Beaches and Cream (3 page)

She didn't apologise this time. As the sensation caused the breath to catch in my throat, I snuck a look at Veronica through slitted eyes. If she saw my tummy clutch and cease its rise and fall for just a moment, she didn't let on. Her own eyes were shrouded by the brim of her sun hat as she concentrated on my body. But I could see she was smiling. Whether her smile was wicked or warm I could not tell.

Her soothing hands roamed over my stomach. The rise and fall of my diaphragm began again, and Veronica's hands glided over my flat tummy, her fingers curving around my torso almost like an embrace.

“Nearly done, now,” she said, almost to herself. Her face was close to mine, and again I could smell the appley sweet scent of her hair.

“Ok….” I sighed, trying not to sound too disappointed.

Her fingers slipped beneath the straps at the back of my bikini top, then eased back round to make sure the fluid coated the swell of my breasts, where the cups of my bikini top met my skin. The palms of her hands rested lightly on my barely-covered breasts, her fingertips protecting my naked skin with creamy caresses. Her hands slithered up to my neck, my throat, stroked softly over my cheeks, waited there for a moment, and she was done.

I opened my eyes and it felt like a long time since I'd had them open. I felt totally relaxed, yet pulsing with a sort of unfulfilled excitement. Veronica was but a hazy silhouette in the searing sun. As my eyes adjusted and I could make out her face, I felt suddenly embarrassed. She was smiling. But I felt like a naughty child, trying to hide the unbearable pleasure caused by her learned hands coursing over my nubile body.

“Please don't do that again, Mand,” she said sweetly. “I've already borrowed enough of Margaret's trust. I refuse to send you back to her burnt to a cinder.”

Groggily, I pushed myself up onto one of my elbows. I used my other hand to shade the sun from my eyes, so I could see Veronica more clearly.

“My mother is very easily alarmed,” I smiled. “It's almost like you know her.”

Veronica laughed and shook her head slowly. “No, no, Mand. I don't know her at all.”

“You're so different, you and her,” I said. “Like the way you've always called me ‘Mand'. But my own mother calls me ‘Amanda', like we've never met before. And you talk to me like I'm your friend. The same way Tia talks to me. And you even talk to
each other
like that.”

“Really? I'd never given it any thought,” she mused.

“No, really, it's amazing!” I insisted. And maybe I was indirectly telling her that
she
was amazing, and that she'd just made me
feel
amazing. “It's just that…..It's just that every time I talk to my mother—about anything—I know that it's only a matter of moments before it all goes wrong. Before she starts warning me. Or blaming me. She hates the fact that I make up my own mind. And the more I do it, the more she hates it. But the more she hates it, the more I wished she loved me. So I try to change….without changing. I suppose my father can be difficult too….but not as bad as her.”

Veronica nodded and smiled sympathetically. “Parents are a funny old bunch. And we rarely turn out the way they expect. But we need to remember that when we become parents ourselves. If I've got any of that right with Tia, I'm very lucky.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment.

“The things is, Mand, it helps that I'm not afraid of people. And not afraid of life. I don't expect everyone to be just like me—including my daughter. I hope I take people for who they are. Not who I want them to be. If I like someone, I just like them. I don't spend every moment waiting to fall out with them. Claudio was the same. That's what made me fall in love with him.”

She'd never spoken of Tia's father before, and a hint of sadness crept in behind her smile.

“And now….” I asked gently.

“Claudio was a beautiful man. He is a beautiful man. And a good man. But sometimes, over time…..people change. But, of course, some of the things you loved in the first place never go away.”

It felt good for her to trust me this much. To talk to me so openly about something so personal, even though marriage and children were things she knew I had yet to experience. But I guess that's what she meant about not being afraid of people.

“Claudio's actually coming here,” she said, brightening. She must have seen the surprise in my face, because she quickly followed with, “Oh, no, not now! I mean after we've gone. He and I may have split, but we still share the house.”

We spent a few more hours on the beach, intermittently talking, reading, walking, splashing about in the sea, and retiring to the shade of the cabana for cold, fizzy drinks when the gorgeous heat embraced us too tightly. The sun had begun its diurnal decline when we got back in the car and wound our way back up to the house.

It was cooler in the hills. We passed through the frangipane gate—I ahead of Veronica—and this time the heavy, heady aroma smelled like coming home. We entered the veranda and peered over the balcony.

“Hello darling!” Veronica called as she waved to Tia.

Tia reclined on a chaise longue beside the pool. And she was unashamedly naked. She had already begun to bronze in the late afternoon sun, and every inch of her body glistened with oily sun cream. I felt a guilty pang of delight to think that the provocative hands of Tia's own mother had made me look very similar only a couple of hours earlier. A broad smile sprang to Tia's face as she sat up and waved to her mother and me.

I sauntered down the stairs; Tia's smile infecting mine.

“You've been gone for ages! Did you have fun?”

I found myself trying to concentrate on her face, rather than her vulnerable body. But Tia felt no such shame, and made no effort to cover up as I approached.

“So much fun,” I said. “The beach was beautiful. You should have come.”

“Are you hungry, girls?” Veronica called from the veranda. She'd changed into an emerald green sunpiece—a one piece, wrap-around sarong with a halter neck top that crossed over her breasts and tied behind her neck.

Tia inclined her head, and I stole a jealous look at her taut, athletic body.

“I'm still a little bit full from lunch,” she answered. And I shook my head.

“Alright, girls. I'll make something a little bit later on. I'm very hot from the car, so I'm going to read in the garden.”

“Ok!” we called in unison.

“So how was it?” Tia asked, returning her attention to me.

I opted not to tell Tia about her mother's expert hands, and the effect they'd had on me.

“It was gorgeous, T. I couldn't believe how late it was when we left. It felt like no time passed at all. The sea was so warm, we must have swam for over an hour. We walked on the beach. And we talked a lot. Your mother is so incredibly nice.”

I lowered my voice as Veronica reached the pool tier, so she wouldn't hear me singing her praises like some sort of creepy, star-struck simpleton.

“Yeah,” Tia said. And we smiled at Veronica, watching her smooth, bare back and broad hips sashay down the stairs to the garden below. “Yeah,” Tia said again. “She is.”

“So what did you talk about?”

“Just, you know, talked. Talked about my mother. About me. About your father….”

“What about my father?” Tia demanded, suddenly defensive.

“Nothing bad!” I countered. “She said he was a good guy!”

“He
is
a good guy!” Tia said sulkily. “Did you talk about
your
father, by any chance?”

“My father?” I asked, confused. “Why would we talk about him?”

Down below, Veronica untied her halter neck and slipped out of her sunpiece. She must have removed her swimsuit in the house, for she too was quite naked underneath. She stretched herself out on a chaise longue, adjusted her sun hat, and opened her book.

Tia stole a look to her mother in the garden below, before casting her eyes down. “You know….”

“No, Tia. I don't.”

”You really don't know, Mand?”

“Tia!”

“Ok!.... I just…..thought you knew. My mother and your father used to…..well….they used to….have fun together. My mother, she….she left your dad…..for my dad.” She smiled embarrassedly. “We were almost sisters. I thought that was old news.”

Tia put a gentle hand up to my chin. I realised my mouth had dropped open in surprise.

“Veronica's had sex with my dad!” I hissed. “How is it that everyone knows this but me?”

“Don't blame me, Mand! I just thought you didn't want to talk about it. And anyway, if you didn't know….maybe Margaret still doesn't.”

I wouldn't have expected Tia to lie to me. She never did and that's why I loved her. But right now I was finding the truth a little bit overwhelming. Perhaps this was why my mother was so hostile toward this family. But then if my mother didn't know, I could never ask her. And then if she did know, what was she so angry about? She would never have met my dad if Veronica hadn't left him. And then there was my burgeoning affection for Veronica. She was a lovely, remarkable woman. So why was I so outraged that my father had good taste?

“That's just….. It's just…..That's not what I expected you to say!”

In the garden, Veronica had sat up to apply sun cream to the newly exposed parts of her body that had been covered on the beach. She applied the lotion to her belly. Her hands followed the curve out to her hips, then dipped down between her legs to cream her inner thighs. It felt rude to watch a completely naked woman tend to herself so intimately, applying the cream, indifferently gliding past the neatly trimmed delta of her sex. She administered the cream beneath her ample bosoms, before taking the heavy flesh, rolling and lubricating first one breast and then the other. At times her hands, and even her forearms, disappeared in the deep, fleshy valley of her cleavage, as she squeezed and kneaded the heavy, malleable, rolling expanse right out to her nipples. Then up and around her neck, with the same tenderness she'd applied to me.

“C'mon, Mand! Don't scowl at Mum like that! It's not her fault. Your dad had something to do with it too!”

Hopefully Tia hadn't seen me startle. I hadn't realised I was staring. And if I was scowling, it was only against the sun. My actual thoughts, despite what I'd just heard, were much softer and more than a little salacious.

“Mand?” Veronica called from below. I was glad Tia had shaken me from my hypnosis, before the hypnotist herself had. I looked back to Veronica.

“Come in to the garden for a moment, please.”

I raised an eyebrow to Tia, but I went downstairs to Veronica without hesitation.

As I arrived, Veronica smiled at me quizzically from beneath her sun hat. I became suddenly nervous, wondering if she'd been listening to every word we'd said, and to my exasperation at her dalliances with my own father. It immediately annoyed me that I was nervous. She should be explaining herself to me! I braced myself for an awkward confrontation.

“Veronica I…..”

“Sorry, Mand. I don't mean to smirk. It's just odd to see you fully clothed. It's like you're wearing a cocktail dress at a pyjama party,” she laughed. “I'm so sorry. I shouldn't laugh. I told you, you can wear exactly want you want. And that hasn't changed. That's most unfair of me.” She held out the bottle of sun cream. “Can you do my back? I don't want to burn.”

I felt the blood rush in my ears as relief, annoyance, and excitement all rolled together. She hadn't heard us at all. She only needed some sun cream on her back. But who was she to tell me how much or how little I should be wearing? She wanted me to do her a favour, yet chose to make fun of me at the same time! Still, even as I flushed with annoyance, I felt a twinge in the pit of my stomach as I thought about touching Veronica as intimately as she'd touched me. I took the bottle wordlessly from her, unable to tell if my rapidly increasing heartbeat was due to anger or desire.

She rose and her breasts swayed pendulously. She scooped up the heavy flesh and collected her boobs in her arms, arranging them comfortably beneath her as she stretched out on her tummy. She laid her head on her hands and closed her eyes.

“Be sure to get every bit, Mand.”

I coated my palms with lotion and reached out greedily for Veronica's ample flesh. I worked my way up from the small of her back in small circles. She felt warm and strong and vibrant in my hands. Her skin became smoother with every touch, making it easier for me to knead and glide over her body in long, fluid strokes.

“That's wonderful….” she sighed.

I crossed my hand strokes. From the centre of her back and out to the left with my right hand; then from the centre of her back and out to the right with my left hand. My hands curved round her, traversing from her narrower waist and working my way up as she grew thicker. My hands continued sliding and curving upwards. It was impossible not to graze her ample bosoms, spilling out beneath her, as I glazed her sides.

I looked up to Tia to see if she found this unusual. But she had turned back to recline in the sunshine.

“Be a good girl and do my bum, Mand,” Veronica said softly.

She hadn't asked me. She had told me. But I paused. Wondering if she'd required the same of my father in his time. She didn't make herself easy to resist. I clearly found her inexorably bewitching and effortlessly seductive. I couldn't blame a man—any man—for falling under her spell.

“….Just while you're there,” she added.

Her bottom was wide and round. I would need more cream. Another lubricious handful and her buttocks were in my hands. I tried to take one in each hand, but she was far too ample for that. I concentrated on first one cheek, working the fluid up from her thighs and over the fleshy hill that rolled and undulated in my little hands. First one. Then the other. My hands drifting, polite but insatiably curious, into the deep, smooth cleft between the two heavy hills. I hoped I would be this beautiful and voluptuous when I was Veronica's age. Almost regretfully, I realised that I'd coated her completely and would soon have to stop. I took one final stroke, down from the small of her back, down over her buttocks, squeezing as I went, until my thumbs nestled between her thighs, only centimeters from her pretty pink pussy, just barely visible.