‘Yes, have you never heard of it?’
His eyes are amused. ‘Yes. Blake’s grandmother used to drink it. I didn’t think anyone drank it anymore.’
I only said that because I read somewhere that it had been the Queen Mother’s favorite drink when she was alive. Other than champagne, and it would have been silly to ask for that, green chartreuse was the most fancy name I could think of. I wanted him to think that I was fancy.
‘Here are the choices. Beer or wine, of which I have both white and red.’
‘I’ll have a glass of white wine please.’
Unsuccessfully hiding a smile, he goes towards the kitchen. I follow him and watch as he opens the fridge.
‘I only have dry. Is that OK with you?’
‘Great.’
He takes a glass out of a cupboard, fills it half full and, coming over to where I am standing, holds the glass out to me. I take it and he raises his beer bottle to his lips. Swigs it.
‘You sure you don’t want anything to eat?’
‘Positive,’ I say and, settling myself on a high swivel chair, observe him expertly grill a steak. I am glad I no longer eat red meat. Meat is full of fat. Still the smell of it sizzling makes my stomach growl. I take a sip of wine. Wine is fattening too. They say it is a hundred calories, but I don’t believe them. It must be more. I actually don’t like the taste of wine, but I am determined to master my dislike. He cooks fast, efficiently, as if he is used to cooking for himself.
While he cooks we talk. What I do for a living, where he has been—and he appears to have backpacked everywhere. India, Burma, Borneo, Thailand, Africa, South America, Europe. He is only twenty-five, but appears to have done things, some I could never even imagine. In Peking he went to an opium house that had hardly changed from a hundred years ago. He lay on a hard pillow and a beautiful girl rolled out the tiny balls of narcotics and placed them in his pipe. In Burma he stayed in a run-down hotel infested with giant cockroaches. He tells me he lives in a garret in Paris, but he wouldn’t move because he likes his bedroom. It reminds him of the painting of Van Gogh’s room in Arles, the one with the bed and the dresser.
When the food is ready—steak, mashed potato and salad—he plates it and carries it in one hand while the other curls around a fork and knife.
‘Come to the dining table.’
I sit opposite him. He cuts into the piece of meat. Looks juicy. The smell of butter in the mash potatoes fills my nostrils. My mouth waters. This is crazy. He puts the meat into his mouth. I watch his teeth, all straight and white and perfect. An orthodontist’s wet dream.
‘You sure you don’t want some?’
I press my lips together and shake my head. ‘I don’t eat red meat.’
This is going to be pure torture. He puts his fork into the mash and lightly lifts some onto it, and holds it next to my lips. I look into his eyes. They are crinkled in the corners. To refuse would be churlish. I open my mouth. The fork slips in, I close my mouth over it. The mash melts onto my tongue. It is so good I want to close my eyes to savor it fully. I resist the urge. I can taste the butter and some of the juice from the meat. It is so long since I had mash this rich. I let it rest on my tongue and sigh with sheer pleasure.
He pulls the fork out, but his expression has changed. His eyes are no longer crinkled at the corners. They have darkened. He lowers his lids to shutter them. I wonder why. He eats fast and does not offer to feed me any more of his food. The smell and that one mouthful have opened up my appetite. I wish he would offer me another forkful—there can’t be that many calories in a bit of mash—but he doesn’t.
‘Here, let me wash up,’ I say for something to do and slip off the chair.
His hand comes out and catches my wrist. A jolt of electricity goes up my arm. This is the second time this has happened. The first time I thought it was caused by the friction between the layers of organza building up static. Now there is not a slither of organza in sight; we are both in cotton. He lets go of my arm. I fight the urge to rub where he has touched.
‘Leave it,’ he says, rubs his chin and frowns. He pushes his plate away and reaches for his bottle of beer.
‘Aren’t you going to finish your food?’
‘Smith will,’ he says abruptly, and gets up. ‘Come on. Let’s begin.’
I panic. ‘Begin? Don’t we have some theory first?’
‘Sex is all practice, Sugar,’ he drawls.
‘I need to get drunk first.’
He turns to look at me. Eyes narrowed.
‘I’ve never had sex sober.’
‘Never?’
I shake my head.
And he shakes his head in amazement. ‘We must remedy that.’
‘At least for this time, the first time,’ I plead.
‘All right, bring your glass.’
We go into the living room. The late evening light has turned the room red gold. On the horizon the sun is a large ball of red. He sits on one sofa and I take the one adjacent to his. I don’t know why I am suddenly so nervous. Maybe it is him. He is so dangerously male. The breadth of him, the way his legs are open wide and claiming all that space.
I take a huge gulp of wine. He says nothing. I glug down another large mouthful. And another. There is another last bit left. I knock that back. He is watching me curiously, as if I am a totally different species from him.
‘Need more?’
‘No.’ I haven’t eaten and I am a lightweight when it comes to alcohol. In a few minutes I know I will be wasted. In fact, the effect of the alcohol is already beginning to pour into my veins. Making me light-headed, brave.
‘Come over here,’ he says.
I stand up and go sit next to him.
‘Go on,’ he invites. ‘Show me what you can do.’
I frown. ‘I thought you were going to teach me things. What Yehonala did and all that. You know, seduction techniques?’
‘This is our first time. No techniques are necessary. The first time you go to bed with any man, the novelty factor will sail you through. Nothing like the first time.’
Boldly, I put my hand on his thigh. An odd sensation in my stomach. Must be guilt. Oh God! Jack. For a moment there I had completely forgotten him. I pull back instantly. I lick my lips. ‘Do you have condoms?’
‘Of course.’
I peek up from beneath my lashes. ‘I might need more drink,’ I say, even though my tongue is already numb with alcohol.
He shakes his head.
‘Can we at least have less light?’
Seventeen
‘Come on,’ he says and, getting up, pulls me up by the hand. I stand tipsily and nearly stumble. He looks at me curiously. I flash a brilliantly bold smile. He takes me to his bedroom and closes the blinds by pushing a button on the wall. The curtains are dark wood and the room is immediately thrown into gloom.
‘Dark enough for you?’ I hear the sex and heat in his voice.
‘I think so.’
‘Relax. It’s only sex.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
The pause is almost imperceptible. ‘Quit stalling, Sugar.’
I did not realize that he had moved, but he must have, because his hands are around my waist. He smells clean: shampoo and soap. His breath is warm against my neck. I catch the scent of the beer, the meat, and the mash he has consumed. The faint whiff of beer reminds me of that disastrous time with Keith, his breathless grunts, the wet slop of his spunk sliding off my belly.
‘I can’t do this,’ I whisper, and try to pull away.
‘Pretend I’m him,’ he says, and I freeze.
In my head I enter into a fairy tale. I need to enter the forbidden garden to get the forbidden fruit. To awaken him from his deep slumber so he can escape the clutches of the wicked queen. I feel his hands untying the belt of the robe. I clutch at the edges of the robe. He pulls them away from my grasping hands. Underneath I am naked.
‘Your mouth is saying no, but your body is dying for it, Sugar.�
� His voice is low and seductive.
Temptation floods into me. My breath becomes erratic. I let go of the material. The robe gapes. I am being turned around to face him. His hands are rough but warm. They span my waist. One hand moves upwards and cups my breast. I close my eyes and pretend I am with Jack, but it is impossible. I know I am with Vann. Vann is too large, too magnetic, too golden, too individual, too exciting for me to pretend he is someone else.
‘Jack,’ I whisper, as if saying his name will make Vann less and him more.
Vann says nothing, simply brings his mouth down on mine while the hands around my waist firmly pull me in so my breasts are crushed into his torso. Something hard presses into my belly. That’s one massive erection you’ve got there, mate.
He takes my fleshy lower lip between his lips and pulls me closer to him. Helplessly my chin lifts. He lets go and starts to kiss me. His lips are softer than I expected. He kisses me as if he is tasting my lips, gently, thoughtfully, almost experimentally.
He opens my mouth with his lips and… Oh! but Vann. He is wet and hot and velvety.
We kiss. We kiss.
All of a sudden sex with a stranger in a dark room becomes insanely desirable. Fucking irresistible. I am no sex kitten but I feel daring, erotic, different. Inside my body, fiery flares of desire are shooting into my brain.
A vixen with needs emerges, fully formed and ravenous for fleshy spoils. She couldn’t give two hoots about Jack or my great love for him. All she wants is for this enigmatic stranger to fuck her. Hard. In this vast and anonymous flat she knows she can scream as much as she wants. With this stranger who has witnessed her complete humiliation she doesn’t have to pretend to be someone she is not. She can be her ugly self. In this dark there is no one to judge her.
She wraps her arms around that stranger’s thick neck and pushes her bare body against the gloriously unfamiliar hard planes of his, and feverishly sucks the tongue that is in her mouth. But he holds himself back; he is teasing her, controlling the pace of their kiss, exciting and enhancing the vixen’s anticipation.
So the vixen bites the man’s withdrawing lower lip and drags her teeth along it making him gasp with surprise and pleasure. Daringly her hands cup the man’s tight buttocks, and pull him towards her. She is very strong and the man groans with the realization.
By now the vixen has got used to the dim and can clearly make out her lover’s face. His eyes are full of lust, feral lust.
‘You’re bad, Sugar.’
The vixen smiles knowingly. He picks her up in one easy movement and takes her to the bed. When he has put her on the bed, he begins to unzip his trousers. The vixen draws the soles of her feet closer to her body and lets her knees fall open. With her body arched and her sex exposed, the wanton vixen leaves and Sugar waits to be ravished.
Without clothes he is indescribable. I mean, it’s not like I have never seen men like this, I have, but only in magazines. Never thought one of them would be leaning down, his hands on either side of me and running his tongue from the hollow of my throat down to my breast bone. His mouth closes around my nipple. And he sucks it.
‘Oh,’ I say, surprised by the unfamiliar sensation, the rush of pure desire. The heat between my legs. And a wanting that I have never felt for any other man, except Jack, obviously.
‘You like that?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper in the dark. I shouldn’t just be lying here. I should be doing something back to him. But I don’t know what to do with my trembling, aroused body. In fact, I don’t have the first clue how to seduce this worldly, rugged stranger who is clearly, clearly very experienced and sophisticated. I watch him with widened eyes.
He carries on suckling. The pleasure is exquisite. I close my eyes and arch into his mouth. Suddenly my eyes fly open with shock. He bit me! The pain flares out. He puts his finger on my lips. ‘Shhhh…’
The tip of my breast throbs as he puts his palm flat on my belly. I note the desire to meld my body to the silky smooth hardness of his body, hazily. To feel it brushing against my skin as it moves in and out, in and out. In an alcoholic haze I run my hand down the silky muscles, washboard stomach, down, down, down… Erect, thick, mine. Strange how possessive I feel of this stranger’s engorged pillar of meat.
I look into his eyes. It has become darker in the room. Impossible to make out the expression. Only the gleam. Like that of a wolf or some night-foraging animal. My legs become numb with desire. He takes my hand in his and makes me swipe my own sex. Jesus, I am soaking wet.
‘Juicy Julie,’ he says, his voice two octaves lower.
And suddenly I cannot bear the anticipation anymore, the tension building inside me, the ferocious hunger to just fuck his brains out. I just want the tight wet heat inside me to be filled up. To the fucking hilt. I grasp his fingers and push them as deep as they will go into my wet core. My movements are frenzied. Unlike me. I am never this greedy. I was right: two fingers are not enough. I need this man’s meat buried deep inside my womb.
I let my hands reach down for his. Solid and heavy and satiny smooth. I want the release I have never had, the one that comes from a cock rammed deep inside me. I begin to move my hands up and down the shaft. Lubrication, Julie. Lubrication.
The other two had wanted me to suck them. I don’t like giving blow jobs.
A) Cocks don’t taste good raw.
B) I’m just not good at it.
C) It’s not pretty, saliva, semen.
D) I don’t enjoy it.
So no thanks. Still, Lana has learnt how to deep throat and… I guess I should at least practice some before I take Jack between my lips. I move my mouth towards his shaft. He wraps one hand over the front of my throat. It stops me cold.
‘This one’s on me, candy girl,’ he whispers in my ear, trailing a finger down my stomach, stopping on my pubic bone.
Suddenly the bed shifts. Digging his elbow into the mattress he cups my buttocks in his hands and using his thumbs pries open my inner thighs as he lifts me up to his lips. Very much as if I am a bowl that he intends to drink from. He doesn’t drink; he sucks me out. As a schoolboy sucks a toffee. Greedily, with great relish, using his whole mouth, determined to draw out all its flavor and swallow every last bit.
And me, I just moan, squirm and bleat like some dumb animal.
I also cry out whenever he jams his tongue into me. My voice seems foreign to me, as if it belongs to a stranger. He goes from the clit to the hole and back again to the clit over and over until my eyes open to something good and beautiful. I thought the orgasm would never stop. It just went on forever. And when the crown of my head is pushed deep into the pillow and my body is done arching and twisting, he buries his fingers inside and begins to stroke and massage the muscles he finds deep inside me, until they ripple uncontrollably in response and I am tingling all over. It is only then that I realize it is the beginning of another climax. One that I had not rushed towards, one that began in a different place inside my body.
‘That’s twice,’ he says.
My legs are jelly. I’ll have to send a thank you note to Fat Mary.
‘Open all the way for me,’ he says and I hear the tear of the foil wrap. More? Now? Yes, baby.
Seconds later he pushes his cock inside me, but so slowly I want to scream. Fucking millimeter by millimeter. And when he reaches the end, he grinds himself against me and I swear, I scream. And if I didn’t my clit does. And just as I think I might be reaching the edge and falling over again he withdraws himself. Slowly, but surely all the millimeters go. And like the tide he comes back in. It goes on following a coded rhythm until I am a boneless, mindless mass of nerve endings and desperate flesh.
The technique is sensational and terrifying. Now I know I am nothing like what I thought. I secretly thought I was borderline frigid. I thought sex with all its smells and emissions was disgusting. What those three guys did to me shouldn’t even be called sex. This is a whole different league. His tongue, velvety on the surface and shantung silk u
nderneath, finds its way into my mouth.
I suck it.
Hard.
Skewered by his thick shaft, I move in unison with him, encouraging the sawing of his cock against my clit. An erotic tango. Ah, the sensations. I feel myself building again. My spirit is pressed up against his. We are connected at an indefinable level. We have become one four-legged animal.
I know it is coming, but I am unprepared for the ferocity of the rupture that rips right though me. So explosive that my entire body shudders and vibrates with it and my insides feel like they have melted and are sloshing around hotly inside me.
But he does not stop or allow me time to recover, he carries on pumping into my molten core. His movements so rapid and urgent that they quickly become mine too. This isn’t lovemaking anymore. This is pure fucking. And the rest of the world can go to hell.
Then he does something to me I never would have thought I could respond to. He brings his mouth very close to my ear and whispers a one word erotic appeal: come.
And, fuck me, as if I am some sort of push button doll that he owns or as if I really am part of a four-legged animal, I do: groaning, twisting, my hips spasming and carried along on a rush of delirious pleasure. Somewhere on the periphery of my consciousness I feel him jerk and explode inside me. When the world drops back around me he is on his elbows looking at me. I stare at him. Wow! I didn’t know it could be like that. If I felt that with this stranger, that I am not even sure I like yet, what am I going to feel when I do it with Jack?
His eyes seem dark in the dimness. He is still firm inside me. I don’t move. Whatever is between us is gossamer thin. Even a breath expelled too hard would break it. We have exchanged fluids and essences, we have touched spirits, but there will be no wedding cake, no marquee full of flowers, no champagne toasts, no guests for us. For ours is only a brief interlude, fleeting like the sound of children’s laughter as you pass a neighbor’s garden. Then wasteland. The thought is strangely bitter.
‘I love Jack.’
My voice comes out loud. A shockingly cruel slap. He stills. It is too dark to see the expression on his face. He eases out of me and flips onto his back beside me.
Seduce Me Page 10
