of her will with all the resolve she could muster. This time there was no turning back.
She would not allow her nerves to get the best of her. She knew what she wanted – no, had needed - for a decade and today she was going to have it. The swimsuit she wore beneath her light blue unbuttoned cotton shirt and white shorts chafed her under her left arm. She adjusted it quickly, then had to stifle a quick grin when she realized that she hopefully wouldn't have to wear it for very long.
Gina buttoned a single button to conceal the swimsuit then glanced at the seat next to her, taking inventory for the sixth time today: towel, sandals, a plastic bag in which to hide her wet clothing, a change of dry clothes appropriate for the shopping trip she was supposed to be enjoying today, deodorant and a hair brush. "All there," she thought, and crammed them into a grocery bag that she had been carrying for a week in anticipation of today's adventure.
Butterflies swarmed in her gut as she stole a glance toward the highway from which his gray Toyota SUV would soon enter. Fear and excitement melded in her soul into an intoxicating brew that left her breathless.
Her marriage to Devin was functional, nothing more. He was a good Dad and decent provider, but cold and unexpressive and a sexual bore. "More of a roommate than a soul mate," she often thought to herself.
For years she had dreamed of him joining her in their backyard pool late at night for a nude swim and whatever fun that might lead to, but to no avail. Gina quickly replaced her sunglasses, pulled down the visor of her baseball cap and slumped lower in her seat. She glanced around the parking lot fearful that someone she knew might be nearby.
"Of course there isn't," she silently scolded herself. "I'm forty miles from home. There's no one in this entire town that would recognize me."
She evaluated her looks in the mirror. "Not bad for a woman pushing 40," she thought. Her face was not as beautiful as it had once been, but whose is? Her paramour was older than she was, anyway. Her figure was still nice, too.
Her cherry blonde hair was shiny and long and quite attractive, if she did say so herself. Her eyes sparkled and her breasts, her best feature, were large and still well-defined enough to distract men when she walked down the street. Her pink nipples were small and sensitive and surrounded by large areolas. She knew that he would love them.
Indeed, she knew that he already loved them, for one time long ago he had seen them, kissed them, caressed them and become entranced with them. In a moment of insanity three years earlier she had even emailed him a photograph of them to taunt, tantalize and remind him. Later she would send him a snapshot of her clean-shaven most-intimate part, something she had never done before and would probably never do again. She smiled as she thought of how those photographs must have affected him.
She imagined him looking at them over and over on his computer screen and becoming erect, even throbbing. She wished she could have been a fly on the wall to see his reaction, and wondered if he had ever masturbated while thinking about her. She certainly had done so while recalling their one time together so long ago, and more than once.
Wistfully, she thought back on the seven years that had elapsed since that one night of forbidden passion and the journey that had brought her to the total surrender she had planned for today.
Her company's sales conference in 2009 was expected to be just one more boring succession of talking heads, PowerPoint misery and stultifying statistics. But the keynote speaker that day, David Walters, had been mesmerizing. She had laughed, been moved to tears and inspired and she instantly developed a crush on the man.
Their chance meeting in the bar that night had led to flirtation, innuendos and a night that neither of them would ever forget. Willingly lured into his hotel room on a flimsy pretext about checking a date on his calendar, she had pretended not to comprehend the implications of finding herself – a married woman with four children – alone in a married man's suite.
In a matter of minutes they were both naked, writhing and kissing on his bed, hungrily satisfying needs that had gone unaddressed by their spouses for years. He had especially relished the time he spent pleasuring her orally and had relived it in his mind hundreds of times since, retrieving almost instantly each time the taste of her moistness, the aroma of her arousal and every ecstatic sensation he had felt. (His wife wouldn't permit him to go down on her; it was apparently too intimate an act for one as emotionally distant as she.)
Gina had come hard on his tongue that night, and then had pleasured him until he came, too. Sadly, he had not penetrated her because fears of pregnancy had overruled the urgent passion he had felt that night to enter and possess her totally. David had agonized a thousand times since over his lost opportunity to enjoy her completely, even if only for those precious few minutes. "For the wont of a condom...."
The discovery that the two of them lived less than 50 miles from each other naturally led both to the same conclusion: this need not be a one-time occurrence! Hundreds of emails - some torrid, most mundane - followed over the next several years. They learned some of the most intimate details of one another's lives, but in other ways remained strangers.
Both longed for more than they were getting at home. She needed to be treasured, listened to, laughed with and held. She wanted a man who was spontaneous and who freely expressed his love for her. Devin was clearly never going to be that.
David, similarly, desired a woman he could talk to about subjects his wife deemed taboo or overly personal, one who would open her heart and emotions to him. He also needed a woman who was eager to make love with reckless abandon and in every position, a woman who was not prim and proper in the bedroom, a woman for whom sex was not something to put on her schedule as though it were a dentist appointment.
