Evie

The sun was low and simmering by the time Evie returned home. She had swum for a little longer than she had realised, but it felt good, her muscles aching nicely. She set her bag and keys down on the kitchen table, walked over to the living room windows and threw the curtains open. Bryan obviously wasn't home, but she half-heartedly called his name anyway, more out of habit than anything else. A relic from a bygone era, she casually thought to herself. Bryan was never home on the weekends any more.
She stood at the window for a moment, looking out to the courtyard, fallen leaves smattering the pavers like splashes of brown paint. Bryan had planted an elm tree there years ago, in what had been an empty soily patch, which they had subsequently transformed into their 'outside space'. Now the tree was large and looming, casting puppeteer shadows over the faded red hue of the pavers. The memories of those early years were happy, but brought the more recent ones into a stark, suffocating contrast. Every time she looked at that fucking tree.. She could cut it down, she thought, and half-giggled to herself at the idea. Wouldn't Bryan just lose it at that. A delightful fantasy.
Evie stood for a moment more, her hair still wet and dripping slowly onto the carpet beneath her bare feet. She dug her toes in a little. Hmm. Felt good.
Eventually she turned, and made her way to the bathroom down the hall. She removed the wet towel from around her waist, hoisting it onto the edge of the bath. She hooked her thumbs under the straps of her swimming costume and began to slide them off her shoulders. Evie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and paused, mid action. Despite being in her early forties - or later thirties as she had begun telling new acquaintances - her figure had still retained the sculpted curves that had won her so much attention in her younger days. The blue swimsuit, still wet from the pool, clung to her body tightly, protesting again the firm mounds of her breasts, her nipples prominent beneath the stretched material. Her tummy was still flat, perfect curves leading outward to her hips, untouched by any maternal trauma. Evie had experienced an event as a child, which she tried hard to forget, the consequences of which were scarring, emotionally and physically. She was told at that young age that she would forever be a 'barren woman', which back then had only conjured up images of deserts and abandoned ghost towns. However as she grew older her understanding changed, and the label seemed unremovable. It didn't stop her from having sex, in fact she was one of the first of her friends to do so. But it was a blight on herself that she couldn't erase or ignore, no matter how hard she scrubbed at it.
Her inability to have children, she mused, had probably impacted the marriage which she would describe as herself 'enduring'. By that token, despite all the wrongdoings thrust upon her, the increasing coldness of her husband's gaze, the withdrawal of intimate interaction, she still could not avoid the steady and unflinching feelings of guilt. What kind of woman was unable to provide a child for her husband? If she had lived back in the reign of medieval kings and queens, she most likely would have been beheaded.
As she stared at herself, a familiar feeling of longing began to stir inside her. To be looked at with intrigue, to be wanted, to be touched. To be kissed with passion, with desire. To be fucked. How deeply she wanted that.
She resumed sliding the straps down her shoulders, but slowly now, relishing both the gradual reveal of skin, and the touch of her own fingertips. Her came out of the straps, first the left, then the right, her hazel eyes steady within her own gaze, as if seducing her own self. She hooked both thumbs at her sides and slowly, slowly began to slide the swimming costume down, over her breasts, her nipples pink and, she was intrigued to notice, perfectly erect. With the costume now around her tummy, Evie stared at herself, a light sheen of moisture gleaming on her bare skin. What man wouldn't want this, she thought. To touch me...
She took a hand and gently pressed it against her left breast, still fixed in her own gaze, a slightly deeper breath coming as she felt the warmth of her palm against the sensitive nipple and areola. She did the same with her other hand and the other breast, both in handfuls, her breath quickening, she hands beginning to squeeze and massage the warm skin beneath her fingers. She closed her eyes and tried to take her mind back to those early days, when she would be explored in the back of her boyfriend's old car, one side mirror missing, a tongue on her neck and fingers finding the wetness between her thighs. Her lips parted slightly as she played with herself, squeezing slowly, the nerve endings at the tip of her nipples electric, pool water still dripping down the back of her legs and lightly splashing on the bathroom tiles below. The boy in the car had found the wetness between her legs, a finger slipping inside deeply and bending at the knuckle, pushing against the magic spot just below her tummy. Evie found her own hand sliding down from her left breast, slipping beneath the border of her swimming costume, feeling the warmth, the soft folds of her pussy lips wet against her trailing fingers, sliding along the border of her opening, teasing...
Then, Evie heard something, something that took her away from the back of that car and back into the bathroom, her eyes snapping open, her fingers suddenly frozen. The front door, slamming shut. A sound she recognised, a sound she had come to despise.
Her husband was home.