by Vina Jackson
It was Raoul. His square jaw looming larger than usual through the artificial angle of the fishbowl-shaped peephole. He was holding his motorcycle helmet in one hand and a large bunch of roses in the other, blood-coloured blooms wrapped in clear cellophane bound tight with a black bow, the sort of bouquet that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a vampire’s lair.
I was sorely tempted to tell him to go to hell. And then get myself back into the now tepid bath.
But though he had been unbearably possessive of late, since I was sleeping with another man without his knowledge or permission I had to admit there was logic to his behaviour and the least I owed him was an explanation. We’d been dating each other long enough that I couldn’t pretend even to myself I hadn’t thought we were yet ‘exclusive’, or any other such cop-out. It was time to face the music.
I gritted my teeth and opened the door.
‘Summer,’ he said, his voice tinged with obvious relief.
‘Raoul, I . . . I’m seeing someone else. Another man,’ I told him, as soon as he stepped inside.
Better to just get it over with, I reasoned, before I changed my mind.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘You do?’
‘I’m not a complete fucking idiot, you know.’
‘Oh.’
He waltzed past me to the breakfast counter, set the flowers down and began opening cupboards, pulling out kitchen equipment I didn’t even realise I had. What on earth would I do with a rolling pin? I remained where I was and stared at him.
‘Do you have a vase?’ he asked. ‘Something to put these in?’
His words spurred me to action. I was grateful for a reason to change the subject, though uncertain under the circumstances why he thought the occasion of my infidelity warranted a gesture of romance.
I fetched a plastic bucket from the shelf alongside the washing machine in my flat’s wardrobe-sized laundry room and carried it towards him, stepping over discarded trainers and magazines on the way that still lay precisely where I had dropped them. A black lace bra and knicker set hung conspicuously from my bedroom door, across from the open-plan living area and visible from where Raoul stood, as if advertising my wanton nature. Tidiness wasn’t one of my virtues.
There was a very definite gleam in Raoul’s eyes. A look I recognised but couldn’t quite identify right then. He stood too close to me as I turned on the tap and filled the bucket halfway, then extracted a pair of scissors from the cutlery drawer, removed the bow and protective film from the wrapped bunch of flowers and arranged the roses in the water.
‘I used to be a florist, you know. A long time ago, just a casual job as a teenager . . .’ I nattered on, filling the ominous silence that hovered between us.
Raoul just kept grinning at me manically with that look in his eyes, half lust and half malevolence. I looked away from him, tore a few more stray green leaves from the pointed stems, assiduously avoiding the sharp thorns. It occurred to me that I was afraid of him. Unlike Joao, Raoul was unpredictable. Always on edge. I wasn’t yet sure that I could trust him.
He put his hands on my hips. Pulled me against him. His erection was prominent, bulging beneath the thin covering of his shorts and pressing against the small of my back. His fingers slipped inside the seam of my underwear and pressed against my slit.
‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘not wet yet. Unlike you.’
I didn’t know what to say in response so stayed mute.
‘Nice and smooth though. I like that.’
I had shaved in the bath.
‘Who are you keeping yourself smooth for?’ he continued. ‘Me or him?’
It evidently hadn’t occurred to Raoul that my choices in matters of grooming were in fact personal and not related to the preferences of the men I dated, but it didn’t seem like the time to give him a lecture on feminism.
He pushed me forward gently with one hand pressed between my shoulder blades. The fingers on his other hand maintained their pressure against my labia, now rubbing through the fabric of my knickers instead of against my bare skin.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked me. ‘Can’t speak? Don’t tell me you’re too ashamed to admit you’re a whore, Summer. Nothing but a horny little bitch.’
‘I’m not ashamed,’ I fired back at him.
‘Bullshit,’ he snarled. ‘If that were true, you wouldn’t have been ignoring my calls. Hiding away here on your own, probably rubbing your cunt silly since you don’t have a man here to fill your holes. Or has he just left, and I’m second? Tell me. I’m surprised I didn’t find a queue outside your door.’
He pulled me up by the hair, bent his head close to my earlobe and hissed, ‘Tell me. When was the last time you fucked him? This morning? This afternoon?’
As he spoke, he yanked the gusset of my panties to one side and slid two fingers inside me.
‘Last night,’ I replied. My voice came out in a high-pitched squeak.
‘You had better not be lying to me.’
‘I’m not lying.’
I wanted to say, Or else, Raoul? I had better not be lying or else what? His grasp on my hair was tight, but gentle. He hadn’t hurt me. Yet. I wasn’t sure whether I ought to be afraid if he would, or if this was all a bluff, the beginnings of a very realistic sex game. Did the oh-so-macho Raoul have a thing for cuckolding? I imagined how it would feel to be riding Joao on top of freshly laundered and probably ludicrously expensive Egyptian cotton sheets in the Jardim Botânico villa while Raoul, still sweaty from a day’s work at the juice bar, looked on from a nearby chair, his muscular forearms restrained with two of Joao’s Armani leather belts, his thick, dark cock hard and throbbing, his temper heating up to explosive proportions but totally unable to do anything about it, an unwilling slave to desires that he detested.
‘Good.’ I could no longer see his face, but I could tell by his tone that he was smirking. ‘Now that’s better,’ he said. ‘A nice wet pussy. Soaking. You like talking like this? Like a dirty bitch?’
My body had betrayed me. I could feel the humidity between my thighs, the throbbing need in my clit.
He withdrew his fingers and brought them to my lips.
‘Open your mouth, whore. And don’t pretend you don’t like sex juices. I know you love it. You’ll be eating my cock later so don’t worry, I’ll give you plenty more.’
He didn’t wait for me to follow his instruction. Just smeared my own secretions over my face and forced his fingers halfway down my throat until I began to choke.
‘You’re out of practice,’ he said. ‘Your businessman isn’t rough like this, is he? I bet you miss it. I bet you think about me when you fuck him.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘I do.’
He grabbed me by the jaw and swivelled me around to face him and pushed his mouth against mine in a violent kiss. Our tongues pressed together, his teeth pulled at my lower lip. I ran my hand down the meaty firmness of his thigh and up between his legs and took hold of his cock through his shorts.
‘And do you think about him when you fuck me?’
‘Sometimes,’ I told him.
He pulled away from me abruptly.
‘I’ll make you pay for that,’ he said. His voice was low and soft, and frightened me more than his blustering did, which seemed to me more bark than bite. But with the pang of fear came a twist of further arousal. My nipples were stiff and pushed through the fabric of my T-shirt, I could feel them aching, and I knew that Raoul could see it too. He pointedly stared at my chest.
‘Go on then,’ I mocked him. ‘Make me pay.’
He pushed me down onto my knees. Slapped me across the face. Spat on me. Then rubbed his saliva over my cheeks and nose with the flat of his hand.
I inhaled sharply. Shocked.
Even in the depths of our darkest explorations, Dominik had never slapped my face. Would never have, I thought.
‘Tell me I’m not turning you on, Summer,’ he insisted. ‘Dare to look me in the eyes and tell me that you’re not e
njoying everything I’m doing to you, and I’ll leave, right now.’
I couldn’t tell him that. It wasn’t true.
I swallowed, hard.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘But I want to hear it.’
‘Want to hear what?’
‘You know.’
‘You’re turning me on.’
‘As if I can’t tell, the way your tits are pressing through your shirt. Your nipples are harder than my dick. And your pussy is dribbling all over the floor, I can smell you from here. Get up.’
He placed a hand under my armpit, pulled me to my feet, and I stumbled against him.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he muttered, and picked me up in his arms and carried me into the bedroom, where he unceremoniously dumped me on top of the bed, face down. It was only half made, the top sheet pulled messily across in the same position that I’d left it in when I got up after the last occasion I’d slept there. Raoul grabbed the bunched-up cover from under me, pulled it away and dropped it onto the floor.
‘Lazy too, aren’t you,’ he remarked. ‘Don’t you ever clean up around here?’
It was a rhetorical question. He kept talking.
‘Lazy, dirty slut, fucking a rich man for money and fucking me because he doesn’t provide enough dick for you. Well, lucky for you, whore, I’ve got plenty of dick for you, exactly the way you like it. Turn over.’
I scrambled onto my back. Looked up at him. He was still standing at the end of the bed, watching me, his face a picture of savage lust. It was a terrible thing, and I knew it, but that didn’t change the fact that I loved being looked at that way. Loved being the object of a man’s uncontrolled desire.
‘Take off your clothes. I want to watch you undress for me and spread your legs like the whore you are.’
I wriggled my knickers down to my feet and pulled my T-shirt over my head. Sat there proudly naked and defiant, silently daring him to make his next move.
His expression changed. As if a sudden thought had occurred to him.
‘I was just going to fuck you,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to make you orgasm instead.’
I must have looked confused.
He explained.
‘So that later, when you’re trying to kid yourself into thinking that you didn’t really want it like this, you can remember how hard you came.’
He undressed. Crawled on top of me. Kissed me again. And then carried on crawling up my body until he was sitting on my face, his cock deep inside my mouth, his balls smothering what little air I was able to gasp.
‘Suck me, bitch.’
Just as I thought I might pass out if he didn’t allow me to take a breath he pulled out. I gulped for air.
Raoul laughed. Grasped my chin and waggled my head.
‘Don’t worry princess,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to kill you.’
He turned around and began to lap at my clit. I squirmed under him and he grabbed one of my thighs in each of his hands and held me still. I heard him chuckle, a low, quiet laugh that birthed in the back of his throat.
‘Enjoying it already, aren’t you slut? And I’ve only just gotten started.’
It was true. Raoul was skilful. Unlike Joao, who had merely been average, Raoul knew exactly what he was doing, his tongue delving deftly within my folds, circling my clitoris with just the right degree of pressure.
I was half-crushed by the weight of his heavy body lying on top of me and still breathing in the musky scent of his groin. I wriggled in vain to adjust my position so that I could get his cock into my mouth again and suck him but it was no use, he was at totally the wrong angle for me to make any kind of proper job at it, the reason why I thought that 69 was a position best left to exploring teenagers. It just wasn’t practical.
He paused. Lifted his head.
‘Don’t just lie there, slut,’ he said. ‘I want to feel your lips on my balls. And your tongue on my hole. I want you to come while you’re licking my arse.’
I did as he asked.
And came harder than I had in as long as I could remember.
I woke before he did. It was becoming a habit, remaining sleepless while the man alongside me snored away peacefully, totally relaxed, a look of blissful innocence spread over his features.
We had both fallen asleep almost immediately after our exertions, spooning, his heavy arm draped over me and pinning me to his side. I eased my way out from under him, threw on a cotton beach dress and went out to pick up some fruit, juice and fresh bread for breakfast.
When I returned he was still lying on the bed naked, his long, dark brown body spread out over the sheet, his head propped on one hand, long black hair swooped back and away from his face. I was relieved that his cock remained flaccid, curled up and soft within his nest of thick pubic hair. For once, I was not in the mood for sex. A sense of unease had shifted over me, which my morning walk had not dulled at all.
I leaned against the bedroom door frame and he looked up at me.
‘Can I get you some juice?’ I asked him.
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘please.’
At least he hadn’t forsaken his manners entirely.
I filled a couple of clean glasses with abacaxi juice from the carton and added ice. Dominik had hated ice in his drinks, but I preferred it, especially in Rio’s heat. I didn’t know Raoul’s opinion on the subject, but dropped a couple of cubes into his tumbler anyway. He would have to live with it. A quick glance around the cupboards revealed that if I had a breakfast tray, I had no idea where it was, so I took a drink in each hand and then hooked my finger around the handle of the plastic bag filled with fruit and pastries and carried it all to the bed.
‘No butter?’ Raoul asked, as he delved into the carrier and extracted a bread roll.
‘No butter,’ I confirmed.
I picked at a few green grapes from the bunch I had washed under the tap, scattering drops of water that still clung to the small fruits across the covers. I had lost my appetite.
‘About last night,’ I began.
‘Yes?’
‘Maybe we should talk about it.’
‘Talk about it? What is there to talk about? We both had a good time, no?’
‘You can’t just turn up here and expect me to . . . to . . .’
I struggled for the right words.
‘Expect you to be my whore?’
‘Yes,’ I said, although when he put it like that, it wasn’t what I had intended to say at all.
‘Okay then,’ he said. ‘Next time, return my calls and we won’t have a problem.’
I turned to face him, furious.
He laughed, and reached a hand forward to touch my face.
‘I’m just kidding,’ he said. ‘Teasing you. I know I was wrong. What can I say. I can’t help it, when it comes to you. You bring out the devil in me . . .’
Bullshit . . . the word ran through my brain, a lone voice of reason. The more sensible part of me, maybe, the Summer who wouldn’t stand for this crap.
‘Forgive me?’ he queried. He had shifted his expression into a pose of remorse, but his eyes still gleamed with humour, and a hint of something else. Considered evil, maybe.
‘Okay, I guess,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want you calling me over and over, or turning up unannounced again. Ever again.’
He brought both hands up to his face in a gesture of surrender.
‘Woah, okay. You’re the boss.’
I glanced out across the small living space to the kitchen counter and caught a glimpse of the red petals blooming in my laundry bucket from the bunch of roses that he had brought over.
‘And no more flowers,’ I told him.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘I thought girls liked flowers.’ It was the only remark he’d made that morning that had sounded really sincere.
‘Not like that. As a nice gesture, sure, but not as a token of apology. Like you’re trying to buy my goodwill with trinkets.’
‘Perhaps a bigger trinket would have been more effective,�
�� he replied, drily.
I nearly slapped him across the face. Took a deep breath and told myself that if I communicated my anger with violence, I’d be as bad as Raoul.
I wasn’t even sure exactly what it was that I was angry about. Or who I was angry with – him or me.
He took both of my hands in his.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I really am sorry. I like you Summer. You’re different. Give me a chance. That’s all I ask.’
His grip was tight.
‘A chance. Okay. I can do that,’ I said.
One more chance.
‘This might not be the best time to bring it up,’ he continued.
‘Yes?’
‘In my bag, by the front door,’ he said. I hadn’t even noticed he’d been carrying a bag. ‘There’s two plane tickets, to Recife.’
‘Recife?’ It rang a vague bell but I wasn’t even entirely sure where it was.
‘In the north-east. Couple of hours’ flight. My cousin lives there, he invited us to stay with him. For a few days, that’s all. I thought we could get away, spend some time together. Just you and me. It’s a popular city. Near the sea, nice restaurants, bars, all that.’
‘And you didn’t think to ask me first?’
‘I wanted to treat you. To surprise you. Can’t a man buy his girlfriend a holiday?’
‘Okay. Thank you. It sounds nice.’
I agreed. I didn’t have anything planned with Joao, and knew he wouldn’t ask any questions. Astrid deserved a break from her violin lessons for a short period anyway, following the recital. I was beginning to get the distinct impression that the shine had worn off her hobby and she was growing to prefer other things. Music just wasn’t Astrid’s passion. At any rate, it meant that I didn’t have any commitments for the foreseeable future.
Raoul had claimed that the tickets he had booked were flexible, when I had pointed out that it was presumptuous of him to assume that I could just drop everything according to his schedule. As we checked in, I noticed that our economy fares were non-refundable. He had lied to me. Again. I didn’t bring it up. It seemed a petty thing to complain about, and I didn’t want to spend the next four days stuck with him arguing.
His cousin, Lucas, was almost the spitting image of Raoul. They had the same wide mouth and slightly sardonic expression, as if every word they uttered was imbued with double meaning. Lucas’s hair was also long, but his skull was shaved on one side in a punkish undercut and the rest of his dark locks pulled into a top knot. His hand was big and warm when I reached out to shake it. He pulled me into a hug, kissed me on both cheeks and laughed.
