by Vina Jackson
As he slipped his finger into her opening, they moaned together, he at the wonderful sensation of her fiery warmth and she at the sheer joy of feeling him inside her again. He moved upwards until he found her clitoris and he began to pleasure her in just the same way that she pleasured herself, brushing his finger around and around in perfect rhythm. He hugged Aurelia so tightly that she could feel his heart beating against her back, faster and faster in time with the motion of his other hand against her sex until suddenly she cried out and collapsed back against him, overwhelmed by the release of her orgasm.
Aurelia’s eyes slid closed and she breathed out a sigh of happiness as the stranger lifted her up and cradled her in his arms. He kissed her forehead gently and smoothed back the stray tendrils of hair that clung to her face. She felt his thigh muscles clench briefly and it occurred to her that the stranger had still not enjoyed the pleasure of his own release. But he did not seem to mind, and Aurelia drifted into a heavy slumber in his arms, enjoying the luxury of peaceful dreams free from the dark shadows that had plagued her thoughts ever since his lips had first touched hers at the funfair.
He held her tight until the night became dawn.
At the first sign of daybreak, the stranger pressed his lips against the smooth mound of Aurelia’s cunt and the mark of his visit that had appeared as she slept and would change her for ever, although it would be some time before she knew it. He kissed her mouth once more.
And then he left.
‘Aurelia! Aurelia!’ cried Siv. Her friend groaned, fluttered her eyelids for the briefest of moments and then fell back into sleep.
Siv took hold of Aurelia’s shoulders and shook her. Hard.
‘Aurelia!’ she shouted again. ‘Ginger took off with the funfair crowd. He’s not coming back. And I don’t want to hang around here all day. There’s a train in half an hour . . .’
Aurelia woke with a start.
‘Hello?’ she mumbled. She brought her fingers to her lips and felt the ghost of another mouth on her own. ‘Are you there?’ Aurelia asked in a daze.
‘Of course I’m here, you silly bint! Whatever has come over you? Let’s go. Now.’ Siv shook her again. ‘And for God’s sake put your clothes on before you catch your death of cold.’
Aurelia hastily crossed her arms over her breasts. She shook her head briefly to clear the cobwebs from her mind.
‘I had the strangest dream . . .’ she said. Her eyes darted around the room, taking stock of her surroundings. She could barely remember arriving in the strange stone church, never mind falling asleep here without so much as a cushion or a covering to keep her warm.
Her eyes landed upon her white blouse and skirt, which were folded neatly and tucked into the corner. She drew her brows together in a gesture of concentration, flipping through her memories like a Rolodex, but striving to grasp the memory of undressing was like snatching at a puff of smoke. The harder she tried to remember, the more the memory eluded her. She stood up and hastily slipped her clothes back on again, pausing when she noticed a darker speck of red on her previously pristine cape. Then she spied the open point of her cherry brooch, and her finger began to throb.
Had she raised her eyes, she might have noticed the alcove in which she had lain with the stranger and the single white rose that he had left there for her, its pale petals in stark contrast to the dark red and purple velvets and cushions that had supported their lovemaking, not that either of them had needed the comfort of fabric when locked in the embrace of the other.
But Aurelia didn’t notice. She quickly gathered up her things and hurried with Siv to the station, leaving the cold stone walls and her memories behind her.
4
The New World
A gentle wind was rising in the bay, dragging grey clouds along in its invisible wake, an initial taste of autumn, or fall as they preferred to call it here.
Aurelia had expected California to be an eternally sunny place and now realised how little she had prepared for this venture overseas. San Francisco’s climate, so far, had proven more European than tropical. She felt angry with herself for not having done any research once the subject had arisen in conversation with Siv and they had hastily decided on northern California. Whose idea had it been anyway? If she’d been seeking rain and dull, damp mornings, they could have travelled to London instead, or stayed home, surely?
Even though she had been born in the USA, Aurelia had been shipped back to her godparents in England following the death of her parents and this was the first time since then that she had been back there. Siv had visited New York and Florida for vacations, but neither of them had been to the West Coast and their prior knowledge had been distorted by the intake of too many films and TV shows.
They’d arrived a week ago at night and the city had already been in darkness. The cab drive to Oakland had seemed to take an eternity and, as the car had driven across the bridge, both the hills ahead and the peninsula behind had been enveloped in a foggy shroud through which barely a constellation of distant lights could be seen. This had proven particularly disorienting after the endless flight, and by the time they reached the sprawling cottage that would be their new home with its front lawn cut into a perfect handkerchief, they were in no mood to make conversation.
Edyta, the old woman who ran a small ballet school from the building where they would be boarding, had met them at the door. She was long and lean like a grasshopper, her dance training still evident in her bearing.
Ginger had helped arrange their accommodation through his connections as a parting gift to Siv. He claimed to have no idea of Edyta’s age and Siv and Aurelia didn’t dare ask, but suspected that she was probably in her seventies, though she might have been older and particularly well kept.
Siv and Ginger had sworn to keep in touch with each other, although Aurelia sensed the relationship would now come to an inevitable end as a result of their move to America.
A cream silk robe with a floral pattern was wrapped tightly around Edyta’s body and her feet were tucked into bright-red slippers. She wore a little gloss on her lips and her grey hair was cut into a short bob, coloured with a faint lilac tint and tucked neatly behind her ears. Her earlobes were long and hung even lower due to the weight of a pair of heavy ruby stud earrings.
She showed them straight to their bedrooms, all white walls and sparsely furnished in frugal but elegant clean lines, and pointed out the shower and the kettle and other necessities before allowing them to crash into bed and sleep off the stresses of the journey.
On the following day they had an opportunity to explore the cottage and learn what their duties would be. Aurelia, even though she was relying on her windfall to cover her board, had volunteered to assist with some of the paperwork one afternoon per week for the sake of gaining work experience and Siv, who was working for her room and suppers, would be tutoring dance lessons every weekday afternoon and helping with keeping the cottage clean. They were given a whole week off to settle in before beginning their chores.
That initial week had proven a blur and Aurelia had journeyed through it in a daze. She knew it was not only jetlag or the unsettling feeling a new environment often causes. As she adapted to the new house, the new city, the new country, juggled the accents, the curious customs, the layout of the local streets and nearby convenience stores, together with the strange state of being that a separation from home seemed to cause, she was conscious of the fact she was only partly here. Half of her mind, and maybe even all of her body – in a challenge to the laws of physical reality – was still back in Bristol, naked on the stone cold floor in the early hours of a bleak, coastal morning.
Her fugue on awakening and the strange stupor that had initially overtaken her mind when Siv had found her and she had hurriedly dressed and they had rushed to Temple Meads train station had gradually lifted over the days following the party in Bristol. Ginger had decided to stay on as his next job was in Wales.
Then Aurelia began to remember. At first, he
r memories were not like memories at all but rather brief flashes of feeling and of emotion so acute and so real that it seemed as if she had been transported straight back to the stone church, as if moments from that night had somehow been frozen in time and she was replaying them at random and sometimes totally inappropriate intervals. There would be occasions when she was walking down the street with brown paper bags full of shopping and her mind totally distracted thinking of the most banal of activities and suddenly she would feel the stranger’s hot breath on her cheek and taste his mouth on hers and feel the pressure of his fingertips caressing her clitoris and she would be almost overcome by great crashing waves of desire so strong that she needed to pause in her step, lower her bags of groceries to the pavement and stand still and breathe until it passed and she was able to continue.
But gradually the events of that night had arranged themselves in an orderly fashion in her mind, although she still had no idea who he was or what it all meant and this time she had not shared her experience with Siv. It felt too private. And altogether too confusing and crazy to explain to another, even her best friend.
There were moments when Aurelia wondered if she had lost her mind entirely. But no matter how much she struggled to apply a modicum of logic and rational thinking to her emotions, Aurelia could not argue away the fact that every thought of him was accompanied by the twin sensations of arousal and safety. Whatever had happened that night, she knew that she had been safe – protected, even – in the stranger’s arms.
Other things had got in the way, though, and she had been forced to put all of her questions, thoughts and desires on hold as they had rushed to organise their trip to America. It had been like a film in fast forward: the packing, the last-minute details, the emotional farewells and then the mini cab to Gatwick and the plane to San Francisco. As if the rest of her life had conspired to prevent her thinking about the night and the stranger and her deflowering until now.
Today was their final day of freedom before Siv began working for her keep and they would both start their new lives in San Francisco properly, as bona fide residents rather than visitors.
Aurelia looked down at her finger. There was no longer any mark there where she had pierced herself with the sharp pin of her brooch and there was, of course, no outward sign of the comfort that he had given her when she had briefly cried out in pain, or the press of his lips on her injured skin.
The mark inside her, however, was still present. Indelible. One she would cherish for ever.
The wonderful stranger.
His touch.
His caresses.
The way he had made love to her. How her untrained body had so effortlessly blended with his. And the emptiness that she had felt that morning when she awoke so acutely aware of his absence before she had even remembered he had ever been there at all.
Aurelia heard the slamming of the front door, and checked her bedside clock. It was still only seven in the morning. She sighed, remembering with an undertow of irritation that Siv had to go into the city to pick up the obligatory application forms for the upcoming circus school audition and to get her original documents photocopied. She followed the sound of her friend’s steps as she ran down the road to catch the municipal bus.
She stretched, her limbs lazily unfurling from the broken angles of sleep under the crisp bed covers, her toes grazing the end of the quilt, and exhaled loudly in the knowledge she was now alone in the house. This was the first occasion since their arrival that she and Siv had been apart. And as much as she enjoyed spending time with her friend, Aurelia now welcomed the opportunity to laze about with no particular task in mind and spend some time on her own.
Not that there weren’t things to do. She had promised to send a long email to her godparents in Leigh-on-Sea to let them know all was well, but somehow she couldn’t summon the energy even to pull her iPad from her luggage, where it still rested alongside most of the clothes she had not yet bothered to hang up in her bedroom closet. There was washing to do, and shopping at the local mall as the provisions they had hastily stocked up on at the corner convenience store on their first day were running low, but nothing that couldn’t wait.
Aurelia closed her eyes and allowed her stiff muscles to relax. One part of her mind was prompting her just to remain in bed and do nothing while the other, more responsible half, was studiously making to-do lists.
Anyway, this was no civilised time to get up. Much too early, she concluded.
She kept her eyes shut, although the light streaming through the curtains created a white background to the screen formed by her eyelids and a constant distraction.
The scattered sounds of birds welcoming the morning outside reached her at irregular intervals, somehow evoking long half-forgotten memories she couldn’t quite identify, like a form of Morse code that only her DNA could interpret. Finally, she couldn’t resist and peered slowly at the corner of sky visible through the window. A greyish blue, uncertain colour.
And knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now.
She swore under her breath and pushed the quilt to the side. Against her will, she was now wide awake and feeling a hollow pang in her stomach. Slipping sideways out of the bed, she walked barefoot to the kitchen. The old promotional rock ’n’ roll T-shirt advertising an Arcade Fire European tour that she had been wearing in bed, along with a pair of cotton knickers, barely reached her midriff and Aurelia shivered. It was chilly and the stains of blue in the sky beyond the windows conveyed a false impression of warmth. Siv had left a jar of peanut butter on the table and she grabbed hold of it and rushed back to the comfort of her bed. Then realised she hadn’t taken a spoon. Dammit, her fingers would have to do. She dived between the covers holding the glass container aloft.
Ten minutes later, licking her fingers clean, Aurelia dropped the now half-empty jar on the bedside table and screwed its plastic lid on. Again she considered getting up and beginning her chores or arranging some kind of touristic activity, but it was just too early in the day and the multitude of available possibilities offered her too many choices.
Instead, she turned over and buried her face into the warm softness of the pillow and welcomed darkness in the comfort of the material. Her arms were still uncovered and she pulled up the blanket and was now left with a decision to either lay her limbs over the top or tuck them under the cover alongside her body where the heat was now captured. She opted for the latter.
Her fingers were flattened against her inner thighs as she adjusted her position for a maximum of comfort.
A nail grazed the skin of her thigh in passing and Aurelia shuddered, her memory flooding with images and feelings as if a box of secrets had just been opened.
The stranger’s touch.
The way his fingers had moved across her skin, sometimes soft and sometimes firm.
How he had made her his on that mad evening that was still imprinted on her mind like an incomprehensible hieroglyph.
A whirlpool of emotions stirred inside her and she retreated into her private world, blanking the room, the faint noises reaching her through the window, transporting herself away on wings of deliberate magic from the Oakland suburb to a dark vaulted space in Bristol, seeking with increasing hunger to recreate every single movement that had passed between them, the smells, the touches, the contact, the static.
She licked her lips. And again she tasted pomegranate.
As if the delicate and fleeting echoes of the fruit had been conjured out of nowhere by the force of her will, her yearning.
Her heart jumped and she moved a finger nearer to her sex.
Her eyes still closed shut, she tried to imagine her fingers were his and he was again exploring her, travelling like an intrepid pioneer of unknown lands across the pale plains of her flesh, approaching the fire, the volcano, that defined her sexual heart. How had it felt to him?
The finger inched its way towards her opening, the heat radiating towards it, reaching it by infinitesimal increments
, every hesitation a further degree upwards, an extra step towards the subterranean blaze that kept her alive, feeding the internal engine that regulated her senses.
She arched her back, deliberately slowed her movement. Patient, delaying the inevitable.
But there was so little ground over which her finger could drag itself without coming to a total stop and, all too soon, as Aurelia attempted to prolong the expectation, explore the apprehension, expand time to new proportions, the finger made contact with her lips.
She was wet, her body responding of its own volition to the complex feelings rushing around in circles in her mind.
The moistness of the labia she brushed against was velvety soft and, for a brief moment, Aurelia pretended she was blind and imagined a whole world she would only ever perceive through the nerve endings on the tip of her fingers, a new universe in which one only survived by the power of touch.
The probing finger dipped inside her – as his once had – weighing her, mapping her, now immersed fully in her raging heat, wrapped in the fiery blanket of her lust. When the stranger had similarly been inside her, Aurelia couldn’t help wondering what it had felt to him to be gripped by such transcendent heat and wished she could once be a man, if only for a day, just to know.
The temptation to introduce another finger was all-encompassing, but it was not the way she preferred to fulfil her pleasure. She retreated and turned over onto her back. Parting her legs wide, her right arm now leveraged into position, her forefinger found the hardened nub of her clit and began a rough symphony of concentric caresses while her free fingers dipped smoothly between her damp lips, their slight movements in studied, clever harmony.
She took a deep breath, all the time watching behind her eyelids a confused movie in which memories of that night in Bristol blended with elements of dreams and nightmares and nothing and no one was quite clear enough to recognise, plunging in and out of focus. Fuck, if only it hadn’t been so dark, then she might have remembered more about it all, the details of his face, the colour of his eyes, every line and crevice and blemish on his skin, and not just his voice, his smell, and the mechanics of the sex they had shared, however wonderful it had been.
