Renewal Ch. 01-08

"I like you like that," he said.

"I know," she said. She meant the nudity.

"Thanks for being OK with this." He meant the camera.

Joy didn't know if it was okay with her or not, but "no" had left her vocabulary. She rubbed him through the thin nylon.

"I can't believe you're getting hard again."

"If you were seeing what I'm seeing, you would, too," he said. There was so much syntactically wrong with that statement that she usually would have been making fun of him, the lawyer who couldn't construct a sentence, but instead he pulled the Speedo down and she wrapped his cock up in her whole slimy, sweat-lubed hand. She rubbed back and forth with not too much pressure, just the way he liked it.

"Oh man," he panted. "You're ... so good ... at that."

Her mouth remembered him. She looked up. "Do you want me to take care of this now?" She put out her tongue and slowly licked her lips. It is, she thought, an oral week.

His cock quivered in her hand. "Yes, I do, but I'll wait."

She couldn't remember him ever turning down a blowjob. He must have a plan.

"Okay Danny," she pouted, "but I might not be interested later."

"I'll gamble on yes," he said. His laugh made many parts of her vibrate. She tried to snap the Speedo up and over his stiffness. She missed.

She still wanted to touch it.

"I'll manage that," he said. He could barely fit the stiff thing in.

"Put this on, Joy." He handed her a gift bag. It didn't weigh anything. There had been one every day with something filmy or diminutive in it.

"Really?" she said. "You want me to get dressed?"

"Sort of." He was blushing. "I want take you to the beach."

"You want to take me on the beach, you mean."

That got a smile. She opened the bag and shook out its contents. Silky scraps and string floated into her lap.

"Daniel. There's hardly anything here."

"Put it on."

Joy had to get pretty close to the mirror before she could see the bikini. It was the softest nylon she could imagine. The color matched her skin tone. I wonder how he did that? Her nipple was clearly visible through the paper-thin fabric that covered about half her breast. The wispy threads of the Brazilian bottom vanished against her tanned skin; the fabric barely covered her pubic hair. Okay, she thought. I got a bikini wax. I'm wearing it on the beach for my husband. She put on the high heeled sandals he liked, and her biggest sunglasses; a wide brimmed straw hat hung by the door. She reached for a cover-up, but his voice stopped her.

"Stay like that."

"In the hotel?"

"Everywhere."

"I'm practically naked." She blushed for real this time.

"I know."

Danny sprayed her whole body with sunscreen. He pushed her toward the door.

She felt afraid. Something about walking outside as she was seemed unrecoverable; she would change in some essential way, become a part of his imagination, an accomplice to his fantasy. The shutter clicked. Maybe she'd always be like this and he'd get bored with it. Maybe he'd always expect her to be like this and she'd never do it again. Maybe it would be a battle. Maybe ten men would take her on the way to the elevator.

Fear and pleasure, she thought. Two sides of the same coin.

Danny was sitting on the bed. "Go on," he said.

"Not alone."

"I'll be right behind you."

Joy turned the doorknob and stepped out into the deserted breezeway. The warm tropical breeze formed goosebumps on her skin. Her nipples were hard and pointed. The door closed. No Danny. She walked alone toward the elevator. She heard her husband emerge and the shutter clicking behind her. "Turn around," he said. "Slowly." She did. He passed her, pressed the call button. "Come." She walked toward him, rolling her hips, arms lifted, chest jutting. She squeezed his cock on the way past. When the elevator doors opened he posed her against the back wall of the elevator and stepped back. The shutter clicked, the door closed. She didn't even have a room key. It turned her on. Naked and up for grabs in the elevator. But the doors opened again; the shutter clicked. She put a foot on the railing, opening wide between her legs. Put a hand there. Of course he wouldn't leave me. Watching is the thrill he's after now.

"Look, Danny." she said, in what she hoped was an icy tone. "There's a naked woman in the elevator." Click. She put her foot down.

He stood away from her as they descended, as if she was a stranger. The camera was positioned at his waist. The door opened and two large men stepped in, carrying their golf shoes. They stood on the other side from Danny. She stood straight up, fought the desire to cross her arms and looked steadily straight ahead. She was grateful for her sunglasses. The camera clicked. The men's eyes traversed her body. Her nipples pushed against the top. This is what he wants, she thought. No one said anything. The rest of the foursome were on the ground floor. She walked between these men, their eyes heating her skin.

Was it brave, what she was doing? Joy didn't feel ashamed, she didn't feel angry or confident or womanly or much of anything, really. She was simply an agent of Danny's desire. She wondered if the men actually wanted her or if it was something more abstract, like the way they evaluated football players. Their eyes on her body felt like Danny's hands. See what's mine, he was saying. When had it become his choice? But sex whispered to her. Trust him.

He trailed behind by ten or fifteen feet as she walked through the atrium, past the reception desk, down the long hallway dotted with potted palms and lined with retail stores. Her legs swung forward and her shoulders slid down her back and heels of her sandals echoed loudly off the lava stone of the walkway, drawing attention. She felt very tall and very naked. Nothing bad was happening. She saw him reflected in a shop glass, ten feet behind her. She stopped, turned and posed, fists on a tilted hip, then turned her back. She walked past the bar; twenty pairs of eyes followed her to the pool deck. Dropping their sandals on a convenient empty chaise, he took a beach towel from the kiosk and walked them away from the hotel and into the state park.

Danny was almost crying. "Wow. Joy, Wow, Oh my god. That was so hot."

It's like he's fifteen years old. "You liked everyone looking at me?"

"I liked looking at you. I didn't see anyone else."

What?

Two perfect young women in thong swimsuits lay out face down on towels, their tops untied.

"They're naked," Joy said. "Do you like looking at them?"

"They're pretty," he said guardedly.

"That sounds like a yes. Don't you want to take their picture?"

"No," he said. "I want to take your picture."

"I'm a fifty-year-old mother of two. I have stretch marks."

"Stop right there," he said. He came up next to her, fiddling with the camera. He flipped the screen toward her.

"Look," he said. "Flat tummy, nice boobs, strong arms."

She couldn't see the photos in the glare of the sun. "Chunky thighs, big butt, frizzy hair," she said.

"My thighs," he said. "My hair."

That made her laugh, and she threw her arm over his shoulder and in that moment forgot about his desire and her nakedness and he was her best friend, just hanging out like on any day.

They walked a while. "Did you like showing me to those men?"

"What?" Defensive. Cautious.

"You heard me." She wanted to know. Some time passed.

"Yes," he finally said. "You may not believe this, but I didn't realize that would happen. I thought it was just for me—but of course others would look at you. I must have known that."

Joy said, "It happened on the trail too."

"I'm sorry if that's too weird."

She silenced him with a hand "I did it, love." I don't give him a chance to think with his dick too often. "Did you want them to have me?"

"You mean fuck you? No."

She saw the gears turning. He's such an honest man.

"Well, I don't think so. Suppose I did? Would you?"

"I don't think so, but I'm pretty turned on," she said. Her boundaries felt mushy. "If you really, really wanted it? And you stayed with me? And I felt safe . . . Maybe I could." She remembered a time in college when her friend Carly got herself gangbanged with Joy there and how happy she had been afterward that she didn't go where Carly went. Of course, it wasn't Danny asking, then. Anxiety constricted her throat. "I don't like thinking about it. It wouldn't be me doing it, I think, it would be me channeling you—like you were me."

"I'm not you," he said, and he was a man. She knew that he didn't really get it, how deep the abandonment of self could go in a woman.

"Are you going to ask me?"

"Ask you what?"

He wants to hear me say it again, she thought. "To let those men fuck me."

She first saw something in his face that she hated and then something that she liked. "No," he said. "Definitely not them." There was something in his voice.

She was relieved, for now. "Maybe someone else, then?"

"Maybe."

"You've thought about this before."

"What?"

"Me with other guys. She could see the struggle in his face.

"Yes. Let's not talk about this anymore right now."

"Who?"

"Please."

"Who? I deserve to know."

He shrugged his shoulders. "In my fantasies? Tal and me . . . And Lea."

Lea was Joy's close friend from college. The four of them had known each other for two decades.

"Huh." Joy hadn't expected that. "You want me to do Lea? Do you get Lea, too?"

He was blushing furiously, defensive. "It's just a fantasy."

She stopped and put her hand on his shoulders. "I'm not mad, Danny. It's okay. I'm doing your fantasy right now. Tell me."

"OK." He took a deep breath. Then another. She gave him an encouraging smile. "You taking me and Tal at the same time. Watching you with Lea, and with Tal, and watching you with them together. All of us watching you masturbate."

"And you and Lea?"

"I guess. That's not a big part of the fantasy. More like spillover."

"She's never fucked anyone else."

"I know that. If she wanted to I could, if it was okay with you."

"You're so generous," she said ironically, but she secretly thought it actually might be okay with her. Huh, she thought.

Danny just rolled his eyes.

It took her a minute to absorb this information. "You're a voyeur." She didn't quite know what to think about that.

"Just for you. I never imagine anyone else."

They were quiet. Their walk took them far down the beach to a place where trees reached out tantalizingly toward the ocean. He took her up a narrow space between a few trees. A small clearing opened up.

"I found this place on my run yesterday," he said.

Ah, she thought. This was the plan.

"I have another present for you." He reached into his pack and handed her an orchid box. The flower was white and pink and purple with dozens of petals and it seemed to have a thousand layers that she could fall into. He took off her hat and her glasses and pinned it in her hair. She stood there in the tiny bikini and orchid, with the white sand and the green trees and the sun slanting down, and her skin was on fire.

"Beautiful," he said. "Pose?"

It was a question and an order, and she watched the woman in the tiny bikini and orchid listen to the man with the camera. She was arching and twisting and jutting and putting her hands in places and the camera was clicking. He moved her toward the sand. She felt a tug on the string of her top. The fabric slipping off her hard nipples made her dizzy for a second. She lifted it over her neck and handed it to him, then lazed on her side, bare skin flecked with sand. Danny had taken his shirt off at some point. He was stiff inside his Speedo.

"This is where we were on the balcony," she said.

"You were completely naked there," he said.

"I could be, here." She wanted him to choose, to get the precise thing he wanted.

But he said, "Touch your breasts."

This again, she thought, but the sand under her back got warmer and the trees greener and the sun even more sparkly and intimate. She watched him watching her and she touched herself according to his face until she only was skin and fingers and fluids and there were starbursts on the back of her eyelids. She felt cold and hot and was hovering above her orgasm until it overwhelmed her. She was panting.

"Joy."

It was a kind of strangled sound, like his breathing had ended just before the "Y." The fog of her orgasm lifted and he was naked and his cock was beckoning her. She reached up and it was super smooth and super hard, like silk. Her hands explored all of its pulsing territory. He was groaning.

"Can I give you that blowjob now, Danny?"

"Oh my god," he said. While she was getting to her knees Danny put the camera on a small tripod and set it to their profile. He posed her to make sure he had the angle just right. Joy Rosenberg, she thought, porn star. Is this really okay? But he came to her then and her mind shut off and she was only tongue and hands and lips and yearning for the hot blood she felt pulsing the veins of his cock. She kissed and licked and mouthed and sucked and rubbed and pulled and he was moaning and his cock was jumping around and his legs were quivering. She kept it up and just before it started to feel like a job he began fucking her mouth so she held still and jerked him harder and prepared for the explosion, and when it came each spasm tasted warm and salty and just like him.

She showed the camera what she had done, before swallowing. She licked her lips.

"And cut," she said. She thought she was being sarcastic but he was totally serious. "I guess you're getting your movie, Danny."

"Our movie, Joy. It tells the story about how much you love me."

It is all about him, she thought, but that's what this is, giving that to him. He gave her the water bottle. She rinsed her mouth. He helped her stand. She adjusted the suit; it covered her, barely.

"This thing is drenched," she said.

"You could put this on."

The swim skirt matched the bikini. It was barely eight inches long; when she slipped it over her bare legs it settled very low on her hips, far below her navel, and barely reached her thighs. He reached underneath and stripped away the bottom.

"Really? This skirt will never stay down."

"You were the one who said she never wanted to wear clothes again." He gathered their things.

"Give me the top."

"Not quite yet," he said. He snapped a photo of her, then draped the top over her shoulder; she played with it and he took a few more.

"Come." He took the top, then her hand and led her toward the beach.

"I can't go out there like this," she said. But he didn't stop and she did it without even looking.

There was no one on the beach. They ran down to the water. She dove in but Danny stayed back, with his camera. The water was on her breasts and her nipples and her pubes and she felt that she belonged to the water, but today she also belonged to him. He'd love to hear me say that, she thought, but when she got out he spoke first.

"You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said.

"You've been saying that a lot," she said. "I may stop taking you seriously."

"I've never been as serious in my life," he said. "I can't even say how grateful I am for you."

She kissed him, a wife thanking her husband for saying something sweet. His hand went between her legs, but when she wrapped her leg around him to rub herself on his thigh she looked over his shoulder and down the beach people were walking toward them. She pointed it out and he gave her the top. He pinned the orchid back in her hair.

"I should wear the bottom," she said.

"You're decent," he said.

"God, Danny, I don't feel decent at all. I feel depraved."

"Well," he said, "you're legal, at least. Long as you don't bend over."

"Or it's not windy."

She held the skirt down as the family of five came past, parents maybe ten years younger than them with three girls under the age of ten, all in white bikinis. Jenny's absence was light, gentle, on the fringes of her awareness. She wanted this family to enjoy their happiness. She saw Danny's eye following the blond wife, who looked really good in a white string bikini herself, and she felt the husband's eyes assessing her. They all waved at each other and Joy said beautiful children to the wife who said thank you, eyeing Joy's outfit with a smile and a wink, and she felt that solidarity and deep compassion that women can have for each other.

"He wants you, Joy," Danny breathed into her ear. "Look at what he's got, and he wants you."

Joy smiled at the wife again, who gave her a wry smile this time, along with a very slight shake of the head. Joy laughed and bowed hers.

"I think he has his hands full, Danny." They walked along the beach and back to the hotel. Putting on her sandals made her feel three inches more naked.

"Let's have a drink," Danny said.

"I can't Danny, not like this."

"If you're careful," he said, "no one will know."

"I thought you wanted to them to know."

"No," he said. "They can wonder. Only I know."

She draped a towel over her arm and held it in front of her. The pool deck was full of people but few of them looked at her, one more attractive woman albeit in a skimpier-than-most swimsuit. At the bar, she sat on the towel and crossed her legs on the stool.

"I can't believe I'm doing this, Danny," she said, but he was already a few feet away taking a photo. He waited. She knew what he wanted.

She saw no one behind him; she swiveled the stool and spread her legs, exposing herself to his camera. He gestured to her with two fingers. She shook her head, but he mouthed "please," and so, a bit ruefully, she briefly slid two fingers in and out of herself. The shutter clicked. Later, when she saw the picture, the bartender was directly behind her. Danny turned and headed for the elevator, leaving her there.

I didn't think he wanted a drink, she thought. Her vulva was throbbing. She abandoned the towel and standing very erect she walked across the pool deck, picking her way through the chaises and chairs. She was sure the fat man lying face-up on his chaise got an unobstructed view as she went by. In the long hallway, colonnaded with huge palms, conversation quieted as eyes picked her up at one end of the bar and followed her all the way past along it, to the limits of their vision. She thought the little skirt was flipping up in the back with each step and exposing her butt, but she resisted the urge to reach back and hold it down. She looked all the way down the long, straight hallway and locked eyes with Danny where he stood by the elevator. He gave her a big smile and held up the camera. Look at him, she thought, smug SOB. I should punch him. But her mouth remembered the taste of his cum and she lifted herself upright and walked straight into the lens of the camera, pressing her whole body against his, rubbing her clit on his thigh, his cock on her belly.

"Here Danny. You want your wife exposed? To have sex in public? Should I cum right here in front of the elevator?"

"Stop, Joy." He was looking around. She kept humping his thigh.

"No, Danny this is what you wanted, you want everyone to see your wife's body. You want to show me off. All the men saw me, Danny, you gave me to them, Danny, they all saw me. . ." The elevator door opened and she pushed him in. She pulled his suit down and he was hard again. She jacked him off.

"Joy, stop." He tried to hold her wrists, but she twisted them away.

She yanked his cock. " . . . I was naked. They all saw me naked, Danny. Look how my nipples show. This skirt covers nothing. You want them to fuck me, Danny?"