“Dan, this is Mariella. Call her ‘Ella’.” Smiles and a handshake. ‘Ella’ looked to be anywhere from early twenties to late thirties, possibly Hispanic, still pretty. I was no judge of age any more. At the moment, I was wondering how ‘Ella’ was going to infect my life. Knowing my wife, I knew she wouldn’t be able to refrain from saying something.

“She has come to see about the ad I placed.” I vaguely recalled Diane saying something about hiring somebody to help clean. I nodded. As I turned away to go to my den, my wife stopped me cold. “You know the one we talked about ... for a woman to live here after I’m gone?”

“Say, what?”

“Remember when...”

“Yeah! I remember!” I swatted the air toward my wife as I took a breath and turned to Ella. “Look, I’m sorry, we only discussed this once. I just don’t...”

Ella smiled at me and said, “I get it. Just... (and here she gave me a different smile) ... don’t forget me. I ... well, please?” I got one last sad smile and she was gone.

We argued a while, but the question never had a chance to be settled. Two months later Diane was gone. Her cancer had eaten her from the inside out and she’d held on too long. I begged her to let go, but her will for life was too strong. Death had to drag her out of life at the end, as I’d always known it would.

I sat sipping coffee and reading email when the doorbell rang. Nobody ‘drops by’. Even before Diane died, visitors were few and far between. Our friends lived back where we’d moved from. I don’t know anybody here. So, I sat naked, wondering if I should grab shorts or just hide behind the door. I decided it was somebody selling something so I opened the door just enough to look out.

Mariella stood on the porch. The memory of who she was took a second to surface. I immediately humiliated myself by opening my mouth. “Oh! Uh, hi. What’s up?”

She gave a little laugh. “What’s up? Well, the last time I was here I was invited inside.”

“Well, the last time it was my wife who invited you in. But, more importantly, when we met I was wearing clothes.”

It was her turn to be surprised, but she replied fast: “Oh, I heard all about your nudity. It won’t shock me. I grew up with three brothers and they were pretty proud of their stuff.”

It only took a second to decide. I opened the door for her. As I closed it I gave her a 360 turn. “So, this is me.”

“I like it,” she said smiling. Then she stepped closer to me and inhaled. I realized I’d had the air conditioner turned to a warmer temperature to save money. I realized I must smell from being warmer. When I tried to apologize she shushed me. “I like your scent, too,” she said with a smile.

After discussing our expectations, we agreed to let her work for me, helping keep the house up. “I know you and Diane discussed you living here,” I told her. “I don’t know if I want to give up my privacy that much yet. When my back deteriorates too much I’ll have to have somebody here, just not yet.”

“That’s fine,” she said. We discussed wages and she named a number I thought was scandalously low for what she’d be doing. I told her I’d pay her half again what she had asked.

“You don’t know what it’s like to work for me yet,” I reminded her.

We sat and talked for a while. At thirty-eight, she was currently living with one of her brothers and picking up a few cleaning jobs. She had been married, but her husband had died in the Middle East.

I put together a great dinner for us both with what I had in the refrigerator and pantry. We ate and talked. After we finished the second bottle of wine, Ella stretched and asked if it was all right if she slept here, just for the night. I told her it was fine with me and showed her the spare room and hallway bathroom. I went back to the kitchen and got a beer to take to the patio. I love laying out there staring into the Universe. I thought about Ella. I hadn’t put on a stitch since she got there and there was no reaction from my dick. I was glad. But sad, too. It had been a couple years...

I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself and drinking yet another beer when I heard the door open behind me. “Stargazing?” she asked in a low voice. A stray breeze blew a floral scent to me but it was gone as soon as it was there.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

“Mind some company?”

“Nope.” I heard her move and saw a towel hit the lounge chair next to mine. It was followed by a voluptuous naked female. After I examined her lower parts I raised my eyes to her face. She wore a lopsided smile.

“Well? Am I ‘worthy’?” she asked.

“Lady, you are worthy as hell!” I sighed. “Not that there’s...” I had to sit up and swing my legs around to face her. I looked her over again, her black hair picked up a shine from the light leaking from the house. She was overweight in a voluptuous way, large round breasts, a curvy middle with a small fold about halfway down. Her crotch was covered with black hair and her feet were small and pretty. Her Hispanic heritage gave her skin a delicious looking cocoa color and her nipples a dark almost purple color.

I had been about to tell her there was nothing to be worthy for in this house, but I stopped myself. I just sat there for a second. I thought about Diane and the look on her face when she introduced us. I thought back before that and the conviction in her voice when she suggested finding a “co-wife” or a replacement for her when she was gone. That was after we found out how severe the cancer was. She meant for this to happen.

“Ella,” I started to tell her it was too soon, but she stopped me a few words in.

“Dan, I get it. I work for a man who just lost his wife. You like to go naked. So do I. But if this is too much, I’ll go inside.” As she started to get up she accidentally farted loudly! Everything froze for a second.

But only for a second, because then I couldn’t stop myself from giggling like a kid, which infuriated her, causing her to fall on top of me and, well, then, as we wrestled and wiggled against each other, the laughter dropped off ... We kissed as she spread her legs across my hips and wriggled her wetting flesh against my barely inflated cock.

“Oh, my God, Ella!” I gasped when she let go of my tongue. I imagined how that mouth would feel on my dick.

“I’m sorry!” she wailed, threatening to cloud up. She started to pull away but I held a cheek of her ass in either hand and I held tight.

“No! Don’t apologize! I’m sorry if you thought I didn’t like this,” I squeezed her round ass in my hands as I talked. “I love it! You feel great, all warm and soft, but...”

“I know. We already said this.” Again she started to get up. But she grinned when she saw the half-erection that had been poking her. She bent at the waist and kissed my cock, giving it a playful lick. Straightening up, she winked. “See you in the morning, boss,” she said and I watched her broad ass roll side to side as she returned to the house and slid the door closed.

I flopped back in my chair. My gaze was filled with the night and stars but the image in my head was Ella’s ass. I wanted that ass. I wanted to sink into the slippery flesh she’d ground on my dick. It was too late to taste her juice from my cock. What she hadn’t swept up had dried in the night air.

In the morning, I was not too surprised to find Ella in the kitchen (breakfast aromas had wakened me), but she was only wearing an apron that had been Diane’s. After our good mornings she brought me a cup of coffee, setting it in front of me. “Eggs and bacon in a few minutes,” she said and turned back to the stove. My mouth watered as I watched her graceful movements, especially that tawny ass. I started to erect.

She put the food on our plates and set them on the table. Then she took the apron off and hung it back on the hook I’d put up for Diane years before. Then she got her own coffee and offered me a refill. “I’ll get it,” I said. “You eat.” I went back and sat down.

“You’re about thirty years younger than I am, Ella,” I said. “Why didn’t you remarry when your husband was killed?”

“Oh, it broke my heart when David was killed. There was no room for anybody else in my heart. I guess I never got over it.”

“Did you try dating? I can’t believe some guy nearer your age hasn’t been interested.”

“Oh,” she sighed, “I was asked out a few times, but I only went out with one guy. He took me to dinner, but it just felt ... wrong. I didn’t want to go down that road again. I would have felt like I was cheating on David.”

“But ... what about last night? What about all this?” I gestured her way, meaning her being here nude with me. I was puzzled.

“Well, when I saw Diane’s ad, my sister-in-law told me to go for it. I told her I didn’t want to be a wife, let alone a ‘co-wife’. But she pointed out that the guy – you – might want to have sex with me, but that I’d get a place to live and sex if I wanted it.” She giggled.

“After talking to Diane, I told my sister-in-law about how you like going naked. She wanted to know about your... ‘pene’.”

“You mean my penis?” I knew what Hispanic people called it. “What did you tell her?”

“Oh, I told her you were so old you probably couldn’t do it any more.” I frowned at her. But she laughed before rushing to calm me down.

“Oh! But you’re not old! I lied to her, maybe.” She glanced under the table and her breasts described a ballet. I relaxed a little.

“Why was it a lie? Maybe Diane didn’t mention it, but it’s been a long time since it has been hard,” I admitted.

“I didn’t want her to maybe take the job before me. She wants to divorce my brother. I don’t blame her. He may be my brother, but he’s a puerco, just like our father used to be. He’s dead now, my papa, thankfully.”

“Wow. Well, I’m sorry for her situation, but she could just go ahead and divorce him.”

“Oh, she will. But she needs a job like Diane offered to me – a place to live and a job. She’s a massage therapist, but it doesn’t make enough for her to live on.”

I nodded. “He isn’t violent with her, is he?”

“No. It’s only the things he says to her, like she’s no good, he wishes he’d married somebody else, like that. He hasn’t hit her – not yet anyway.”

“What about how he lives? What does he do?”

“Oh, he claims to have a part time job but the work isn’t steady. He’s either dealing or stealing. That’s what I figure anyway.”

“Is there anything you need me to do before I leave?” The abrupt change of subject is something I learned to expect from Ella as I got to know her more. I told her I was okay for the day. I decided after she got dressed and left that I would enjoy her living with me, if only for the companionship and the eye candy. Also, there was nothing wrong with my tongue if she wanted it, and Diane’s ‘toy box’ was still in the closet.

I thought about her sister-in-law’s situation a while. My disability payments extended only so far, though. I had some money from Diane’s insurance. After I divided it out to other beneficiaries according to her wishes, it left me with a nice amount, though I was not rich enough to hire another woman, even if it might be nice to have both of them running around here naked with me. I had to laugh at that thought. The thought of free massages was a plus, though.

Ella returned the following week, as arranged. She stripped off her clothes and went to work cleaning and dusting. She was washing up the pan I’d used for my dinner the night before when I went to the kitchen to tell her she could bring her things and live in the spare room if she still wanted to. She turned around and I got a hug, her hands dripping water down my back and her belly, also wet, gave my belly a kiss.

We lived each day. Ella worked the lunch to dinner shift from 11 to 8 on Thursdays and Sundays. As she settled in with me she bitched about the tips those days. “That’s why they gave me those shifts. None of the other girls wanted them,” she explained.

I commiserated with her over a couple of beers on the patio. It had been about two weeks by then since had been living with me. “Ella, I’d like you to consider this your home, not as a job. As far as I’m concerned you can stay here as long as you want. You can quit the job at the café.”

She didn’t say anything for a second. Then I saw the crinkle at her eye just before she asked, “So, you mean I’ll be, like a co-wife?” There was a saucy lilt to her voice. Added to her slight Spanish accent, it was intoxicating.

I barked a laugh. “Yeah, I guess you will, even without the first wife!” I said.

“Cool!” she said. Then she got up and gave me a wifely peck on the lips. “I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow.”

And that was that. I wasn’t sure what had happened. Did I piss her off? I didn’t think so, ‘Oh, well, she’ll be up in the morning and I can apologize if I offended her,’ I thought. Though for the life of me, if I had, I couldn’t figure out why. I watched the Universe rotate another half hour (and another beer) before I decided to call it a night. I started by checking the door locks before going to bed.

As I walked down the hall, I noticed that Ella’s bedroom door was closed, as usual. I continued past the guest room/office to my bedroom on the opposite side of the hall. There was a dim light in the hall from a night light I’d had installed so there was no reason for me to turn on the bedroom light when I got there. I could see my way to the master bath to pee before I got into bed. I’d left the bedroom door open, as I always have done. Ella and I have seen each other naked so what was the point of closed doors?

I shook off the last drops, finally, and left the bathroom and moved toward the dark bed. A voice in the darkness said, “Jesus, it took you long enough.”

I closed the distance to the bed to find Ella, still naked, under the covers! Well, under from the waist down, since she was sitting up now. “What the...” I began, but she shushed me.

“You said I’m a co-wife. I’m claiming the wife side of the bed.” Simple. I guessed. Right then I was so tired, yet turned on and, more than anything, I realized, glad to have someone next to me at night the way Diane used to be.

“Fine. How did you know which side I sleep on?”

“Well, Dan, you leave your door open. I’ve watched you sleep.”

“You’ve ‘watched me sleep’?”

“Yeah, she sniffed. A couple of times.” I couldn’t believe she admitted having done that.

“Well, I guess you’ve heard me snore then,” I joked.

“Hell, I heard that from the first night. It isn’t too bad unless you had more to drink some nights.”

“Really? Okay, thanks for telling me. All anybody else would do is complain. Three wives and Diane.”

“Four? You were married four times?”

“Yeah. So? Didn’t Diane tell you my life story?”

“She said you had both been married before, but she never told me she was your fourth wife!”

“Well, the first one was when I was twenty. Lasted about two years – last I heard, she had just been released from a mental facility because she’d claimed to hear voices in the wall begging for help. The second marriage produced my two daughters – 15 years. The third was four years. Diane was my longest and only really good marriage. We were together seventeen years.”

“Wow. No other kids?”

“Nope.”

She’d spent a long time since she’d been there cleaning all the things we’d been unable to keep up with on our own. She had even mostly taken over the cooking and liked it when I taught her to make something she was not familiar with. She did all the work as I instructed. That was fun because she, like me, had given up wearing clothes at home. I loved watching her move around.

She did the laundry, at first keeping her own separate and doing small loads for us each. I suggested she just toss hers into the basket with mine and do one larger load instead of two small ones. She resisted for the first week, but she relaxed and let her panties and the occasional bra (she rarely wore them: never in the house and only to go out of the house) mix in with my shorts, along with the rest of our clothes.

She had dropped all but one of her other cleaning customers. That one, she told me, was a lady older than I was who was in a wheelchair. The nurse that took care of her didn’t clean, cook or do the dishes. The woman gave Ella money to shop for her groceries and Ella would cook up enough meals for her to eat the next few days with the help of the freezer and microwave.