‘Men,’ you whisper, ‘a lot, looking at me, all around me, running their hands over me, dipping their fingers in. A dog, brought in on a leash. They are all watching, my pleasure, someone … someone parts my cheeks. They all fuck me, one after the other, again and again. I am favoured, caged, bound, handcuffed, displayed – the object they all want.’
You are deeply red, deeply shamed, at the end of it. Your face is flaming. You are quiet, cannot look at him, cannot say anything more. Can’t believe you have allowed this.
He turns you around. With great certainty, with gravity. In silence.
‘Thank you for trusting me. I’m your helper, your facilitator. I will never hurt you, I will never exploit you. Let’s see how far we can take this. But only if you want to …’
His tongue flicks into you, as deft and cool as a snake.
You clench on it, groan.
His answer.
Lesson 138
A friend. Not perhaps until later life do we recognise the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as it is sweet, of possessing or of being a friend.
Later, in the kitchen, cradling a mug of tea.
‘But how can you love me yet even think of doing … everything … that I said?’ The blush is deep; what you have revealed, oh my God. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘I love what you have given me. What we are doing here. You will never forget it and neither will I. We have released you, and so few women get that chance. We are doing this together. You’re a work-in-progress, but then so am I.’
He comes right up close, his face tells you he is confident that no one, ever, can take his place, no matter who comes next; he is inked through your heart, through your blood, until the day you die he is there and he knows it. His smile tells you your pleasure is his, that he knows he will have succeeded if he sees you gaining ultimate pleasure, beyond him, beyond anything he can do; it will be his greatest gift.
‘But how?’ You furrow your eyebrows, frown, still don’t get it. He tells you he is doing all this because he is a student of women and he needs to learn, as do you, it is the writer’s curiosity – he is a student of life, of living to the limit in pursuit of love, connection, soul-sharing, radiance.
He loves you, never forget that. No matter what comes next.
‘I want to unlock you completely and fully and absolutely. Give you the tools of womanhood, the most splendid of experiences. My ultimate lesson. I want you to know the choices you will have – the breadth of the experience – and believe me, many women, most women, don’t. Consider it an act of generosity, if you like.’
‘But what’s in it for you?’
‘It’s exciting. I want to watch. I want to see your pleasure and know that I, ultimately, am responsible for it. I want to give you an experience that will be with you for the rest of your life.’
He asks you to shut your eyes.
He leaves the room and returns; buckles the collar around your neck. You are free to look but don’t, in perfect obeyance.
No more words, as his rigid cock presses firm into your flesh.
He takes the collar off.
The breath of a kiss, on the nape of your neck.
‘Friday. We’ll be ready.’
Before you can ask him what he means, again, he is gone, he has shut the door on you, the study door that is always locked now; his secret refuge you are not allowed to trespass across anymore. You walk out of Woondala. The afternoon has turned, is now grey, sullen, waiting. You retrieve your bike. You don’t have to return. You don’t have to ever see this house again.
‘It’s your choice.’ The yell from the verandah to your departing back. ‘It’s always your choice.’
You do not turn around.
Lesson 139
Be honest with me. I don’t expect from you more than human nature is capable of.
Running to him two days later, in your overalls, the shirt flung from underneath them as soon as you have slipped through his gate and tossed your bike aside. Running to him, for him – you can’t help it, he has you snared, trapped. He loves you earthy, sweaty, loves you brimming with vividness, his child of nature, that girl he first knew, and so you are running and running in your Blunnies, through deep fern gullies and over rocks and through his creek; thudding away spiders and cobwebs and snakes; grimy with sweat and exhilaration and the slap of his bush; grimy with its life. There’s the crispness of an approaching storm in the air, an exhilarating readiness and you feel alive, on edge, shivery on the precipice of a something – God knows what – and you are poised to leap off and you are so ready, trembly wet, laughter shooting out. Ready to act volcanically however he wants, your heart pumping with greed and hunger and dread and desire; you are pure emotion now, shameless, unmediated by discretion or convention or decorum. You have entered a new world. You are someone else.
No name, no age. No future, no past.
Just this, the varnished present. Pure, lovely, ravenous want.
He walks out to greet you.
As if he knew it would always come to this.
The curve of his cock, erect, through his trousers.
He is holding a black silk blindfold and a pair of black opaque stockings and a suspender belt in one hand, and in the other, some beautiful Manolo Blahnik stilettos, of spindly black velvet, exactly your size of course. He places everything down, methodically, he has thought carefully about all this. He unclips your braces, pulls them down. You are wearing nothing underneath and you are shaved, in readiness. He shuts his eyes, briefly, as if he can’t bear to see it. He asks you to put on the stockings and the shoes. You have never worn anything like this in your life.
Trembling, you obey him, breathing deep.
He turns you around. He covers your eyes.
Blindfolded by the softest of black silk. Two tiny metal weights on the ends. They slither, icy, against the skin of your lower back, a thrill of cold. Your flesh springs into goosebumps. He buckles the heavy collar around your neck.
All sensation now. Nothing else.
He dribbles the lead of the collar down your stomach then threads it between your legs. He pulls it up sharp. Between your lips. Forcing them apart. Exposed. You wince, with exquisite hurt.
‘Steady, my beauty, I’m with you,’ he whispers, a calming hand on your back, murmuring as if you are a wild brumby he has to lead into a horse float for the very first time, guiding you gently, all the way, every step.
‘Remember, confidence.’
He leads you into the cool dark house you know so well, every crevice, wall, crack. He leads you into the main room, his hand still holding the chain taut at your back. You grip his arm tight, blinded, breathing deep. The chain cuts through you. Flipping open a lip. You are ready. Your nipples ache with anticipation. All your senses on alert.
He stops you.
Works the chain up higher, higher, so you have to spread your legs, open yourself wider, groan. You hold your voice, leaning your back against his stomach with his fingers in your bare cunt, splayed; as if on display.
All is still, all is quiet.
Just the tin roof above you, cracking and ticking in its heat.
The roof you know so well.
The only thing you know, now, in all of this.
Lesson 140
Our interests gradually take a wider range
Gently, so gently but with firm authority, like a doctor before an operation, he lies you, belly down, on the couch. Your buttocks are placed over the roll of its arm. He trills his fingers up and down your back, then your thighs, dipping inside, further and further, soft, so soft and you lift up your arse, out, up – have to. His hands help you, his knowing hands, you open yourself out, groan, it’s unbearable, you want him, here, now, so much. You are left alone. Your body keeps pulsing, opening out. Then you hear another noise, the sound of a belt being taken off, trousers unzipped.
In the room.
With you.
Who? You don’t know, who else, how many.<
br />
Yes, no, you can’t make it out.
‘Only do what you want to do.’ Tol is back, beside you, whispers his soothing words, ‘I’m here, I’m with you, everything’s your choice, it’s what you want.’ Then he leans close and his fingers continue murmuring over the back of your thighs, loving, so tender – it moves you to tears, it’s unbearable, you spread your legs wider, you want it, want everything, all your clothes gone, on show for anyone here in this place, men, women, whoever is here, everything, trying to scrabble off the Manolo Blahniks, the belt.
‘Yes,’ you whisper, ‘yes.’
‘Good girl,’ he whispers, slipping down your stockings, unclipping your belt, parting your cheeks, for them, for the room, for whoever it is. You hear a gasp. His, someone else’s, you don’t know, don’t recognise anything anymore. It’s your cue. You lift yourself higher, higher, giving yourself to the air, rocking with it, displaying your arse, for God knows who, what.
‘Come on, come on,’ you whisper under your breath, urging it. Ready for him, his mates, his possession. His creation, ready for whatever he wants.
‘This is only the start,’ it is whispered.
Gently you are turned over. Instinctively you spread wide. Your hands are taken. A belt you don’t recognise – you can feel its difference, its heaviness – someone is binding you with this stranger’s belt. A knee is holding you down. You submit, you trust, the knee is removed, you curve your back, splaying your wetness, your readiness. Strain to hear – you can’t make it out, another presence … or several … movement. Something else in this room, breath.
‘Well … well,’ in appreciation, as hands are directing you to the ground, some kind of platform. Hands, you don’t know whose, gently someone blows upon you and you bow your back, you arch your buttocks out, ready, so ready for this – trembling, wet, you feel as if your insides are tumbling in slow motion, with all of it. It is fear, excitement, anticipation; power, surrender, want.
A finger, you don’t know whose, touches your cunt. Softly, brushing the underside of it, parting your lips. Inspecting.
‘Sssssh,’ Tol whispers, reassuring, in your ear. ‘Sssh.’ He angles you head down, so you are opened wide, wider, dangling the collar’s chain – its cold, brutal metal – across your wanton cunt.
Lesson 141
Come, just as you are – ragged, dirty, dishonest.
Only come, and we will do our best to make you what you ought to be.
Fingers, everywhere. You don’t know whose. You arch your back, giving yourself to them, wanting it all, all, everything. In your arse, in your cunt, your mouth, between your breasts, all at once, blinded but seeing all, in your head; but they don’t let you come, they stop just short.
Saving you for something else.
‘Surrender,’ Tol whispers.
You groan.
You are humping a tongue. Urging it deeper, deeper. Something slips into your arse. You fuck it all, all. You want everyone to see, you arch your back, you love that you are giving pleasure, dispensing it; you feel supremely in control – strong, victorious, holding this room captive. Wanted.
Noticed.
That you can have this effect. You.
The power of it.
The gift of attention.
Sounds, coming from you, that you did not think you were capable of, in a register lower than you have ever uttered in your life. You are split wide open, stripped, they have seen the core of you and you have never seen it before, in yourself and you marvel at that; the next step. That such a thing exists. That your body is capable of this.
This tsunami of … pleasure.
Lesson 142
We feel we should like to go on living, were it only out of curiosity
As you come and come you push away, all of it, not wanting anyone, anything, curling in exquisite aloneness, need to savour, scissoring your body again and again and turning brutally, in this needing to be alone.
When the spasming has finally died down, Tol enfolds your trembling in his arms and holds you and holds you until you stop, until all is quiet. Sssh, he is whispering, smoothing back your hair, again and again, sssssh.
‘What exactly is freedom,’ he muses later, close, and you can hear the smile in his voice, ‘but doing exactly what we want to in life?’
Then he kisses you. Just. The moth’s kiss.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
You are still blindfolded.
He slips it off.
His eyes, soft, into yours. Just his eyes, nothing, no one else, in the room. He lifts you like his bride with the dearest and most sacred tenderness and he carries you across the threshold of his bedroom again and he lays you on his mattress with consummate gentleness.
You have no idea of anyone else.
No awareness of anything, only him.
His gift.
Lesson 143
Where shall we find the light? In the world and its ordinary code of social morality, suited to social convenience?
I fear not.
One last fuck on that seared, soaked day: lying with his stomach pressed into your back, one of his hands across your mouth and the other strong on your pubis, fucking in silence, stifled. Muffling your cries with his hand, you must be quiet, he is giggling, sssh, as if he is not meant to be doing this, others are listening, they’re not allowed to know he is sneaking it.
‘I want you to be my woman forever,’ he is whispering deep inside you, moving so slowly, almost imperceptibly as his words pump through you, filling you up. Glow girl. Have you ever felt more alive, more sated, than this? He has removed you, shut the door on everything else, you are his only now, his – his woman, his world – and when he comes it is with a great cry of agony and distress and release, his whole life in it, all his past, all his future.
‘Thank you,’ he breathes again, panting, and then tells you he will never forget what you have given him – your trust, the gift of it through all these summer weeks. He will remember this golden, burnished time for the rest of his life – your love, what you have done, all of it. And then he starts to weep.
The shuddering pressing into your back.
The tears, the wet, the weight.
You stay still. You do not turn to him. It is something deeply private, and you do not want to intrude upon it.
Lesson 144
The wretched girl lives in terror of being turned from an angry father’s door
The house feels completely empty, except for you two. You have heard no one leaving, moving about, no cars, nothing. Just you and Tol and a world you have created for yourselves. You lie there and smile in the infinite depths of the silence of the softening day and the stopping and the rest. God in the quiet. Grace. You know now what it is to be a woman who radiates peace. Serenity.
In a life driven by love.
You sleep, you stir, you are the salt sweeper now, mining Tol’s body with your lips, your tongue, your breath. You taste regions, delve. The velvet softness of his flaccid penis, the toadstool head freckled softly, endearingly. You remember walking through his drawing room door once, unannounced, and Tol coming at you, rising from the couch, and in that instant you had a vision of him old – the thickness, the tiredness, the slowness – and felt an enormous tenderness for what he would become. You will be beside him, of course, you will not recoil from it; charging like crazed warriors at convention, still. You can see it.
You float your lips over his body like a metal detector at a beach, trying to know him, extract him, his essence. This man in your life who touches the world so lightly with his living, who has no need of anyone else. With his constant capacity to surprise.
Now, with stillness.
The coldness of night is leaking into the air. The real world awaits. You get up. You shower. You leave. With a breath of a kiss on the nape of his sleeping neck.
Your little Victorian volume is waiting for you on the verandah doorstep, your little manual of scrupulous honesty that has accompanied you the e
ntire time you have been in this house. Smeared by insects and ink smudges and mud from a dam. You pick it up, puzzled. You’d left it in the pocket of your overalls, in the ditch.
Inside is a fresh inscription.
Up front, roguishly, in an area that has never before been written in – the writing messy, hasty, not his usual neatness – a person who has been shaken from themselves.
This place can teach you so much.
Lesson 145
From that day this girl never was dependent upon any human being
Your father looks up from his tea and chocolate biscuit as you enter the house. As if he knows, as if he can smell something on you. Change, perhaps, as simple as that. Bruises are pluming on your thighs and your upper arms but he cannot see them; you do not know what he senses but it is some subtle thing, perhaps a ripening, a readiness, just that.
‘How old are you again?’ he asks absently.
He always teases you with this, on the birthdays he invariably forgets or ignores, to toughen you up, to get your indignant reminder. He asks you now like he can’t believe you’re growing so fast; he needs affirmation of how young you really are.
You just roll your eyes and smile the disbelieving, mock-disgusted smile that you always give him at this question then retreat to your room – have to, suddenly an uncontrollable trembling in your legs. Have to rip away your clothes to examine the vivid map on your skin, the imprint of what went on: the bruise on your left breast, deep and angry, the strange colours dancing up. No idea how it got there. The savagery of the lovemaking, all over, an elbow, or a chin, a knee. Embedded.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 39
