The telephone rang.
"Hello, is that John?"
"Yes, do I know you?" I asked of the familiar voice that I couldn't place.
"It's Sheila ... remember me? We met at the wedding."
"Of course I do ... you're the cousin of my cousin. I thought you'd forgotten me."
"Sorry, but I lost your card with the number," she said.
I smiled down the phone because I knew her daughter, Ashleigh, had taken it from her handbag, but had no intention of telling her.
"You've got me now'" I said, as I remembered her dancing in front of me with her arms waving in the air and showing off her considerable breasts and enveloping me in Chanel Number 5.
"I wondered if you'd like to meet up some time, John."
Ashleigh told me about her mother: "She gets enough as it is." It was easy to imagine her getting lots of attention with tits like that, especially as she was ready to flaunt them -- and at an unknown man - me.
Both Ashleigh and her mother appeared determined to get what they wanted. It must be in their genes, I thought. How could I object? My association with the daughter paid major dividends. Sheila seemed like a logical extension.
"Sounds like a good idea."
"We didn't have enough time to get to know each other at the wedding."
"That's because of Ashleigh ... I don't think she likes me." I lied. I knew exactly what she felt about me.
"Just the opposite ... I whisked her away before she got too involved with you."
"It didn't seem like that to me."
"I think it's important for youngsters to keep with people of their own age."
"Quite right," I said, compounding the lie, thinking of how Ashleigh and I and her friend Danielle had been having brilliant sex over the past weeks. The age difference had long since stopped being of any consequence -- if I could enjoy myself so much with girls half my age, why not with one older than me?
"Do you fancy a meal sometime?" she asked.
"I know an Italian restaurant in town ... we could meet there."
"I cook a good spaghetti bolognaise, if you're interested."
"What about Ashleigh?" I asked.
"It would be an evening when she's out."
"Sounds good to me," I said, hoping she wouldn't choose one of the nights Ashleigh slept with me.
"How does next Saturday sound to you? She's staying with a friend that night and won't be around."
So that's how I ended up sat in my car outside Sheila's house, just as the late summer light began to fade. The house looked new and how I expected: a small, detached property, trim and well looked after, on an estate of similar houses towards the edge of town.
I offered her the bottle of Moet, still cold from my fridge, as she welcomed me at the door and we air-kissed, close enough for me to appreciate the full effect of her perfume, which merged into the aroma of the bolognaise sauce cooking somewhere in the depths of the house. Michael Bublé crooned in the background.
Sheila stood to one side, allowing me to pass into the sitting room. She left just enough space to allow the front of my body to brush across hers. A first frisson of excitement tingled in my groin. I hoped it promised more to come.
The table was at the far end of the room, towards the source of the food smells. Two candles flickered in its centre casting a semi-light. She disappeared and returned with champagne glasses and placed them on the table and invited me to open the bottle.
The activity made sure my eyes stayed off Sheila's ample cleavage that the tightness of her black dress showed off to full effect. One look at that dress and the sight of her breasts bulging from it dispelled any doubts about the possibilities of the evening. I felt the first stirrings of an erection.
The alcohol from the first glass of Moet melted away the fact that we hardly knew each other. We resumed the banter that started so spontaneously at the wedding, as if the gap of weeks in between never happened.
"You're a very brave woman," I said, sat in an easy chair in the sitting room. She sat opposite me on the settee with her legs tucked beneath her, covered by the silkiness of her long skirt, and replied with a quizzical look.
"Aren't you taking a risk inviting a stranger into your house like this?"
"How could the cousin of my cousin be a stranger? We're family now," she said, smiling until the dimples in her cheeks shone, her face curtained with blonded hair that fell to her wide shoulders and the gold necklace around her neck.
"I suppose we are," I said, continuing the small-talk about the wedding and families and divorces, clearing the debris of our lives in preparation for the future.
She leant forward to sip at her drink and her breast meat strained at the thin fabric of the black dress. I tried to look over her shoulder at the photographs of a boy and girl on the bookcase. It proved impossible -- my eyes were drawn back to the cleavage that started not far below her chin and disappeared into her dress about six inches lower.
From the stare in Sheila's eyes, she understood the impact her bare flesh was having on me and the tension it created.
The story of her marriage was more interesting than mine. "We began to want more from our relationship," she said, "so we tried an open marriage. It was good fun at first ... like being a wild teenager again. Then he shacked up with a younger model ... and it finished us off. Not that I'm complaining ... now I'm free to do as I please."
"Except when Ashleigh's around," I said.
"She's off to university soon ... then both of them are gone ... and I'll be as free as air."
Ashleigh never told me, I thought. It made me realise that I was just a convenience in her life -- sort of a friend with benefits -- and what benefits.
The spaghetti bolognaise tasted delicious washed down with a smooth Italian red wine. There is something primeval about eating pasta -- twirling it around the fork and getting it in your mouth with lengths hanging off out and sucking in the last bit without dripping sauce down your chin.
I noticed how Sheila's lips resembled Ashleigh's: pouty and generous and red with lipstick and, as she sucked in a dangling length of spaghetti, I knew they would be as perfect for oral sex as her daughter's. This thought caused the tension to spread further around my body. My cock reacted, forcing me to shuffle around in my seat to rearrange myself.
