?"
Malcolm blinked in the face of such sustained ire and meekly replied, "Sorry, I don't speak Spanish."
"I'm not Mexican," Cleo had snapped, bending at the waist to rub the site of her injury. "I'm from Brazil."
Confused by geography and language but gaping at the full round breasts threatening to pop free of the clinging bikini bra, Malcolm had spluttered another apology. Reeling at the prospect of physical violence from the slightly built yet curvy woman seething with anger he then repeated his offer of a compensatory drink. "Or a meal, if you prefer," he added, wondering what the hell he was saying even as the words came out.
She looked at him, pouting, suspicious. "A meal -- nothing else."
Malcolm's eyes widened at the presumption. But, thinking about it, he quickly realised she must get a lot of attention, a large percentage of it unwanted. She had those sorts of looks and that kind of body.
"I don't mean anything by it," Malcolm said. "I just want to make a gesture to apologise."
Later on, months into the future, Cleo would tell Malcolm there was something in the way he said it that convinced her immediately of his sincerity.
With typically demonstrative gestures, Cleo had said: "It was like a book on your face. I could read it, Malcolm. I looked at you and saw -- straight away -- that you are a good man; but a man who is hurt. I don't know why," she shrugged, "I cannot explain the feeling. But I had this need to help you. Like a mother." Then Cleo had grinned and added, "But now it is not like that between us. The things we do are like nothing which should pass between a mother and her son."
At the time, on the beach, with it all going on around them -- jet-skis bounce-bounce-bouncing; parasails over the water, towed by speedboats; people swimming, throwing balls and skimming Frisbees; with the chaos in the background, Cleo eyed Malcolm for a few beats.
Then, with an emphatic nod she held out a tiny hand. "Okay, mister. I take the deal."
They met for lunch, with Cleo wrapped in a Sarong, the diaphanous sheet clinging to her body enhancing her appeal. The abrupt and insistent surge of desire took Malcolm by surprise. Meeting Cleo had woken his slumbering libido, the beast rising with a snarl to match the vigour in his cock.
His opinion of her shoes was they were entirely inappropriate, the precipitous heels a danger. Those heels and sarong combined had made for an incongruous manner of dress, but one with a profound effect.
He thought her exquisite.
"I like shoes," she shrugged when she saw him looking.
The lunch led to a dinner, with the same the following evening -- and the one after that.
It took a week before Malcolm opened up about the disastrous marriages, and even then he brushed his recent divorce aside, claiming he was glad to be out of it.
"But you are sad too, yes?" Cleo leaned back in her chair, the cane latticework creaking as she crossed her legs.
Around them came the hum of conversation, the bar comfortably filling with holidaying couples looking for an early evening buzz of margaritas or
Dos Equis
.
Malcom's eyes flicked to Cleo's legs when she reclined and settled back into the tub chair and thick cushions. The shape and sheen of her smooth calves drew his attention, his focus shifting to lean thighs all toned from dedication to her gruelling gym routine. For all Cleo had said so far about the mind being the most interesting element to a person, no matter how self-deprecating and even contemptuous she was in regard to her own physical allure, Malcolm couldn't help but think she expended a great deal of effort and some considerable time keeping her body in such supreme condition.
He forced himself to look up into Cleo's face, his brain soaking up the detail of the canary yellow dress tight against her flat stomach, his gaze flicking, momentarily, over the tight crease of Cleo's cleavage, the inner flanks of her breasts squeezed together in the keyhole aperture.
"Not so much sad as angry," Malcolm said, replying to Cleo's question. "At myself, too. For being sucked in. I'm forty-four and I've been divorced twice..."
Cleo's superb legs uncrossed. She leaned forward, reaching for the mojito.
"I am thirty-five and never married. I have never found the man."
Malcolm blinked at the expanse of décolletage on display while Cleo sipped her cocktail through a straw, lips pursed, her blue eyes, so at odds with her dark hair, fixed on Malcolm's face.
A moment later her head canted, the straw slipping from her full lips. "Is this why you haven't made a pass at me? You are wary of women and their motives?"
Her candour took Malcolm by surprise. "Uh ... I..." he blustered.
A laugh tinkled from Cleo. She regarded Malcolm with amusement lighting her eyes, one corner of her mouth twitching. "Oh, come on, Malcolm. I've seen you looking. At the beach, at the pool ... Me in this dress...
"Do you mistrust women so much that you cannot stand to flirt with me?" Thin, precise eyebrows went up to her hair, her expression questioning. "I have had similar experiences, Malcolm. Men have used me in the past. When I was younger and very naive...
"I too have felt pain."
Suddenly, the atmosphere between them was serious.
"I have only two days remaining," Cleo murmured, chocolate/blonde hair shimmering when she slowly shook her head. "You're the first man in years who's shared time with me and hasn't made a pass."
For Malcolm, the moment compressed, Cleo's inner beauty coming at him with the force of a hurricane. His chest was suddenly too small for all the organs it contained. He'd known she was leaving soon but had pushed the fact out of his head. He didn't want to get involved; no matter how physically attractive she was he just couldn't risk it.
"If you are going to flirt with me, Malcolm; you better start soon."
Regardless of the blatant invitation, Malcolm couldn't find the strength or will to engage in banter with the lovely Brazilian. Cleo was gorgeous, absolutely stunning. Malcolm appreciated her intelligence as well as her body. However, regardless of the attraction on all levels, he just couldn't bring himself to flirt with her.
Two days later at Cancun airport Cleo had come in close and quickly wrapped her arms around him. She was too quick for Malcolm to step back, hugging him tight, breasts cushioned between them, the fragrant scent of her shampoo wafting across his senses.
"I hope you heal, Malcolm," Cleo murmured. A chaste press of her lips against his cheek and she disengaged. Cleo picked up her bag, slipping the strap over one shoulder before opening the flap. "Here," she said, holding a small card towards Malcolm. "My email and number." Cleo paused and blinked, chewing the gloss from her bottom lip before finishing with, "If you want to get in touch...?"
She left it hanging, a question for him to ponder.
Malcolm stared at her compelling derriere when Cleo abruptly turned and hip-swayed away, heels click-clacking across the hard floor. He held the card loose in his fingers by his side, an aching void of loss yawing in his guts.
***
Over a year later, in his office, Malcolm stared across London's dense sprawl. Memories popped into being in a quick kaleidoscope of impressions:
Copan Ruinas
, Guatemala where he'd found Cleo at work helping restore the ancient site; their first kiss; the first time he'd seen her spectacularly bare, her physical beauty bringing forth a gasp of wonder.
"You've got the body of a nineteen year old," Malcolm croaked, marvelling at Cleo's full breasts, their rounded mass suspended in apparent defiance of Newtonian physics.
He boggled at the thick, elongated teats in the large discs of Cleo's areolae, licking his lips with lupine intent as his focus moved south to take in the dense rectangular matt of pubic hair. Seeing Cleo exposed caused an arterial burst of absolute desire within him, the border of pale skin between her bush and suntan showing him how brief her bikini bottoms had been. Malcolm gulped and recalled the tiny pouch of those bikini briefs packed with her plump pudenda; he saw the lines of lighter skin high on Cleo's hips where the thin straps had hugged her body, the spectacle making him wonder at how he'd managed to keep his hands off her during their time in
Playa Del Carmen
. The feminine curve of Cleo's hips down to her taut thighs brought volcanic desire bubbling, the shape of her legs adding to the quick rush of yearning.
Cleo cocked a hip and grinned. "Thank you. It makes me glad you appreciate my body so much."
The texture when he stroked her skin made Malcolm's cock pulse. Tasting Cleo's lust when he lapped at her opening was a deep, lingering thrill. Cleo's groan of pleasure and gasp of delight pleased Malcolm immensely when he licked her clit, the woman's back arching while she reached for his head and pulled him tighter against flesh slick with need.
"Oh," Cleo had moaned, eyes wide, expression awed when she looked up from where her body was accommodating Malcolm's length for the first time.
Her eyes held Malcolm's gaze fast. She looked at him as though looking for the love she suspected was there. They gazed at one another, hardly moving but with Cleo's hips never quite still as she rocked gently to-and-fro.
"Oh ... Sweet Jesus," Cleo blasphemed, her stomach tensing, torso angled with her weight on her elbows while her legs were folded at the knees. In that position, with Malcolm between her thighs, his cock easing slowly in and out, Cleo had moaned and rolled her eyes, mouth hanging open, face slack, tingles of pleasure rippling outward from her core. "Fuck me," she murmured. "Love me..."
Thrilled by the sight and sounds and textures, and after gazing at her breasts shivering and swaying, Malcolm began to thrust, his mouth closing over Cleo's lips, her tongue moving into his mouth.
When it was nearly over, with Malcolm grunting a warning, Cleo held him tight and sighed he should flood her with cum.
"Let it go," she groaned. "When it comes, I will come too."
A few brisk lunges later and Cleo's eyes went wide.
"You're coming!" she yelped, forcing herself onto Malcom's spitting cock. "Yes," she gasped triumphant. "Does it feel good, Malcolm? Does it, my darling?"
He couldn't reply with words. All Malcolm could do was groan, wall-eyed and gasping as his seed pulsed from him. "Agh," he grimaced, teeth clenched. "Oh God ... Ah ... Cleo ... Oh God, Cleo..."
Then she was going with him. Cleo sobbed and clasped a hand to the back of Malcolm's neck. She held herself semi-upright and looked down to see Malcolm deeply embedded, her fleshy labia clinging his girth, the shaft gooey with their combined lust when he finally withdrew.
Semen trickled from Cleo's scarlet opening, the sight and sensation of the stuff dribbling along the cleft between her buttocks bringing a lewd chuckle from her before she pulled her lover in for a long, lingering kiss.
After that, Malcolm was in love, with Cleo matching his sentiment. Their courtship was complicated by working on different continents, love frustrated by geography and the demands of Cleo's career as an archaeologist and the necessity of Malcolm's presence in England at the helm of the business.
But, regardless of the difficulty and pressures peculiar to a long-distance romance, they stuck to it, marrying eleven months after Malcolm had tripped over Cleo on the Mexican beach.
And he'd forgotten Valentine's Day.
Malcolm worked through the afternoon, so distracted in a meeting he cut it short and prepared to leave his office.
He could easily afford a driver but preferred to do it himself, powering the BMW along the M11 motorway out of London towards home in Bishop's Stortford.
He was early, the time being a full half an hour before the 6 p.m. deadline.
Malcolm walked into the house, a huge former vicarage encircled by a high stone wall, the gate at the end of the drive flanked by two yew trees.
"Ah, you're home," Cleo breathed, smiling. "Thank you for the flowers," she added, moving to kiss her husband's mouth when he found her in the vast, gleaming kitchen.
"I love you," Malcolm mumbled, pulling Cleo tight so he could kiss her again, reluctant to let her go.
She returned the kiss and then slid out Malcom's embrace. "Now I will have to do my lipstick again," she pouted. "No more touching," Cleo added with a waggle of an admonishing forefinger. "It will ruin the surprise." Stepping back, heels pecking at the tiles, Cleo struck a pose and asked, "I bought a suit for the dinner next week -- what do you think? You like it?"
Malcolm took in the black patent high heels and blue-grey skirt, the hem of which fell to an extremely flattering point on Cleo's thighs -- provocative but not to the point of immodesty. But, anyway, as far as Malcolm was concerned, his wife had the legs for it.
He nodded with approval and murmured, "Nice," his eyes going to the matching jacket-cum-blouse, sleeves short, the hem just above his wife's elbows.
"You really like it?" Cleo breathed, obviously eager for her husband's approval.
Nodding again, Malcolm said, "Oh yes, Cleo." He nudged his chin at her. "But you're going to have it fastened up properly at the dinner, yeah?"
