Salome's Garden

  Title Page

  SALOME’S GARDEN

  A MILF’s Tale

  By

  Ivan Latham

  Publisher Information

  Salome’s Garden

  Published in 2012 by Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright © Ivan Latham 2012

  The right of Ivan Latham to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  New Year, Same Shit

  Bobby had called at lunchtime with some half-assed excuse for forgetting that she even existed last night. He’d been half-drunk, apparently, his semi-comatose brain bedazzled by the spectacle of the Thames-side firework display. Rowena wanted desperately to believe his version of events. New Years Eve had been remarkably unremarkable for her: some tasteless microwaveable mush pretending to be lasagne in the company of Jools Holland and a crap Indie band hailed as the new Oasis. She had lost interest in the dawn of the approaching New Year long before three million of the taxpayers hard-earned cash went up in smoke down at the river. It was little consolation to think that she had helped turn the London Eye into some huge pink catherine wheel straight out of a Katie Price nightmare.

  And then, when it was apparent that Bobby had forsaken her yet again for the bed of the latest girl to fall for his slimey spiel, she had switched off the TV and sought solace in Smirnoff-induced slumber. She had finally regained consciousness just ten minutes before Bobby had tried out his hundredth meaningless attempt in the last six months to get back inside her pants after remorselessly cheating on her. Her splitting headache had only served to harden her resolve not to give him any more chances. She was sure that they must have heard her furious demand for him to ‘Fuck Off!’ down in Birmingham!

  God, if this first day of the new year was anything to go by, then she wondered if she would ever be able to reach December without throwing herself off a motorway bridge or something!

  She was glad to be back at work the next day. It dawned gray and damp, reflecting Rowena’s sullen mood as she caught the bus for the four mile journey from her flat to the pharmacy where she worked as a dispensing assistant. The prospect of a day spent doling out advice about which haemerrhoid cream was the most effective hardly promised to help her current mood, but at least it got her out of that damned flat and forced her to focus on more than her thoughts, which veered from depressed to downright psychotic whenever she dwelt on Bobby’s most recent infidelity.

  Her first morning back was as uneventful as she had expected it to be, but after the long and tedious Christmas break, even pricing up boxes of aspirin was a welcome relief. She managed to push Bobby to the back of her mind for most of the day, and then buried her head in the local newspaper for the evening bus ride back home. As she slowly turned pages filled with accounts of war, famine and other examples of global desolation, she tried to take solace in the fact that there were millions of people whose lives were shittier than her own. Tried, but failed.

  Past the sports pages and a glum report about the slaughter of the local team by Chelsea and Rowena arrived at the singles ads. She scanned them ponderously, drawn to the ‘Athletic Forty-something Seeking Good-Time-Girl’ ad before concluding sceptically that this was doubtless nothing more than a post by some waste-of-space married mid-life crisis with a list of inadequacies longer than your arm. As she turned to the penultimate pages, she was met with column after column of adult service advertisements, such as ‘Blow Your Load With Britney – 1.50 per minute.’ Her lips curled in wry amusment at the Shania’s, Kylie’s and Montana Skys all offering to help any caller attain sexual Nirvana for the cost of a years television license!

  She was about to close the newspaper when her eyes alighted on a larger advert close to the foot of the page. But the whine of the bus as it braked at her stop saw her look up with a start, scrunch the newspaper together and hurry for the doors which were already beginning to hiss shut.

  “Sorry,” she gasped to the driver with an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

  It was cold, dark and had started to rain and she ducked out from under the bus shelter and into the narrow residential street towards home. She reached the door of her apartment building, fumbled her key into the lock and tried to blow strands of wet hair from around her face as she checked her postbox. Finding nothing except the usual takeaway flyers and an open letter inviting her to give blood the following week, she stuffed the mail disinterestedly into her bag and climbed the three flights of switchback stairs to her flat.

  Ten minutes later, she had her hands wrapped around a mug of steaming hot chocolate and, ignoring the three new insincere messages from Bobby that the red light on her answering machine had drawn her attention to, she settled back onto her sofa to watch a Deal or No Deal New Year special.

  Less than five minutes later, her phone rang again. She ignored it and turned up the television until the ringing stopped and her machine kicked in for the fourth time that day.

  “It’s Bobby. Pick up if you’re there.”

  The voice of Noel Edmonds rose to drown out that of her unfaithful boyfriend as Rowena depressed the volume button on her remote, her full lips set in a firm line.

  “Rowena?” Bobby was barely audible.

  “Piss off!” she hissed.

  She heard Bobby’s latest message recording faintly as he unwittingly complied with her ascerbic demand, and then she was left in peace again. She hurriedly returned the TV to its normal volume level before she could give the demented old bat downstairs any more reason to indulge in her favourite pasttime of reporting fellow tenants for antisocial behaviour, and then jumped from the sofa to pull the phone line from its socket.

  If that cheating arsehole thought he could wile his way back into her bed after this, then he could think again,, she thought. He could go and blow his load with Britney if he was that desperate!

  She suddenly remembered the newspaper and retrieved it from the hallway table where she had absentmindedly dropped it on her way in. She returned to the couch and, TV forgotten, turned to the inside back page of the paper and the advertisment that had earlier captured her attention.

  The peculiar headline was what had hooked her curiosity: Sexy One Box Ladies Urgently Needed.

  She had no idea what a one box lady might be, and just what differentiated them from a no box woman. Or even a two box one, if such a thing even existed!

  “Salome’s Garden is a high class escort service dedicated to providing quality service to the more discerning client,” she read out loud. “We are currently seeking mature, sexy ladies over thirty-five to meet the demands of our ever-increasing client base. Rewarding opportunity promising fun times and an excellent rate of pay plus bonuses assured. Please contact Clarissa at the email address below, attaching a recent photograph of yourself.”

  A crazy thought crossed Rowena’s mind, but she dismissed it almost as soon as it had presented itself. Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, she told herself. Was her life so empty that she felt her only recourse was to become some sort of high class prostitute?

  The devil on her shoulder whispered painful memories of Bobby’s incorrigible infidelity with girls half her age. Two minutes later, she was seated at her computer in the corner of the bedr
oom, logging into her email account.

  She hesitated again. What the hell was she doing? But once more, thoughts of Bobby cheating with bimbos barely out of college as though she had nothing to offer him in the sack saw her jaw set resolutely as she typed in the email address. Then she recalled the application requirements stated in the advert and she rooted in the desk drawer for her webcam.

  But what kind of picture were they expecting? Something told Rowena that they would want something more than the bog-standard passport type photo. It was hardly a position at Natwest that she was applying for after all! More doubts flickered through her head. Was she even the kind of woman they were looking for?

  She stood up and began to take a long hard look at herself in the mirror. The face that stared back at her looked tired and worldweary, and the slouchy pullover and tracksuit bottoms she had slipped into suggested anything but sexy! She sighed. When she studied herself like this, was it really any wonder that Bobby had strayed….

  No! She shook her head in disgust with herself. There was no way – no fucking way! – that she was going to start projecting Bobby’s guilt onto herself! That was exactly what that bastard would want, and she’d be damned if she would give him the satisfaction! The old Rowena would have weakened in her resolve to see the cheating rat burn in hell before she would ever take him back, but not this time. New Year, same shit? Only if she gave in to the guy who had done nothing but shovel boatloads of it into her life the past two years. What had he ever done but criticise the way she looked, the way she dressed, the way she did her hair?

  She froze, staring hard again at the image in the mirror. And suddenly she realised just what kind of game Bobby had played. This frumpy mid-thirty-something looking back at her was his invention. The product of his telling her over and over that her hemlines were too short, her necklines too low, her make-up too slutty. The two-faced asshole! Talk about dog in a manger! Would the real Rowena Swift please stand up!

  In moments, the pullover and tracksuit bottoms lay in a heap on the floor. Rowena combed her fingers through her shoulder length blonde hair, pursing her lips in a more appreciative appraisal of the curvaceous figure that had emerged from the dowdy outfit. Okay, so the underwear left a bit to be desired, but she was sure that there must be something more alluring with which to garnish her ample curves somewhere in her bottom drawer. She rummaged there for a few minutes, finally settling on a classic black lace number that enhanced her creamy thighs and gave her a cleavage of Grand Canyon proportions! She felt her heart racing, shocked at the transformation she had worked in herself in just several short minutes. She hardly recognised the sexy, sensual woman staring back at her!

  She stood there mesmerised for some minutes then remembered just what the motivation for this had been and set about working on a pose for her application photograph. She smirked at just how far removed this was from any mainstream job application! But at least she wouldn’t have the stress of wondering just how she would produce the certificates to prove her string of non-existent college qualifications she had included on her current CV! And anyhow, she wasn’t really going to go ahead and follow up this employment opportunity should it even come to that. It was more a fun therapy session for Rowena than a serious attempt at a career move.

  She turned from the mirror and struck a provocative pose in front of the webcam, feeling a little self-conscious as she saw her scantily glad image in grainy moochrome on the computer screen. And yet at the same time, a tingle of excitement coursed through her veins as she sat down, pouted sultrily towards the camera, thrust out her ample breasts and clicked on the mouse. The webcam snapped in a millisecond and presented the result to her critical gaze. No, no, no, she thought, unhappy with the blurred picture. She resumed the pose, modifying it with a sexy, come-to-bed look, tossing her hair forward a little so that it hung unkempt and alluring around her inviting expression. Another click on the mouse and Rowena murmured a quiet satisfaction with the result this time around. Saving the picture to her desktop, she attached it to her email and then sat thoughtfully before starting to try and compose the accompanying message:

  Dear Clarissa, she began. Further to your advertisment, please find attached…

  She stopped abruptly. That hardly sounded appropriate to the picture! She scrolled back, deleting the sentence as she went, frowning as she tried to think of a more suitable covering letter. Her face relaxed into a mischievous grin as she typed simply: If you want it, come and get it! Then striking the return key, the email flew off into cyberspace.

  A curl of excitement wrapped itself around her insides and she felt a little breathless as she stood up from the computer and glanced at her reflection again in the full-length mirror. She looked and felt sexier than she had done in ages. And God, was she horny right now, as almost subconsciously her fingers slipped down the front of her very, very wet panties….

  Salome’s Garden

  Rowena told herself that she didn’t even expect -- let alone want -- a response to her email, but there was no denying the twinge of disappointment she felt when she found nothing in her Yahoo inbox the next morning. The excitement of the previous night had depleted itself with the orgasm that had wracked her sweat-soaked body following a marathon solo-sex session in the wake of submitting her application. And now, in tune with the broiling grey skies and persistent drizzle, her mood was lower than the sperm count of a nuclear power station employee.

  The morning dragged. At lunchtime she declined an invitation by a colleague to go to the local pub and ate her packed lunch in the silence of the stockroom. Her thoughts wandered again to the email she had sent and pondered using the pharmacy’s computer to log into her account. But she resisted the temptation. The last thing she needed right now was to be heading to the back of the dole queue.

  Afternoon passed by at an interminable rate with few interruptions from customers, the normally regular flow of which had been diluted by the driving rain. Rowena felt like screaming with frustration by the time five-thirty arrived. She grabbed her coat on the dot and almost ran from the shop.

  Her whole bus journey home was dominated by just one thought. She tried to deny it, to maintain to herself that just because she had sent in that picture didn’t mean she was actually bothered about getting a reply! But as the bus neard home, this day-long attempt at self-deception waned and waned so that by the time the bus drew up at her stop, she would have freely admitted that she was desperate to see the contents of her inbox.

  Ten minutes later, she was seated at her computer with her mouth hanging wide open in disbelief. The words of the open message had been the last thing she had expected, despite the hopes she had secretly nurtured the whole day. A reply was one thing, but this was an ego-booster of astronomical proportions!

  Hi Rowena, the message began. Love the picture, and your approach! You’re definitely the kind of sexy lady we’re looking for. Call by anytime and we can talk. Love, Clarissa x

  Rowena didn’t realise that she had been holding her breath until her chest started hurting. She let out a gasp, feeling giddy with renewed excitement! Sexy? Her? She tried to tell herself that they probably said this to all the girls, but before she conceded to that possibility, she wanted to revel in the simple, unadulterated thrill that these words on the screen had elicited. It might turn out to be just bullshit, but right now, it was bullshit that made her feel like a sex goddess!

  She allowed the words to continue massaging her ego for the rest of the evening. It cast her own perception of herself in a whole new light. She took a long, hot shower, resuming the intimate appreciation of her naked body that she had begun the night before. One hand clutching at her full breasts, the other deep between her soapy thighs, fucking her pussy with a hunger she had not known in a ages. She almost brought down the shower curtain as the inevitable orgasm struck and she struggled to stop herself from simply falling in a jibbering heap in the bath! Her pussy burned with pleasure, and sent an inferno of sensation scorching along e
very nerve and fibre of her naked body. It was intense, seemingly unending, and left Rowena seeing stars as the climax subsided.

  Wrapped in a large white bathsheet, Rowena sauntered back to her bedroom and stared at the message she had left open on the screen for what must have been the hundredth time in the past hour. Call by any time…. Should she, or not? Common sense advised against doing anything too rashly. Who was to say that she wouldn’t be walking into the net of some eastern European sex traffickers or something who would cart off to some Polish shit-hole to be fucked senseless for the next twenty years? She smirked to herself and shook her head. Despite there being just the remotest possibility of that, she didn’t in all honesty figure that it was very likely. She had taken a look at the website of Salome’s Garden and to all intents and purposes it appeared to be a genuine and classy set-up. She quelled any misgivings she had with thoughts of this glossy and ‘respectable’ façade, and decided that she would only kick herself if she didn’t at least go along to satisfy her curiosity. Clarissa sounded friendly enough, and where was the harm in a chat and a coffee?

  While waiting for cheese on toast to cook under the grill, she called one of her work colleagues to let them know that she wouldn’t be in the next day because of the stomach virus she had mysteriously contracted on the bus journey home. Then tucking into her two slices of deliciously melted cheddar smothered in HP sauce, Rowena closed her eyes and for some reason dreamed of being smothered in the biggest, wettest pearl shower she could imagine!

  ***

  Clarissa Smart looked every inch the epitomy of a professional woman. Not that kind of professional; her light-grey two-piece would not have been out of place in the boardroom of Lloyds of London. She looked more Chief Executive than Madam, and Rowena caught the subtle scent of some patently expensive perfume as she stepped forward from behind her desk with an outstretched hand.

  “You must be Rowena,” she said warmly. “Please, take a seat.”