The Beach House (10 page)

He snorted. “Can’t turn shit into gold.”

Jenni had no idea why he treated her this
way, putting her down constantly, making out she was ugly. It
caused her to doubt what the reflection in the mirror showed, made
her doubt her own judgment. She ate the rest of her food in
silence, all taste gone so she chewed without being aware of the
clean sweet sea tang of the snapper. She was trying hard not to let
tears flow, trying not to let him catch a glimpse of how much he
hurt her.

It hadn’t always been this way. Jenni loved
him once. Thought she loved him. Now she couldn’t remember if the
emotion was love or something else. She had been escaping her
reputation, escaping her wild past. Nineteen, a year out of high
school but the wildness had started long before then, the word out
about her. Jenni no knickers. Blow job Jen. Want a good time, want
to get laid? Hey, try Jenni, she’ll fuck anyone. What made the
whole thing worse was that everything they said was true; in those
days she would fuck anyone, try anything. Not because she was easy,
but because she loved sex, loved how she felt as another body moved
against hers. She became frustrated, trying to find satisfaction
somewhere but ending up giving satisfaction only to others.

The winter after she turned nineteen she
made herself a promise to stop sleeping around, to find someone who
loved her, who didn’t want her because she had a great ass and big
tits and would let them fuck her any which way. That promise led
her to choose Mark.

He hadn’t chased after Jenni, instead it had
been the other way round. Mark was quiet, two years older than
Jenni, a steady job working for his Dad’s auto repair shop and he
looked okay; not great, but okay. He didn’t want to fuck her every
second of the day and night. That had seemed a blessing. If only
she had realized what it meant, but instead she welcomed the
respite, welcomed the lessening of the rumors. When she and Mark
married a year later it was like a comfort blanket wrapping around
her.

At the start life had been okay. Acceptable,
anyway. She grew used to the fact he didn’t want sex as often as
she did, learned to live with that. She grew used to his moods and
the comments, always denigrating her, always making out she was
nothing special until she doubted all the things anyone said to her
that made her believe differently. Things had changed so slowly
Jenni couldn’t pin down any exact moment when she started to hate
the marriage and what she had become. Like a toad in a pan of
water, not aware it was growing hotter until too late, she accepted
more and more degradation. Sometimes the contrast between what was
then and what was now stopped her cold and she wondered how things
had managed to get so bad.

Jenni started looking around for
satisfaction elsewhere only when she could stand the frustration no
longer. Always with visitors, always with strangers until Paul,
never with anyone from the island. She had been discreet. Mark
might not want her, but she believed if he discovered what she did
in secret he might kill her. Sometimes she wondered if that would
be a better solution. Let him find out; kill or cure,
literally.

Jenni cleared the plates and Mark went to
the hallway and pulled on his coat.

“Are you going out again?” she asked,
instantly aware it was the wrong question tonight when he whirled
back, strode across the kitchen and slapped her across the
cheek.

“Why? D’you care?” he snarled, turning away.
“Don’t bother waiting up.”

The door slammed and Jenni ran water into
the sink, allowed her tears to run free across her cheeks and drop
to mix with the hot water. Through the window the evening lay dark
on the hillside behind their small house, made even darker by heavy
cloud. In the distance she heard thunder, saw an occasional far off
stab of lightning glowing through cloud.

Maybe she’d get lucky and one of those bolts
would seek ground through Mark, when he finally made his way back
from the bar. She went upstairs and searched through the small
bookcase in the spare bedroom. Somewhere, she knew, she had copies
of both Joe’s books and she wanted to read them again. She found
the first, a battered hardback she had bought from a thrift store.
She took the book downstairs and curled up on a chair and opened it
to the back cover where a photograph showed Joe. He looked younger,
his hair shorter. He looked sexy as all hell. She turned to the
front page and started reading.

***

Joe and Kim took Ami out in her sling, walked the
dark beach, pale phosphorescent waves rolling in, the sound soft in
the night. The moon had risen three-quarter full and stars filled
the sky other than to the east where high thunderclouds gathered.
Wind blew in intermittent gusts, and from far over the sea came a
faint, distant sound of thunder. The smell of seaweed gathered
above the tideline offered its half-unpleasant scent to the air,
and they walked close to the surf where the wind blew in over the
ocean

“Storm coming,” Joe said.

“Ayuh,” Kim said and they both laughed. She
had been raised in New England, but no-one would guess unless she
wanted them to.

When they came back into the house they
tucked Ami, still sleeping, into her cot then lay under a single
sheet, listening as the wind gathered strength and worried around
the house. The waves sounded louder and thunder came more
frequently. Neither of them wanted to sleep, but they didn’t want
sex either so they lay side by side, chastely holding hands,
listening as wind spattered the first raindrops against the open
bedroom window.

“The rain’s going to come in,” Joe said. “I
should get up and close the window.”

“Leave it. Nothing’s going to spoil.”

They fell silent again. Rain came more
persistently and the room cooled. Kim rolled over and hugged
herself against Joe, her hand cradling his balls.

“Joe?”

Thunder rolled and he waited for the sound
to fade. “Mm-hm?”

“I wasn’t joking before.”

“About what?”

“There’s something about that woman, Joe.
I’ve never been turned on by anyone except you. Why is that?”

“She doesn’t know how incredible she is,
does she.”

“Mm... We’ve joked about this before, Joe,
but I’m not joking now.” Kim’s fingers were stroking his balls, and
even though he didn’t want sex his cock responded.

“Tell me what you want, Kim,” Joe said, the
subject of their conversation exciting him.

“We’re going to kill each other if we don’t
stop.” Kim rolled on top of him, slid down so his cock entered her.
She lay flat against him, hardly moving, her lips against his
shoulder. Joe felt her nipples harden against his chest, her
breasts flatten.

“You know I love you,” Joe said.

Kim chuckled. “I want to... I want to fuck
her, Joe,” she said, and it was out in the open, her voice sounding
a little shocked.

“Me too, babe, me too.”

“You do?”

This time Joe laughed. “You’re kidding,
aren’t you?”

“A little, yeah. You don’t mind I want to
fuck another woman?”

“I guess I’m supposed to.”

“You are. So what would you do if I fucked
her?”

“Do you want me to mind?”

“I need to know, Joe. I can’t tell you what
to feel.”

“Is it what
you
want, Kim. Do you
really want to fuck her?”

Kim was moving against him now, slowly,
softly, but she was tight around his cock and he knew she was going
to make him come eventually, make him come like she always managed
whether he was in the mood or not, he was so crazy in love with her
she was capable of making him do anything she wanted.

“I think I do.”

“It’s not just some… I don’t know, some
infatuation? You’ve never shown interest in women before.”

“I’ve never told you, Joe.”

“You have?”

She wriggled. “You still haven’t answered my
question. How would you feel about it if I fucked Jenni?”

“Depends.”

“Depends on what?” Kim’s voice had grown
soft and despite his cock lying rigid inside her pussy he felt her
body loosen against him.

“If I can fuck her too.”

Kim’s mouth formed a smile against his
shoulder. “As well as, or together? I think I like the idea of all
that.”

Joe laughed softly. “Who are we kidding?
She’s probably not interested.” Joe grasped Kim’s ass in his hands,
encouraging her to move a little faster but she teased, responding
by going completely slack on top of him. Her passivity aroused him
even more and he felt his cock harden painfully inside her.

“Oh, she’s interested,” Kim said. “A girl
can tell these things. So can you. Trust your instincts. She’s
interested, Joe.” Kim’s voice was soft, slurred, her body loose as
she lay against him. Her bones were melting, muscle dissolving.

“Do you want to fuck right now?” Joe asked.
He was rigid inside her, encased inside the slick warmth of her
pussy.

“No, not really. But it’s nice like this.”
Kim squirmed against him.

Joe stroked her back as she loosened
further. Thunder sounded close to, and Kim jerked as it brought her
awake but almost instantly Joe felt her drift again. Her mouth
opened where it lay against his shoulder and saliva dribbled on to
his chest. She began to snore softly against his skin and Joe
smiled into the dark and let his hand rest in the small of her
back. He was still hard but knew any chance of real sex was gone.
That was fine, because this was good too, so comfortable with Kim
sleeping on top of him, her body molded against his. Every now and
then she mumbled and her hips moved, as though she dreamt of what
they might be doing.

The storm came in full force. Rain lashed
the windows and Joe heard it spatter on the floor, but Kim was
right, nothing would spoil. Thunder crashed overhead and Kim
stirred again. Joe took the opportunity to ease her body off his.
His cock slid from inside her, cooled as air caressed it, and he
rolled Kim on her side and spooned around her, his cock lying stiff
along the crack of her ass, his hand wrapped around to cup her
breast and eventually sleep claimed him as well.

***

Mark woke Jenni as he returned home, late and drunk,
stumbling around the bedroom while he let his clothes fall wherever
he managed to get out of them. He fell into bed beside her in his
shorts and reached across without a word. This was how they had sex
now, as though he needed to get himself drunk enough to want
her.

Jenni tried to ignore him, tried to feign
sleep, but Mark didn’t care whether she was conscious or not. Jenni
turned her head aside as he climbed onto her, not even bothering to
pull his shorts down. He fumbled his cock through the elastic of
his shorts and pushed her legs apart. She was dry, but it hardly
mattered because his cock was slim and he forced himself into her,
humping rapidly, coming fast and rolling away.

He fell asleep in moments, and when she was
sure Mark was comatose Jenni slipped from their bed and went along
the hall to the bathroom, washed the evidence of his anger away.
Anger it was, she knew. There was no love in what Mark did to
her.

Jenni had gone on the pill after the episode
with Paul, not wanting to take any chances, knowing Mark would go
wild if she fell pregnant. Truthfully, she did not want Mark’s
child now. A child, yes, but not his. Jenni was also honest enough
to admit to herself that the pill was an acknowledgment she was
going to repeat the betrayal of her marriage. The act of taking the
small daily pill permission to herself.

She sat on the edge of the bath, hearing the
storm batter around the house and made a resolution. She would
leave him, if that was possible. As soon as the thought came she
felt better, smiling into the mirror, smiling at the pretty woman
sitting across from her that couldn’t be her because Mark kept
telling her she was ugly, so someone else must have crept into the
house and taken her place. Good. Maybe it meant she could sneak out
without being missed.

“
Mark, get out of bed or you’re going to be
late for work!” Jenni shouted up the stairs. She could have added:
Again
.

Lately Mark seemed not to care whether he
his job was there or not. He might work for himself, but the few
customers who still came to him would soon drift away if he was
never there when they called. Well, if
he
didn’t care, Jenni
did. They had little enough money coming in, and what Mark earned
he drank half of. If not for the cleaning and laundry Jenni did
they wouldn’t have food on the table. Mark still expected food on
his table.
His
table; according to Mark
everything
was his stuff, nothing hers.

Jenni returned to the kitchen and cracked
two eggs in the pan she had fried bacon. The eggs spat and
crackled, bubbling around the yolk the way Mark liked them. Jenni
preferred her eggs soft; she had no idea how Mark could eat them
like this, burned beyond all taste, but she knew if she tried to
change things she’d earn a slap, or worse.

She turned the eggs over, slid them on a
plate next to the bacon, started a new pan for pancakes. Still no
sign of Mark. She slid the pan off the heat and shouted upstairs
again. No answer. She made her way up. He might not care his job,
but she did!

Jenni found him lying in bed. Jacking off.
She stood in the door and he grinned at her, unabashed, frantically
rubbing his small cock.

“Want some, sweetheart?” Mark’s voice shook
with the effort of his movement.

Jenni turned on her heel and stamped down
the stairs. How dare he! If he wanted sex why didn’t he ask her?
She had never said no, would
never
say no. Sex was one of
the pleasures she treasured, one of the aspects of her life she
recalled in memory rather than reality. Good sex, anyway. Who the
hell was he thinking about, on his own, in their bed? Not her, for
damn sure.