A Different Plan

Greetings to our readers.

We are new at Literotica and are unsure how to categorize this story. It involves Loving Wives, Group Sex and most of all a person whose spirit we celebrate and whose memory we cherish. What you will read here took place in March, 2005. We wanted to tell some of our story because aging and illness are taking their toll—we think that such_good_friends will only hold together for a couple more years. This chapter is one of two.

Our group has a history before and after this two-chapter episode—prequels and sequels if you will—but we thought this might be the best way to gauge interest in what we have to share. Ted wrote the first draft while waiting for passengers, circulated it to the rest, and this is what we have been able to piece together from our journals and memories. The location is the island of St. Martin. Readers who have been there will recognize the venues. Since the venues are relevant to the story—and to our shared experiences!—we have not changed them. We have changed our names and some details of our jobs so that we can protect our anonymity. Intimate friends might recognize us of course, but we trust their discretion.

We hope you enjoy these experiences. If you’re looking for non-stop sex scenes, you’ll be disappointed. This is neither erotica nor pornography. Think of it as a literary memoir. We’re ordinary people telling a story about adults coming to terms with some realities of life, and then making “a different plan”.

Perhaps our story will inspire you and your partner to try a new path. Go for it. We promised Carol we would grow and share. Not a bad promise to make to your partner, and to yourself.

If these stories resonate and we write more, we might combine them into a book. For this reason, our work is Copyright 2012, with all rights reserved.

Noon, Thursday, Orient Bay

“She still there?”

Paul looked at his wife, Gina, across the table at Papagayo where they were finishing a light lunch. Club Orient’s signature restaurant featured a patio with a view to the southern end of the beach. Gina peered across the tip of Paul’s shoulder to the woman in the one-piece black bathing suit. She sat knees drawn up at water’s edge, looking out across Orient Bay.

“Hasn’t moved since we sat down.”

“I told you something was wrong.”

Gina nodded. They had flown to the island to celebrate his recent retirement from his “day job” as a New York City police detective. His powers of observation didn’t seem to take much notice either of his new employment status or the fact that they were on vacation in St. Martin.

Gina wondered, “So how does a woman in a one-piece bathing suit on a beach signify that something’s wrong?”

Paul turned to look at her. “Three things. First, she didn’t walk here, she didn’t drive here, and she’s not a guest here. I saw her swimming along the beach, and she simply stopped at the jetty when she could go no further. Second, she’s isolated herself. There are three hundred people on this beach. She’s as far away as she can be. Third, wearing a tank suit on a nude beach in the middle of the largest nude resort in the hemisphere doesn’t compute.”

“Maybe she just wanted to see what the no-kini folks were doing?”

Paul shook his head. “The only thing she’s looked at for the past hour is the water. She could have done that anywhere on this beach, or on the other 36 beaches on the island. No, she doesn’t want someone to find her while she’s working through whatever she’s working through.”

Gina observed, “Suit or no suit, she’s going to get a hell of a sunburn if she’s not careful.”

Paul chuckled. Gina’s Mediterranean ancestry made the sun and her olive skin good partners. The five days that they had been at Club Orient had erased both of their winter pallors. At 53, Gina still turned heads. She fretted that her hair had turned silver, and her breasts were starting to see the effects of the earth’s gravitational pull, and there was a faded scar overlying her kidney transplant. Still, she was strong inside and out, and in Paul’s eyes she was still the beautiful bronze goddess that he married two decades ago. Her concern for the well-being of others simply made her more beautiful.

Gina started folding the last two cookies into a napkin and slipped a bottle of water from the table into her beach bag. “See you back at our umbrella, honey.”

Before Paul could get a word in, Gina threw her towel over her shoulder and set off towards the woman. It was his turn to smile. Gina was the senior social worker at one of New York’s larger hospitals and spent most days helping families in crisis. One of the reasons he liked her. One of the reasons he married her. Clothed or naked, the empathy came out full force.

He paid the check and wandered back to their spot on the beach.

***

Not wanting to startle the woman , Gina circled to the water’s edge. Gina caught the woman’s gaze, put the towel down next to her, and sat. She reached into her bag to offer the cookies and bottle of water.

“You look hungry.”

The woman looked up at her. Mid 40’s, Gina thought, brown eyes, short brown hair with streaks of grey. Engagement and wedding rings on her left hand. Like her detective husband, Gina was also a student of people.

“Do I know you?” the woman asked.

“Not yet. My name’s Gina.”

“Ellen. And thank you.”

Ellen took a long pull from the bottle. Devoured the first cookie. Washed it down with another deep swallow.

“Want to talk about it?”

Ellen shook her head. “It’s personal.”

“It always is.”

Ellen twisted the rings on her left hand.

“Did he leave you? Hit you? Cheat on you?”

A look of horror crossed Ellen’s face.

“No, much worse,” Ellen said. “I cheated on him. And I’m terrified that I’m going to lose him.”

Gina was only mildly surprised. Women strayed nearly as often as men, and rampant cheating contributed to half of all American marriages ending in divorce.

“Does he know?”

Ellen pawed at the sand . “Oh God, no, it would break him.”

“What happened? ” asked Gina.

As Ellen started to talk, Gina slipped into social worker mode. The two women gazed out to the sea crashing on the rocks. Ellen was oblivious to the fact that she was talking to a naked stranger. Confession or catharsis, Ellen had to share the secret.

“It was four months ago. I was invited to speak at a scientific meeting in Chicago. The talk went great, and several attendees took me out to dinner afterwards. The waiter kept refilling my wine glass—it was half-full for four hours– and I was a little buzzed walking back to the hotel. One of my colleagues was staying on the same floor of the hotel…”

Ellen’s voice trailed to a whisper.

“He leaned down to kiss me good night. I knew it was wrong. I knew it. But all of a sudden, I felt more aroused than I had in years. Call it surprise. Call it adventure. I pulled him into the room and we were kissing, tearing our clothes off, and fucking like animals. It happened so fast…”

“We fell asleep and woke up around 4 a.m. I was frantic. He was embarrassed. He left and we never spoke of it again.”

Gina let the silence hang for a moment. “You made a choice. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. You think your husband wouldn’t forgive you? How long have you been married? ”

Ellen beat the sand around her. “Seventeen years. Two great kids. Jobs that we like–he’s in IT. But I’m not worried about forgiveness.”

“What then? What has you so upset?”

Ellen sighed deeply.”I really liked having sex with someone different. I love my husband more than anything else in the world. Having sex with him is the best. But I can’t stop fantasizing about other people. I bit into the apple in the Garden of Eden, and it tasted …delicious.”

For a few moments, both women fell silent and together stared out to the horizon. Gina framed her comments carefully.

“That’s a big stress for you and for your marriage. I imagine I’m the first person with whom you’ve shared your secret. So you know, I’m a professional social worker so everything you just told me is confidential. I’m not here to judge. I simply listen and reflect. I give guidance sparingly, and only when absolutely necessary. So there are two things you need to know. First, you’re not alone. I hear a similar story two or three times a week. People aren’t wired to be monogamous for decades or even years. You gave into a biological imperative.”

Ellen thought about it for a moment. “And the second thing?”

Gina replied, “If we don’t get you under an umbrella and get some more sunscreen on you, you’re going to turn into a boiled lobster.”

Ellen laughed, “You’re right.”

She turned around to follow Gina up the beach.

Ellen continued, “I feel a little foolish wearing a swimsuit with everyone else nude.”

Gina turned. “Nobody cares. And every single person on this beach used to wear swimsuits. Somewhere along the way, each decided on a different plan.”

Ellen paused, and Gina retraced her steps to stay alongside her.

“I suppose it would make putting on sunscreen easier.”

Gina remained silent.

“The straps on this suit aren’t comfortable anyway.”

Gina glanced at her.

“And there wouldn’t be tan lines.”

Gina started walking.

“Wait a sec.”

Ellen ran into the water and emerged a moment later, swimsuit in hand.

“Too much sand in the wrong places.”

It was Gina’s turn to laugh.

***

“Paul, meet Ellen.”

Paul put down the book he was reading– the latest Jack Reacher adventure—and looked over the top of his glasses.

“How do you do?”

Gina said, “See, his mother raised him right, to stand in the presence of a lady.”

Ellen blushed as Paul extended his hand. Although he was a few years older than she was, his close cropped grey hair, rugged face, and fit body had her undivided attention.

She glanced over at Gina who simply shrugged.

“Paul’s a cop—actually a recently retired detective. He’s the one who spotted you all alone.”

Paul also shrugged. “It’s what I do. Or did. What do you do?”

Gina started pouring out sunscreen onto Ellen’s fiery red shoulders.

Ellen winced. “Owww….” .

Gina said, “It’s got some aloe in it. Give it a moment and it’ll cool off the burn areas.”

Ellen began,” I’m a biology professor at Saint Louis University. Boring academics. But I work on human genetics.”

Paul looked past Ellen to his wife who imperceptibly shook her head side-to-side: Don’t pry. Stick with shop talk.

“I suppose that you used DNA evidence in some of your cases?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you might have heard of the man who taught me most of what I know about DNA forensics.” Ellen named the nation’s foremost expert in DNA evidence.

Paul blurted out, genuinely surprised, “You’re kidding, right? That guy wrote the book! I heard him testify once. He was brilliant! Tore the defense to shreds. Was he your professor in school?”

Ellen’s face crinkled into a smile. “Not exactly. He’s my dad.”

Gina rolled her eyes and groaned, knowing that this conversation was going to go on without her for a few minutes. Paul was like that, always learning and excited to hear about cutting-edge technology. Well, better that he hear about it from this woman than go back to being a detective.

“I’m heading up to the chalet . Would you two like some more water?”

Both nodded. Within moments Paul and Ellen were discussing the latest technology tagging criminals to their crimes.

Gina returned with a large plastic bag with cold fruit, more water, and her cell phone.

As soon as Ellen saw the phone, she clapped her hand to her mouth, “Fred!”.

Paul looked at her quizzically.

“My husband. He went on a parasailing adventure this morning and should be getting back to the hotel room about now.”

“What hotel?” asked Paul.

“L’Hoste”. Ellen had named a quiet seaside hotel about a mile up the beach.

“It’ll be a faster walk than a swim. Or I can drive you.”

“Either way, I’ll have to put my suit back on.” There was a hint of disappointment in her voice. Nude suddenly made more sense to her.

Gina picked up on the inflection, raising an eyebrow at Paul, who merely nodded approval. He knew what was running through Gina’s social worker mind.

“Ellen, give him a call and tell him you’re just down the beach and will be back in 20 minutes. Also, we’re having a couple of other couples over to our chalet for dinner. If you’d like to join us…”

Paul looked at Ellen as she punched in the number. He did a quick mental playback of the afternoon. Woman swims up. Clearly a fish out of water. Talks to Gina for 30 minutes. The two of them show up nude. He spends the next 45 minutes talking shop with someone he’s never met. Her husband doesn’t have a clue she’s calling from the nude end of the beach. No way on earth she’s going to accept that invitation.

“Honey, how was the parasailing?….I’m just down the beach and will be back in 20 minutes…They’ve invited us over to dinner…No, their chalet, a cookout, two other couples…I’ll tell you more when I see you…” Ellen glanced over at Gina, mouthing “what time?”

“Happy hour at 6:30,” said Gina.

“6:30 honey. Time for a shower and a quick nap. See you soon.” Ellen ended the call.

Gina looked over at Paul, knowing he bet against Ellen’s accepting the invitation. Catching his eye, she stuck her tongue out at him.

It was Paul’s turn to laugh. As a detective, he was really good at ferreting out the past. But his bride was a lot better at seeing the future.

***

As Ellen walked away to the textile section of beach, Gina and Paul busied themselves cleaning up the area, closing up the umbrella, and collecting the towels. Walking the few meters inland toward the chalet, Paul turned to Gina.

“Okay, what’s the story.”

Gina gave him an uncharacteristic response. “Gotta wear my professional hat on this one. I gave her my word.”

Paul protested. “C’mon. You don’t invite clients to over to naked dinners. Especially when the two other couples sleep together.”

Gina turned to her husband and said, ever so sweetly, “You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

Paul carefully considered his potential rejoinders and came up with the only one that made sense.

“Yes, dear.”

6:15 p.m., Thursday

As day turned to evening, Paul and Gina were joined by the couples who had the chalets on either side of them.

Ted and Liz came over first from Unit 62. Paul always thought of them as the bean pole pair, both tall and lanky, neither one carrying an extra ounce of fat. Liz spent her days as director of HR for a Fortune 500 company, a job that seemed to occupy every moment of her time. Just as well since Ted was chief pilot for the same company flying the corporate jet for the CEO. As far as Ted was concerned, he had the best job in the world—his front office was seven miles above the earth’s surface—and the best wife in the world—she had given them three beautiful children, the last of which had just left for college.

“Welcome empty nesters!” Paul and Gina hugged their friends, and quickly put them to work slicing cheese and setting out crackers.

“And I’ll bet they’re happy they can go back to being naked at home whenever they want!” boomed Charles. He and his wife Susan brought bags of groceries across from Unit 66.

“We got enough fish and salad for eight. Who’s the new duo?” asked Susan as she threw her dress in the corner. “Folks here at the resort?”

Susan was always the most inquisitive of the group, and maybe the most analytic. Paul attributed it to her Irish background and flaming red hair—Susan had the answers before Paul had thought about the questions. Charles was the perfect foil for her. He was imperturbable and always seemed vaguely amused by his wife’s ‘put it out there’ approach. Of course, her job as an ER doc didn’t leave much time for subtlety. She called ’em as she saw ’em. His job as a middle school math teacher meant that he had to draw daily on an infinite reservoir of patience. Paul thought of Susan and Charles as the checkers of a checkerboard—she red and he with his jet black hair and equally dark eyes—jumping over and around each other in the game of life.

“Not exactly,” said Gina as she recounted the story of spotting her outside the Papagayo restaurant a few hours earlier, carefully omitting the cause of Ellen’s angst.

“You think they’ll come to dinner?” asked Susan. “What if her husband isn’t into the nude thing?”

“Oh, they’ll show. In fact, I’ll bet they’re in the car that’s pulling up next to ours right now.” A white Toyota had just appeared on the grass. Sure enough, Ellen and Fred got out of the car. Fred was carrying a grocery bag.

“Didn’t know what you liked, but a couple of bottles of champagne always seem like a good idea.” Gina hugged Ellen, saying “Glad you two came over.” She turned to Ellen’s husband and, accepting the bottles, said “So you’re the handsome guy Ellen’s been telling me about!”

Fred laughed. “That must be her other husband. I’m just Fred-the-IT-guy. How can I help?”

Predictably Susan was the first to speak. “Well, you two are just slightly overdressed for dinner at a nude resort.”

Fred smiled. “Yeah, Ellen told me that dinner was down here at Club Orient. No problem.” He and Ellen had their clothes off in about five seconds.

Paul turned to Ellen. “I thought this was your first trip to a nude resort?”

Ellen said, “Yes…but…”

Fred finished her sentence. “…we’re nude around the house most of the time. And when I was in college, I was the figure model for the Drawing 101 class to make a few extra bucks. In fact, that’s how we met. She was a student in the class and after she showed me her drawing, I asked her out on a date. She’s got talent!”

Liz piped up, “That must have broken about a thousand HR rules.”

Ellen replied, “Maybe. But we were both starving students and it wasn’t like he was controlling my grade. Besides, I got to see his “package” before going out on a date!”

“Truth in advertising. What a concept!”, deadpanned Charles.

All eight started laughing like schoolkids.

***

The sun had made all of them hungry, and they attacked dinner with great gusto. It was Fred who asked the question that Ellen was wondering but too shy to put forward.

“What brought you three couples together?”

All six chorused, “Carol!”.

Fred looked at them quizzically.

“Ted’s first wife. She died 12 years ago this week.”

Ellen blanched. Gina saw her and said, “Don’t be embarrassed. Our trips together are celebrations of Carol’s life.”

Ted continued,” She was a wonderful woman.” Fred saw Liz take his hand and caress it. “She was a free spirit. The one that would go out in the rain just to dance in it. Forever taking in stray animals. Trying new things just because they were new—remember the race car thing she won?”

Charles chimed in. “Yeah, she got to drive the formula 1 car, and by the time they were though a few laps, the pro asked if she would ever consider driving professionally.”

Susan added, “She would have made a great driver…smooth and fearless.”

Liz went on. “One day, she said she felt tired. And it was worse the next day. By the third day, we knew something was terribly wrong. We dragged her into the emergency room.”

Susan said, “I was the ED doc. Did the blood tests. Took one look at the results and thought ‘oh shit’. She had the worst type of leukemia.”

Gina continued. “I was in training, doing a rotation at the hospital and was assigned her case as the social worker. Here was this beautiful woman with a great family and an awful diagnosis. Truth is, she handled it better than me.”

“Seventeen days. She had exactly 17 days between diagnosis and her death. It was horrible for the rest of us, but Carol was completely at peace. Every day, she said she loved living every day of her life. But she did make us promise one thing.”

Liz paused.

“She made us promise to make a different plan. To live in the moment and to celebrate what we had in front of us and not fear what might or might not happen in the future.”

Ted gripped Liz’s hand tightly. “We took her at her word. Liz is Carol’s younger sister. We married six months after she left us. It was right for both of us. ”

***

Ted’s words hung in the tropical air. Ellen got up and walked over to Liz, simply to hug her.

Fred broke the silence. “There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

Gina responded. “Yep. Carol was a free spirit, but she was also a very smart woman. She understood that life was finite and that some of her risks could get her killed. So she had taken out a life insurance policy—a million dollars face value.”

Charles added, “We didn’t find out about it for several weeks. One day, we were all summoned to an attorney’s office. Acting on Carol’s final wishes, the attorney deposited the million dollars into a trust for the six of us to use, but on two specific conditions. First, we had to get together twice a year to celebrate and share freely what we have. And second, the money could only be spent on that celebration. No funeral expenses. No memorial gifts. She wanted to make sure we had a good time for a long as the money held out. That was “The different plan.”

With that, Charles raised his glass in a toast. “To Carol, for all she taught us.” All of them. Fred and Ellen included, echoed his words.

***

The men somehow turned the conversation to sports, and the women rose in unison to clear the dishes. Susan – the self-appointed organizer of the crew—quickly had the tasks assigned and the women joked with one another about the direct link of the Y chromosome and the need to start a sports conversation while they washed the dishes.

As they finished up, Ellen slipped her dress over her shoulder and carried Fred’s shorts, shirt and sandals out to him. She caught the end of their conversation where the men were all talking about how wonderful their wives were.

“See fellas, talking about how wonderful your spouses are is always better than sports,” said Ellen. She leaned over to kiss her husband. “Time to go home, honey, before we overstay our welcome.”

Ellen went back inside to say thank you to Gina, Susan and finally Liz.

“Your sister was a remarkable woman. What would she be doing if she was here with us right now?”

Susan blurted out an answer before Gina could stop her. “She’d be giving Charles a blow-job.” Ellen’s gaze moved from the three naked women, to the unlit candles around the room, and finally to their three naked husbands who were smiling broadly as they wished Fred a good night.

Liz blushed while Gina glared briefly at Susan. Ellen instantly understood that the three couples were more than ‘just good friends’. She thought for a moment before turning to Gina.

“Thanks for a truly wonderful day!”, she said. Embracing Gina, she whispered into her ear “Your secret is safe. And y’all really do have a very different plan.”

9:30 p.m., Thursday

It took Fred and Susan ten minutes to get back to L’Hoste.

While Fred went on about “how nice those folks were to invite us to dinner”, Ellen’s brain was on overdrive imagining the hot sex that was launching among those same ‘nice folks’. She rearranged the couples in her mind like she was shuffling a deck of cards, imagining Susan getting on her knees to suck on Paul’s gorgeous cock while Ted took Gina doggie-style and Charles buried his face in Liz’s pussy.

Ellen squirmed in the car seat as her cunt began to throb. She could feel the wetness form between her legs. Her brain was writing an orgy scene hotter than any porn movie on the adult TV channel.

Fred pulled into the parking space and turned off the ignition. Before he could reach for the door, Ellen kissed him hard on the mouth.

“I need to be fucked hard. I need to be fucked now. Got that, my studly hubby?”

A little surprised but suddenly finding himself very horny, Fred replied, “Only if you’re in our room naked inside of thirty seconds.”

She was, with seven seconds to spare. Ellen threw her dress in the corner and bent over the bed, pushing her pussy into the air while she reached between her legs and fingered her clit. Fred knelt behind her, pulling her ass towards his face while pushing his tongue into her cunt.

Ellen pushed back, grinding her clit against his chin. She felt the delicious tense feeling grow flow into her pelvis until she exploded into the waves of her first orgasm, drenching her husband’ face with her juices.

“I need your cock in my pussy NOW!”

Fred stood up. As he slipped the head of his cock inside, Ellen drove her ass back at him, taking him all the way inside in a single motion, feeling the tip of his cock pushing against her cervix.

“I..WANT…THAT…COCK”, she demanded, her cunt sliding up and down Fred’s shaft with each word. She closed her eyes, feeling her husband while she fantasized about the other three naked couples with whom they had just dined, randomly assorting their mouths, hands, cocks and cunts into an incredibly hot scene.

Fred’s lust matched her own. He pulled out of her, flipped Ellen onto her back, pulled her to the edge of the bed, lifted her ass onto two pillows and pulled her ankles over his shoulders. He was perfectly positioned to that with each thrust, his cock stroked her G-spot.

“OH…FUCK…YEAH..,”

Fred started tugging at her nipples, gently at first and then harder. Ellen played furiously with her clit. Within moments she was screaming. She exploded again, her cunt muscles gripping Fred’s cock. Fred felt his balls tighten, and then the jets of hot cum began to flood Ellen’s pussy. Ellen quickly had another orgasm.

They collapsed onto the bed,breathless and sticky with sweat and cum.

Fred finally spoke, “Wow. I mean, wow. You haven’t fucked like that since…I can’t remember.”

“Well, we haven’t had time for us, away from the kids, in a tropical paradise, eating dinner bare-assed,” Ellen replied. She kept her fantasy to herself. “You’re a helluva stud, stud.”

Fred felt his cock twitch, “Keep it up, and we’ll have to do it again…but I need a cool shower right about now. ”

In the end sun, drink and fatigue won over a second round of sex. Together they fell into a deep and dreamless sleep that would carry them into a new day.

Thursday, 10 pm

Gina put the last dish into the chalet, poured herself a glass of wine and went to join the others on the patio.

“Interesting couple,” Liz was saying, “especially the way you spotted her and Gina approached her.”

“There’s something underneath, but Gina won’t spill,” Paul replied.

“No, I won’t.” Gina’s tone made it clear that her reasons would remain her own.

“They seem very much in love,” observed Ted, ” which is pretty rare these days after two decades of marriage.”

Gina responded, “I’ll give you that much. Those two are good people. Good values. Good vision. Nice to be around.”

“Yeah, and Charles thinks she’s got a nice ass,” piped up Susan

Susan’s never one for subtlety, thought Gina. Besides, she had caught Susan checking out Fred’s tight abs, cock and balls. Right about the time she was admiring Fred’s package too, she thought wryly. A decade younger than either of the two women and the energy to go with it. She felt her pussy become warm and moist.

“Yeah, well I think you’ve got a nice ass too, Susan,” said Ted. Turning to Charles, Ted asked, “May I fuck your wife?”

Ted laughed. “Only if I can get Paul’s okay to play with Gina.”

“Works for me,” laughed Liz. “I get Charles’ gorgeous cock for a little while. And we all better go inside and pull the curtains before the neighbors figure out our little orgy.”

***

Friday, 9am

As Fred and Ellen were finishing breakfast, his cell phone rang.

“Good morning, Fred, it’s Gina. Hope you guys slept well. Is Ellen close by?”

Fred handed the phone to his wife.

“Gina! Wonderful to hear from you! We had such a fun time with all of you last night. Thanks so much for asking us to dinner.”

“The pleasure was ours. It’s so nice meeting new friends on vacation. Listen, we’re about to leave on a catamaran cruise, but we wanted to offer our umbrella and chairs to you while we’re off the resort. Ted and Liz suggested you might want to get rid of the tan lines—so if you guys want to be nude, c’mon down and we’ll leave some towels on the chairs for you so you won’t have to pay the daytime fee.”

“Sounds great! Hang on for a moment.” Ellen turned to her husband. “You want to wear trunks and get tan lines, or do you want to go back to the nude end of the beach? Gina and company are going on a boat today and offered to let us use their spot.”

Fred grinned, pointing his thumb south.

“Yeah, it took him about a millisecond to decide that nude was better. Thanks, and we’ll chat later. Say hi and thanks to your buddies!”

Ellen ended the call and handed her phone back to her husband.

“Sweetie, if you’re done with breakfast, let’s pack the beach bag and get some sun, ” said Ellen.

Fred took a last sip of coffee, picked up the newspaper, and headed back to the room.

***

The three couples headed over to the beach where they were ferried out to the waiting catamaran. The Tiko-Tiko, her Capitaine and his mate quickly set sail for Tintamarre, a quay a few miles off the island. All were comfortably nude in the morning sun, the friends stretched out on towels so they could chat easily with one another.

“Another shitty day in paradise!”, grinned Susan whose fair complexion made SPF 70 mandatory. “Would someone put a little more sunscreen on my back and butt?”

Paul was closest. “Here you go. You were hot enough last night to tan everybody indoors!”

Ted added. “I’ll say. It was less cowgirl and more riding a bucking bronco.”

Liz laughed. “Stop complaining, dearest, you were having the time of your life. We all heard you cumming, and you were the one that sounded like the raging bull.”

“Naw, that was you hearing yourself Liz”, said Charles. “You just wanted more and more, and now I’m oh so sore.”

“He thinks he’s a poet, and he thinks we don’t know it,” chuckled Gina, triggering a round of laughter among all six. “But my hubby is right. You were really aroused last night.”

Susan bit her lip. “Yeah, I was. Fred and Ellen are a really cute couple and I was fantasizing about doing him. Such a nice guy and he looks like he has a really delicious cock.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “See, she has a thing for younger men…”

Susan swatted him playfully. “Honey, you know I always save the last dance for the one who I married forever. Besides, you were telling me in the shower that you thought she would be fun to play with.”

Paul protested. “You’ll have to get in line. She’s smart as hell, and I have a thing for smart women…ummm…like Gina!”

Gina made a point of arching her eyebrow and speaking in a comically stern voice, “You bicycled out of that one, fella, but I’m paying attention.”

They all laughed again as the first mate offered bottles of cold water all around. Gina sipped thoughtfully while the rest went back to their books and magazines. An idea was forming in her mind, but she wanted to think it through a bit for talking to the group about it.

A half-hour later, the Captaine announced, << Nous sommes arrives! >>—we have arrived!.

Orient Beach, Friday, 10 am

Beach bag in hand, Ellen and Fred strolled down Orient Beach just as another bus disgorged two dozen tourists who were on a day excursion from one of the large cruise ships that docked on the Dutch side of the island. While some came simply to enjoy the mile-and-a-half of white sand and tranquil blue water to the north, others chose walk to the south end of the beaching front of Club Orient. For a few minutes, Fred and Ellen were carried along by the group, watching the nudists. A moment later, they split off towards Gina’s umbrella, stripped down and became part of the sea of naked people watching the cruise people.

Fred was applying sunscreen to Ellen’s back and shoulders.

“Sort of like Alice in Wonderland,” mused Fred.

“Come again?” replied Ellen.

“Through the looking-glass. It’s like there’s a transparent wall between the people wearing the bathing suits looking at us wondering what it would be like to be naked on the beach, and we’re looking back at them wondering why they’re not. The only difference here is that we made a different choice.”

“Yesterday we were pretty much them. But we made a different plan.”

“Yes, we did. But you were on lead. My sense was that you didn’t want to come down to the nude end of the beach. Next thing I know, you’ve made half a dozen friends here and we’re having dinner with them. What happened?”

“I just swam as far as I could go. It seemed peaceful here. And this end of the beach seems a lot friendlier.”

Fred thought about it a moment. “WYSIWYG,” he said.

“At the risk of repeating myself, come again?”, asked Ellen.

“Sorry. An IT expression. When we talk about computer interfaces that are straightforward and intuitive. What You See Is What You Get. WYSIWYG.”

Ellen started putting sunscreen on Fred’s back and shoulders. “So what do you see in the six folks we met last night?”

“It’s funny. Six adults, all in their mid fifties. They seemed healthy, happy and genuinely happy to be with each other. If that’s what we’re going to be like in five or ten years, it’s something I’m looking forward to sharing with you.” Fred gave his wife an affectionate peck on the cheek.

“Yeah.” Ellen sounded wistful. “But our parents never had friends like that. Our neighbors are nice, but I don’t want to spend this kind of time with them. And I sure as hell am not going to bring my co-workers down here for a naked faculty retreat.”

Fred started laughing. “No, I think that would be a definite no, for your boss and for mine. Where would we put our pocket pencil protectors?”

Ellen looked at her husband and started giggling. She loved it when he let go of work enough to let his playful side emerge. Doesn’t happen enough, she thought ruefully.

Fred pointed to a wooden platform about 50 yards off shore where a couple of other nudists were diving off to swim back to shore.

“Race you out there.”

“You’re on!”

They ran full tilt into the water.

***

Tintamarre Island, 11 a.m.

On Tintamarre, Gina and her friends were also letting their playful sides emerge. They covered themselves in mud and let it bake on –Liz assured everyone that such a ‘beauty treatment’ would cost at least $100 in the resort spa. They ran back into the sea to wash of the mud, swam back to the catamaran, and set into the light lunch of sandwiches, fruit and soft drinks that the crew had set out for them. After a brief swim, they helped one another reapply sunscreen and sprawled out on the deck. While Paul regaled Ted and Charles with tales of police work — some of the stories Paul told rivaled what was on the TV shows–the three women chatted about how lucky they were to have this time together with their husbands.

“I miss Carol every day. Ted does too.” Liz went on. “I wish she had never gotten sick, and that she and Ted were still happily married.”

“Me too,” said Susan. “But then we would have never met. She would never have come to the ER for my treatment or needed Gina’s social services.”

“But she saw possibilities in us, for us, in the last days of her life. And we saw those possibilities. Changed our lives.” Susan and Liz agreed.

Gina continued, “And now I’d like to bend one of our rules.”

Liz and Susan looked at Gina quizzically.

“I’d like to ask them to play with us.”

“You want to do WHAT?”exclaimed Liz, loud enough for the husbands to turn their heads towards the women,

Susan thought about it for a moment. “This isn’t just because the two of them are good-looking and fun to be around, is it?”

Gina spoke quietly. “No, it isn’t. And please don’t press for more. Either we’re all in or we’re not going to do this. But it’s right for us—and I know it’s right for them.”

Susan remarked, “And I sort of let on that we were swingers, didn’t I.”

Gina shook her head. “You did, but that’s irrelevant.”

Liz said, “They’re a cute couple. And it might be fun for a night. But I have one question. The one that matters.

“What’s that?,” asked Gina.

Liz asked, “What would Carol say?”

Gina paused. It was the question she had been pondering since they had set sail in the morning.

“Carol used to say that she had nothing if she couldn’t risk losing it. We wouldn’t be together if we hadn’t risked what we had–good but ordinary lives– for these times we spend together. She I think she would say that if it feels good and it feels right, go for it.”

Liz looked skyward. She thought about Carol’s escapades. Until she met Ted, Carol had a string of gorgeous boyfriends. Mom always claimed she had broken half the hearts in the Midwest, but most of them had come to her memorial service and shared great joy in their times together. Carol understood how to make people happy. Did Gina have a bit of that gift? Was this the time? She looked back over at Gina.

“Okay. I’m in. We’re in.”

Susan grinned. Turning in the direction of the husbands, she called over to them in a falsetto voice, “Oh boys, if you can spare us a moment, we ladies have something to discuss with you…”

***

Fred and Ellen sliced easily through the gentle surf, Ellen reaching the platform a split second before Fred. He didn’t care–he got a great view of his wife’s butt as she pulled herself up the platform ladder.

“And the lady wins!” acknowledged Fred, pulling himself up behind her.

“That was no lady…that was your wife…” said Ellen, who proceeded to give her husband a deep kiss.

“Mmmm. Have I told you recently how glad I am I married you?” purred Ellen.

The two of them stretched out on the platform, looking back towards the beach.

“What were the odds? If you hadn’t decided to swim down here yesterday, we’d probably be down at the textile end of the beach not knowing what we had been missing.”

Ellen cringed inwardly. It was precisely the same line of thought that had run through her mind when she first spoke to Gina yesterday.

“Yup. And we found it together, honey.”

Ellen followed Fred’s gaze back to the beach.”Pretty amazing story they told about Carol. It was almost as if she willed her sister to marry Ted. And then pulling her doc and social worker together with the travel money idea even as she was dying. But it worked. They’ve become such good friends.”, remarked Ellen.

” I wonder if it’s more than that.”

“Huh?”

Fred went on. “While you were inside helping with the dishes, the husbands went on for a few minutes about their wonderful wives. the sorts of things I think and say about you. But each spoke as easily about the other two as his own wife.”

Ellen looked over at him. He might be a computer guy, but his people-reading skills were right up there.

Fred continued. “I think after we went back to our hotel last night, the six of them fucked each other silly.”

“Well that’s an interesting point of view.” Ellen kept a straight face. How her husband sorted this out was beyond her. She reimagined the scene, the fantasies started and she could feel the juices start to flow between her legs. She looked over at her husband and noticed that his cock had started to swell.

Ellen whispered, “I’ll bet I know which of the ladies you’re thinking about right now. I saw you checking out Susan. Bet you want to “play doctor” with that doctor…”

Fred gave a nervous laugh. ” She’s a firecracker, isn’t she? But Ellen, you’re such a tease. You know I love you more than anything in the world.”