by Jade West
* * *
My instinct was to lean forward – to close the space between us, but instead I got out of the chair and went to the window. I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my trousers and stared out into the mist through a chink in the drawn curtains. A thick blanket of fog was draped across the manicured grounds that surrounded the bungalow. Behind me I could hear Amy moving on the bed. I could see her in the reflection of the glass. She was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her long slender legs on the floor, as if she were poised to spring to her feet. The only sound in the room was the sound of her breathing, hoarse and ragged in her throat as if she had run a long way.
“Tell me about that incident,” I said, my voice seeming to come from very far away. “Tell me about the time you were raped.”
I watched her reflection carefully. She licked her lips and then pushed hesitantly at her hair. Then she seemed to subside with a long slow sigh of breath, and the tension melted from her body. She lay back until she was stretched out on the bed once more.
I turned quietly then, and patiently let the silence draw out for tense long seconds. At last Amy’s breathing slowed to a deep resonate rhythm and I became mesmerized by the tantalizing gentle rise and fall of her breasts.
“It was a long time ago,” her voice had lost the sharp points of inflection and emotion, and now the words came from her as though she were in a deep hypnotic trance.
“Was it your first serious sexual encounter?” I already suspected the answer to my question.
“Yes,” she said softly. I drifted back across the room, my footfalls silent, my movements almost ghostly. I went to the chair again, but did not sit. I was standing over her naked body, watching her carefully, reading the secret signals as her expression changed until suddenly I heard a choked sob in Amy’s voice.
“God, that night haunts me,” the words were wrenched from her in a strangled voice. “It was the most erotic moment of my life. I know it’s fucked up. I know I’m fucked up. Hell, don’t I know how fucked up I am. Just look at where I am.”
“Tell me everything,” I kept my voice level. “Go back to the very start and tell me how you felt, what you thought.”
I saw Amy frown and her eyes came open, her gaze soft and almost dream-like.
“Do you really want to hear this?” she asked.
I nodded my head and there was a flicker of a humourless smile on my lips. It stayed there for just a second. “You need to tell me what happened,” I prompted. “You have to tell me how you felt. I want to know about your emotions, the sensations, the senses. That’s what I want from you. I don’t want a report. I want you to peel back the layers, Amy. Tell me everything. It’s critical.”
Her expression became solemn and enigmatic. A shadow of something secret moved behind her eyes. She stared hard at me.
“Is this really necessary?” she baulked. “It’s not something I’m proud of – the way that man made me feel… the way he treated me… the depths of my own depravity…”
“Trust me,” I urged in a whisper.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes again.
“Okay,” she said in a long sigh of breath that sounded like surrender. She kept her eyes tightly closed. “I’ll tell you everything – every sordid detail.”
* * *
“It started at an art gallery,” Amy began quietly and there was a tremulous shudder in the tone of her voice. “I was at an exhibition for a friend of mine. She painted abstracts and nudes. It was her first showing in a commercial gallery. I went along to support her.”
“Do you like art?” I asked, matching the softness of my voice to that of Amy’s.
She shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “But there was a nude painting on display – it was just a girl – no one I knew, no one I recognized. But the work was remarkable. It was an oil painting of a girl sitting on a chair. She was leaning forward, looking longingly out of a window. The colors in her face and on the curve of her breasts were incredible. It was the major piece of the show, hung on a wall at the back of the gallery. The lighting was all on the canvases so the room was dark.”
“You mean pitch black?”
“No. Just darkened. I could see the people around me, but the light spilled in pools on the floor and on the works. We were gathered in the shadows.”
“Was there many people?”
“Yes,” she said. “Maybe a hundred. People I didn’t know, drinking wine and chatting in animated little groups.”
“And yet with all those people around, you were raped?”
“No,” she said. “But that’s where it began. The gallery was where it all started.”
“How?”
She sighed again and seemed to hold her breath for a very long time. The silence felt like a tangible weight that seemed to press down on her so that each breath became an effort. A warm wash of color rose from the pit of her stomach, up across her breasts to bloom hot on her neck and cheeks.
“I heard a voice behind me,” Amy faltered.
“A man’s voice.”
“Yes.”
“And what did he say?”
“He brushed up against me and stood very close.”
“You mean he groped you?”
“No,” her breath hissed softly in her throat. “It was like a caress, a touch that made me tingle. I felt his breath against my neck, his face close to my ear and the heat from his body against my own. It was like a kiss of skin that was so intimate and so shocking that I felt my legs tremble.”
I said nothing. I was watching Amy’s face closely, drawn towards her until I was perched on the edge of the bed studying the beautiful play of her features as she spoke.
Amy filled the silence.
“I didn’t turn around. I stood frozen with a glass of wine in my hand. I was in a room full of people but suddenly it was as if this stranger and I were the only ones who existed. I could smell his aftershave, and I could feel the fine fabric of his suit. My senses swooned. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I didn’t know what to do.”
“And then what happened?”
“He spoke to me,” Amy said.
“Do you remember what he said?”
“Every word.”
“Tell me.”
“He said, ‘very beautiful’.”
“The painting?”
“No,” Amy was suddenly fierce. “He was talking to me. He said I was very beautiful, but the way he did it – the deep husky tone of his voice was an erotic whisper filled with lust and desire. There was an ache in his voice – something primal and sexual and raw.”
“And it turned you on?”
“He made me come,” Amy said in a soft rush, the words laced with her bewilderment. “I had an orgasm.”
“Just from his voice?”
“And from his touch, and smell, and the sense of presence this man had. It was like an aura. It was undeniable. It’s like he drew the orgasm from me.”
Amy opened her eyes reluctantly and saw me staring at her. Suddenly the air in the room seemed overwhelmed with the musky moist scent of her femininity.
“Do you want me to go on?” she asked. The words were just a dry croak in the back of her throat.
I nodded and Amy closed her eyes again. Suddenly I was sure she was back there – back in the gallery with the stranger, her body remembering every moment, every scent and subtle intonation of his voice.
“I swayed against him,” Amy said and swallowed hard. “I wanted him to touch me. I wanted to feel him. I arched my back and moved my hips so that we brushed against each other and he was like iron. It was like a slow sexy dance – a gentle secret gyration so that we were moving against each other and every inch of me was tingling and trembling.”
“Did he do anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he touch you?”
“Yes!”
“Where?”
“I felt his hand on my hip and the skin beneath
the fabric of my skirt seemed to catch alight. I swear his hand branded me. The heat was incredible. Then he slid it around until his arm was wrapped around me, pulling me back against him, pinning me to him.”
“And you resisted?”
“No,” Amy shook her head. “I moved with him. I moved for him. I swayed my hips and moved my feet apart. I felt his mouth on my neck, the ragged rasp of his breath that sent shivers down my spine.”
“So you encouraged him?”
“Yes.”
“And you feel guilty about that? You regret it?”
“No,” she said flatly. “I wanted it. I wanted his touch all over me. I wanted him to slide his hand inside the waistband of my skirt and feel his fingers inside my panties. I wanted his kisses on my throat. I wanted to lose myself. I wanted... I wanted him to fuck me.”
“What happened next?”
“He moved his hand.”
“Lower?”
“Higher,” she whispered, “until he was cupping my breast.”
“In public like that? In a public place like an art gallery, surrounded by so many people?”
The memories of that night seemed to make Amy swoon with a giddy vertigo of arousal. I saw it in her gaze – the shadow of erotic memories passing behind her eyes like clouds across a clear mountain lake. “Yes,” she said, like she was reveling in the recalled brazen decadence. “And I was helpless to resist, even if I wanted to. I was overcome. I was lost. I felt like I was clinging to driftwood in a storm-tossed ocean. It was beyond my ability to resist his will… and my own desperate desire.”
She turned to stare into my eyes, our faces just inches apart and I could see the turmoil, the confusion and the desperation in her gaze. It would take just an instant for the moment to turn into raw unrestrained passion – and all the progress I had achieved would have been lost, extinguished like a flame, doused by the high winds of her desire.
I sprang to my feet and put space between us. When I glanced back at Amy the set of her shoulders had changed. Her lips were still parted, the color on her cheeks hectic but cooling. I buried my hands back into the pockets of my trousers and rocked on the balls of my feet.
“What happened next?”
Amy sighed like she was lost and helpless. She wrung her hands together. “The gallery had a storage room,” she said faintly. “It was at the back of the building, down a few steps. The man told me to wait for him there and to leave the lights off.”
“And you did, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And…”
“And I stood in the darkness waiting for him,” she admitted. “I was so nervous! I could feel my legs shaking. The room smelled of oil paints and turpentine. There were racks of paintings – I could feel them with my hands.”
“Did you think of leaving?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly, and once again there was a trace of shameful guilt in her voice. “I would have waited all night…”
I nodded, without casting judgement. “How long did you have to wait?”
“Just a few minutes,” she said. “Then I heard his footsteps and a moment later the door cracked open. I could see the outline of him. The light was behind him so he was just a shadow. He told me to turn around and put my hands up against the wall.”
“So you couldn’t see his face?”
She shrugged and shook her head so her hair shimmered and swished across the smooth skin of her shoulder blades. “No. I just did what he told me to.”
“And then?”
“He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.”
“At that moment, what did you want to happen? How did you want this encounter with your mystery man to end?”
Amy smiled wryly, a wintery little grin. “I wanted him to fuck me,” she confessed. “I wanted him to take me in the darkness and use me.”
“Did you feel nervous?”
“No. I felt alive. I was shaking and quivering and panting… I felt his hands go around my waist and then the arrogant press of his hardness against me. I pushed back, hungry for him, and I heard him groan. It… it was the sexiest sound I had ever heard. I could feel his hot breath against my neck and his fingers dug into the flesh of my waist so that I felt pinned and helpless. He was strong and his hands felt like fire. Everywhere he touched seemed to burn.”
I arched an eyebrow. Amy was gazing at me with an earnest expression on her face. She was leaning forward so that the weight and size of her breasts was emphasized. I felt my eyes drift down her body once more, and it required all of my will to drag them back up until we were staring at each other again.
“Amy, you said that he raped you,” I began, measuring each word carefully. “Is that what really happened?”
“Yes,” she said, but suddenly there was doubt in her tone. “He raped me,” she repeated as if she were trying to add more conviction. “He kicked my legs apart with his feet and then his hands tugged the hem of my skirt up until it was bunched around my waist.” She paused for a moment then, as if gathering her thoughts or her courage before continuing. “Then he ran his hand slowly up the inside of my thigh until I could feel his fingertips against the silk of my panties. I felt my legs buckle and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. He slid his fingers inside me…”
“When did you tell him to stop? When did it become rape?” I asked gentling my voice.
Amy swallowed a choke of breath. I noticed her hands had bunched into white-knuckled fists. “That was when I told him,” she said. “He was fingering me and my body was swaying like a tree in a gale, moving and responding to the press of his fingers deep inside me. I knew I was losing control. I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. It had all happened so quickly I had been overwhelmed. He slowly slid his fingers from inside me and then he held them up to my lips. I sucked the taste of me into my own mouth and then I realized the man was wearing a wedding ring. I felt it against my lip and I went suddenly cold. In that instant everything changed. I told him, ‘no!’. I told him I didn’t want to go any further.”
I felt a sudden sad melancholy of compassion. The expression in Amy’s face changed, but still – underlying the mask of distress – I sensed a deeper current of the same guilt that had run like a subterranean river through the course of our conversation. There was something more here. Something she wasn’t telling me.
“The man raped you?”
“Yes. He was fumbling with the front of his pants, his body blocking my escape. Then I felt his hands at my hips and suddenly the huge hardness of him began to fill me, pinning me against the wall as he took me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
Amy shook her head dismissively. “I was sorry too,” she said. “I told him to stop but he didn’t listen. He was driving himself into me, his cock full and swollen, and I had no choice but to give myself up to every thrust. I was pinned against the wall by the weight and the strength of him. I was sobbing – not crying – sobbing… because I suddenly realized something in the midst of being raped. Despite everything I was more aroused than I have ever been in my life. I felt desired, I felt as though I was irresistible. Despite everything, the raw sexual woman in me wanted him to keep on going, wanted him to use me again and again until we collapsed.”
I said nothing. Amy sat forlorn and bewildered on the bed, somehow shrunken and smaller now that she had told her story. She shook her head at last and then lifted her eyes to mine in a silent plea for help, or maybe just understanding. “I am fucked up,” she whispered. “I told the man to stop, but deep down I wanted him, and he knew it, too. I loved every touch and every thrust of him.”
“And now you fantasize about being raped again?”
“Yes. Every night.”
I rubbed the stubble of my chin with the palm of my hand. “Why do you think you are having this recurring dream?”
Amy shrugged. “It arouses me,” she said as if the answer was obvious. “I love being taken, used… that’s how I ended up getting into pa
in…” her voice lowered, “and everything else you saw in those photographs.”
I nodded, and then raised a pointed finger to the ceiling like a school teacher about to press home a salient point to a student. “You have been trying to reproduce the arousal you felt that night in the art gallery,” I said. “But you have been trying to provoke men to desire, goading them with defiance and rebellion because what you want – what you really want – is for them to lust after you. You want them to be so overcome with the need to have you, the reckless urge to fuck you, that they lose all control. What you’ve gotten instead is violence, punishment and abuse. And in return you have reacted. What you want, more than anything else, is to respond. You want a man who must have you because it will allow you to surrender – to give in to his raging passion and you will then feel complete – lusted after, wanted, desired.”
Amy crinkled her nose and her brow rippled into deep furrows of thought and confusion. She seemed to be replaying my words in her head, holding them up for analysis – looking for any truths within my claim.
She stood up slowly but came no closer. Her head was bowed so that her hair fell over her face like a veil, hiding her expression. I waited in silence, watched her take a few tentative steps around the edge of the bed and then stop in mid-stride. She lifted her head slowly and cuffed at a stray strand of hair that hung across her eyes.
“You think I want to be lusted after? You think this is all about me needing to feel I am irresistible to men so that they simply must give in to their urges and take me?”
I said nothing.
She stared fixedly at me. “You think that’s what these fantasies are really about?”
Again, I said nothing. Amy narrowed her eyes.
“And you think the years of pain play, the abuse — everything in those photos – was brought on by me trying to recreate what happened that night in the gallery?”
I nodded at last. “Yes,” I said. “I think you’ve allowed yourself to get drawn into heavy sexual scenes hoping that men will desire you, but instead finding men that get their thrills from mistreating you, beating you, dominating you and hurting you. And when they do, you react – you fight back, so they hurt you more....”
