The Cliff House Curse

"This is really good," I say to no one as I wolf down my whole grain, sprouted, rabbit food sandwich.

"Thank you, Pete" Zephyr says, laying her hand on my thigh for a few seconds. Then she goes back to munching on her salad. She doesn't have a sandwich. No wonder she's still got a figure. She's starving herself.

The table remains eerily quiet. Redcloud seems like he's million miles away, and Monique is staring out to sea like she's getting really tired of being so beautiful, in such a beautiful setting, on such a beautiful day. Her thick black hair is bunched up in a ponytail, and when she swings her head around you expect something to get knocked off of a shelf.

"Monique," I say, trying desperately to make conversation. "Caroline tells me you got a scholarship?"

She turns to stare at me like I'm speaking a language she doesn't understand.

"At Stanford?" I continue, glancing at her perfect breasts.

"What?" she asks, annoyed. She folds her arms over her chest and looks back out at the sea.

"College is for idiots and fools," Redcloud announces. "College is just a tool of the Establishment. They think if they can channel the creativity of the masses, they can control the masses." He stares at Monique, but she's not taking the bait. Obviously miffed, he grabs his sandwich and stomps out onto the deck, closing the door behind him. I hear myself chewing. I notice that Monique must be cold.

"You're going to school, aren't you Pete?" Zephyr asks cheerfully, resting her hand on my thigh again.

"Yeah, engineering."

I'm usually proud of my chosen vocation, but in this setting, it has a hollow ring to it. Fortunately, her hand stays on my thigh, reassuring me that I haven't violated the Hippie Code by attending college.

"That's great. You'll be able to write your own ticket when you're done." She turns towards me and her hand slides further up my leg. "Maybe you'll be designing a new bridge down here one day, and you can come back and visit?" She sounds so sincere, so earnest.

"Sure," I smile, and her hand squeezes my leg gently. Then she gets up to clear the table and I get another peek at the intense jiggling of her tits. I let out a little sigh as her incensey fragrance wafts across my face. Then she's off to the kitchen, leaving me a prisoner of Monique's charms.

She leans back in her chair and stretches her hands up over her head, her small round tits turning into two perfect ovals dotted a little above the center by her pointed nipples. It's too much. I'm overdosing on breasts. I feel my dick growing.

Finally, Monique sets down her mismatched silverware and gets up. "Need some help, Zephyr?" she asks as her towel slips off. When she bends over to pick it up, I get that fleeting peek of pink I was hoping for. I stare at my food, seeing nothing but that juicy slit between her legs. Monique wanders off, and I'm alone at the table.

"Which way to the bathroom?" I ask, hoping my hard-on doesn't materialize again and prove to Zephyr that, yes indeed, I really am a sick pervert. I feel her hand on my shoulder.

"Follow me, pardner."

I gulp. Did she say "pervert" or "pardner"? I trail behind her like a lost puppy, watching her ass swaying it's way down the hall. Ba Dum! Ba Bum! She's got a sweet ass. It's the kind of ass you want to wake up with. For the rest of your life. We snake around a couple of potted palms, and then we're surrounded by ferns and moss. The bathroom is alive with glistening greenery.

"Oh wow, this is cool," I say, like an idiot. There's a jacuzzi tub, and a shower with redwood two-by-two's on the floor, and the whole place is open, with plate glass windows looking out at the sea. There's a gold sink, and an ornate Victorian mirror, and incense holders and candles abound. I remove my towel to piss, and she stands at the mirror, brushing her already brushed hair.

"It's almost like being outside, isn't it?" she asks, watching me in the mirror.

"Yeah," I mumble, as I finish my business and reach to flush the toilet.

"Wait a second," she exclaims, "we try not to waist water." She scurries over and pulls up her dress, confirming that the "no underwear" clause of the Hippie Code is still being enforced. I stare at her finely manicured bush, which is nothing more than a little fluffy tuft of hair, sort of like the under-the-lip beards the drug dealers on TV wear.

Holding her dress up around her waist, (for my benefit?) she tinkles a minuscule amount of pee into the bowl. Then she spreads her legs to wipe and I notice that below her tuft, she's totally hairless. I wrap my towel around my waist, hoping my dick will behave itself for at least another minute or two. I try not to watch her but it's impossible.

She catches my eye in the mirror and smiles. "You're kind of shy, aren't you Peter?"

"I guess so." I shrug my shoulders and watch as she gets up off the toilet and lets go of her dress. It hangs up on her curvy ass, and she has to do a little shimmy to free it. Of course, the little shimmy also causes her boobs to jiggle uncontrollably, forcing me to disguise another long, anguished sigh.

She flashes me an amused grin. "That's one of the reasons Redcloud put that painting up by the front door. To break the ice, reveal the truth." She looks right into my eyes, and I get the feeling that I'm the guy she was posing for when Redcloud painted her, all naked and exposed. "The human body is nothing to be ashamed of," she says, sort of like a high school teacher in biology class. "It's our Temple, and our Savior, and if we don't accept it, then how can we possible live a complete life?"

She slides her hand around my waist, and shoves her breast against my arm as she guides me back to the dining room. At this point, I am no longer walking, I am floating on air. She smells even better than Monique: Lilacs, sandalwood, patchouli, tangy vanilla. Christ, it's almost too much to bear.

"Uh oh," she whispers, "looks like you're late." The table is deserted, so I dash up the stairs to find Monique naked on her stool, her labia all spread open, and Redcloud fussing with his palette.

We go for another two hours and I'm about to die when Redcloud finally announces it's break time. Zephyr brings the tea up, and this time she rubs my back. Her touch is heavenly; soft, like a lover, and strong, like a mother, and I'm so grateful, I want to kiss her feet, touch her hair, put her breasts in my mouth. I open my eyes with a start, feeling her body pressed up against my back and her hands on my chest.

"Don't worry," she whispers, "Redcloud's downstairs on the phone."

I watch Monique outside, stretching seductively. I watch Zephyr's hands sliding down my stomach towards my growing penis, and I realize I must've died and gone to Heaven. Zephyr's hands flutter past my groin and onto my thighs, her fingertips just grazing my balls. I lean my head back into her flowing hair and sigh.

"You need to walk around a little bit," she whispers, "so you don't get stiff." But it's too late. I'm already stiff. I turn, to tell her I love her, to beg her to run away with me, but she's already going Ba Dum! Ba Dum! down the stairs.

The final two hours are excruciating, and when we're finally done, Redcloud seems disappointed. "This is shit! Utter shit!" He storms down the stairs in a huff.

Monique peels my hand off her tit. "Don't worry, he's always like that." She pats my ass, ambles over to her clothes and dresses in front of the screen. It isn't till she has to find her shoes that she actually goes behind it, where you'd think normal people would go to get dressed. But she's not normal. In fact, nobody around here is normal.

Zephyr strides in, wearing a different dress, sort of a sari kind of thing. The way it wraps around her chest and shoves her left boob up, I'm convinced she wore it just for me. She's got her hair piled up and held together with a wood stick pin,(chopsticks?)and she's got little gold hoop earrings glittering in the afternoon light. "Can you walk?" She asks cheerfully, as she hands me my towel.

"I don't know."I know I can lie down, if you'd be interested in that ma'am.

"See you next time," Monique chirps, picking up the charcoal sketch with the perfect crotch detail and hustling towards the stairs.

"Bye hon," Zephyr says, grabbing her by the arm and giving her a little peck on the cheek. As the brown goddess recedes down the stairs, Zephyr turns to me and smiles. "Want to jump in the hot tub for a few minutes?" She lays her hand on my thigh for about the eighth time today. "That'll help get the kinks out."

"Sure," I say, wobbling to my feet.

"I'll bet you never thought sitting still would be such hard work, did you?"

"No, I'm amazed."Hard work? Pun intended? Never mind. We don't need to go there.

She hands me my towel and I follow her down the stairs. "The stretching really helps," she says, her incense fragrance trailing behind her like a cat's tail flicking back and forth.

"So, you've done a little modeling too, huh?" I ask, not interested in her answer so much as interested in her right tit, which looks like it might jiggle right out of her dress.

"You might say that."

We reach the bottom of the stairs, but, alas, her tit doesn't fall out. "Is it true you were in Penthouse." I ask, aspiring swinger that I am.

"Several times," she answers proudly. "I was the first girl to open it up, let em see everything." She laughs, "and now they all do it."

"I guess that makes you a Pioneer on the Sexual Frontier, huh?"

She stops and turns around to look at me and I get this sinking feeling that I've blown it.

"That's good Peter, I like that. A Pioneer on the Sexual Frontier." She says it with a deep voice, like an announcer.

Pleased with the impressiveness of my clever banter, I let her take my hand and we walk out onto the deck off the living room. The view out here is magnificent. You can see down the coast, almost all the way to San Simion, or peer up north towards the Little Sur lighthouse. You can smell the ocean, you can feel the breeze like a promise of new things to come, and you understand why people flock to the California coast to escape from their real lives.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" she asks.

"No shit." I watch her perfect profile as she gazes out on the ocean. I wonder if I should kiss her now.

"As soon as we laid eyes on this place, we knew we had to have it. Getting out of L.A. has really rejuvenated our marriage. Man, what a pit that place was."

I guess maybe this isn't the time to kiss her. "So you two've been married for a while, huh?"

"We've been married forever. We're soul-mates." She looks at me solemnly, squeezes my hand, and then scampers off. "I'll turn on the bubbles," she says, bounding ahead of me.

A moment later I hear the whirring of the pump as the hot tub churns to life. I wobble around a little lattice fence just in time to see her unwrapping her sari. Her left tit comes out, and then the right, and then her hips, her legs, and then she's naked in all her California tan glory. My jaw drops. The painting on the wall doesn't do her justice. She's ten times more lovely in person. The way her waist tapers in, and her round smooth hips swoop out, and her full breasts hang majestically off her chest, she's almost too beautiful to look at.

"Well?" she asks, cocking her head, "are you getting in, or are you just going to stand there and stare?" She smirks at me, hands on her hips, daring me to keep looking. I can't help it. I feel like a soldier visiting a topless bar for the first time.

She slips into the water slowly, oohing and aahing till she's up to her neck. "Come on, don't be afraid," she giggles with pleasure. I sit down on the redwood deck and dip my feet in, marveling at the way her breasts float, bobbing like buoys in the bay. She slides her hands up inside my legs. "Come on."

"What about your husband?" I ask, nervous.

"Don't worry about him. He's running Monique home, and then he'll probably stop off for a drink." Her hands slide up under my towel. "These custom order paintings drive him nuts, but the money's too good to pass up." My towel mysteriously comes loose. "He'll be gone for at least an hour. Just relax. You put in a long day"

Suddenly she grabs my hands and jerks me into the water, laughing like a kid. "Isn't that better?" she giggles. She floats to the other side of the tub, her tits bobbing merrily up out of the water.

"Yeah." I let out a big sigh and the heat takes over. She slips around behind me and starts rubbing my shoulders. "That's great," I moan. I close my eyes and succumb to the feeling of her fingers kneading my aching muscles. Her hands slide around to my chest, and I feel her breasts pressing up against my back. A minute later her bush is tickling my butt.

"Zephyr?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you do this for all your models?"

She chuckles. "Only the ones who need it."

"Was it that obvious?"

"All you young guys need it. It's only natural. You have to give your body what it requires if you want to stay healthy, right?" She floats around in front of me and lets her legs wrap loosely around my hips.

"What about Redcloud?" I ask, wondering what the hell is going on. Are they soul mates with an open marriage?

"What about him?" She lets her tits bob up against my chest.

"Does he know you and me are...?" My stiff dick tickles up into the space between her legs.

"He knows everything, and yet, he knows nothing."

My dick is now nestled between the crack of her ass. The shaft may even be rubbing her cunt. It's hard to tell.

"How old are you Peter?"

"Twenty," I gasp as her fingers flutter across my chest.

"Have you ever been in love?" Her hips start to move, ever so slightly, back and forth and I determine that, yes, the shaft of my cock is rubbing her pussy. "I mean real love. Not just sleeping with somebody, but wanting to die for somebody?" She doesn't wait for my answer. "You find out over the years that love is like a living thing. You have to feed it, care for it. It has it's moods. It has its good days. It has its bad days. Sometimes, when it's weak, you have to borrow love from other places to make it strong again."

I take my cue and slide my hands up under her heavy breasts, gently lifting them, pondering the possibility of taking a big brown nipple in my mouth. She intercepts my fingers and pins my arms back against the ledge of the tub, politely, of course.

"Just relax," she whispers. She lets her tits bounce around on my chest while she's getting my dick settled back into it's proper position up against her slit. "Are you safe, Peter? No aids or herpes?"

"I've only been with three women, and they were all safe." I lie. Only two women, actually.

She slides her hands down on my hips and presses just a little. I feel the head of my dick nudge into a soft spot. She stops and lets it settle there for a moment. I feel her pussy lips twitch, and then they grab the head of my penis, like one of those fish that sucks the side of the aquarium. She's got her mouth hanging open, gasping quietly. I want to ram it in so bad, but she''s holding my hips firmly, and I can't move. All I can do is sit there and quiver.

"Do you like that?" she whispers, as my throbbing head slowly works its way inside her.

"Yeah," I warble, like a virgin getting his first fuck. It feels like the head of my dick is almost all the way inside her when the phone rings.

She freezes. Three rings and it stops. Five seconds go by. Ten seconds. She relaxes, lets out a little sigh, and goes back to work. It rings again. She grunts "shit" and my dick pops out. "It's probably RC," she sighs. "That's the signal, three rings, silence, then three rings again." She pulls herself out of the tub, flops down on the deck, and grabs the cordless phone.

"Oh hi honey," she says in a lilting voice. She sounds pleasant, unlike me, who is dying here in the tub with a little unfinished business waving up and down under the water. "Yeah, he's still here."

Great, it's Redcloud, checking up on his horny, love-deprived wife. She leans back, and her right boob slides across her chest. "A little while ago." She looks at me and shrugs her shoulders. "No! That sucks. What a bummer!"

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that.

"OK, honey."

I look out at the ocean, but it's not as majestic a sight as it was a few minutes ago. Now it just looks small and cheap, like a faded postcard on an old dusty rack in some shitty roadside gas station.

"Well, you know how it is," she intones into the phone. She dangles her foot in the water and starts swinging it back and forth like she's getting impatient. "No! Really?" I reach for her foot, but she's not paying attention, and before I can grab it and stick her toes into my mouth, she pulls it back out. "OK Hon, see you in a few."

She puts the phone down and turns to me sadly. "That was your sister. Her car's still in the shop and she needs a ride to work. They told her if she's late one more time they're going to fire her ass." She gets up and grabs her sari. "You can stay and soak for a while if you want. Just lock the door on your way out."

I watch as her tan ass disappears around the corner. Ba Dum! Ba Dum! Suddenly, her Ba Dum! Ba Dum! has a tawdry ring to it. I feel sick. Lovesick. Jesus. Why does my little sister always have to screw things up? Seems like she has a real knack for making sure I don't get laid.

Dejected, heartbroken, I sit there in the tub waiting for Zephyr to do whatever it is she has to do before leaving. Thankfully, my hard-on is gone, which makes the angst I'm feeling a little less debilitating. Finally, I crawl out of the hot tub, grab my towel, and shuffle back to the house, hanging my head like a homeless puppy.

I shuffle through the back door just in time to see Zephyr gliding across the sunken living room. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow?" I ask, hopefully.

"You better come back tomorrow." She pauses by the front door. "Redcloud really likes you." She waits a beat, giving me an innocent look, "and so do I." Then she turns to open the door.

"Um, Zephyr," I croak nervously, "would you like to, um, maybe, you know, meet me for a drink sometime, somewhere?"

"Peter," she says, sarcastically, "I'm Married!" She gives me a teasing look, turns to wave goodbye, and then she's gone.

I make my way up the stairs to the studio and pull my clothes on. I feel like shit. My muscles ache. My heart aches. I need a beer. I take a peek at Redcloud's masterpiece before I leave. It's pretty good. Not because of me, I'm not even finished yet, but because of Monique. God what a babe. The way her pink labia are spread out, it's like you can almost smell it. And, judging from her purple thong, it smells damn nice, too. I start thinking maybe I'm chasing the wrong woman here. Maybe Monique's a better bet. At least she's not married. I realize I must be going crazy. Breast overload. Pussy poisoning. Somebody should've warned me.

I stumble up the driveway in a daze. The Cliff House. They really ought to be calling it the CLIT House. I get my truck started and turn on the radio. I should know better -- I mean besides falling in love with a married woman, I should know better about turning on the radio. All you get down here is static, but I do it anyway. There's something comforting about the static. It's telling me that I'm not crazy after all. It's telling me that the static in Zephyr's life is Redcloud, and if it wasn't for him, she'd be free to live the life she really wanted, free to be my lover, and sit at home in my little duplex apartment in Santa Cruz while I'm in school. Yeah, right.

I head up the coast, thinking maybe I'll stop at Woody's Place for a burger and a couple of beers. Then I remember that I'm broke. I never got my hundred bucks from Redcloud. I pull into the lot at the River Inn and call Rob, a guy I work with down here. I ask him if I can crash at his place tonight, and if he's got anything to eat.