Louise was among the most desired women in the neighborhood, still attractive at 40. Her husband, Ector, three years younger, was one of the most envied men in the area. At the beach, she wore a modest two-piece swimsuit, her long blonde hair and mature figure, slender with just a hint of softness around her middle, made her even more desirable. She was the main attraction at the exclusive beach, with husbands yearning for her and younger men admiring her. Yet, for several years, she had lost her passion. She loved her husband but was listless in their intimate moments.
Mark was a twenty-two-year-old bartender who had once dated Louise’s daughter, but the mother had convinced her daughter to leave him. “That nobody will amount to nothing in life, he’s not suitable for you!” Louise had told her daughter. Louise and Eric’s daughter, Maeve, studied in London and interned at prominent City firms, destined for an important career. Mark, meanwhile, had to work as a personal trainer at a gym to mask his real activity as an escort, and as a second job, he decided to bartend at his sister’s beach kiosk to frequent the most exclusive beach on the coast. His imposing, well-built and muscular physique made him admired, and he wanted to punish his ex’s mother, waiting years for the moment to face her and avenge the suffering she had caused him. Maeve had listened to Louise, and he found himself without the love of his life, had dropped out of school and had to turn to escort work to make ends meet, though fortunately, there were very generous ladies, and money was no longer a problem.
One day, Louise ordered a juice with a croissant to be brought to her beach tent, seemingly not recognizing him. “Do you remember me, Mrs. Louise?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment. A tall, dark-haired young man with an athletic build.
“Mark?” Louise was surprised; it had been three years since she last saw him. “You work here now?” she asked politely.
“Yes! I’ll be with you in a few minutes!” He had always found her attractive, and her daughter possessed the same allure. To Mark, Mrs. Louise resembled one of those Hollywood stars, always radiant and admired, with smooth, glowing skin. She was slightly taller than her daughter, who stood at five feet nine inches.
“Thank you! Good luck, and please try to keep this job!” she said, turning away in her beach wrap that revealed her shapely, smooth bottom, still well-defined despite her age.
Mark sliced the oranges, put them in the juicer, poured the juice into the glass, warmed the croissant, and prepared the tray with a small plate for the pastry. Before placing the glass in the small serving tray, he stuck his finger in his mouth, then dipped it into the juice and stirred for a moment. He hated Louise. A few years ago, he had gone back to studying, wanting to make Louise’s daughter proud, but when the mother made them break up, his world collapsed. He dropped out, moved from job to job until landing at the beach bar, saved by his gym friends. He wanted to ruin her life as she had ruined his, he thought while placing the tray on the tent’s small table.
“Enjoy your breakfast!” he said, glimpsing her legs, beautifully full and velvety.
“Do you still have my daughter’s computer?” Louise asked while waiting for her husband, who was taking his usual morning swim. Maeve had told her about the laptop left at Mark’s house that was never retrieved; her daughter had left for London and couldn’t get the computer back. To her, it seemed the perfect opportunity to reclaim what belonged to her daughter.
“Of course!” Mark replied.
“Could you return it to me?”
“All our photos are on there, I should make a copy first!”
“Can you manage it by tomorrow?” her husband asked as he returned from his swim and lay down beside her. Ector recognized Mark and greeted him, wishing him good morning. Mark returned the husband’s courtesy. “She’ll have Maeve’s computer tomorrow morning!” and he returned to work.
The next day at home, Louise stared at Maeve’s laptop, proud of having retrieved it. Curious to see her daughter’s photos, she turned it on. The password was still the same – the name of her beloved dog Minny, who had passed away a few months ago. She began scrolling through the images but quickly shut the screen – her daughter and Mark had photographed themselves during an intimate encounter. She reopened it, trying to determine how many photographs there were, and discovered several videos among the files. She shuddered.
The following morning, Louise confronted Mark at the bar while Ector was taking his swim. She hadn’t told her husband about the photos on Maeve’s computer.
“You must delete everything!” Louise demanded, emboldened by the momentary absence of customers.
“Why?” he asked with feigned innocence.
“They’re obscene, perverted!”
“And your daughter is a saint?”
“How dare you? Delete those photos, or I’ll report you!”
“So you want to create a public scandal!”
Louise regained her composure at those words. “Are you blackmailing me?”
“Actually, you’re the one threatening to report me when I haven’t committed any crime. I merely kept some intimate photographs!”
He was right – there was no evidence of distribution, and he had never made any demands, or at least her daughter had never hinted at any threatening requests. “I’m willing to pay!”
“I don’t want money!” he said, staring at her trembling chest as she breathed angrily.
“I’ll help you find better employment!” As she and her husband ran an accounting firm, managing many companies’ books, surely one could hire him.
“I don’t care, I earn well enough, and the view here is excellent!” He didn’t need money; his second job as a fitness trainer was quite lucrative, and bartending allowed him to socialize and find clients for his gym.
“There must be something, come on!”
He stared at her – beneath the white sundress, he could make out the curves of a mature, voluptuous beauty. If he could sculpt that body, he’d transform her into a stunning bombshell. He found himself wanting her. “I want you, for the entire night!” he shocked her with his declaration.
Louise turned crimson. “Isn’t this blackmail?”
“I have no intention of spreading the photos, but if you want them back, you have nothing to offer except your body!”
She had never faced such brazenness, not even from her boldest suitors. Her daughter was pursuing a prestigious master’s degree and an internship that would open doors to great opportunities – a scandal would ruin her. That smug grin didn’t inspire confidence; she couldn’t trust this young bully, but neither could she give in to his despicable advances. “Forget it!” she returned to her lounger, so infuriated she had to cool off in the water.
That evening, she called her daughter, trying to gauge how much she valued her reputation. She mentioned meeting Mark, and her daughter immediately became anxious. Sensing her fear, Louise assured her she’d recovered the laptop and would return it when she came home, lying about not having turned it on. Yet her daughter let something slip while saying goodbye: “I really hope everything goes smoothly!” revealing she’d been accepted at one of the biggest tech companies with offices abroad, right near home.
The idea of having her daughter employed by a multinational company and having her close by led her to make the most painful decision of her life. So the next morning, she went to the bar and confronted Mark. She waited until she was alone with him. “Every Wednesday and Thursday, my husband is away for a consultation in a leading company in the steel industry, I’ll come to you after dinner! Let’s make it quick!” She had betrayed Ector only once, during the first month of their relationship, and she had confessed it to him. Then they fell in love and no longer saw other people. Her love for her husband became so important that she never disappointed him again, not even when a few months ago she recognized the scent of another woman on her husband’s shirt. She no longer reciprocated with the passion of the past, and he had sought that feeling elsewhere: Eric would never abandon her, they managed an accounting firm together, and she didn’t reveal to him that she had intuited his fling, ready to forgive him if he confessed it to her.
“All night long!” Mark reiterated, brazenly.
She thought of her love for her daughter. Louise was an experienced woman, and Mark was still a boy playing at being a bully; he didn’t frighten her. She would have him on the ropes in ten minutes, half an hour at most, and would be bored for the rest of the night: or at least that’s what she wanted to believe. If her husband were to find out, she would make him forgive her by telling him what their daughter had done, but only if Ector threatened divorce: it would hurt the father too much to know his daughter was indulging in such indecencies. “Alright! But you’ll have to delete every photo of you and Maeve, you’ll also have to give me your computer! I don’t want to risk those images being recovered!”
Mark’s mouth twisted into a lascivious grin as he savored the idea of lying with Louise, tall and alluring like a diva. Her daughter resembled her greatly, but wasn’t as slender as her mother.
Wednesday arrived quickly; in the morning at the bar, Mark explained to her how to get to his house, a villa a few meters from the sea. “Come dressed in the white sarong, the transparent one!” he specified, brazen.
Louise said goodbye to her husband in the afternoon, put on a white swimsuit and the transparent sarong with thin folds. Over it, she wore a very light duster that covered her chest and hips. “Let’s do this!” she thought, thinking of her daughter, curious to discover Mark’s youthful body. She would live that experience as an escape. She believed she could lead the game, get the computer handed over, return to her husband and forget or cherish the memory of an unspeakable adventure.
The villa faced the sea on a small hill, with steps that reached down to the tiny, secluded beach, protected by the cliff. “How can he live in such a luxurious setting and work as a bartender?” doubts arose as she rang the doorbell. When Mark opened the door, he was naked, with sculpted abs and pectorals, tall, with a pendulous member: she was used to well-endowed Calabrians, even her husband was well-proportioned, and she wasn’t frightened. She remained motionless on the threshold; he pulled her inside.
“Undress!” Mark ordered.
She was there for that. She obeyed. She threw the duster and the sarong on the couch, took off her swimsuit, and let herself be observed. She wanted to return home quickly and favored him. She saw him stare at her for several interminable moments, from her chest to her lower belly. He approached and grabbed her round breasts with his right hand, staring into her eyes, then slid his hand over her abdomen, down to her hairy, lush vulva, played with the crisp curls, ran his index finger between her labia several times. She felt a flush rising from her abdomen. Then he plunged decisively, with a vigorous thrust, his two fingers penetrated her, climbing up into her vagina, as deep as possible. She moaned; she hadn’t expected it. He was a bully, sexually grown with the example of porn films. He didn’t know how to treat women; Louise played along with his game. She saw him collect the swimsuit and the duster and throw them in a basket, but he took the sarong in his hand and escorted her to the bedroom. He opened the door for her, and she felt a lump in her throat as she glimpsed the large bed with blue sheets and the window with a view of the coast. She felt herself grabbed, turned vigorously, fixed with his eyes, and pushed forcefully onto the bed. She fell supine, him on top of her, he spread her legs and began to lick her thighs, climbing with his tongue up to her clitoris, squeezing it between his lips, then releasing it and pressing it again between his teeth. She had no time to catch her breath, overwhelmed by conflicting sensations. Discomfort and excitement alternated vehemently. What he managed to do with his tongue on her vulva seemed pleasant to her, a novelty. The first orgasm was clitoral, and she was already ready to go home, but the evening would be much longer. Mark placed his substantial glans between her labia, at the opening of her vagina, and began to push. She worried, she didn’t see him put on a condom, but he reassured her, assuring her he was healthy. She felt him inside her, opening her completely. She felt him large, powerful, hard. The thrusts increasingly vigorous. Deeper and deeper. Faster and faster. She abandoned herself with her head thrown back, began to scream. She was experiencing pain. “Enough! Enough!” she repeated it several times until she gave in, hoping it would end soon. She was wrong. It seemed to her he was hammering her for an infinite time. She felt him up to her cervix. She thought she no longer had the elasticity of the past to endure such penetration, instead she began to feel pleasure. She felt the thrusts sink deep, becoming more pressing. Then she felt it eruptive, the second orgasm, intense, deep. Visceral. A sudden shock that reverberated throughout her body starting from her cervix, trembling on her thighs down to her feet, explosive in her head. She panted breathlessly, drenched in sweat. He used the sarong to clean her, then passed his tongue between her lips and resumed sucking her clitoris, with overwhelming intensity. The room began to spin; she felt ecstatic, shocked by such vehemence. At three in the morning, she was exhausted, worn out by Mark’s physical vigor. She hadn’t counted her orgasms, she could no longer speak, she only hoped to return home soon, everything was tingling, she couldn’t feel her legs, she had remained with her thighs open for an interminable time and begged him to let her go. Instead, he positioned his glans again between her labia and delivered a violent thrust. She screamed, with acute and exhausting pain, then fell back with her head thrown back, exhausted. Almost stunned by his vigorous thrusts. And after an interminable time of violent plunges, she remained shaken by a new trembling orgasm, emptied of all energy and guilty for that unwanted but disruptive satisfaction, while he emptied himself inside her. She woke up on the sofas, with the sarong put on her and soiled, her legs giving way, sore.
“Computer, Hard Drive, and phone with Maeve’s photos are in the car! You can go!” she didn’t care about the smartphone, she would buy another one, it had been worth it.
“I can’t leave like this!” obscenely exposed.
He stared at her barefoot, as she tried to clean her long legs damp with sweat and bodily fluids, with the soiled sarong flattened against her mauve nipples and the down of her sex exposed to every nuance. “I have nothing else to give you!”
“My swimsuit and the coat?”
“Thrown away!”
“Why?”
“I want you to go home like this!” shamefully at his mercy.
Louise felt humiliated; she had been treated like a porn star, perhaps even worse. She got back in the car and took the road home; at eight in the morning, there were few people on the street. She was careful not to be seen, waited for the underground garage to open, went down with the car to the first underground floor, then entered the elevator and went up to the fourth. She had left the computer in the car. She inserted the key in the lock, and when she thought she had managed not to be seen by any resident in the luxurious seafront building, she heard her neighbor’s door open.
“Louise!” as she quickly closed the door behind her, leaving only her face visible. “I cooked the ragù as you taught me!” Hanna was three years older than Louise. “Pierre loved it!” she lived with her husband who was four years older, with two children who were the same age as Maeve.
“I’m very glad!”
“What happened to you, you look worn out!”
“I need to get to the bathroom, I’m not feeling well! You know, it’s that time of the month!”
“Go then, we’ll talk later!”
Finally, she entered the bathroom and gave herself a vaginal douche. Mark had come inside her, multiple times. She was already in menopause, the chances of getting pregnant were minimal, but she was terrified of it. In the shower, she cried. The satisfaction she had felt had been humiliating, brutal, not passionate as what she once allowed her husband to do. She felt dirty, but it was a necessary betrayal, she thought to herself.
Louise returned to the beach the following Sunday with her husband, not wanting or able to live in the shadows due to shame. She didn’t stop at the bar for breakfast, not wanting to see Mark again even though she couldn’t stop thinking about the orgasms he had given her. She was recovering, with her thigh muscles still aching. She lay in the sun beside her husband. Her phone vibrated, she opened the message and turned pale. Her heart seemed to stop suddenly. Mark had sent her a message, only inviting her for breakfast at the bar, but she wanted to avoid any contact. She deleted the message from the unknown number, even though she knew well whose sequence it was, got up and confided to her husband she was going to the bar for breakfast. Fortunately, at that morning hour, there were no customers in the small bar.
“You’re a son of a bitch!” Louise accused him. “You must never contact me again!” referring to the file sent earlier.
“Seems to me you enjoyed yourself! When was the last time you felt such pleasure!” as he showed her the deletion of her phone number and message from his new smartphone.
“You’re just a bully!” but satisfied with the photo’s deletion.
“I’ll bring you your breakfast in a moment!” pointing to the group of customers entering the bar.
She sat waiting for the crowd to thin out, after fifteen minutes Mark brought her the tray with orange juice and a croissant. She thanked him, but he opened the croissant to show her the abundant filling, whitish, translucent.
“But this looks like…” then lowered her voice to avoid being heard. “…sperm!” sniffing it, while he closed it hiding the contents.
“I made it thinking of you, just moments ago! Hope you like it!” shocking her. He smiled at her and greeted her husband, who sat down across from his wife to order his usual coffee.
“Filled with blackberry jam?” Ector asked his wife, knowing her preferences.
“With… cream!” she hastily replied, her face flushing red. Then she took the small plate with the croissant, stood up, and dumped the pastry in the waste bin. “I’ve decided to stick to my diet!” she justified, avoiding even the orange juice, noticing Mark’s sinister smile. Her husband bid her goodbye with a kiss before heading for his usual swim, while she waited for the bill. She wouldn’t make a scene in front of the bar’s customers, who were also her beach neighbors.
“You’re a bastard!” Louise whispered when Mark approached her.
“And you, Mrs. Louise, know how to spread your legs like only a whore can!” he silenced her, handing over the receipt. He couldn’t explain what had come over him; he wanted to humiliate her, still angry that she had caused the rift in his relationship with his daughter.
Louise glanced around, hoping no one had heard. She left the money on the table and hurried out to join her husband in the water.
That evening, she made love to her husband and realized how distant she had been in recent years. She had been the one who had lost enthusiasm. It was her fault that their love had become tedious, performed like an occasional duty rather than with passion. She rediscovered her enthusiasm and fulfillment, giving herself to the man she loved more deeply than ever before. It was voluptuous, intense, profound, and he reached places that made her tremble with generous, comforting, earth-shattering, loving sensations. She felt guilty about having betrayed him, but she had rediscovered her sexual energy and was at least happy about that, along with having recovered all evidence of her infidelity and seized the computers containing images of their daughter. Her husband would probably have done the same to protect their daughter, but she didn’t tell him about it. She felt renewed; the sex with her husband had been vigorous and loving, he had been attentive and allowed her to enjoy without causing her discomfort. Even Ector seemed surprised by his wife’s rediscovered erotic energy and asked what had happened, noting he hadn’t seen her so involved in years.
“I remembered how much I love you!” she admitted, truthfully.
“Better late than never!” he kissed her. “I love you!” he whispered. Ector had his secrets too; he had cheated on her with a younger woman one Wednesday when away from her, but avoided revealing this. Confused by this surge of passion, he hoped his wife would never discover his infidelity. She had always been the woman of his life and he loved her; he wouldn’t let a one-night adventure ruin their life together.
The following Saturday, one of their beach umbrella neighbors, a sixty-year-old widow of a much older husband, confessed to frequenting the gym where the young beach bar server worked as an instructor.
“They call themselves personal trainers, but they’re all escorts!” revealed the woman, admitting she had been with two vigorous young men like the bar boy.
“You mean to tell me that both girls and boys work as… personal trainers?” asked Hanna curiously, who besides being Louise’s beach umbrella neighbor was also her landing neighbor and often shared innocent secrets about her relationship with her husband Pierre.
“Yes! They even give private lessons at home, they charge well but I must say they leave you satisfied!” admitted the woman, with mischief.
So that’s where Mark had learned to treat women with such roughness, nothing like her husband’s passionate dedication, thought Louise to herself, still shaken by her experience with that crude young man.
“Louise, wasn’t he dating your daughter?” Hanna remembered.
“Several years ago, when they were in high school!” Louise confirmed, evasively.
“The bartender has been a personal trainer for less than a year!” informed the sixty-year-old, bidding farewell with the same suggestiveness as before.
In the late afternoon, Louise was surprised by her daughter’s return home. Her husband had picked her up from the airport and brought her to their house, so when Louise left the beach, disregarding Mark’s lingering glances, she found Maeve at the entrance, opening the door to welcome her. She hugged her, comforted by her smile, but her daughter’s first concern was the laptop she had retrieved from her mother. “Did she come back from London just for the computer?” Louise wondered, noticing her daughter’s anxiety.
They had dinner at home, with her husband cooking fish – he was an excellent cook. After dinner, her daughter retired to her room to rest from the journey, and Louise relaxed on the terrace. Ector joined her with two glasses of white wine, turned off the light to complement the twilight, and sat beside his wife on the white sofa, overlooking the crowded seafront promenade below. She sipped her wine while he drank his in one gulp, then placed the glass on the table and rested his palm on his wife’s tanned, shapely thighs. She wore a light turquoise linen sundress; after her afternoon shower, she had put on casual lingerie, suitable for staying at home.
Louise parted her legs slightly, closing her eyes as her husband pulled up her dress, sliding it over her thighs. He intoxicated her by trailing from her ear to her neck, kissing down to her décolletage while his hand moved up beneath her underwear. She spread her legs further, allowing access, feeling her husband’s fingers caress her delicately up to her clitoris, rubbing it first gently, then passionately. When she felt her husband pulling her underwear down her thighs, Louise reopened her eyes and looked at the street below. She saw a group of people gathered right under her terrace, across the street, on the low wall separating the beach from the road, and feared the twilight wasn’t enough to conceal their intimate moments.
“We’re putting on a show!” she smiled.
He turned around and noticed a group of young men looking upward. Their sudden passion had momentarily diminished their sense of modesty. Though they believed they were hidden from view, and the twilight obscured most details, the thought that those young men might be watching his wife ignited a sudden concern in him. The iron railing only partially concealed Louise’s legs, with her white underwear pulled up her thighs, while the reflected glow from the street lamps provided fuel for their imagination. Ector pulled down his wife’s sundress to cover her thighs, kissed her, and escorted her to their bedroom, where their passionate frenzy continued between the sheets, allowing Louise to experience deep and genuine ecstasy.
His wife’s involvement had allowed him to rediscover feelings from the past, and he remembered how much he loved her, reciprocated by her affection. He no longer had any reason to think about other women, and when his wife whispered “I love you!” with a sensual and persuasive cadence, satisfied, he dove back between her legs to caress the edges of her sex with his tongue, until he penetrated her with rediscovered and delicate passion.
Louise woke up feeling renewed. Her husband’s passion had even helped her absorb the shame inflicted by Maeve’s ex-boyfriend bully, but when she reached the small beach with her husband on Sunday morning and saw her daughter talking to Mark at the bar counter, she had an intolerant shudder. So when her daughter returned to the beach umbrella, she decided to have her talk with Hanna and the sixty-year-old woman from the previous day. The daughter was bewildered by what she learned.
“He’s just an old friend!” Maeve assured, dampening the flirtatiousness of her mother’s friends.
On Sunday, Ector woke up early, leaving a note on the pillow to avoid waking his wife, informing her that he had prepared breakfast. “I’m reorganizing the basement, you’ll find me there,” he had written, and when Louise read the note, she felt faint. She had hidden the pregnancy test in the basement after her encounter with Mark, and then she remembered the security cameras they had installed a few months ago after experiencing a burglary: she hadn’t deleted the footage of when she had returned home at eight in the morning.
She covered herself with a purple negligee, slipped on fuchsia slippers, then took the elevator down to the basement. One of the residents of the villa-style building, which consisted of eight apartments, a seventy-year-old man who lived on the third floor with his wife, stopped in front of the open elevator doors without entering, bewildered by the sight of her disheveled hair and the negligee revealing her knees and décolletage. Louise wished him good morning, embarrassed, covering herself as the doors closed, completely naked under the negligee.
She reached the basement and saw both cars in the outdoor parking lot, while Ector was reviewing the security camera footage: the freeze-frame showed her wearing the soaked pareo. To the side, the cabinet hiding the pregnancy test was wide open. Her husband stared at her, holding the pregnancy test in his hand. So she confessed everything, showing him the box where she had hidden Mark’s computer and phone containing the compromising videos of their daughter. She confessed her humiliation, the guilt of betraying him, even the bully’s attempt to make her swallow the croissant.
He stared at the pregnancy test.
“I didn’t have the courage to try!” Louise confessed, lowering her head. “But he assured me he doesn’t have any diseases: he gets monthly check-ups!” Louise imagined that his escort work required him to take care of himself.
Ector understood his wife’s terror. He saw her pleading and anguished, glanced at the box containing Mark’s laptop, then walked around the outdoor parking lot to calm his rage, admired the clear sky, and returned. His wife was crying. He wanted to teach his daughter’s ex-boyfriend a lesson, but first, he needed to comfort Louise.
“I also need to confess something!” and she told him about the affair she had a few months ago.
“I already knew, and I’m sorry if I was distant during that period!”
“How did you figure it out?”
“From the perfume on your shirt!”
Ector managed a slight smile and fixed his gaze on the unopened pregnancy test package resting on the wooden shelf. “Do you want to try?” he asked, embracing her. “I’ll be by your side, whatever your decision!” he reassured her.
She, moved by his words, held him tight. “If I am, I don’t want to keep it!” and half an hour later, after riding the elevator back up with her husband, the test came back negative. She could then have breakfast, relieved of a burden: it would have been unlikely for her to get pregnant, but the confirmation came as a liberation.
Their daughter spotted her mother’s test in the service bathroom’s waste bin and joined them in the kitchen. “Don’t tell me I’m getting a little sister or brother?”
Louise had forgotten her daughter was home and hadn’t paid attention to where she’d thrown the test, while her father invited her to sit down. So her mother gathered courage and confessed what she had done to recover her photos from the bully, her ex-boyfriend.
“Has Dad seen them?” Maeve worried.
“I have no intention to!” Ector replied, disgusted.
“That bastard! Mark will pay for this! To think I came back to see him, but now I’m completely done with him!” Maeve was both disappointed and furious. A few days ago, he had sent her a series of messages that she found charming, and she had returned from London not just for the holidays but also to meet him. Her mother’s confession shocked her, and she apologized to her parents. “You won’t divorce because of me, will you?”
“I love your mother too much!”
“Forgive me, I never meant to betray you!” Louise felt like a fortunate woman.
“You didn’t betray me at all; you were taken advantage of! Then you came back to me, that’s what matters!” he responded lovingly.
“Dad, don’t dirty your hands with Mark. I’ll make sure he gets what he deserves!”
“Don’t do anything foolish!” her mother pleaded.
“Oh, I promise, Mom, I’ve never been more clear-headed in my life!” she assured her.
That afternoon, while they were relaxing under the sun at the beach, Mark approached their umbrella during a quiet moment.
“You shouldn’t be here at all!” her husband rose from his beach chair to confront him. Ector was also well-built physically and showed no fear.
“I beg your forgiveness! I don’t know what came over me! Since Maeve left me, my life has fallen apart! I make money, but not the way I wanted to! I lashed out at Mrs. Louise because she made Maeve leave me, but she was right! I should have earned your trust to keep the love of my life!” He confessed that their daughter had reprimanded him so severely that he had to delete Maeve’s number, even though he still remembered it by heart.
“You can’t seriously think you’ll get away with just an apology!” Ector protested angrily. He wanted to slap him, or at least berate him, but the beach was starting to fill up, so he held back the scene.
“Enough, darling, let’s drop it! I don’t want to think about it anymore! Look at us, we’re closer than ever!” Louise pleaded with her husband. She had achieved more than she’d hoped for – she had destroyed evidence that could have compromised their daughter, kept her away from the bully forever, rediscovered passion with her husband, and found a stimulating new sensuality, all thanks to Mark’s rough treatment. She wondered what their daughter had said to the bully to make him so docile and remorseful, but her husband had forgiven her, and she had emerged victorious from the situation, so when she dismissed the bully, she felt less offended than she had in the previous days.
Louise grabbed her husband’s hand, accepting his invitation for a swim, wearing an alluring white bikini. “Why is everyone staring?” she noticed glances from people of all ages, and she enjoyed the sensation of so many eyes on her.
“You know, love, I’ve heard some whispers about our show on the terrace last night!” he smiled, flattering her.
“What were they saying?” she worried.
“They were complaining that they couldn’t see more than what they had to imagine!” he reassured her: the darkness had protected them from scandal.
“Did they really recognize us?” she asked, standing at the water’s edge with a string of beads on her left ankle.
“Lou, everyone here knows where we live!” he gestured toward the beach with his palm facing upward.
She smiled mischievously.
“You enjoyed being watched!” he teased, while gently splashing her with saltwater to coax her into the sea.
Instead, she hugged him like a young girl, coy and accommodating, letting herself be admired by the beach voyeurs. “What if I did?” she felt eager, wanting to explore every opportunity and form of desire.
He reciprocated his wife’s passion, his palms sliding up her backside, pulling up the lace of her white swimsuit, slightly revealing her buttocks where the tan line gave way to the pure whiteness of her flesh.
“Are they staring at my bottom?” she asked flirtatiously.
“Most definitely, darling!” he replied, noticing the beachgoers’ gazes in their direction.
