‘But surely the women who wore the bracelet for you were just a hobby, a release of tension if you like? After all, you do have a girlfriend.’
Tarquin frowned. ‘I do?’
‘Estelle.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, there is Estelle, but the journey that Estelle and I have shared began a long time ago and if it hadn’t already been nearly over I don’t think that I’d have joined the society, do you?’
Kristina shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Men can separate sex from emotion more easily than women. I thought that Estelle met your emotional needs, and she certainly enjoyed watching me when I was wearing the bracelet. I think you make a good pair.’
He was watching her like a hawk now, his back very straight and his head erect as he listened to her words, carefully weighing each one. ‘We made a good pair once,’ he conceded. ‘Our relationship has now come to an end.’
‘By mutual agreement?’ asked Kristina in surprise.
He sighed. ‘Reasonably mutual. There’s always one person who remains involved longer than the other, as your friend Jackie knows to her cost.’
‘At least you’ve still got the society,’ laughed Kristina. ‘I’m sure you’ll meet plenty of other women of the kind you mention. Women like me.’
‘Why should I want them?’
‘For the excitement, the variety and the lack of commitment that drew you to it in the first place I suppose.’
Tarquin stood up and moved over to sit beside her. ‘You haven’t been listening to me,’ he said quietly, running his fingers over the back of her hand. ‘As I said, the games you and I played were only the beginning. Now I want us to carry on, but this time on the journey I mentioned. The erotic journey that will, I’m sure, last a very long time.’
Kristina’s heart was thumping against her ribs but she struggled to keep her voice calm. ‘You’re saying you want our affair to continue?’
His hand moved to the nape of her neck and then lightly through her hair, caressing her scalp with incredible tenderness. ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Of course, it may not be what you want, but it’s certainly what I want.’
‘But without the bracelet it will be different,’ she murmured, beginning to wriggle beneath his caress.
‘Different yes, because we’ll come together as equals. That doesn’t mean it won’t be as good, in fact I imagine it will be even better. We still belong to the society, and I shall keep the bracelet. You can always wear it for our own pleasure if you choose to, but I don’t think that will happen very often.’
His hands were massaging her shoulder blades now, easing away the tight knots of tension that had formed there and releasing trapped nerves so that her skin started to tingle as blood coursed freely through her veins.
‘What about emotions?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Do you have a problem with emotions?’
‘Of course not, but surely you do? The last thing men from the society want is personal involvement, as Laurence demonstrated only too clearly.’
‘I can’t picture you as a clinging type of woman under any circumstances, and that’s the only kind of woman I couldn’t cope with. Of course I get emotionally involved with women I make love to regularly. That’s why it’s so wonderful to give them pleasure, and help them discover new things about themselves. I have to be involved, in my own way.’
‘Yes, I suppose you do,’ agreed Kristina, but she still wasn’t certain what he meant by his own way. She doubted if he was as committed to her as she was to him, but for the moment that didn’t matter. It was enough that he was telling her he wanted them to remain lovers and that he was talking about the long erotic journey that lay ahead. She could worry about the rest another time. Right now all she wanted was physical proof that what he was saying was true.
Suddenly he rose to his feet. ‘Excuse me a moment, Kristina. I’ll just have a word with the chef.’
While he was gone she sat sipping at her drink and thought about all he’d said. He wanted her, and he’d wanted her to take off the bracelet. That was what mattered, that her show of independence had been what he’d expected, which meant he wasn’t the kind of man who’d feel threatened by her success. He wanted to make love to her as an equal, and she wanted it too. In fact, at this moment she wanted it far more than she wanted to eat dinner or make further conversation.
At that moment he returned, his face even more sombre than usual. ‘There seems to have been a disaster in the kitchen. The meal won’t be ready for some time yet. I wonder, would you like to come upstairs with me? There’s something I’d like you to see.’
Kristina rose to her feet and looked into his eyes. The true question he was asking wasn’t whether she wanted to go and see something upstairs, it was whether she wanted them to make love or not, but he was leaving the decision entirely to her. She didn’t hesitate. ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ she said with a smile.
At last one of his rare smiles lit up his face. ‘I hoped you’d say that. Here, let me show you the way,’ and he held out his hand. She slipped her hand into it and let him lead her up the wide staircase and along the first floor landing until he opened a door and drew her into a vast bathroom.
‘Much as I adore your dress,’ he said huskily, ‘I have to take it off now.’
The bathroom was already hot and humid, the sunken marble bath filled with perfumed water so hot that steam was rising from it. It was a beautiful room, with daffodil yellow walls and a deep green and yellow carpet. The high window had matching curtains tied back with yellow cords and on the various shelves and stands candles in the shape of oranges and lemons burned brightly, emitting the perfume of the fruits they represented.
Because it was so hot, Kristina was grateful when Tarquin carefully unzipped the back of her dress and then eased it off her shoulders and down the length of her body until she was able to step out of it.
When he saw that she was entirely naked beneath it, except for her stockings, Tarquin made a tiny sound of appreciation, before kneeling at her feet and rolling the holdups slowly down each of her legs in turn. Then, when she was totally naked, he stood up and slowly ran his right hand down her left side.
‘You’re even more gorgeous than I’d remembered,’ he said huskily, and Kristina trembled with excitement. ‘I’ll make sure Lydia’s got the temperature of the water right,’ he added. ‘Then, you can step in and after that I’ll take care of everything.’
Kristina was glad. Despite the fact that she wasn’t wearing the bracelet, at this moment she didn’t want to be the one to take the lead. She needed to have Tarquin assume command, and her body was straining for his skilled attentions as memories of past pleasures flooded through her.
‘It seems fine,’ he murmured a moment later. ‘Here, let me help you in.’ Carefully he took her hand as she stepped down into the deep water. Then, as she lay back against one end of the bath, resting her head against a soft padded cushion that was fixed there, he began to remove his own clothes.
Through half-closed eyes she watched him closely, revelling in his well-muscled body and the soft, golden-brown skin. He was already becoming aroused, and she couldn’t stop watching the slowly swelling penis as it rose up from its surrounding cluster of thick dark curls.
For the first time since she’d met him, Tarquin didn’t bother to fold his clothes neatly. His dinner suit, shirt and tie were discarded carelessly and at speed, ending up in a crumpled heap in one corner of the bathroom.
With a brief smile at Kristina, Tarquin pulled a bathroom stool over to the side of the tub, sat down on it at the end where her feet were and then reached into the water and pulled up her left foot.
‘I’m going to wash you all over,’ he said softly. ‘By the time I’ve finished you’ll be cleaner than ever in your life before.’
With a sigh of contentment, Kristina gave herself over to him. She watched as he soaped his hands and then began working on her imprisoned foot, pulling on each toe in turn before sliding his
fingers into the gaps, moving them rhythmically in and out in an imitation of love-making that made her whole body tremble.
As he moved slowly upwards, over her calves and thighs, she continued to shake beneath the water, but he left her genitals alone and instead took the stool to the opposite end of the bath where he proceeded to soap her neck, spine and shoulder-blades where they rose above the water as she sat upright.
As he washed her breasts he took extra time and care, working the soap into the swelling flesh for so long that she started to feel the first tiny tremors of an orgasm beginning. Sensing this he stopped, and instead got her to kneel up in the bath so that he could wash her belly, hips and buttocks, again touching her with teasing eroticism that aroused but never led to fulfilment.
Finally, when she was expecting him to start soaping her aching vulva, he turned away from her. ‘Just a moment, there’s something else I need,’ he murmured and for a moment she was left alone, her body no longer relaxed because it was too sexually aroused.
When Tarquin returned a few moments later he was carrying an airbed which he laid on the carpet next to the bath. As Kristina watched curiously he picked up a bottle of body shampoo from the shelf over the basin and using water from the basin tap began to work the shampoo into masses of suds which he then spread over the surface of the airbed, teasing the bubbles into pointed peaks until the airbed vanished beneath the snow-white lather. Tarquin nodded to himself in appreciation of his own work and then held out his hand to Kristina. ‘Time to step out now. This is the most exciting stage of the game.’
She climbed out carefully and then hesitated, unsure of what he expected of her. ‘I want you to lie face down on the suds,’ he explained. ‘Then close your eyes and wait.’ Kristina lowered herself into the foaming soap bubbles and felt them breaking under the weight of her body. They prickled and popped, teasing her already excited flesh, and the sensation was delicious, rather like sinking into a bowl of meringue, she thought with a smile.
Once she was face down, Tarquin proceeded to cover her back with an equal quantity of suds, heaping them high along her spine and across her back. For Kristina the sensation was one of utter bliss and she gave a sigh of delight at the gentle touch of the lather.
Once he was satisfied with the way she looked, Tarquin soaped the front of his own body and then he knelt at Kristina’s left side before stretching himself over her, taking some of the weight on his elbows at the opposite side of the airbed.
Now, as Kristina whimpered with delight, he began to slide his body all over her, moving up and down the length of her spine with his body positioned like a cross beam over hers. Just as she was becoming used to that he altered the position of his elbows and slid diagonally up and down from her right buttock to her left shoulder. As her breathing grew increasingly ragged he pressed his abdomen to and fro over the softly curved cheeks of her bottom so that her belly and vulva were forced down on to the airbed and the sexual tension inside her grew and grew as a climax drew nearer.
He moved slowly at first, and then more quickly, changing rhythm regularly so that he never quite allowed her body enough time to reach an orgasm. Eventually Kristina became so desperate that she started to cry out, begging him to press harder, keep the rhythm going for longer, but in reply he merely turned her on to her back and then after staring into her beseeching dark blue eyes he proceeded to cover every inch of her front in the same way.
She felt him easing the lather into the crevices at the join of her thighs, into her belly button and all over her straining abdomen before covering her upper thighs and then he added a few more suds to his own body before starting to tease her in earnest.
This time he lay straight along the length of her, although still taking some of his weight on his elbows, and as he slid up and down her body she could feel the tip of his penis brushing against the entrance to her vagina. Every time he did this she thrust her hips upwards, but he was always too quick for her and instead the swollen glans would brush against the soap-covered clitoris so that Kristina was squirming and wriggling like a creature in torment as her nerve endings grew tighter and tighter under his clever arousal.
‘Please, I want you inside me, Tarquin,’ she begged him at last, unable to keep silent any longer.
His black eyes stared down at her and he nodded, but when he moved his body on the next upstroke he merely let the tip of his penis enter her for a few brief seconds. She cried out with disappointment, but he smiled. ‘Patience, it won’t be long now.’
She didn’t want to be patient, although her body was revelling in this long-drawn-out foreplay and she realised that now with every upward movement he was plunging a little deeper inside her, and then he started to rotate his hips as well so that the nerves just inside the entrance to her vagina were aroused and sharp tingles began to spread outwards through her entire vulva.
Finally, when her nipples were harder than she could ever remember them and her stomach felt as though it was swollen to twice its normal size as the sexual tension made the muscles of her belly ripple beneath the skin’s surface, Tarquin took pity on her and on his upward movement he allowed himself to penetrate her totally.
Kristina gripped the length of him with her internal muscles, her body frantic to feel every centimetre of his erection brushing against her vaginal walls. Tarquin struggled for control as she tried to hurry his climax along, and he lowered the whole weight of his body on to her and then slid one soapy hand between them so that he could push back the tiny hood of skin that was covering her retracted clitoris. He then manipulated the slippery nub by rolling the pad of one finger around the smooth sides.
Kristina’s body jerked underneath him, and she started to pant with the almost unbearably intense sensations that were engulfing her. Her whole body was on fire, stimulated relentlessly by his body’s movements for the past half hour, and now it was all coming together with such force that for a moment she was frightened by the power of the contractions that were beginning deep within her body.
Now Tarquin allowed a second finger to slide lower, below the clitoris itself so that while he continued to massage that he also slid the other finger up and down the damp channel beneath until he felt the slender body beneath him heave helplessly as her long-delayed orgasm was finally released.
Kristina heard herself scream aloud at the incredible hot flooding pleasure, centred deep behind her clitoris but spreading out to every particle of her body, and now her internal contractions were uncontrolled and Tarquin felt himself gripped by her convulsions so that he too climaxed with a shout of triumph and delight.
For a long time afterwards they lay silently together, side by side with their arms wrapped round each other’s bodies, both of them unwilling to break the eroticism of the moment or admit that for now at least the sex game was over. Finally Tarquin stirred. ‘We must get dressed,’ he said with a laugh. ‘What will the chef think?’
‘Do you know, I don’t think I care,’ said Kristina lazily.
Tarquin smiled at her and wiped some remaining suds away from her breasts. ‘Somehow I thought you might say that.’
As he brushed at the suds, Kristina realised that her nipple was hardening again and she quickly sat up. ‘That’s enough! As you say, we must think of the chef.’
‘Then I’d better let you dry yourself off,’ said Tarquin. ‘If I do it, I won’t be held responsible for the result.’
They ate sitting side by side at the dining table, with Tarquin frequently stopping to feed Kristina titbits from his own plate. Much later when they’d rested and talked, they undressed in the drawing room and lay naked on the soft rug, pouring wine into each other’s mouths and then laughingly licking up the spills. Finally, in the early hours of the morning they went upstairs to Tarquin’s bedroom and there, for the first time since she’d met him, Kristina spent the night in his arms.
When she woke in the morning she looked down at him as he lay sleeping and knew that whatever it took she was never g
oing to let him go, and neither was she going to let her business slip again. She really was going to ‘have it all’, she thought to herself.
Six months later, Kristina arrived back at Tarquin’s house at midnight, carrying an award from the Publisher’s Association dinner she’d just attended. She still had her own house, but spent most of her time at Tarquin’s. They were generally accepted as a couple on the social scene, and she’d taken particular delight in going with him to a publishing party that Roberta had organised to announce the fact that her publishing house had finally managed to sign him up. Roberta’s face had been a picture, something Kristina would long remember. Much to her relief Jackie had at last regained control of her life. Realising what had gone wrong in her relationship with Laurence she’d found herself another job and had started going out with men like William again. But then when that had palled, as Kristina had guessed it would, Jackie had announced that she had landed herself a job in America with one of their top women’s magazines.
‘It probably won’t be any different there,’ she admitted to Kristina, ‘but it will all be new, and American men are meant to like English women.’
‘I’m sure they’ll like you, as long as you don’t try to make yourself something you’re not!’ laughed Kristina.
Jackie shook her head. ‘I won’t make that error again. Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson. I still envy you though; you really have got it all now.’
As Kristina turned her key in the lock she remembered those words and wondered with a sense of unease if it was true. She’d thought so, and Jackie had endorsed her feeling, but lately she’d sensed that things weren’t the same between her and Tarquin.
He met her in the hall. ‘Well?’ he asked in his deep, soft voice that still had the power to make Kristina’s knees go weak.
‘I won!’ she shouted, and held up the silver pen that was her award.
‘I knew you would!’ he laughed, and pulling her to him kissed her with such intense passion that for a moment she wondered if they might just sink down and make love there and then in the hall, but even as the thought passed through her mind he drew away. ‘Let’s have a drink to celebrate.’
The Bracelet Page 23
