Things would have been simpler if they had never met Billy.
That much is certain – though Jasmine and Neil would never agree who was to blame for what followed. Maybe both; maybe neither; maybe the root cause lay with the resort.
Because every day of Jasmine and Neil’s holiday there felt identical: the same heat, the same bruised blue sky. There wasn’t much to do during the day, so there was too much time to think. Jasmine and Neil spent most of their days hot and indecisive at their hotel swimming pool, and it was there that they met Billy.
Billy lay on a recliner near them every day. He introduced himself on their first day, but otherwise kept to himself. He rarely moved; every half hour or so he stood and stretched and paced gingerly across the white tiles to the edge of the pool and dived in to cool down. He was tall and thin, a good deal older than Neil, with dark, curly hair. He drew Jasmine’s gaze every time he passed. It was not that he was attractive: he might have been handsome once, but a two-inch dark scar down one cheek gave his face a lopsided appearance – and it was that scar that made her stare. In those long poolside hours and from behind her sunglasses, Jasmine imagined Billy’s history; what had caused the injury – a gang dispute, she supposed – and why he was here alone, even though she noticed he wore a wedding ring.
Sometimes, when she was thinking about this, Billy caught her staring.
*
In their room one evening, Jasmine and Neil lay on the bed before they went out clubbing. She liked the way Neil smelled at this time of day: sun cream and grass. Absently, she unbuttoned his shorts, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent down to take his cock between her lips. Neil began to harden.
“I was thinking,” he said. “That guy at the pool; you think he’s attractive?’
Jasmine let his cock escape her mouth with a wet pop.
“Which guy?” Then she realised and laughed. “Billy? Of course not. Why?”
Then she realised. It was that obsession he had about a threesome.
She lowered her head and took him back into her mouth, noticing how hard he still was.
At some point the next afternoon, Neil had gone for a beer at the bar. Jasmine was looking across at Billy when he stood and came towards her.
“You’re looking at me a lot,” he said. “Have I done something wrong?”
Jasmine turned back at the book she was reading. “Sorry,” she said.
“Wondering how I got this scar, I suppose?”
Jasmine was silent.
“Nothing romantic. A car crash, that’s all.”
“I didn’t mean to … stare.”
Billy laughed. “Don’t worry. If I’m honest, I’ve been looking at you, too. Your body reminds me of someone when they were younger.”
Jasmine held her breath. She did not want to react, but a continuing silence forced her to ask.
“Who?” she said.
“My wife.”
Jasmine snorted. “That’s – that’s about the creepiest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said. She wrinkled her forehead and a furious energy made her stand up and head to the pool edge, her toes curling over the lip. The sun was toasting her back, and its heat was exacerbated by her supposition that Billy’s greedy gaze was surely on her body too. Comparing her to his wife, of all people. Yet as she stood there she was aware of all her physical flaws that he would be noticing: the hard callouses on her heels; the tiny mole behind her knee. If she had known she was going to be inspected she would never have worn her hair in a ponytail, because it drew attention to her prominent ears. A memory flashed by of a moon-faced doctor who had once told her of the risk of spine curvature in later life unless she paid more attention to her posture.
Jasmine stood more erect, but more self-aware. Her bikini bottoms had ridden up on both sides. As she twisted a finger behind her to adjust them, a blush rose over her because Billy was watching and she didn’t know whether she felt powerful or weak. She turned sharply.
‘For the record, I don’t find you attractive.”
Billy ran his finger down the side of his jaw.
“I understand.”
“Your attitude, I mean. I don’t think it’s appropriate for a married man to say things like that to someone’s girlfriend.” She looked around for Neil.
Billy looked grave. “I’m sorry. Your boyfriend said you’d be flattered…”
“I mean you’re here without your wife, ogling younger women. Where is she while you’re sunning yourself?”
“Unfortunately,” Billy said, “she was in the car crash too.”
*
She wanted to talk to Neil about this incident, but she kept quiet because she suspected that in some way he had encouraged Billy to speak to her. Neil had a strange idea about her since she had told him what had happened with her two best friends years ago.
She had liked Luke and Finn equally; Finn’s sophistication, his style and his intellect; Luke’s dry wit. She had never chosen between them, because they just hung out after school and were best friends and were happy with that.
After the last exams of school that summer term they had gone to the local park. Finn produced a huge bottle of cider from his rucksack and they took turns swigging from it. Another bottle appeared from somewhere and Luke began telling jokes that were even funnier when he repeated them. They ran out of steam giggling. The three of them lay back, side by side – Finn on her left, Luke on her right – and looked up at a sky beginning to grey in the summer dusk. Jasmine wondered aloud about their future. Finn said he hoped magical things would happen to her; the way he said it made her want to cry. She kissed him on the cheek, and to even things up, did the same to Luke. Then Finn leaned over her and their lips touched. None of them was laughing now; everything was still; the park was silent, save for a sleepless blackbird calling in the tree above them, and a low buzz of traffic from the trunk road. Finn was up on his elbows, over her, kissing her more strongly. His tongue squeezed into her mouth; Luke’s arm circled her waist; he nuzzled into her neck.
A thick line of excitement ran down her spine. She drew Finn to her so she could taste his tongue again. There was a tug on her shirt; a button popped open and a hand was inside, teasing a nipple. Another hand slewed up her inner thigh, beneath her skirt. Jasmine floated so high with a mix of arousal and happiness that her heart was full; she clamped her eyes shut so she could not tell between them. The same hand sneaked inside her panties and there was a wet mouth around her nipple. She reached towards Finn, drew her hand across the hard outline of his trousers and began to rub. She was not fully sure what she was doing.
Finn said, “Fuck,” and nothing else. But that encouraged her to stroke harder and his cock emerged fully from his pants. She masturbated him with abandon. And somehow Luke’s cock lay in her other hand. She was stroking them both and they both came, separately but together, in each hand.
The three of them lay together afterwards, wide-eyed. Everything had changed, but she realised this was a deep longing satisfied. She kissed Finn again.
She had confessed all this to Neil. He asked relentless questions: Did it happen again? Did it excite her to wank off two guys? Threesomes don’t work, she said. But Neil didn’t listen; didn’t ask what it had been like an hour after, when Finn and Luke could not speak to each other, or the day after, when everyone from school seemed to share their own version of what had happened; Finn avoided her; Luke was bitter.
‘It was always Finn,’ he had texted her. ‘Wasn’t it?’ And she had replied no, it wasn’t. But that wasn’t true. It had always been Finn, she just hadn’t realised it. You can never want two people the same way. Neil never understood that.
*
Billy was in his usual place when Neil and Jasmine arrived at the pool the next day. Neil nodded across as he passed, but Jasmine kept her head down. She set her towel out on her lounger.
Neil looked at her. “You go so brown, so easily,” he said.
Jasmine adjusted her sunglasses and rested her arms down the side of her body.
“Shame to have tan lines,” Neil said. “Take off your top.”
Jasmine looked at him. “Why?”
“You’re shy,” he teased.
She shot a glance over to Billy. “I don’t want people staring,” she said.
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Neil said. He sat on the edge of her lounger and leaned into her. “What’s wrong with giving the old boy a view he’ll enjoy?” he whispered, and he nudged the straps of her bikini top over each shoulder until it slumped down.
She did not look in Billy’s direction. She could not bear to. She lay back again, topless, and closed her eyes and felt the gaze of two men upon her. It meant she couldn’t settle.
*
That evening, in the shower, Neil teased her that her breasts were pink and sunburned. He undressed and came in behind her, enveloping her under the blast of water.
He said, “You were a good girl to take your top off today. Our friend admired it.”
“I didn’t do it for him,” Jasmine said.
“I think you like showing off,” Neil said. He was erect again; he had taken the shower gel and was working it over her body so her skin was frothed and slick.
He bent his knees slightly and pressed into her. Jasmine was surprised by how quickly he was inside her, how easily she responded to his thrusts and how quickly they both headed towards a climax. She turned her face upwards under the shower head and as she came it felt like she was drowning.
*
Neil had been awkward with her all evening. He seemed happy enough, but he paced the room, cleaned his teeth, and drew the sliding doors to the balcony back and forth until she pleaded with him to stop. Jasmine suggested they went out drinking, or maybe found a new club somewhere, but Neil said he wanted to stay in. She shrugged.
So they lay in bed together, watching a reality TV programme in Spanish that made no sense. Neil looked at his watch and clicked the remote off. He snuggled into her.
‘Baby?’
‘What?’
“If I asked you to do something would you do it?”
“You always ask me to do things. I always do them.”
“Well, put this on,” Neil said. He dangled an eye mask between his fingers.
“Where did you get that from?” Jasmine laughed. But she took it and drew it over her head until it covered her eyes and the world turned black.
Jasmine was still smiling. ‘Is this some sort of a surprise?”
“You could say that,” Neil said. “Lie back now. Further.”
The room was silent for a minute. “Neil?” she said. No answer.
She heard a door opening and some whispering. And then she guessed what might be happening because Neil had surely planned this. She couldn’t believe he would do this.
She did not remove the mask.
A weight on the mattress shifted Jasmine’s body. The bed squeaked. Another weight – a second knee.
Jasmine waited.
The thin sheet that was covering her was drawn down. Jasmine was exposed. She was only wearing a pair of panties. She pressed her legs together.
Two hands circled each of her ankles like bracelets. The hands drew up the sides of her legs. They were not Neil’s hands. They were bigger, rougher.
Jasmine sensed a body above her. And even from its smell, from its presence, she could tell it wasn’t Neil’s. The man above her took her hand and put it to his face. Her fingertips made out an unmistakable scar. It was Billy.
Billy’s hands went back to her body, down her sides, down her legs, and circling her ankles as they had done before. This time he was edging her legs open, her heels catching on the bed cover as they came apart.
Tiny kisses now graced the inside of her calves and her thighs, higher, higher and ever lighter until the kisses reached her underwear and warm breath came through the material and the kisses became generous and uncountable and without even noticing how, her panties had been pulled to the side and a tongue was lapping at her exposed pussy expertly, making her twitch. And while the tongue was on her, running in solid strokes around the point where she craved it, Neil finally spoke.
“That’s it, baby. That’s what you want.”
Jasmine’s eye mask had drifted up beyond her brow, but she kept her eyes closed; she could not focus. Her imagination rose above her; she felt her body dropping onto the strange tongue that somehow seemed to know her and how she would respond.
It was a shock when she felt the weight of a second body on the bed.
She opened her eyes just as Neil’s cock arrived at her mouth. Without thinking – she could not think – her mouth opened and his cock squeezed past her teeth and drew over her tongue.
She could not concentrate on it though. Her own hands were tugging at her panties, trying to escape them and make her legs wide and inviting to a tongue that was on the cusp of making her cum. There was a hand on her breast, another opening her legs, a tongue at her pussy, a cock in her mouth.
For the briefest of moments, Jasmine wanted two men. A prickling heat spread across her like a stain, and she knew she was close. As second before the first wave of orgasm hit her, Neil’s cock seemed to swell further in her mouth and he spurted, first into the back of her throat and then, as he withdrew from her, over her cheek and her ear.
At the same time, Billy drew up alongside Jasmine on the other side and stroked her hair. Jasmine reached for his cock in a clawing movement. He seemed to flinch, but once she had captured him he relaxed in her grasp. How different he felt. She began to stroke him and Billy moaned, tremorous and low. Her hand went faster, the movement accompanied by a wet slapping noise. Neil was on his knees on the mattress, watching silently as Billy raised his hips a final time and came in sharp pulses up Jasmine’s arm.
Afterwards, they all lay side by side, Neil on her right – the window side of the room – Billy on the left. No-one spoke. Jasmine stared at the ceiling. Her eye mask was still on, pushed up so far it was gathering her hair in an updo. Eventually, Billy’s breathing deepened and he began to snore, softly.
“That wasn’t how I expected it to be,” Neil whispered.
“I wasn’t expecting it either,” Jasmine said.
“I mean, I was more jealous than I thought.”
Jasmine said nothing. She was still in the embers of the moment, still thinking of what she had done, of a tongue that had made her cum so effortlessly. Still thinking too, of the way Neil had gone about things.
Neil whispered, “I’m glad nothing more happened, baby.”
Jasmine lay thinking until she too fell asleep with the cum of two men still drying on her, unaccountably lonely.
*
Jasmine did not wake until Neil stirred around dawn, heading for the bathroom. She heard him turn the shower tap on. Jasmine edged backwards, wondering if Billy was still there. He was. His body was warm against her and she was aware, after a few seconds, of his erection pressing against her lower back.
Jasmine’s eyes blinked open. Her hand drifted behind her and clawed at Billy’s cock for several seconds, reminding itself of its shape. Her hand awkwardly clutched his shaft and began to work into some sort of rhythm. But she wanted more.
She turned around and kissed Billy’s mouth, then his chin, his Adam’s apple, his breastbone. She kissed along one arm and along every finger until the coolness of his wedding ring touched her tongue. Billy flinched again.
Neither of them moved for a moment. But Billy was aroused, his erection lying long and beached on the flatness of his lower belly. Jasmine straddled him and kissed him again. Her tongue pushed greedily into his mouth. Behind her, she found his cock and adjusted it. It worked its way into her and as it did so, Jasmine breathed out.
Billy pushed up and grasped her bum cheeks. He thrust up, deep inside her and she wanted to say how perfect it felt but she couldn’t because at the moment Billy was pushing inside her, Neil came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist. He froze when he saw Billy’s cock, thick and shining, entering his girlfriend time and time again.
“Oh, God,” he said. He started to climb on the bed, but Jasmine held her hand out.
“No,” she said. “I told you. I don’t like threesomes.”
Billy thrust into her harder, and Jasmine rose up and sighed.
Neil watched for some time, then opened the sliding doors to the balcony and stepped outside and looked out, towards the sea, only occasionally glancing back at the couple on the bed.
