Flirting with Fire: A Summer Camp Swingers novel

Even more than her looks, she had a healthy attitude about sex. In a way, she reminded me of Susan. Allie wasn’t a widow, but she might as well have been. She even looked a bit like her. She was taller, bustier, and wider through the hips, but close enough that I noticed the similarities more than the differences. And I’d been attracted to women like her for as long as I could remember.

She opened the pizza box as an excuse to avoid my gaze. “I’m hungry all of a sudden.”

“Fair enough. Let’s eat.” My stomach agreed as soon as the aroma hit me.

We devoured half of the pizza before either of us came up for air. I’d eaten with her before but never alone, and she took the opportunity to steal a piece of pepperoni from my plate.

“I told you, I like meat.”

“Just pepperoni?”

“No, sausage too.”

“Lemme guess,” I chucked, “Italian?”

“I prefer American.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. It’s the casing.”

“I’m sure,” I said dryly. “But we should probably change the subject.” Before my own sausage gets me in trouble.

Spoilsport.

I pasted on a smile and tried to ignore him. I was a grown man, not a horny teenager.

“You’re right,” Allie said, almost like she’d heard. “What should we talk about instead?”

“Why don’t we just enjoy the view.”

* * *

The sun had already disappeared behind the house, but its dying rays glowed in the treetops on the eastern edge of the clearing. The trees were just visible over the roof of Christy’s workshop, a hundred yards away. Off to the northeast, between the house and the pool house, the light created a natural chiaroscuro in the forest.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep…,” I said.

Allie looked at me sideways. She had an English degree from Brandeis, and she knew the classics as well as I did. It was another thing we had in common.

“But you have promises to keep?”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “Although… it isn’t a snowy evening.”

“No.” She fell silent for a moment before she sighed in contentment. “This is nice.”

“Yeah, thanks. Our little slice of heaven.”

“Ken wanted to buy one of the lakefront lots…,” she mused. “Several years ago.”

“Why didn’t you? They were going for a good price back then.”

She shrugged. “Wrong time. Wrong reason. Wrong everything.”

“Mmm.”

Ken was her ex-husband, Filipino American, Catholic, and much older. He was a traditional male chauvinist, and I didn’t understand what Allie had seen in him. Christy certainly didn’t like him very much, and I took my cues from her.

I’d only met him a dozen times in the six years we’d known them. He was a hotel executive who traveled for work, so Allie was a single parent for all practical purposes. He’d shown up for holiday parties and the occasional backyard get-together, but I’d never seen him at a dance recital, birthday party, or anything else to do with his daughters.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Allie said. “Sorry I brought it up.”

“No need to apologize.”

She thanked me with a smile that had nothing to do with innuendo, sexual or otherwise. We were still friends, even if we flirted all the time. She sighed heavily and stared into the gathering gloom. I didn’t want her to sink into a funk, so I changed the subject.

“Do you wanna go for a swim?”

“Has it been thirty minutes?”

“That’s an old wives’ tale. Besides, I’ll save you if you get a cramp.” I punctuated it with a roguish grin, but she didn’t rise to the bait. “C’mon,” I said, friendly this time. “The water’s nice this time of night.”

I stood and checked on the girls through the glass in the doors. Emily gnawed on a pizza crust, but the others had finished, and they were all engrossed in the movie. Allie followed my gaze.

“They can’t see us. The glass acts like a mirror. Safety precaution,” I added.

Allie had known for years that we were swingers and nudists, although she’d never tried either. According to Christy, that was Ken’s influence more than any reluctance on her part.

Now’s the time to find out, the little head said, and for once I agreed with him.

“We don’t need to wear our suits…”

Allie pretended shock and switched to a drawl straight out of Gone with the Wind, “Why, Mr. Hughes… are you makin’ an immoral suggestion?”

“That comes later,” I joked. “Right now I’m just trying to get you naked.”

“Why, whatevah for?”

“Why do you think?”

“And what would your wife say?”

“Seriously? You know what she’d say.”

“Crap,” Allie said in her normal voice. “You’re right. She’s been trying to get me to try it for years.”

“Now’s the perfect time.”

“I…” She hesitated and then glanced toward the girls inside. “Maybe some other time.”

I hid my disappointment. “No problem. Just thought I’d ask.”

“You can do it if you want,” she said quickly. “I mean, it’s your house, after all.”

“Nah. It’s more fun if we do it together.”

She caught the hint but dismissed it with a laugh that didn’t sound convincing.

“Come on,” I said after a moment.