A Summer Vacation: A Wife-Swapping Novella Read Free Page A

open, and she had no idea what to say.
    The tension gripped Steve a different way though: he could feel a new desire inside of him, a seed being planted, an idea that would never really leave him after that moment, just continue to grow into a fevered fantasy that he had to keep to himself. It didn't come from the idea of an orgy, though that obviously had its merits. It didn't come from Zahra's panty-flash, or the idea of having sex with her – though these things, too, had their merits as fantasies.
    No. The thing that he pulled out of his memory of that night, again and again, to spin into a fantasy, was the way that Reza looked at Helena. The way another man raked his eyes possessively over his girlfriend, who later became his wife. After he married Helena, the fantasy only intensified, actually, as if the designation “wife,” had a magical power of its own. He had no more than to think about how Helena was his wife, and imagine Reza looking at her like he had that night, to get hard.
    And then he began to imagine Reza standing up and crossing the room. Sliding the straps of Helena's tank top from her shoulders. Dipping his dark hand into her shirt and cupping her breast.
    And then he began to embellish that fantasy: to imagine Reza standing up, and crossing the room, and unzipping his pants, and holding out his cock for Helena. Who would smile sheepishly, and give Steve a sideways glance, before opening her mouth, shrugging, much as Zahra just had, and swallowing it whole.
    The fantasy had gone on, all these years, from there. Steve had started to include other men, imagine other scenarios.
    But Reza's stare, and Reza's prowess as a man, had been the inception of Steve's fantasy. It was still the most potent image he could conjure, the one he liked best. When he imagined a man ramming his cock into Helena, making her sweat and moan, and then filling her up with his cum – it was Reza he liked to imagine most.
    Back at the table, ten years later, things were different. They were all married, Steve and Helena had kids.
    But things were not so different, not really. Steve watched Reza smile at Helena, and he could see the same possessive lust with which he moved his eyes over breasts. And inside Steve, it clawed at his chest and wrung his stomach into knots. And his cock got so hard he grimaced.
    “You okay, honey?” Helena said.
    Steve raised his glass in a toast, because he doubted his voice at that moment.
     
    The evening turned inky-blue, guests came and went, and Reza excused himself a few times to see the departing part-goers off to the door.
    “So you're not doing anything this summer, then?” Zahra said to Helena, during a lull in the conversation.
    Helena was taking a break before going back out into the workforce, something she wasn't even sure she wanted to do. With the kids finally old enough to send to a summer camp and their grandparents, she had a nice vacation stretching out in front of her. At Steve's suggestion, Steve thought smugly.
    “You should come over here,” Zahra said, setting her drink on the table next to her with a slight clang. Her voice seemed to have turned into an alcoholic beverage: smoother, a little slurred, rich and more Persian than usual. She held her hand to her forehead, almost as if she had noticed the sound of her voice herself. “I've had too much to drink,” she stated, but her tone was not apologetic. More statement of fact.
    “I have the whole day free for the summer,” she continued. “I just sit out here at the pool and enjoy the sun. Sometimes I have a party,” she jiggled a little in her chair, excited by the prospect of dancing, as Zahra had always been. Her firm breasts moved underneath the bikini, promising to make the whole thing come undone. Steve had to fix his eyes rigidly on the table to keep from staring.
    “Every day you have a party,” Reza said. He had the tone of an admonishing husband but he ended by smiling.
    Zahra flopped back into her