[The mini-series, “Mount Bliss,” continues from “Asses Up” with a story of reuniting lovers.]

Lola’s Nectarine

There we were, the six of us, finally, all together.  Lo and Lily, naked as water nymphs wading in the blue lake.  Collin, a seeming avuncular benefactor to his young niece and her attractive friend.  Suzanne, sitting bemused by her husband’s masochistic tendencies.  Oh, and the two dogs, Shadow and Bandit, lounging in the warm sun, too lazy to bark at Jim and me as we approached the backyard, they merely lifted their heads and looked over with expressions of mild curiosity mixed with ennui.

After Lola had greeted me and Lily greeted Jim, the two of them had made proper introductions of me to Suzanne since, as of yet, I had never met her.  I could see a spark of interest in her eye as I shook her hand politely and Lo showed me off like a prize on a game show.  I didn’t want to be Suzanne’s prize.  I just wanted to be unwrapped by Lo.

I greeted “Uncle Collin” with an external warmth and “manly” handshake that masked my deep-seated antipathy toward him.  Collin and Suzanne were hospitable, offering us lunch, cold drinks, and to change clothes if we wished to enjoy the lake.

I didn’t know how to say, “Can you all please just allow Lola and me some private time to ourselves before we join you?”  So I didn’t say that.  Not to mention, Lo seemed quite content with making me suffer by continuing my physical deprivation of her body and my mental agony of seeing her show off her assets before my nemesis, Collin.

As I said, Lo and Lily waded into the placid lake as Jim and I sat on lounge chairs, tall Gin and Tonics by our sides, making small talk with Collin and Suzanne.  “How was the ride?”  “What the hell’s happening in the big city?”  “Have you heard all the adventures that we’ve been up to here?”

That last question, spoken in his boisterous tone by Collin, landed like a grenade in my lap.  I wanted to say, “Yeah, I heard about how you have been living out all your fantasies of seducing girls one-third your age, one of whom is your niece no less!”

I suppose this was a writer’s karma coming back to bite me since a while back I had written lurid, lengthy passages about The Nutcracker and Clara’s relationship with her Uncle Drosselmeyer.  Here, life was imitating my art (or philosophical musings) as Uncle Collin played the prurient host to titillate Lo with his perfectly choreographed vignettes of vice.  Of course, that’s not the way Lo saw things.  According to her, Collin was a perfect gentleman, showering upon her all the kindness and attention that she rightfully deserved.  Vanity skews reality terribly.

The girls sat down on their towels in the sun as Jim, Collin, and I sat in chairs.  We were all facing out toward the lake.  Collin offered to get the girls another drink.  Lo asked for a tall glass of ice water in addition to another G&T.  It seems to me that there is an unwritten rule that women must do things in pairs, never solo, and so Lily also asked for a tall glass of water on the side.

I tried to be a good guest and offered to help Collin, but he turned me down and encouraged me to “get reacquainted” with Lola.

Suzanne returned with a tray of drinks.  In her absence, she apparently changed into a skimpy outfit.  Not quite nude, but not hiding anything either.  The dogs were dutifully by her side.

Lola accepted the drinks graciously and then Jim and Lily got up to play a game of horseshoes on the lawn.  Lola remained, sitting on her towel across from me.  She sat up and bent her knees, displaying her crotch to me.

“Hot today,” she said with a seductive sip of her straw.

She pulled out an ice cube from her glass and ran it over her lips, under her chin, down her neck, over her nipple, and down to her crotch, over her clit and, eventually, slipped it right in her cunt.

“That feels goooood,” she said.  “Miss me?”

I was practically drooling as I looked at her.

She repeated her performance with another ice cube, delighting in my discomfort.

Then she took the remaining four or five ice cubes out of the cup and slipped them into her pussy.

“Do you want to play, Daddy?” she asked.

“Play what?” I queried.

“A game,” she said ambiguously.  She then crawled on all fours toward me and, when she got right between my legs as I sat in my lawn chair, she kneeled in front of me and put her elbows on my knees and looked up at me.  She said, “I missed you.”

It was nice to hear those words from her mouth.  But I shouldn’t have been fooled.  She was not being sweet, she was being sexy.  Just after the words I longed to hear dripped off her lips, the ice cubes she had been harboring inside her hot snatch dropped from her sopping pussy onto the grass.

“Whoops,” she said.  “I guess I’m not as tight as I used to be.”

“I’m interested in seeing our sleeping quarters,” I said to her.

“Oh, Daddy, you’re in such a rush.  Let’s enjoy the weather while it’s still sunny out.”  She could see my raging hard-on through my shorts and she said, “I’ll make it all up to you later.”

“I’m not going to enjoy anything until I hear about your time here.”

She knew what I meant by hearing about her time.  Our special pillow talk.

“Oh, Daddy, it’s been so much fun!” she almost squealed.  “I wish we could go back and do everything again with you!”

“What did you do?”

“You’ll hear all about it tonight.  But right now, let’s make some new memories together.”

She got up and Suzanne called us to join the others to eat.  Lola and Lily put on some skimpy shreds of fabric and we headed up for a late lunch.

They had grilled out on the deck and I was famished.

As we sat around the table in the backyard, I tried to tamp down how much I despised Collin and did my best to avoid the flirtations that I perceived from Suzanne.

“It’s too bad you couldn’t join us, H,” said Collin in his booming voice that made everything he said sound like a brag.  “You would have really enjoyed it.  I think the girls did.”

“The girls?” I thought.  Such a chauvinist.  Where was Lo’s feminist streak?  I guess it washed off in the lake or she shed it while streaking around the back yard.

“But don’t think I spoiled them,” he continued.  “Oh no.  I made them work for their room and board.  I think Lo might have even developed blisters on her hands from the effort.”

“Is that so?” I asked, turning to Lo.  “Let me see the palms of those delicate hands.”

Lo showed me her hands and said, “I had to tug and squeeze and pull and yank, just to get a little bit of cream.  But the taste was sooooo rich and sweet that it was totally worth it.”

“Did you churn it as well?” I asked, playing along with her.

“I sure did.  I churned it until all that cream turned to butter.”

“I bet you did.  Golden, sweet butter.  I can’t wait to taste it.”

“And my peach?!”

“Peaches,” I corrected her.  “You picked more than one, didn’t you?”

“There’s only one worth having,” she said.  “But did I say peach?  I meant, nectarine.”

Collin served up the burgers, steak, veggie kabobs, and Suzanne brought out the salad and more drinks.

“Isn’t he a darling?” asked Suzanne to Lola with reference to me.  She had a barely perceptible southern drawl that came out more pronounced in her question.

“I see now,” said Lo, “he is just the darlingest darling.”  Her voice was conveying a lot of latent content, most of it hostile to both me and Suzanne.

Suzanne was fluttering around, clearly trying to impress in what was basically her lingerie as she attended to Jim and me.  After five days of being a recluse in her room, suddenly Suzanne was eager be the life of the party.  She vigorously mixed our martinis in the shaker above her head like a bartender straight out of Cowboy Ugly.  She bent over to pour out the drinks into the fancy, handmade, delicate glasses.  She strutted her stuff in heels across the slate floor and generally put on a Lola-worthy performance.  It afforded me a glimpse into the life of Lola in twenty years (when I’m either dead or in the old-age home).

She had been friendly, in a cordial way, to Lo and Lily, but now she was flirty, vivacious, and playing the role of the vixen.

Collin watched with a just perceptible look of perturbance on his face.  Not outright scorn or contempt, but a subtle disapproval of her behavior.  Who was he, though, to call her out?

After a few drinks, I stopped avoiding the unwelcome attention of Suzanne and began to  enjoy it to the exact degree that it annoyed Lola to witness.  And the more I displayed my pleasure at Suzanne’s doting over me, the more Lola was visibly disturbed by the spectacle.

Jim was only slightly less distraught than Lo due to Suzanne’s uninvited flirtation.  Lily paid her no mind, as if Suzanne was merely a summer fly that had to be tolerated, but couldn’t ruin all the other benefits of the great outdoors.  We sat around the deck sipping our drinks in the afternoon sun, which made the already potent concoctions even more powerful.  I was pacing myself, but I noticed that for every drink the rest of us downed, Suzanne had pounded two.

Soon afternoon had turned to early evening and Collin lit the fire pit.

It was as if a switch had flipped in Suzanne’s head and without warning her hospitality and flirtation transposed into hostility and vindictiveness, aimed mostly at Collin.

“What do you think, Collin,” she taunted with spite, “should I take H here on a trip to the hotel?  Strip him down naked, and enjoy some eye-candy?  Would you like that?  Maybe he would like this?” she said, rubbing her hands over her hips.  What had seemed charming and attractive just a little while ago, now, with the admixture of too much alcohol, appeared to me rather disgraceful and repugnant.

For the first time since I met him, Collin was visibly uncomfortable, not in control of the situation, and at a loss.

“That’s enough of that,” he said to Suzanne, feigning power, but revealing fear.  “Tell me, H, of this big case that kept you away this week,” he said to me, trying to steer our attention away from his wayward wife.

“Yes, H, tell us,” Suzanne said, stealing the spotlight again.  “Did you press your point hard?  I bet you have such an interesting job.  Not just vicariously getting animals to live your life for you.”

I let out a nervous laugh and said, “It’s actually quite boring.”

“Boring?!” squealed Lo.

“Of course, I don’t mean you.  I mean work.”

“See, Collin, how he adores her?” Suzanne tossed in his face.

“That’s enough,” began Collin.

“And he doesn’t even hold it against her that she’s a little slut for you.”

“Hey,” I said, feeling like I needed to come to the defense of Lola despite the fact that we’ve never before regarded the S-word as a slur.  But between us it isn’t meant as an insult.
“No, no,” said Collin, “let her talk.  Let her show you who and what she really is.”

Now it was getting very tense at the table and Lo, always the social lubricant, interrupted it to say she’d help clear the dishes.  She got up and grabbed a few plates from in front of us and sashayed toward the house.

“Can I get anyone anything while I’m up?” she asked over her shoulder.

Collin was busy staring down Suzanne.  Suzanne was busy staring at me.  Jim was suggesting to Lily that they go to bed and Lily excused herself to help Lola.  What an uncomfortable set of sexually frustrated friends.

“Collin, did you know that HH is a scholar of art history?” Lily asked, interrupting the thick silence.

“No, no I didn’t.  I thought he was a lawyer.”

“People can be more than one thing,” said Suzanne.

“Would you like to show him your art collection?” suggested Lily.

“An excellent idea,” said Collin, clearly eager to get out of the close quarters of the dining area turned battlefield and eager to show off more of his monetary prowess.

He took me by the arm and began showing me various second-rate paintings and sculptures that he had acquired over the years and haphazardly arranged around the house.  None of it was worth a quarter of what he had paid for it, I’m sure.

When we were done with our little tour, he led us back to the living room where Lo and Lily were whispering something.

It was set up like a little conversation pit with a fireplace and round leather couches.  When we got there, Suzanne followed with the two dogs in tow.  She started teasing them and roughhousing with them until she was on all fours and they were nipping at her playfully, yipping and yapping.

“These two,” she said, “have been so jealous for my attention ever since you arrived.”

“Suzanne!” called Collin.  “Please!”

“They are so jealous.  They can’t stand to have other males in the house.”

“Stop it!”

“Well, except for Collin, of course.  But he doesn’t count.”

The dogs were jumping, getting behind her and lifting their front paws.

“That’s why they’re so frisky,” she laughed.

“SUZANNE!!!” yelled Collin.  This time Suzanne, clearly inebriated, merely laughed hysterically at the playful pets.

Just then there was a startling CRASH from behind us.

Suzanne & Bandit