by Vina Jackson
One wall in this room was lined with a glass case, and in the case was the collection of instruments that I had been looking for. Viggo had guitars, wind instruments, violas and violins. Some were more modern and fairly nondescript, others looked immensely beautiful to my relatively untrained eye. The light wasn’t good and I couldn’t get close enough to make out any distinguishing markings or check the few violins for signatures.
The glass case, I saw, was unlocked, and I had to push away an almost overwhelming desire to open it, pick up one of the instruments and play something, but the presence of Luba made that seem an impossibility. I could not take something that didn’t belong to me while she watched, even if Viggo had told me that I could. Right now, he was unaware that I was here.
Luba stood up, as gracefully as a fern unfurling itself, and stepped out from the stone by the waterfall onto the side where I stood, and padded over to me.
‘He won’t mind, you know,’ she said. ‘If you want to borrow something.’
She opened the door where the violins hung, and gestured towards them. ‘He likes to collect beautiful things, but he’s very free with them. Will you play something for me?’
I wondered if she was one of the beautiful things that he liked to collect.
I picked up one of the instruments and a bow, held it to my chin, and began to play. The sound was awful at first, and it took me a few minutes to tune it. But the tone was pretty, and the violin felt pleasant in my hand. It wasn’t the Bailly though, and that recollection reminded me why I had been looking for Luba in the first place.
‘Did you speak to Eric?’ I asked her. ‘Did he say if he’d picked my violin up last night?’
Before I could get the words out, Luba held a finger up to my mouth, and she ran her fingertip along my lower lip. Her touch made my heart beat wildly. She was soft and sleek and smelled sweet like sugar. She removed her finger, and replaced it with her mouth, pressing her lips against mine in a slow kiss. My tongue entwined with hers, and she pressed herself against me, dampening my body with her wet bathing suit. She slid her hands up the back of my neck, holding my head in place while she kissed me.
Luba was mesmerising, like one of the nude statues come to life, but with all the warmth of a human being. Her touch on my skin felt like electricity, and for the first time in my life, I really wanted to explore every part of her, a woman, not just out of a curiosity to try on bisexuality for a night but because she made my whole body feel alive.
‘Let’s go,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘There are more comfortable places for this.’ She took my hand and pulled me out the door with her, and up the stairs, all five flights up to Viggo’s room. Not for the first time, I wished for an elevator but the thought was lost in the vision of her arse wiggling attractively, framed by the wet fabric of her high-cut one-piece which was either one size too small or deliberately designed to reveal half of each of her butt cheeks.
Viggo was in the shower when we arrived on the fifth floor.
‘Come on,’ Luba said, mischievously, approaching the door to the en suite. ‘Let’s wish him good morning.’
He certainly seemed pleased, if not surprised, when we undressed and then opened the door of his oversized shower and joined him in it.
The cubicle was large, but it was still cramped with the three of us packed inside. Luba wriggled out of the way, pressing me firmly between her and Viggo.
He spun me to face him and bent his head down for a kiss, meeting my lips with his own as he tangled his fingers in my hair and Luba ran her soapy hands between our bodies, her breasts pushed against my back.
Viggo made no move to turn off the shower, allowing the water to course over us, so I felt as though I was drowning in his kiss. He moved his hands to pull my nipples fiercely, and I gasped in the shock of sudden pain, so at odds with Luba’s light caresses.
She laughed softly.
‘He is not always gentle,’ she whispered, bending down so that she could speak into my ear. I refrained from telling her that I preferred it that way.
His cock was now pressing against my thigh, and I ached to feel it inside me.
I moaned, a sound full of need, barely holding myself back from pressing him inside me unprotected.
It was Luba who reached behind us and flicked the water off, and then led us both out of the shower and onto the bed, oblivious to the water dripping all over the covers.
She reached into the bedside drawer and threw him a condom, which he caught with such a practised flick of the wrist, that I wondered how often they operated as a two-some.
‘Put the girl out of her misery,’ she said in her slow, seductive drawl.
‘Always happy to oblige,’ he replied.
It was dark when I realised that I still hadn’t spoken to Chris. Viggo was asleep again, tangled up on the bed with Luba. Her now dry white-blond hair contrasted vividly with his black locks.
That must be a good sign, I thought. Chris would have called me straight away if he hadn’t found my instrument in with all the other stuff. I’d been worrying needlessly. Then I remembered, with a sinking feeling in my heart, that I had left my phone in the living room with the fountain in it, when I’d gone to explore the house, hours ago now.
I padded down the steps, a feeling of dread hanging around my shoulders like a dark cloud. My phone sat on the arm of the panther chaise longue, just where I had left it. I picked it up and tapped in the passcode.
It was Chris. Three missed calls, a voicemail and a text message.
‘Your violin. It’s gone.’
6 The Brighton Front
When he had still been lecturing, Dominik could rely on the comfort of some sort of routine, a pattern of hours divided between preparing his talks, the lectures themselves, tutorials, marking and the regular pilgrimage down from the greenery of Hampstead on the northern line to the point where he merged into the busy grey crowds of the centre of town.
Now that he had given up academia for writing, he felt himself adrift, with no fixed point in the middle of a sea of indecision, a slave to his keyboard and the dismissive glare of the computer screen as he scrambled not so much for inspiration but for the right words.
The long day lay ahead of him, its emptiness a deep well of temptations from the moment he achieved his daily target of pages. There were occasions when everything flowed and, always an early riser, he would reach that liberating point by mid-morning and would then treat himself to a late breakfast as a reward for a job well done. On other days, however, the work proved an uphill task, more full of deletions than new lines.
But he had always been a strongly disciplined person and he stuck to the task at hand, the oasis at the end of the long slog being the prospect of leisurely empty beaches of free time when he could read, watch movies on DVD without feeling guilty or, more often than not, explore the nooks and crannies of the Internet with a mixture of detached amusement or a measure of interest in the women he came across there.
With every name flashing across the screen, Dominik would replay the episodes in which other women with the same names, or other ones – they all had become a blur in his mind – had featured and which made him the man he now was. Christel, the German au pair who lived in an attic space and had been at least ten years older than him and for whom he had pined since the day she had taken a shower in his presence and hadn’t minded his watching (or his hard on), and the weekend when he had run like a madman backwards and forwards from his base at the local Youth Hostel through the Vallée de Chevreuse in search of her. Or Catherine, who had the privilege of having been the first to break his heart when he discovered she had slept with another, the first in a seductive procession of Catherines, Kats, Cats, Kates and Kathryns. And then there had been Maryann, the American exchange student, whom you could do anything to as long as you didn’t touch her breasts, followed by Danielle whose sexual appetites had initially scared him and whom he had shamefully deserted in her hour of need. Aida who sucked his cock like no ot
her, with an appetite that was never sated. The list was a long one. Rhoona who wanted to be spanked. Parvin who insisted on keeping her top on as she was embarrassed by the roundness of her stomach. Rebecca who invariably cried when she came and fell into a deepblue funk, until the next time when she promised she wouldn’t, but of course always did.
And then there was Kathryn, of course.
After whom everything had changed.
The way her grey-green eyes had begged him to hold her neck tight as they fucked. The
imploring for him to act rough and take her to the edge, to pin her arms down until his fingers left a deep mark on her wrists, to pull mercilessly on her hair as he took her from behind, to tighten the teasing hold of his teeth on her nipples. The constant mute demand to explore new boundaries.
There was a before and an after Kathryn.
And he had begun to assert himself more in the bedroom, or wherever the sex took place, dominating his lovers by instinct and inclination and discovering, much to his initial surprise, that so many women were not put off and even – like Claudia – welcomed this new side of him.
Which had led to Summer.
Dominik sighed and idly began clicking on some of the profiles on the contacts website he had out of habit summoned up from the long column of bookmarks on his laptop.
Willing victims or predators? Or just normal people, like him, subject to a spider’s web of compulsions that warped their minds into perverse imaginings and compulsions?
He had long learned to navigate the words and thoughts that appeared between the lines of the profiles, becoming adept at recognising the flakes, the fakers and the jokers. He also made it a habit – snobbish, he knew, but the rule had seldom let him down – to skim over any profile or ads which were badly spelled or featured particularly bad grammar. He preferred his fucks to be literate, and if this elitist part of his character excluded a good proportion of the submissive women in search of domination, then he could live with it without too many regrets.
Lost in thought, Dominik was about to desert the shady dark alleys of the web when a window on his screen opened, indicating he had mail via his Facebook page.
A fan, it seemed, who had liked his novel and sent him a complimentary note. Even though the book had enjoyed a modicum of success, getting readers’ letters was still an uncommon thing, and appealed to his vanity.
It was the usual guff about how she loved the story and identified with the main female character in which she saw a lot of herself. Dominik smiled. It was a comfort that people were still reading the novel. For him, it felt like so long ago now.
On the left of his screen, a green dot indicated the sender not only had the same email provider but was still online. He typed a message.
Thank you for the kind words, Liana.
The response reached him immediately.
Not at all, I really loved the story. Found it so moving. Wow, and now I’m talking to you …
Dominik was intrigued, and one thing soon led to another. He briefly considered the ethics of the situation and decided the relationship between a writer and a reader was above board, and had no similarities, moral or otherwise, with that between teacher and student. On the contrary, he reassured himself.
She was a young woman in her mid-twenties by the look of the photograph on her profile. If the image was recent, of course. She told him she had an office job in Brighton. The later photographs she volunteered to send him after a few days of generally innocent chats, had migrated to flirtatious and teasing, proving both explicit and restrained, lacking vulgarity despite their amateur nature. A flash of breast, a half moon of buttock with a hint of past bruises or marks, a fuzzy almost abstract composition which turned out on further examination to be a close-up of her red pubic curls from an angle which at first sight gave them the appearance of a seductive alien landscape. She continuously brought up the fact that she had much in common with Elena, his heroine, despite the differences in nationality, eras and circumstances. When Dominik asked her whether these heavy hints meant if she was submissive sexually, her answer lit up his screen.
Yes.
His heart jumped. Might this be a chance to start again. Do things right this time?
And you, Dom?
Maybe, he answered, teasing her. Hmmm …
He was normally suspicious when a woman was too detailed about her tastes, needs and cravings. The more they wrote about extreme sexual practices from bondage to restraints, asphyxiation, ropes, collars, degradation, humiliation or whatever was the flavour of the day, the more it indicated that they were in fact unlikely to go through with it when it came to the crunch. A more limited menu was classier and more authentic and true to life, he reckoned.
Liana was interesting. She kept on dropping heavy hints but they were also tinged with a touch of humour and deprecation, and featured all the right elements to attract his attention.
They had been sparring live online and through emails for a couple of weeks already and Dominik was warming to the idea of an adventure. Somehow hoping not that this could prove the love of his life but that it might help once and for all banish the spectre and memories of Summer.
Do you have a face pic, pse
He had deliberately refrained from having his photo on the book’s dust jacket, and kept his Facebook image ambiguous, preferring at the time a form of mysterious anonymity. Maybe it would be at this stage that he lost her. Dominik had always disliked being captured by the photographic lens and there were surprisingly few pictures of him in existence.
He downloaded a rare image, a photo he’d had taken to accompany his application for the New York fellowship a few years back and pressed Send.
Yet again there was now a fifty–fifty chance that she would disconnect if he didn’t fit her criterion for whatever reason he would for ever remain unaware of. Once she saw the man behind the writer.
He waited, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the image he had called up of her bruised arse cheek, idly seeking patterns in the yellow, brown and purple stains of the bruise which he had blown up to full-screen size, colours indistinctly merging softly into each other. It now looked like a work of modern art. Enigmatic, random. Like a fuzzy cloud unforming and reassembling. A screen saver.
The response came.
Tasty. And should I call you Sir?
You flatter me. But no need to call me Sir. I’m not that kind of dom … it’s not about words.
Good. I always find it ridiculous when so many guys demand to be addressed that way within a few lines when you haven’t even met.
A girl after my own heart …
I think this could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
Dominik smiled.
The train rushed across the South Downs and as it approached the steel cavern of Brighton station, Dominik could smell the sea and hear the herring gulls fluttering above. It had been ages since he had last been here, using a conference as an excuse. On the only occasion Kathryn had been able to get away from home, her husband, and spend a rare couple of nights with him. Maybe that was why he had never come back. The memories. Not that they had seen much of the city – apart from walks on the seafront and through the Lanes, and rushed seafood restaurant meals – beyond the private world of their bedroom.
There was a big convention in town and most of the major hotels were full, but he had managed to get a room at a so-called rock ’n’ roll boutique hotel called the Pelirocco on Regency Square. Every room had a different theme and he had been allocated one in which the decor evoked a camp boudoir, with pinks and reds the dominant colours and a panorama of female underwear in all shapes, sizes and compositions adorning the walls, replacing the more traditional paintings or prints. It was a bit overwhelming and not a bit incongruous, but it brought a smile to his face, bearing in mind the nature of his visit to Brighton.
They had agreed to meet on neutral territory first, next to a fish and chip stall by the entrance to the pier.
When he had asked how he would identify her as her face didn’t always appear clearly on the photos she had sent him, she had joked he would have no difficulty in doing so. This of course provided her with the opportunity not to make contact if her initial sight of him in the flesh did not please her.
He arrived a few minutes early and was thinking of treating himself to a portion of chips when a chirpy voice greeted him.
‘Hello, Dominik.’
‘Liana, I presume?’
‘Were you expecting anyone else?’ She sounded amused.
‘Do you have a real name?’ he asked.
‘Liana.’
‘Good.’
She was slight in stature, almost spindly at first appearance, but stood resolutely straight, the weight of an oversize rucksack strapped to her shoulders maintaining her equilibrium, an untidy mop of auburn hair, almost boyish, crowning her delicate features. She wore a thin silk choker around her neck. On others it would have looked like an affectation or a misplaced attempt at being fashionable; on her it hinted at so much more. Just a hint. Now he knew what she had meant. However, she was not dressed, contrary to his expectation, in fierce black leather or torn jeans to compound some punk ethos, but in a surprisingly demure beige cotton blouse and a pleated skirt in darker brown which reached down to just below her knees. Around each wrist she wore identical thin silver bracelets. And clearly secure in her lack of height, she wore flat ballet shoes.
Her features were impish, making her look much younger than she probably was, small, turned-up nose, a weakish chin but full scarlet lips, eyes dark-green pits and a natural Snow White circle of crimson highlighting her prominent cheekbones. He thought she had a good figure, though the looseness of her blouse obscured her curves.
Liana looked up at him.
‘Do you like what you see? So far?’ she asked him.
