As Mireille led the way out to the pool area, the dark early morning sky was full of stars. Reaching the edge of the Jacuzzi, she turned on a switch and the dimly lit turquoise tub began to come to life with bubbling foamy ripples. There were a pair of rich terrycloth towels on a redwood bench adjacent to the octagon pool, and the steam was rising into the cool air to invite them.

Mireille wasted no time in unfastening the shoulder straps of her jumpsuit and the top portion of it fell down exposing her full breasts. She then paused.

"Is this enough light to see my new tan lines?" She smiled and proudly pulled her elbows back to further display the contrast of her tan arms and neck with the white, milky tone of her bare breasts.

Even in the greenish light of the submerged pool lights Steve could indeed see she had managed to become two separate tones, either naturally in the summer sun or in a tanning salon somewhere.

"Well? are you going to join me in this lovely bath?" she asked.

Steve watched as she did not wait for an answer, but simply let her entire silk outfit fall to the wooden deck while she gracefully stepped out of it, standing now waiting for him in pair of black bikini panties.

As if in a trance watching her, Steve unfastened his belt and unbuttoned his shirt, then quickly removed both, standing himself in his underwear, his fit body also glowing in the asure pool light.

"Didn't think I'd have to twist your arm," she said, laughing softly.

Both of them stood facing each other for a moment until Mireille in one quick movement, pulled her panties down over her hips and thighs, removing them completely and throwing them onto the bench. She paused just long enough for him to notice the familiar two-toned look of her flesh, but also could see that she had freshly waxed that place where the sun seldom finds a woman.

Stepping quickly into the steamy cauldron of foam and bubbles, then sinking down to her shoulders, Mireille watched as Steve unhesitatingly removed his undershorts, then crouching with his arms straight back, feigning that he would dive into the small pool like a like competitive swimmer. The semi-drunked antic earned a giggle from Mireille, but then he carefully stepped into the sultry hot water himself and moved close enough to put his arms around her waist. She met this action with her own hands on his shoulders and pressed her silky body warmly against his. This was followed by a long-awaited kiss on Mireille's part and Steve not having any difficulty carrying out his acting skills, as if it were a signature love scene for him.

As Steve's hands moved from her waist down along her thighs to her firm buttocks, he pulled her closer to him still. Quickly becoming unavoidably aroused, he lifted her out of the steaming water just enough to expose her breasts into the night air. He then proceeded to kiss and tease them softly  with his mouth. Mireille put her head back and seemed to look to the stars with abandonment as Steve cupped his hands onto both her breasts, massaging them gently then firmly. 

As the moments stretched out, there were more kisses with their faces joined and then apart to recover in breathless sequences. This lasting until Steve felt the sensation of Mireille's hand softly clutching his swelling manhood. As she began to softly stroke him there, she pressed her face into the knap of his neck with abandonment. He could hear her breathing increase as she then positioned herself onto him in a compromised position, straddling his hips with both her legs.

Just as she began to guide his throbbing anatomy with her hand carefully into the folds of her most sensitive place, there came a voice quickly approaching them.

"Mireille, Mireille! I couldn't stop her . . . It's your sister . . . Caia!

"Who?" Mireille shouted back.

"She came to the door just now. Forced her way in . . . told me she must see you. I told her you were in the kitchen . . . but she's not going to find you there!"

"What does she want? That bitch!"

"She just pushed her way in, Mireille. Said she had to see you. Now!"

Steve was frozen. Waiting to hear and see what would happen next.

Mireille quickly got up and stepped out of the warm water. She quickly dried herself with one of the towels, threw on her jumpsuit without underwear or shoes and turned to storm back into the house.

It was too late.

Caia was already there on the Jacuzzi deck. Dressed as if she had been to a gala party. She faced her sister closely in the ghostly glow of the pool.

"What are you doing here, Caia!" Mireille screamed. "In my house! . . . On my property! . . .In front of my guest!" She pointed to Steve still half-submerged in the water.

Caia, simply smiled calmly.

"Steve?" She looked down at him in the water. "Shall we tell Mireille why I'm here?"

The scene had suddenly morphed into a horror film to Steve. A bad movie he did not want to be yet stupidly agreed to be featured in.

"Shall we inform my love-sick sister . . . how you came to be here tonight? . . . And why she probably wanted  to fuck you tonight?"

Steve called out. "Wait! Caia . . . NO! . . . Don't do this!"

He got out of the water naked and grabbed a towel. He covered himself as best he could with one hand while raising the other like a partition between the two sisters. He tried to stand closer but they both moved away and resumed their aggressive positions. Steve could only look silently on, taking in the striking image of the identical young women, facing off. Looking into their mutual mirror of anger.

"Caia . . . How do you know Steve?" Mireille demanded, her voice teetering on hysteria.

"Shall we tell her, Steve?"

Caia seemed triumphant in her correct calculation that on this night the two would be intimate.

"Tell her, Steve . . . How I hired you to do this . . ." She looked into Mireille's shocked face, spitefully. "Do you really think he cares for you? He's an actor, stupid! . . . And I have to admit . . . he's pretty good this seduction game." She pointed at the Jacuzzi and laughed.

Steve suddenly felt a growing storm of rage take hold of him. He could sense himself wanting to become violent with Caia. To destroy her for the heartless display of cruelty she was inflicting upon her sister.

But Mireille then turned to him. She looked searchingly into his eyes.

"Steve . . . did you . . . Are you . . . Is this really what she says it is?"

He was silent. And could only now avoid her incredulous stare. He tried desperately not to cave in to the storm of emotion he was holding back. It was a mixture of guilt and sudden overwhelming empathy. He could not bring himself to speak. He just hung his head in shame.

"Well . . . I guess I'll leave you two now to sort things out," Caia said, coolly.

But as she turned to leave, Mireille lunged at her, knocking her to her knees on the deck. Steve grabbed her, holding her back, allowing Caia to escape and run back into the house.

"I want to kill you both!" Mireille screamed, struggling with Steve to let her go.

As they both heard a car engine start near the garage, Steve let go of Mireille's flailing arms. She too ran back into the house hysterically, while Steve stayed outside, dressing and feeling helpless to do anything that could even begin to make things right again.

When he heard the rumble of a second high-performance car start up in the garage, he quickly slipped on his shoes while hearing Mireille's Lamborghini squeal out onto the roadway. He managed to run through the house past Hala and into the garage. Having left his keys in the Porsche he jumped in and started it. He then backed it out with the tires screaming and was racing  down the mountainous road in a matter of minutes. The hilltop was empty of cars and the sky still clear. He couldn't imagine where the two sisters would go or even what they would do if they met up again down the highway or back in Santa Barbara.

Knowing his car was designed more for rallying on curves at high speed, he figured he could catch up to the two whose cars though fast, were made mostly for road cruising along the world's elegant autobahns.

Taking each curve much faster than he had driven earlier that evening behind Mireille, Steve pushed the envelope of his speed and maneuvered dangerously across the center line at each turn to make gains on the sisters ' vehicles, now somewhere  in the darkness. After a good ten minutes of downshifting through the curves and putting the Porsche into fifth gear on the straightaways, he could see the headlights up ahead of their luxurious cars, still speeding down the treacherous mountain road in close proximity.

On one strait section of asphalt, Steve took the Porsche up to one-hundred forty MPH, shaving off the road space that distanced the twins from him. As he took the tighter curves considerably slower, he soon could see Mireille's White Lamborghini up ahead trying to bump up alongside Caia's Black Ferrari in an attempt to push her to the narrow shoulder and stop. Caia was not going for this ultimate confrontation and fought back by swerving her car, still at high speed, back and forth and within inches of Mireille's close-following vehicle.

Rather than rush up behind them, Steve stayed back but could see the danger the two were engaged in by their foolish combat near the cliff edge. The mountain road, clearly without guardrails, gave only a margin of two meters before the precipice began with a drop of several hundred feet into the dark canyon below.

As he idled back, Steve watched horrified as Mireille made one more lunge at Caia's car with hers, this time forcefully colliding with it. This caused both girls to slam on their brakes, putting both their vehicles into side-long skid. They immediately lost control of the road while sliding, and literally sailed off the edge of the cliff into the darkness below.

There was a momentary silence and absence of light as their headlights went out of view. Then came a great flash of bright orange below, lighting up the hillsides as their cars had obviously burst into flames somewhere down in the canyon.

Steve slowly pulled his car over to the shoulder where both cars had disappeared and ran to the edge. A fire was beginning to rage far below, igniting the dry brush and scrub oak trees on the canyon wall. In the light of the growing flames, he could see that both of the sister's cars were quickly disintegrating into unrecognizable pieces of twisted glass and metal. Soon the smell of burnt oil and wild brush was redolent in the air and Steve could see in the headlights of his own car the wind carrying the smoke ever skyward.

At first he was emotionally compelled to hike down the steep cliff to the wreckage site. To look for whoever might have survived the tragedy. But clearly seeing the mass of destruction and no signs of human movement in the large burning debris area, he painfully came to the realization that neither sister could have possibly survived the fiery area of canyon now burning out of control. 

Not having his cell phone with him, he was about to return to his car and speed down the mountain to alert the authorities of the terrible accident. But just when he was about depart, another motorist stopped behind him in an old and battered service truck. The driver ran over to look down into the canyon where the flames were burning brighter now.

"Did you see what happened?" the man asked. He wore a baseball hat and looked to be in his late sixties.

"Do you have a phone with you? " Steve desperately asked him. "We need to get the Highway Patrol and fire department up here immediately."

"Yeah, I'll call 911," the man answered back, taking out of his pocket an old-looking cell phone.

He made the call and gave an accurate location of where on the mountainside the terrible accident had occurred.

Still looking down in shock, the truckdriver took off his hat and wiped his brow. " Don't know how anyone could've survived that," he said. 

In a daze, Steve took several steps toward the road edge to begin the trek down. 

The man quickly caught his arm. "It's too damn steep for us to get down there, buddy. That whole hillside's go'in up. Fire Department . . .Search and Rescue will be up here soon."

"Yeah." Steve said, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Thanks for calling."

"So, . . . you see what happened? Looks like it might be two cars down there."

Steve thought for a moment of what he should say, knowing exactly what had happened.

"No . . .. I just came up on . . . what looked like a brush fire." he answered. "But yeah, I see now it's two cars . . . Really don't know how it happened."

"Probably just some crazy young 'uns. Drink'n and driv'n back to town. It's a bad road for that shit up here."

"Yeah, I see that," Steve said, noticing his own hands were beginning shake, leaving him feeling nauseous.

"You know . . ." the man said philosophically. "There just ain't no such thing as an accident. Never has been. Ever since the good Lord blessed the Earth with beautiful young ladies." 

He slowly put his phone back in his pocket with resignation. 

"True," Steve replied quietly.

"Na," the stranger continued, "It's always some damn fool's fault. These kinda things. Or maybe a pair of damn fools." He held an open hand toward the burning canyon.

"Yeah. Could be something like that," Steve said, feeling more tears well up, and that he might vomit at the side of the road. "Probably something like that."

* * *