Close Encounters Like No Other

Beth was dismayed to feel a stranger touch her arm, a split-second touch that made her stop as she walked from the rental car and was making her way to the hotel's entrance, her suitcase wheels rattling on the tarmac.

"Hey!" was all she cried out, her shrill voice making her husband, John, turn. A young couple stood close to his wife. "Oh! Thank you, I didn't know it had fallen out of my bag."

"I guess not," the young man smiled as she took her travel purse from his outstretched hand. "I should have simply said something and not touched your arm to get your attention. Sorry if I scared you."

"It's okay," she answered holding his look upon her for an instant. "I wondered what was happening. No harm's been done."

"But we've met," the guy said smoothly.

The couple were well-dressed, smart but casual, and had made some allowances for the warmth of the day. They were successful, that she could see, otherwise the nightly room charge would be beyond the reach of a couple their age, in their early thirties she thought.

They had arrived at the hotel at the same time, in the early afternoon, and were dismayed at the sight, how the building seemed to cling to the cliff face of jagged rock and with the Mediterranean Sea far below. It was a beautifully furnished boutique hotel, on the Amalfi coast, and one that they had believed would hold few attractions for a young couple they had smiled at and then introduced themselves to, as they all signed in.

"John and Beth Fullerton," she said, a hand gracefully pushing back the tumble of her shoulder-length, straw-blonde, hair which was showing signs of grey but the sight of which, John had said, gave her a stately grace.

"Calum and Josie Taylor," the engaging young woman smiled at each of them, her auburn hair, with reddish highlights, plaited in a ponytail that allowed John to study her slender face as she too signed the register, her husband Callum looking on.

John met his wife's look, if only for an instant, and saw Beth arch her eyebrows as she smiled at him. He understood what lay behind that gaze, for she would not have missed the approving glance of Josie on him; nor, perhaps, what he had taken in of the young woman. She would have taken in John's cobalt blue shirt that he wore with his pale cream, lightweight, linen suit, his choice letting everyone know that his standards would not slip, even on holiday and with her by his side. Tan woven leather slip-ons finished the summer holiday look that he sought.

"I'll be glad to get out of my travelling clothes and relax," Beth ventured, "and then to have a look around and see if the place is as the web pictures showed."

"Yes, seeing is believing," John smiled in reply and intended to engage the young couple in conversation. He was already into the young woman before him,

"We picked the place on a whim...we saw a last-minute deal and went for it," Josie offered, clutching her big straw bag under one arm. She turned as Callum said something, out of the other's hearing. "Yes, I'm coming. Well, it's nice meeting you..."

"We'll share the lift if that's okay?" John ventured. "I couldn't help overhearing that our rooms are on the same floor."

"So, they are!"

Josie gazed at John's craggy face, tanned and with the unmistakable line of grey-black stubble, where he had shaved. It lent his jaw a toughness that was not to be seen in his grey-blue eyes that stared out from under grey-haired eyebrows. At six foot, or so, he seemed to tower over her slender frame, but he had become engaged by her and she did not feel the least bit uncomfortable to know a rich and older guy was so immediately involved with her.

Beth prodded John's back with the fingers of one hand as if she knew what was playing out before her eyes. "Let's go then, shall we."

What she now felt was utterly bizarre for its suddenness. How their stay would be spent, in a quiet resort, might be discovered as soon as was decently possible and at John's say so, a reason for them to talk to the young couple presented to them by some strange good fortune of her having dropped her travel-purse.

The doors clunked shut, the lift jerked into motion and it rose to the third floor.

"Let us buy you both a welcome drink after we have settled in?" John suggested as he stood aside for Callum and Josie to move past. He clutched room keys in one hand and the handle of his suitcase in the other. "You picking up Beth's travel purse deserves a reward. What do you say?"

He looked at each of them in turn.

"Don't make a big deal of it, darling!" Beth said, loud enough for them all to hear.

"But it is, darling," John smirked in reply.

"Yes, it's a good idea," Josie soon enthused and saw Calum's soft smile that she took as his agreement to what had been proposed. "We've got to get along with everyone while we're here, don't we? Callum and I have a knack for meeting just the right couples, don't we hon'?"

Callum seemed to have been caught off guard by what his wife was saying to a couple they had only just met. He wasn't going to deny that Beth had caught his eye, dressed in a swirly floaty dress, her slender legs ending in a neat pair of gladiator sandals, and her hair would become blonder under the fierce sun they had felt as they walked from their cars to the hotel. Three days, the length of their stay, would be long enough to discover if she, and her husband, John, were players.

His Josie had already set those wheels in motion and John's unflinching gaze on her had already set him thinking of the possibilities. But Beth was a different prospect, so a drink would loosen tongues and be a time to see where their meeting would take them.

Time spent by the pool, or down on the beach that was a short drive away, would soon reveal the woman to him in all of her tended glory. That was so unless Josie's rush into things didn't hasten the breaking down of inhibitions, or reluctance as it might be encountered with Beth.

At the door to their suites, they glanced down the corridor at each other.

"See you later!" John called out.

"We're counting on it!" Callum answered with a laugh, even as Josie gave him a playful shove that propelled him into their room.

"We won't be long!" Josie assured them as she peered round the edge of the doorway, a wide grin creasing her pretty face. She smiled at John before she was lost to his sight.

Beth was startled to hear the room's telephone trill. No one knew that they were staying in the hotel but it soon occurred to her that the couple they had just met might be calling. John motioned for her to answer it.

"Hello?" she said cautiously.

"Hello!" came the laughed-out greeting. "You sound surprised, Beth!"

"Well, I am. We're nowhere near ready to meet up with you, Callum."

"There's no rush, although we'd like to meet up with you both again. We had an idea," Callum said and then paused. "We've read in the hotel's info folder that there are some massage tables close to the pool and we wondered if we met there, enjoyed the sun, and had a swim, along with having a drink and we got to know each other better. What do you think?"

Beth felt a little flustered. The young couple were only too forward, even a little presumptuous, in how they behaved towards them. "I'll ask John..."

Beth held the phone away and told John what was on the young couple's mind.

"Are you there, Callum?"

"Yes, I am," he replied brightly. "I should also tell you that Josie and I are into having massages. After the flight, and then the drive down here to the hotel, we thought we would offer that to you both as a way of saying 'thank you'."

Beth couldn't suppress a soft and disbelieving laugh. "It's a new way of saying it, or should I say, 'showing it'?"

"The showing may come later," he answered, Callum's voice lowered and suggestive. "The hotel has suitable tables by the pool so we thought to try them out. We have the oils we need with us, so...so we go for it in swimming gear, not in the nuddy as at home."

"That's a relief!" Beth did wonder, now, just what she and John were getting into with the young couple. "We'll be with you in ten minutes or so."

"We can wait that long!" Callum was heard to laugh in reply as he rang off.

"Well, just what are we to do about that?" Beth sighed as she looked across at John. He was already changed, his swimming briefs tight on his hips, shaping his buttocks and crotch with an unmistakable bulge. She reached out to him, a look of concern creasing her lovely face. "You know what they're after, those two, don't you? You know that already and I'll have to go along with it, just as I did the last time, darling, and still on my terms."

"Yes, and as far as it goes and if it's happening the way I think it is."

Beth felt a rush of relief to see that the massage tables, little more than tiled concrete slabs with support walls that reached waist height, were screened by a wall of stone. No one could observe what could play out behind it and parasols cast a shadow over only a part of them.

And there they stood, Callum and Josie, looking relaxed in shorts, skimpy and clingy in Josie's case, a cropped top shaping her breasts and revealing a tanned cleavage.

"It looks like you've done this before," John chuckled as he saw how things were laid out in readiness.

Bottles of massage oils were placed on a narrow shelf at the head of each table, their surfaces covered by a thick beach towel. He felt Beth's hand trembling as she gripped his arm, the towelling robe a cover for what they ach wore underneath.

Callum smiled. "Yes, many times. It helps to break down barriers and leads to good times."

"We hope that you'll go along with us?" Josie asked and soon moved to stand by John's side. "Put your robe on that chair and lie down on the table. Beth? You do the same, please."

Beth hesitated. This was a situation quite new to her and she recoiled at the prospect of being touched by a stranger, no matter how good-looking Callum was. They had met scarcely two hours ago and here she was slipping out of her bathrobe and standing before them in a revealing one-piece bathing costume, a fabric tracery scant cover for her shapely breasts and tummy.

"Lie on your front for me," Callum asked even as he sensed her unease. "Just tell me when to stop, okay?"

Beth nodded and reached across the narrow space between the two tables to clutch John's hand, before she lay down with her face turned so that she could see just what Josie would get up to, John's swimming briefs shaping him and leaving anyone, looking in on them, in no doubt what he would bring to any woman. "Is this for real, what I'm agreeing to?"

The massage oil was warm and so soft, Callum's fingers so gentle on the skin of her thighs, on their backs and between them, that she felt the rising pleasure of arousal in her belly. She had chosen a one-piece bathing costume, but the sheer cut at her hips and the mesh front that covered her shapely and firm breasts would reveal enough of her body to the young man who was acting out the role of a masseur; but she took it all to be the acts of foreplay, heightened by the acts of massage being performed outside and close to the pool.

Josie moved so that whatever she did for John was partially hidden from view. But John's continuing grip on Beth's hand suggested that the young woman had wasted no time on stroking his legs and getting close enough to arouse him, those swimming briefs being scant cover for the erection that John was amply blessed with and could not prevent from growing larger.

"I like what I'm seeing," Josie murmured approvingly as she leaned in and whispered against his lips. "You're with me in this, aren't you?"

As John's grip on her hand fell away, so Callum drizzled warm oil onto her thighs and began to smooth it rhythmically into her skin, deliberately avoiding brushing her mound, but his softened look on her and the progress of his touches over her legs, and then back to seams of her swimming costume, in the creases at the tops of her thighs, made her squirm.

"May I touch you?" Callum asked, his lips brushing her lips and his fingers grazing over her mound, shaped so enticingly by her swimming costume.

"Can I stop you? You've gone this far!"

Beth again reached out and clutched John's hand as Callum slowly caressed her, pressed fingers into her slit, and moved them slowly. "We wanted you to know that we're into swapping, into having fun with a couple we meet."

"And whom you assume are into all of this?" Beth gripped his arm to stop his caresses.

"Your John is, I knew that from the moment we met you. Nothing's been said to change my opinion or what I want to share with you both," Josie said, interrupting her. She was seen to massage the bulge in John's swimming briefs and leaned in to nibble kisses on his belly as she worked him slowly.

"Let us both get used to the idea of what's happening so soon!" John groaned and gently pushed Josie away. "Give us some time, for Beth's sake especially."

But she was moving on the massage table, writhing as Callum's fingers, of one hand, slicked her wet heat as the other pulled her costume aside. "It's a taster of what Josie and I would like to do and share with you. Say 'no', now, if you're not into what was are asking. Honesty is best..."

"And trust!" Beth retorted, and slipped away from his touches, soon rearranging her swimming costume and sitting up, her slender legs dangling over the edge of the table as she sat looking at Callum. She turned to see that John was now doing the same, but his engagement with Josie, who stroked his thigh before her hand disappeared from view, and she was seen to look down, a sure sign that they were into each other and what had been shared, so far.

"A swim, I think," John suggested jovially as he gathered up his bathrobe and covered himself, his erection less but the swell in his swimming briefs obscenely large. "It's a miracle no one's seen us at it."

"And they won't, later," was Callum's answer. "I'll go get us the drinks while you grab a table on the terrace, by the railing, so we can enjoy the view."

"Of each other!" Josie giggled softly, but her gaze fixed on John. She did not see Beth's reaction to what had been said, nor how Callum whispered in Beth's ear as he embraced her, his actions hidden from view of those who lazed by the pool.

Her man was into the older woman, and she wanted a wasting time of it with John, the rich and good-looking older guy who packed more than enough to scratch her itch.

"How do you live with it, the memory of what you have done with others?"

Beth asked her unlikely, but talkative, holiday acquaintance as Josie was seen to keep her eyes on John, her interest in him unmistakable and something of a concern to her. The love of her life had his moments and she allowed him to play, even sharing the heat with another, and in John's presence, but never to the extent of penetrative sex. Her mouth and hands would please another, just as she allowed a man to perform acts of oral sex, to devote his attention to the heavy tumble of her breasts that surgery had firmed but not unnaturally so on a woman of her age. Only John was the man to enjoy all that she brought to their bed.

But now? Callum was persuasive and seducing in his ways with her, and she felt uncommon tingles of anticipation from the younger man's interest in her that had been shown on the massage table.

Her husband was the object of another's attention, his outgoing personality and good looks, his charisma, seemed to have captivated the young woman beside her as they sipped on the drinks Callum had bought. Doing so had simply been a pretext for them to hook up, and it was only the first afternoon of their stay.

That Callum had not kept his eyes off her, or so it seemed when they lazed by the pool, had not escaped her attention. That she was to be seen wearing a single-piece bathing costume, her breasts covered by a thin mesh, or weave, still attracted him and left a great deal open to another's gaze, may have explained it.

But Josie was not lacking in what she brought to the eye, and John had failed to keep his gaze, let alone his attraction to her, from being noticed or acted upon on the massage table.

"We have fun that's not complicated by any emotional attachment. We all know the rules before we play," Josie now told her with calm assurance in her sing-song voice. "John's looked after himself and, I guess, being with you he has a reason to do that."

Beth sighed and followed her gaze.

John stood on the edge of the pool and wiped water off his body and legs with his large hands. Those sky-blue, drawstring swimming trunks flattered her desirable husband and would look good on a younger man. On John, they shaped him even more than when she had seen them dry. He was a bit paunchy, and his pecs were not as firm as she saw them on Callum, but there was no doubting his virility, his chest hair a down of grey and stark against his tanned skin.

"I'm more than satisfied with John, with what we have," she chose to confide, "even if he does have his moments of straying. But...but I'm never far away when he does that."

"Oh...oh, is that so!" Josie asked sharply. She sat up and looked at John as if through new eyes. "Do...do you think he'd stray while he was here and with me? I got the feeling he would when I massaged him."

"Worked him up, you mean." Beth laughed, softly, as she looked across the space between them. Josie lounged back, her long legs stretched out and her tummy flat, her breasts sagging in the small cups of her bikini. John would enjoy taking a younger version of the woman that she, his wife, had become.

The men joined them, a swim enjoyed while the women chatted, John soon slumping down on a lounger before slicking back his hair. He gazed at each of them in turn.

"You didn't want to come in for a swim," he said on meeting Beth's wandering gaze as he lay there, utterly relaxed and again the object of Josie's rapt attention. He now gazed at her. "What's on your mind?"

His directness of gaze and what he had asked startled her. "Well...."

"The two of you want to finish what was started over there on the massage tables. Is that it?" Unprompted he offered a fingertip caress to Josie's tummy, then pulled his hand away. "Callum said as much while we were swimming."

"And what about it?" Josie asked, moving to lie on her side, her breasts slumping as she gazed at him. "Beth's not so sure about any of this, what's happened so far between us."

"Oh, I'm sure all right," she retorted sharply. "I won't get a moment's rest until we finish what you two have begun. John's into it all so much more than I am."

She met his soft and understanding smile.

"Just be with me and I'm sure Callum will help you through. There's time enough for just the two of us to enjoy what this place, and the resort, have to offer. Three of us need a fix for what we're feeling. I hope that you'll come round and feel that way too."

The slow fingertip caress of Josie's fingers did not keep John from leaning in to kiss Beth, and he felt her nod in tacit agreement to what he had suggested for her.

"Our room. It's closer to the lift," Callum was heard to say as he held out a hand to Beth and helped her get up from the sun lounger. "No one's about, up there, to see us."

"Yes, that is so true," Beth sighed in resignation. How was she ever to deal with what she knew would soon play out?

Beth felt that she was losing control. What she had agreed to do with others on the occasions that John strayed, or he wanted to pursue different ways of it and with another woman, was becoming more difficult to resist where it concerned a prospective lover so much younger than she was and certainly John.