The Baumgartners Plus One

Selena Kitt

Prologue

I met the Baumgartners because, as my mother was too fond of saying, “Danielle is nosier than a cat in a tuna fish factory.” Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. But what was I supposed to do when someone started sunbathing nude right outside my back door-just close the blinds?

Besides, a fully-clothed Carrie Baumgartner would have been pretty hard to ignore, let alone a topless, unbelievably bronze one, completely covered in coconut-scented oil. The stuff was so strong I could smell it from the window.

I’d seen her around before-we waved to each other on the way to the mailbox, had even said, “Hi,” and had brief conversations about having to lug laundry across the street and guests parking in our reserved spots-the usual neighbor stuff.

Maybe if I’d been a prude, or if I’d had kids like everyone else in University of Michigan married housing, or if Carrie had been just a little less attractive in her black bikini bottoms, I might have called campus security or just turned a blind eye like a good girl. But I didn’t.

Instead, I was a very bad girl.

It had been a long time since I’d even thought about anyone sexually, but I had to admit, she perked my formerly dormant libido. She was so sexy, even fully clothed just passing me on the way to the mailbox, that her presence alone practically bordered on pornography. She probably would have made a ninety-year-old man remember what other function his cock was made to perform, aside from peeing the bed. She certainly made me wish for a moment that I had one myself, just so I could imagine it inside of her.

I knelt up on my bed- our bed still, not that Mason came home to it much anymore-and peeked around the white sheet I’d tacked to the wall as a curtain when we moved in. According to our lease, we were supposed to cover our windows and I’d just never gotten around to putting up the blinds. Besides, I didn’t know how to hang them, and I couldn’t rely on Mason for much of anything.

Our backyards were tiny little postage stamps and only semi-private. There was a black, wooden head-high sort of half-fence at the end of all of the apartment yards, but instead of a divider between each, there was only a divider between every two, as if these one-story apartments had been connected or meant to connect at some point.

The Baumgartners’ yard and ours meshed together and while the blue and yellow U of M blanket was spread out over on their side, I could still see everything from my vantage point. And I mean everything.

I watched her drizzle oil over the copper colored flesh of her belly, her hands kneading it into the sloping curve of her ribs and onto the generous swell of her breasts, brazenly bared to the sun. I stayed quiet, swallowing my breath, as her palms made slow, lazy circles over her nipples and then dipped gently into the hollow of her throat, her slender, buttery fingers stroking her neck down to her collarbone.

I heard her sigh and saw her hips shift as her hands moved downward once again, lingering on the fullness of her breasts. She was so beautiful I could barely breathe, her hair spilling like honey against the navy blue blanket, her limbs long and shapely. I bit my lip when she pinched her nipples, hearing her again, a soft cry.

I ducked when she sat up on her elbows, sliding her dark glasses down so she could peer around. It was nearly noon on a Monday, the late August sun high and bright, still hot although it was moving steadily toward autumn. The kids were back in school just this week, the neighborhood quieter than it had been all summer.

She glanced around and thought she was alone. She didn’t see me watching from the window as she slid her slick hand down the flat, sloping surface of her belly, under the elastic band of her black bikini bottoms. At first, I thought she was going to take those off too, but when her hand moved under them, fully between her legs, I understood.

Breathless, I watched as she began to touch herself, occasionally glancing around, worried she might get caught, that someone might walk by. Our little one-story apartments backed up to a small, wooded area. The kids liked to play there, but today there were no calls of “You’re it!” and no one fighting over the tire swing someone had hung from a tree.

We were alone, she and I, two women longing for something, looking to ease a sudden, throbbing ache. I should have just turned away and gone back to studying my Italian phrasing, which is what I’d been doing before I heard the sound of her back door opening and closing, that tell-tale squeak and bang. But, as my mother would also attest to, I rarely did the things I should do in life. Instead, I usually did the things people told me I shouldn’t, and more importantly, I did the things I wanted to do.

And I wanted to watch. I was wearing jeans, too confining, but they were quickly unbuttoned and unzipped. I sought my own heat, my pussy moist, still shaved smooth the way Mason liked it. God, how long had it been since he’d touched me? I shoved that dark thought away and turned my attention to the luminous visage of the woman writhing on the lawn next door, taking her own unabashed pleasure.

Her hand moved rhythmically under the stretched crotch of her bikini bottoms, her face turned toward me. The dark sunglasses she wore kept her eyes from me, but I saw the part of her lips, the way the pink tip of her tongue slipped out and licked them.

Her chest moved with her increasing breath, her breasts rising and falling, faster and faster.

My clit hid, untouched for so long, in the swollen folds of my flesh, but I managed to find it, shuddering at my body’s response, as if I had an instant “on” switch I’d just rediscovered. I teased it to life, back and forth, round and round, my own breath coming faster, my nipples hard under my t-shirt as I pressed close to the wall, straining to see out the window.

The blond on the blanket flicked and tugged at her own nipples. They were brown and hard, like my own, although I was far paler than she and her breasts were a little bigger. We were both pretty well-endowed in that department though, and I cupped my breast though my bra with my other hand as if to check, rubbing my thumb over the ridge of my nipple, feeling the weight of it, wondering what her breast would feel like in my hand-heavy, oily, fleshy.

It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been with a woman. Before Mason, I’d been with Dee. My mother had insisted I was “going through a phase,” and when Dee and I broke up in the midst of a huge drama over-what else?-some guy, my mother had crowed that I’d proven her right, that I wasn’t a lesbian after all. I didn’t know what I was-I just knew that women turned me on and men turned me on, and maybe aliens would turn me on, too, but I’d never met one. Maybe I was just greedy, insatiable. I had always wanted more than the world could ever give me. At least, I used to.

“Ohhhh!” The soft cry that rose up from her throat drew my attention back to the spectacle next door. She bit her lip, her tanned thighs spread and shining with oil, glistening in the sunlight. I wished then that she had taken her bottoms off too so I could watch her fingers plunging into her pussy, as fast and furious as my own, wishing for a cock, a tongue, something, everything at once.

I arched my back and rocked up and down, back and forth, riding my own hand, my nipples rubbing hard against the windowsill, forgetting myself, forgetting that I was supposed to stay quiet, unnoticed. I pressed my nose to the screen, catching the scent of fresh cut grass and coconut oil, imagining I could smell her too, the pungent aroma of her pussy. Was she shaved, like me? Was she blond down there or dark, I wondered?

Just thinking about it was so exciting I had to slow down or I was going to climax right that second. And I wanted to wait.

I wanted to come with her.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” She gasped and gave three short, sharp cries, her hips thrusting upward, her thighs butterflied wide, one hand rubbing herself frantically, the other clutching her breast, tweaking her nipple. The sight of her was enthralling, but it was the low, throaty growl she finally gave and the way her head thrashed from side to side as she came that finally sent me soaring.

I didn’t just fall, I leapt, moaning and thrusting and diving headlong into the precipice, that same delicious edge I’d been flirting with and yet paradoxically trying to avoid since the moment I unzipped my jeans. I came so hard I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I didn’t let myself go-there was no choice involved-I simply went, plunging headlong into bliss.

And that’s when the screen fell out of the window.

I’d been pressing on it so hard, it was no wonder. The springs that held it in just gave way and, if I hadn’t caught myself, I would have fallen too. It wasn’t a high fall, but it would have been an embarrassing one, considering that my hand was still plunged into the front of my unzipped jeans. It was embarrassing enough as it was as Carrie scrambled to grab her bikini top, tying it quickly on, and I zipped and tucked and yelled out some sort of apology across the yard.

It was Jezebel who gave me an excuse. I used her wanton lust to defend my own, claiming that it was our cat who had knocked out the screen. She’d been sitting quietly next to me on the sill the whole while, occasionally licking a fat, black paw and rubbing it over one velvety ear, the only other witness to our sin. Jezebel looked askance at me when I offered her up as a sacrifice, her expression even more indignant than usual.

“It should just pop right back in.” The blond walked across her yard and into mine, bending down to pick up the screen. “I’ve knocked ours out a couple times.”

“Thanks.” I took it awkwardly, shoving the sheet-curtain aside as I brought it through the window and dropped it next to the bed. As the screen passed between us, our hands touched-hers sleek and smelling of coconut and mine still wet with my juices, although I’d hastily wiped my hand on my jeans-and she smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“I was just working on my tan.” She glanced over to the blanket she’d been touching herself on and then looked back at me. Did she know I’d been watching?

“Want to join me?”

“I-” I searched for some excuse. I didn’t want to embarrass myself any further. “I don’t own a bikini.”

“You can borrow one of mine, if you want. I was only wearing half of one anyway.” She grinned, adjusting her bikini top. She didn’t even flush-but I did. “I’m Carrie Baumgartner, by the way. Nice to meet you, neighbor.”

“Danielle Stuart,” I replied. “They call me Dani.”

“Come on, Dani.” She waved me out, as if the decision had already been made.

“Let’s get some sun together.”

And that was how it began.

Chapter One

We spent a week in our backyard-and I thought of it as “ours” by then, connected as it was-soaking up the last of the summer sun, Carrie in a black bikini and me wearing a modest one-piece, red with little white polka dots. I wasn’t there for the sun and I think she knew it, although we spent that first week chatting about our husbands, campus life and our families-or lack thereof. Carrie had moved around from foster home to foster home as a kid, and hadn’t had anything like a “real” family until she married Doc (“His name’s Steve, but everyone calls him ‘Doc,’ even me,” Carrie said) who I had yet to meet. That was another thing we had in common-husbands who were hardly ever home, although for vastly different reasons.

“He works so hard.” Carrie sighed, turning her face to me on the blanket. She was on her belly, top undone, her hair curling at the edges with oil. No matter how much I showered that week, I went to bed smelling like coconuts and I inevitably dreamed of Carrie Baumgartner’s tanned flesh. I was more than halfway crushing on her already.

“You have to respect a man who loves what he does for a living. But I do miss him.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I know what you mean.” And I did, although missing Mason didn’t leave me with stars in my eyes like missing Doc did for her. While her husband was doing his residency at the University of Michigan teaching hospital, mine was…well, I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing most of the time. Hanging out in basements with his friends, rolling many-sided dice and conjuring spirits, most likely. It sounded too ridiculous to even mention, even if we were four years younger than they were, so I just kept my mouth shut.

“Where did the sun go?” She craned her slim neck to see the sky, giving me a dizzying view of her cleavage. I could see the dark flower of her areolas and could almost glimpse their center. “Is it going to rain?”

“It better not rain on our last week of sunshine.” I screwed up my face and stuck my middle finger up at the darkening clouds. “Classes start Monday.”

“Oh that’s right, I almost forgot.” She turned her face back, rubbing her cheek against the blanket. Carrie had her undergraduate degree in something, but she hadn’t decided to go back for a graduate degree, so she was taking occasional classes while Doc finished up his residency. Me, I was kind of excited for classes to begin again-it would be my last year. Besides, my major was my passion and I missed not being immersed several hours a day in classrooms where only Italian was spoken.

A loud clap of thunder shook the ground beneath us and both our heads came up, eyes widening as our gaze met.

“Uh oh.” That was all I managed to get out before the skies opened and rained down on us. We both squealed, scrabbling for the blanket and our clothes. The t-shirt and shorts in my hands were already damp just in the time it took us to get to the Baumgartners’ back door. Carrie pressed me inside, still topless, and pulled the screen door shut behind us. Lightning struck a tree in the woods and we both screamed and clutched each other, seeing the brief spark of a flame and then smoke. It was pouring, the splash of the rainwater wetting our faces through the screen.

“That was fast!” She closed the door as I moved fully into their kitchen. The apartment was the same layout as ours was, as they all were, the kitchen making the short part of an “L” that turned the corner into a living room. There was a bedroom off the kitchen, and I glanced in to confirm that, yes, there was a queen sized bed in there.

Carrie and Doc’s bedroom. Another door beyond that was closed-the second bedroom. We had one, too.

“I need a shower.” Carrie slipped past me into her bedroom, turning on a light. It was like night outside now, the rain pelting the roof. I hesitated in the doorway. I’d never been in their apartment before. We always met in the yard. She hooked her thumbs in her bikini bottoms, glancing back at me as she slid them down her hips. There was no guile or self-consciousness in her look, but watching her made my mouth go dry. “You want to take a shower?”

I just nodded, not trusting my voice, and followed her as she walked naked toward the bathroom. Just like our apartment, the bathroom was attached to the first bedroom. Anyone who wanted to use it had to go through, which always made me uncomfortable when we had guests. Whoever designed the place obviously didn’t have my anxiety about unmade beds. Carrie’s was made though, spotless, the comforter a lovely patchwork thing, pulled taut, the shams to match on pillows against the headboard. I ran a finger over one of the seams, a zigzag stitch.

I heard the shower start and glanced at the open bathroom door. I could see her leaning over, breasts swaying, to adjust the water, her bottom round and full and shockingly pale compared to the rest of her.

“Nice tan lines,” I commented and she made a face at me.

“If I didn’t think one of the nosy neighbors would call the cops, I’d take my bottoms off too.” She reached into the little closet and got out two big, fluffy light blue towels. They matched the shower curtain. I wasn’t about to tell her that I had been one of those nosy neighbors just days ago. “I hate tan lines.” She put the towels on the edge of the sink, glancing over at me. “Are you coming in? Don’t be shy-we’re both girls.”

When she’d asked me if I wanted a shower, I’d sort of hoped but hadn’t assumed that we’d be taking one together. Now that I was here, standing in the doorway of her bathroom with that question answered, I wasn’t so sure. Especially since I had to take off my bathing suit to make it happen.

“Come on,” she invited, turning fully toward me. “The water’s warm.” Jesus, she was beautiful. I dropped my eyes, trying not to stare, and glimpsed the short, tight blond curls between her thighs for the first time. That sight gave me a jolt but when she slid her arms around my neck, untying my suit at the neck, I thought I might melt into the floor.

“Wait.” I gulped as the top of my suit dropped to my waist, my breasts exposed to her view. I winced at the expression on her face when her gaze fell, her eyes widening.

“Oh my god.” Her eyebrows drew together, her hand reaching out, hesitating, not touching. “What did you do?”

“I fell.” I turned sideways and slid my suit down my hips. She’d seen now-there was no sense being modest anymore. Most of the bruises had faded, looking more like a Canadian sunrise across my middle instead of the storm clouds they had been a few days ago.

“You fell?” Her expression was doubtful. “Where? Off a roof?”

“I tripped over a chair in the kitchen, fell against the counter.” I’d prepared this speech all week, just in case. And it wasn’t entirely untrue. Not entirely. I made it sound casual, dismissive. “It doesn’t hurt.” I stepped into the shower to avoid the look in her eyes, the water hot, stinging my face. It was just a moment before I felt her get in behind me. I edged forward so I wasn’t hogging all the spray.

“I have to tell you something.” Carrie took the soap out of the dish, rubbing it thoughtfully in her hands, making suds. “But I don’t want to make you mad at me.”

“Why would I be mad?” I turned to look at her. We were almost the same height and we stood eye to eye, practically nose to nose, the steam rising around us. “You’re the first friend I’ve had…” I blinked, glad for the water running down my cheeks. “In a long time.”

“And friends should be able to tell each other things,” she said, rubbing her soapy hands over her oil-slick shoulders. “Right?”

“Right,” I agreed, although I wasn’t quite sure what I was agreeing to.

“Well, then.” She reached for the shampoo, giving up on the soap and slipping it back into the dish. “You have to know these walls are pretty thin.” She nodded toward the tiles and squeezed shampoo into her cupped hand. “I’m sure you’ve heard us.”

I flushed, glad for the heat of the shower turning my skin pink. “Sometimes.” It was true that they might as well have used tissue paper to insulate the walls. I’d heard the two of them at night a few times, her sharp cries, his groans-and their bedroom was two rooms away from my own. Either they were incredibly loud or the walls were incredibly thin. Or a little of both.

“So tell me…” She worked the shampoo into her hair. “Do those bruises have anything to do with the yelling I heard coming from your place last week?”

“No.” I denied it immediately, my arms crossed over my middle. “I fell.”

She turned her back to me, letting the spray rinse the soap from her hair, working it out with her fingers. I took the soap and quickly washed, the smell of coconut strong in the moist heat. When she handed me the shampoo, I took it, using it as an excuse to close my eyes and turn away from her.

“I knew it would make you mad,” she said in a small voice. I felt her fingertips brush over my shoulder, like bird’s wings. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad.” I shrugged. It was true-I wasn’t mad. I was afraid. And I didn’t want to talk about it. “Really, I’m not.”

“So we’re still friends?” she asked as I turned to face her.

“Friends who take showers together, apparently.” I grinned.

“Nothing wrong with that.” She laughed. “Can I ask you something else?”

I groaned. “Do you have to?”

“I was just wondering…” Her gaze fell briefly and then skipped back up again to meet mine. “Have you always shaved down there?”

I blinked and then glanced down too, as if to confirm what I already knew.

“Well…not always. But Mason likes me smooth.”

“Does he?” She cocked her head, looking again between my legs as if my response gave her permission. There was no hair there at all anymore. I used to have a dark little landing strip but Mason had made fun of me, saying it looked like my pussy had a Mohawk, so I’d gotten rid of it. “What’s it like?”

“Haven’t you ever gone bare?” I raised my eyebrows, looking down at her little nest of curls. She was definitely a real blond. “You, with your penchant for bikinis?”

“Well, I keep it trimmed.” Her hand went there, her fingers pulling gently at her pubic hair. It reminded me of seeing her touching herself from my bedroom window and the memory made my knees weak.

“You could wear one of those little micro-bikinis if you shaved,” I pointed out.