The de Winter's Tale

The de Winter's Tale.

Copyright © Naoko Smith 2015

Many thanks to Sara, curl4ever and Oggbashan for beta reading and giving me their insights into this story.

It was the best job in the world!

To start with, the pool belonged to Jeff Somers -- the millionaire writer who created the Dara Cruft character. Carl had of course grown up playing the spin-off games from Somers' books -- and surreptitiously reading the books. To actually have a job taking care of Jeff Somers' swimming pool was enough to make the kid in him punch the air with joy.

The job was designed as a sinecure to cover the summer break from college. You had a little money, a room over Somers' garage, meals with the rest of the household staff and you were supposed to take as much time off as you liked to write fiction.

Presumably Somers gave you tips on writing? Carl had what he later realised was a premonitionary qualm when the Head of English, Prof. Jones, said: "and of course, you will have guidance from Dr. de Winter." He thought the manic gleam in Jones' eye was just a reflection of light on his glasses but there was no disguising the reverential awe in Jones' voice.

Still, any guidance on his stories would be good, right. Even Jones' pedantic lectures about the use of the semi-colon had value and Carl had heard other students say de Winter gave top quality critique.

Carl laughed to himself about most of the feedback on his writing. He already had successful stories under a pseudonym on erotic writing websites and a substantial fanbase. What he wanted was Somers' advice. How did you write something that hit the big money like Somers had done?

Carl knew, of course, that a degenerative disease meant Somers now used a wheelchair. Was it to sublimate his wish for a more active life that he still wrote the Dara Cruft stories in which she loped effortlessly through jungles rescuing near-extinct species of moss and fungi? Carl did feel it for the old man, who had been a minor star on tennis circuits in the early days. You could sometimes still find an old copy of one of his books with a photo of him on the back wielding a racquet. Laughing with his blue eyes as well as his mouth, a sweater knotted carelessly over his broad shoulders, his thick blond hair swept back from a patrician brow.

He had looked something like Carl, although it was swimming that was Carl's sport. For Christ's sake! He was a junior league swimming champion and he had a summer job looking after a freaking swimming pool! Carl still swam regularly for exercise, although he no longer put in the long hours per day necessary for championship standard. Sure, they had murmured about Olympic hopeful to his parents but Carl was well aware that even if he hit that big time; even if he won one or two or three gold medals, it would all be over in a very short time. He would be left to make a living coaching the next set of hopefuls -- and some overly ambitious hopelesses. He wanted an easier route to fame and fortune.

"Feel free to use the pool yourself whenever you like," Somers said to Carl. "I usually use it myself mid-morning for half an hour, with my physio."

The big wheels on his chair were running smoothly along the marble floors of the hallway. Everything about the house was designed to suit Somers' mobility. The main living quarters were on the flat, with kitchens and staff quarters built into the basement.

Carl wondered if Somers was trying to tell him not to use the pool during that time. He felt supremely conscious of his own fully fit muscular body, walking in a lazy stride through the hall beside the man in a wheelchair.

"I'll make sure I have the pool clean by then, sir," he said.

Somers tilted his head sideways at Carl. His hair was thinning and white now but he still wore it swept back off the patrician brow. His brow was lined, you could see the suffering etched into it.

Carl had that uncomfortable feeling that came over him sometimes. He had the knack of seeing how other people's lives might be from the inside. What kind of pathetic struggles with pain and the indignity of loss of physical control coiled in Somers' mind? Carl didn't want to feel it. Then he saw a laugh twinkling in Somers' rheumy blue eye at odds with the assumptions Carl was making about him.

"Don't worry about that," Somers drawled. "Use the pool yourself whenever you like. Neither my wife nor I will mind. We just like to encourage a fresh writer if we can."

Carl realised that the old man was explaining his routine, in case Carl should find it difficult to see his spindly legs -- just now neatly encased in beautifully pressed navy blue wool slacks -- floating uselessly in the shimmering water.

"My wife will be back this evening," Somers added. "She'll be tired after her journey. She says she hopes you won't mind waiting till tomorrow to meet her." He seemed to look with particular meaning at Carl as he said this.

Carl wondered what Mrs. Somers was like. Some chubby motherly woman, perhaps, not quite so faded and lined as Jeff Somers? Keen to make sure Carl ate properly. He made a polite reply. He mentally sketched then rejected a story scenario featuring a plump MILF type who brought an apple pie to the fit pool boy and made it clear she needed servicing as well as the pool.

In the morning, he rose early and dutifully took the cover from the pool, inspected its sparkling waters and wrote a few hundred words of a story about a female spaceship officer to show Somers. Then he thought he would go for a swim, before poor old Somers had his turn in the pool.

He walked to the grassy slope of the closely mowed lawn from the garage. As he came up the fresh green slope, the swimming pool was laid out in angular splendour before him. It was right by the house but a neatly trimmed privet hedge hid it from the windows, forming a dark green backdrop. The white stone edging of the pool sparkled in the sunlight, the waters in the turquoise pool gleamed.

Centrally placed, right before his eyes as he came up the slope, a woman lay on a white sunlounger in a jade green swimsuit. The lounger was tilted so he saw her whole body as he came towards the pool. Her long dark hair cascaded around a magnolia petal face. She wore dark glasses so he couldn't see her eyes.

Her mouth was perfect. The upper lip had some kind of tuck in it. Combined with the full lower lip it made her look as if she were perpetually pouting in anticipation of your cock pushing at that plump lower lip.

The jade green swimsuit was ruched about the bosom to enhance breasts that didn't need any enhancement. They were sweet melons hanging in the dusky green of her costume, their full curves further emphasised by the trim figure of her narrow waist. The swimsuit was cut high in the leg but again, her long shapely muscular legs needed nothing to showcase their beauty. Water drops were scattered like glistening jewels on her pale clear skin. Her toenails were jade green tips to her pale toes, matching her swimsuit.

Carl's cock was filling against his thigh. He was glad he had worn swimming shorts and not a pair of tightly fitted speedos. He carried on walking up the slope under the blank stare of the sunglasses. The light breeze made his t-shirt flutter against his muscular chest. He felt intensely conscious of the breeze on his skin, of his strong legs moving up the lawn, of the rough nap of the rolled towel he was carrying, tucked under one arm.

Jeff Somers appeared, wheeling his chair round the hedge. He was carrying a tray on his lap with two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice on it.

"Oh Camille," he said. "This is Carl. Carl -- my wife. Would you like some juice too, Carl? I'll call for another glass."

The perfectly pouted lips parted.

"Carl may have my juice," she said.

The perfect fucking job! Surely, surely that was the real reason they took on a student every summer who didn't actually have to clean the pool. The gardener took care of the pool because he knew what balance of chemicals to put in it, and when. They got someone in to take care of Mrs. Somers' ... needs, just like they got people in to cook and clean and take care of their swimming pool and of Jeff Somers' needs.

She threw Carl into a fever. He couldn't think clearly. All he could think about were those legs wrapped around him. Perhaps while he stood in the shed where the pool cover and extra sunloungers were stored, his physical prowess allowing him to support all her weight while his cock sank satisfyingly deep up into her cunt. All he could think about was sucking on her magnificent tits.

How would it happen? Would she appear with an apple pie; he laughed heartily at the absurd incongruities this picture presented to his mind.

Next morning, he was hurrying up the dew bedabbled slope of the lawn early. She was also an early riser -- there before him. As he came up over the brow of the sloping lawn, he saw she was already in the rippling waters.

She wore a lapis lazuli blue bikini. Her head stood up high and proud, out of the wake going before her. She was doing breast-stroke and every time her arms cut back in the clear water, her cleavage thrust forward into the ripples. Her long strong legs streamed out behind in her kick.

She swam to the side and held onto the white stone. Her fingers were right by his feet in flipflops. Her nails were painted blue today to match her bikini. She looked up at him and he saw that she had green eyes. Green eyes like woodland pools, fringed with long curling black lashes.

"Good morning, Carl," she said. "Jeff told me you are a championship level swimmer."

"I've won a cup or two," he acknowledged. He was looking in the green eyes tipped to stare up at him. On the edge of his vision he could see down into the dark cleft between those fabulous breasts.

"Perhaps you can help me with my ... technique," she said.

"I'll be happy to help any way I can," he answered.

She pushed off from the side to swim back up the pool. As he went to put his towel on a lounger and take off his t-shirt, he surreptitiously watched her peach of an ass moving up the pool. Her globular firm buns moved easily through the ripples. The dark blue of her bikini contrasted with her pale skin, making it pearlescent in the shimmering water.

He slid into the cool water, a shiver going over his whole body. Early morning swimming was the best: the sensation of the chill ripples against your warm skin intense on a body not yet dulled by the long day. Never mind when he was hyper-conscious of his own muscular strength, his golden tanned skin, his broad shoulders gliding through the waters in tandem with a beautiful woman.

She swam a couple more lengths then pulled over to the side near the house. He watched her white arms as she pulled herself out, water cascading off her ivory limbs and lapis lazuli bikini, her pearlescent skin. She took the clutch out of her dark hair and it fanned out, shining and free, around her head and shoulders as she turned.

"Will you have something for me by this afternoon?" she asked. He felt as if her green gaze could see through his loose swimming trunks to the cock which was already turgid and thick for her, bobbing in the water. She turned without waiting for his answer. Tossing her white towelling robe around her shoulders, she walked back to the house, diamond drops falling from her jewelled limbs.

Annoyingly, he found an email when he got back to his room, making an appointment for him at 2.30 in the library with Dr. de Winter. de Winter asked him to email a piece of descriptive writing outlining a character for feedback. Carl hoped Camille Somers would hear of this and understand why he wasn't at the pool early in the afternoon. He planned to rush over there as soon as de Winter had done of course.

Would she fuck him in the pool? Just strip off those lapis lazuli bikini bottoms and straddle him in the limpid waters. You couldn't see the pool from the house, but he had a feeling she was shy.

Carl tidied his room scrupulously in case she wanted to come back there for privacy. There were the cars in the garage, too. He kept his mind assiduously off the thought of fucking her on the bonnet of the Mercedes Benz GLE Coupé. He desperately didn't want to wank off and waste his spunk before the afternoon's delights.

Carl's female spaceship officer had long been lost in the space his fevered imagination inferred between Camille Somers' breasts. All he had were some descriptions of Camille, whom he had located in a strip joint from which she was to be rescued by a strong silent Marine.

He intended to come clean, or should he say dirty! about his erotic writing. Sex sells, doesn't it. He knew his erotica was shit hot, he had fans worldwide begging for more. He wanted to impress Somers - who presumably got the dibs from de Winter before he came in with his advice - with his best stuff.

He had lined up Starry Starry Night: the stomach-churning, spine-tingling tale of an artist driven to extremes of erotically described self-harming by his passion for a model with a perfect ass (described in considerable luscious detail). However, de Winter had specifically asked for character development and Carl was honest enough to admit that characterisation was not one of the strong points in Starry Starry Night.

In describing Camille-the-stripper, he had of course mainly focussed on capturing in lyrical prose the beauty of those priceless boobs and ass. However he had provided her some character in dialogue with her friend the obligatory natural redhead for stripper stories (red down there as well). He had sought to pull audience sympathy by depicting Camille-the-stripper as a tart with a heart; kindly advising her friend on how to get through the strip act. He had made her intelligent with world-weary cynical insights into the exploitation of hers and the redhead's beauty. This allowed for a quick and exhilarating pen picture of the mean manly atmosphere in the strip joint although he knew he would have written it out in later drafts as too heavy.

In the little time left after tidying round his room, he hurriedly emailed what he had to keep de Winter going. He could pretend he had just left the over-heavy characterisation in so as to discuss with de Winter whether that was too much for a commercialised erotic story. He doubted de Winter would recognise Camille-the-stripper. In his experience, people barely knew even themselves well enough to recognise when he had slipped them into a story.

He was nervous as he knocked on the door of the library. Not about his writing, of course. His mind was an hour ahead, already by the poolside. He had worn swimming trunks under his jeans: speedos.

He came in to the room shelved with books and well lit by two large French windows. You could carry books out onto the terrace, where there was a wrought iron table and loungers, if you wanted. Today, though, the windows were firmly shut.

Camille stood at the far end of the room, beyond a big table surrounded by chairs, by a desk scattered with books and papers. She was dressed in a perfectly tailored sharp grey skirt suit with a silk blouse which lay softly over her body under her double-breasted jacket. The sheen of the pale silk make her skin look like porcelain. Her long dark hair was up in a severe bun.

She held some papers in her hand. As Carl approached across the carpeted floor, he saw that it was his stripper story. It had been marked all over with comments in differently coloured inks.

The green eyes were glacial and the perfect mouth was pouting with scorn.

"Seriously?" was all she said.

He began to blush. Inside his speedos his dick shrivelled under her cold glare. "Camille ...," he stammered. "Uh, Mrs. Somers. I never meant you to see ..."

She tilted her head. Her expression became if possible even colder.

"I am happy for you to call me Camille," she said, in a voice so chilled that you could've poured it into a glass and put an olive in it. "However while we are working together, perhaps you had better address me as Dr. de Winter."

Even so expressive a writer as he himself, praised for the manner in which he set thrusting sexual activity in erotically charged sordid locations, could not find the words to describe the heat of burning shame which seemed to boil his cheeks as crimson red as the spanked buttocks of the sex slave in his Dungeon of Ultimate Pain.

Camille de Winter was indicating a chair at the table. He was intensely grateful for the opportunity to take the weight off his shaking legs. He bowed his head over the table and waited for her to tell him what a disgusting act of violation he had committed against her and her husband's generosity and hospitality. To his horror, she began to talk about his story. Seriously.

"... and in paragraph three, you put another semi-colon when what you want is a comma. The semi-colon would work here, of course, then you could at least drop that second 'but'. Try to avoid using 'but' wherever you can -- you have got it three times in this paragraph ..."

Devoutly he wished he could get his fucking butt out.

"Yes, I see," he whimpered, although he could barely make out through his unshed tears her blue-lacquered fingernail resting on the offending 'but' on the page in front of him.

Finally she stood up from the rags of his dignity which her excoriating review had left shredded before her. Straightening a small crease in her jacket with an efficient tug on the bottom of it, she walked to the library door. She turned as she opened the door.

"You have a real skill for characterisation," she said. Her voice was as cold as the summer sun on the terrace outside was hot. "You can draw on real life people and show us highly complex motivations in a sympathetic way. You provide excellent back story for your central character, making us understand why she might have chosen the difficult working environment of a strip joint. But do you really think a character like that would just be waiting around for some man to come and save her? So what? What does that do for us, to read a story like that? Where does it take me, the reader? Back into the Stone Age? Is that all you want to do with your skills?"

Finally Carl managed to raise his scarlet face from hanging over the table and slide a look over his shoulder at her. "Sex sells," he mumbled desperately. "Like ... adventure stories? I just thought ... perhaps, I could sell my writing."

Camille's look could not have become colder but it seemed to become harder.

"Selling sells," she said. "People who know how to sell can use sex, adventure, cream cakes to sell things we would not normally buy. If you just want to sell things, go down to the used car lot.

"Jeff and I wrote the adventure stories for fun .... I mean Jeff writes them," she spluttered. For the first time her composure was ruffled. Carl lifted his head higher. He looked at the arrows drawn over his story which told him parts of the action would work better in other sections of the story, that he had revealed too much back story too early in one place and needed less about a minor character, more about a major one.

Camille had recovered her poise: "Jeff always made sure Dara Cruft's motivation was to think about a fragile ecology. Do you want to know how many people wrote and said they realised a career in entomology was more important than becoming an astronaut because of the stories Jeff wrote? A whole team of PR specialists use the adventure in the stories to 'sell' them; neither Jeff nor I could sell ice in the Sahara. If you just want to make money, it doesn't matter a toss how well your stories are written; you should go back to school and switch your degree programme from creative writing to an MBA."