Sex in the City--London

by Maxim Jakubowski

  ‘You know how work is. It’ll be easier for me to stay an extra night or two in London than to commute.’

  ‘You know best, love. Now, what do you think about the dinner party on Thursday, should I buy the new dinner set? Do you think Eva would be insulted if I didn’t use the one she gave us?’

  Disappointment.

  I’d spent almost all my adult life with her and she either didn’t know or didn’t care that I was lying to her. I desired to be loved and wanted by someone who knew me completely and accepted my flaws as readily as my money. Heather had never been that someone. I spoke to my wife about what various acquaintances would think about her purchasing some new china while I stared at another woman revealing more and more of her flesh as she tried on a pair of black leather boots and thought maybe this is what marriage comes down to.

  When I clicked the phone closed Catherine smiled at me.

  ‘Can you answer yet whether you like me in heels?’ She was holding her long skirt up, to show the tops of the boots clinging to the white flesh of her thighs. She turned around pulling her skirt up higher to reveal that she wasn’t wearing any knickers, my cock responded to the glimpse of her full buttocks making my whole body physically ache for her.

  ‘I like you,’ I said. The timing was wrong, I knew that. It must have been obvious to her and everyone in the shop that I’d been talking to my wife, but she let go of her skirt and stepped towards me, brushing her hand against my cheek.

  ‘Show me how much you like me. On your knees, lick the heel of my boots.’

  The shop assistant showed no surprise but smirked as I dropped to my knees and ran my tongue down the heel of her boot. Maybe this was her game, maybe she knew London better than me and the whole tourist thing was a ruse to bring random business men to this shop and humiliate them. That made more sense than the forces of fate and coincidence delivering a woman I’d had a cyber fling with to the airport at the exact time I arrived. In that moment breathing in the scent of new leather and the tantalising closeness of her sex I didn’t care who she was and what she wanted to do to me.

  ‘Take these boots off me, I don’t like them any more,’ she said, ‘they’ve been sullied.’

  I unzipped them and peeled the leather away from her smooth skin, fighting the urge to stroke her beauty. Her feet were perfection, high arched softness with crimson painted toenails and I couldn’t resist stroking the heel of her foot as I pulled the boot away from her. She looked at me with something akin to pity and stroked my hair.

  ‘Buy me that pair of shoes,’ she said pointing to a shoe with six-inch see-through heels.

  I obeyed running my fingers over their contours hoping she would let me do the same when they were on her feet. She put them on and walked out of the shop leaving her original shoes discarded on the floor.

  She moved with as much ease and grace as when she was wearing the flat footwear. Except now in the moments when she turned to me she was looking me in the eye, staring at me with a gaze that I never wanted to escape from.

  ‘I want to see something big now,’ she said.

  There was no teasing or innuendo in her voice, nothing that encouraged me to do what I so desperately wanted and put her hand on my cock. So we went back on the tube and I suffered through the airless heat of too many people in too small a place, her body continually brushing against mine and the thought of trains going into tunnels. Trains going into tunnels. An agonising image.

  I took her to the Monument waxing lyrical on Sir Christopher Wren and the Great Fire of London.

  ‘Is burning a bad death?’ she asked.

  I stared back at her, all the dates and facts and figures I wanted to impress her with fading away as I looked at her.

  ‘I think, I’ve heard, anyway, that it is the smoke that kills you, not the flames. It is suffocation rather than heat.’

  She nodded, it was an acknowledgement of the fact I was choosing to ignore her question and the too obvious pain in her eyes.

  We looked away from each other and stared up at the 202 foot high stone monument strutting into the grey sky in commemoration of people who died hundreds of years ago.

  ‘Something else now,’ she said turning away.

  We walked up to London Bridge. She did not pause to look at it.

  ‘I like the other one,’ she said, ‘this one is nothing.’

  ‘Shall I take you to Tower Bridge?’ I asked. ‘Is that the one you mean? The one you see on all the postcards?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Somewhere else.’

  I took her to Canary Wharf hoping that it might fit her earlier remit of something big and my vague impression that all females like to shop. She walked out into the street, took one look up at the UK’s tallest building and then walked back to the train station without giving me a chance to regale her with any of the facts I had been mentally preparing for her.

  I followed her back onto the train, she got off at the Cutty Stark station. The old Tea Clipper was hidden behind boarding but she didn’t seem to mind as she stood staring at it.

  ‘There was a fire a couple of years back, I think,’ I said, ‘I recall something about it on the news.’

  She looked at me and I stopped speaking remembering her odd question at the Monument.

  I felt a strange relief when she walked on and we began the hike up the park.

  ‘I don’t really know this part of London so well,’ I said, settling down next to her on the grass at the peak of the hill. ‘Of course as a kid I did the whole trip to the Royal Observatory but that was a long, long time ago.’ I laughed, silently hoping she wasn’t aware of the difference in our ages as much as I was.

  ‘Shut up. Enjoy the view,’ she said.

  I looked ahead at a city I didn’t know, old grand buildings taking their place in the skyline alongside new functional upstarts. It wasn’t just looking at London from a different side, the strangeness came from the fact she was beside me. The fact I wasn’t at home listening to my wife empty her head of all the little things she’d been saving up to tell me. I was here sitting on the grass in Greenwich with a woman who was either a total stranger or someone I flirted with online a couple of years ago. Everything had an air of unreality, even the ancient stones of London had a surreal quality.

  Then my thoughts disappeared, my breath caught in my throat and I dared not release it, her hand was on the crotch of my trousers, undoing my fly. I fought the urge to look down as her fingers wrapped themselves round my cock. I was a superstitious kid again making up rules in my head, if I don’t stand on any of the cracks in the pavement my mum won’t really be dead, if I don’t move then this beauty by my side will really be touching me.

  Except this time it was true, Catherine’s had pulled my erection out of my trousers, the coolness of the air was touching my heat, making me feel alive. Catherine’s hand was working up and down my erection with a speed that I couldn’t fight against. I came hard, spunk flying in the air making me feel like I had fired my juice over all the distant buildings, my cream had landed on the spikes of the Millennium Dome and drowned the arrogance of Canary Wharf, the whole of London was touched by my seed.

  The release was short-lived, she zipped me up and wiped her hand on my trouser leg.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ she said.

  I followed her around as she walked the streets of Greenwich and then beyond, following the path of the river. I wanted to say something to her, but what could I say? ‘Thank you for the hand job, but please can I have a bit more, Miss? Sorry I came so quickly, I normally last a lot longer than that, you can ask my wife if you don’t believe me. I promise I’ll do better next time if you’ll be so kind to give me another chance.’

  ‘It’s getting a bit nippy,’ is what I said, rubbing my hands together as if she needed extra signs to understand me.

  It was getting colder, but what concerned me was the way darkness was falling in around us, apart from being somewhere in the midst of London I had no knowledge o
f, I recalled a recent dinner party discussion about London being the most violent city in Europe. She was too beautiful to be wondering around at night with only me for protection.

  ‘Maybe we should start finding our way back to the hotel?’

  She answered me by pressing me against a brick wall, her body pushed into mine, the heat of her breath warming my lips. Her hand was on my fly releasing my desire to the cool air again. She gazed into my eyes as she wanked me with the same expert speed as before. I tried to hold back, think about something else, but my lust had increased, not abated after her earlier attention. She was too close to me, her stare was too intense, I came again. She stepped away from me at the precise moment my pleasure exploded leaving my cream to spill onto the pavement.

  We both looked down at the white puddle.

  ‘Lick it up,’ she said.

  I dropped to my knees and lapped my come up. I thought of the millions of people who lived in London, the number of feet that must have passed this way through time, and I was in the midst of all that population and all that history, tasting my spunk for the first time because she had ordered me to.

  When I had cleaned every last droplet she turned and walked on. I followed after her, almost forgetting to make myself decent in my fear that she might disappear into the night. She turned away from the river and within a couple more turns we emerged back into the noisy, lighted hub of the city. I followed her onto a bus and then a tube as she took us back to the hotel. Re-entering it, I had to remind myself why I had chosen it, all the glamour and pampering that was available in London, why had I taken this beautiful, amazing woman to a place like this. I wasn’t the man I was this morning, I didn’t care who saw me with Catherine, nor who they told.

  ‘Let me take you somewhere else,’ I said.

  She shook her head and I was struck by the fear that she had no intention of staying with me, but she came with me to my room and sat down on the bed with her legs stretched out in front of her.

  ‘Do you want something to eat?’ I asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘What would you like? What can I do for you?’

  ‘You want to fuck me,’ she said.

  Her saying the word ‘fuck’ made my cock struggle against the material of my trousers.

  ‘Would you like me to? I want to make you happy,’ I said.

  She laughed, a hard mocking laugh that somehow made my cock yearn for her more.

  ‘Do you think the fake chivalry makes you a good English gentleman?’

  ‘It’s not fake,’ I said, ‘it’s who I am. I don’t want to fuck you if you don’t want me as much I want you.’

  She continued with her laughter. ‘Do you believe the truth of your own words?’

  I opened my mouth to protest, but realised there was nothing I could say.

  ‘Fuck me.’

  I climbed onto the bed feeling like a virgin as I edged her skirt up her thighs and revealed her sex, dusted with dark, nearly black, hair. I gently pushed her legs apart and moved to bury my head in her haven. She grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head towards her.

  ‘Don’t waste time,’ she said before releasing me.

  I fumbled with my belt and removed my clothes while she watched. I wished I could do as my wife did and turn the light off, but my embarrassment was worth the view of her beauty. She did not undress but still lay with her skirt where I had raised it to her hips and her feet enclosed in the shoes I had bought.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she said.

  I lowered my body on top of her, hardly daring to breathe as my sex was at her entrance and her velvet passage was parting to let me in. I thrust into her gasping as our bodies met on this cheap hotel bed. It humiliated me how excited I was that she was so much younger than me.

  Take that you little cockteaser, my mind yelled as I pounded into her.

  She yawned.

  ‘I want to be fucked not tickled,’ she said and effortlessly rolled me over onto my back so that our positions were reversed.

  She ground into me with a fury, her nails digging into my chest. Her body squeezed round my cock, sucking my cream out of me. She screamed as I jetted up into her, I had no idea whether the sound she made was from a place of anger or pleasure, it was a primal roar from somewhere hidden deep inside the human psyche. It continued for an eternity, she ground against me with more fury, uncaring of the fact that I had reached my orgasm. She ripped the lace edging of her top, pulling it down to reveal her full breasts. I reached my hand up and gingerly touched her orbs but the look in her eyes showed me what she wanted. I pinched at her beautiful flesh and pulled on the dark circles of her nipples. I twitched inside her and responded to her passion and rage with my own.

  ‘Fuck me, slut,’ she said, her words echoing my thoughts.

  I bucked up into her and she pushed her weight down into me. I was screaming back at her, a low moan growing into something monstrous. It felt like the room couldn’t contain us, our lust was spilling out onto the streets of London mixing and being heightened by all the unfulfilled desire of the city itself.

  Sweat was dripping down her face between her breasts. I leant forward and licked the salt off her skin as her breasts pounded against my ears. My heart was thumping so hard. This is death. This is death, I thought. Her nails were in my back and I was clinging onto her as if she was life itself.

  I came, an explosion, my whole being draining into her. I collapsed back on the bed, my eyes closed, bathing in the scent of her sex. I rested my hand on her hips and breathed deeply as droplets of her sweat fell on my body. I opened my eyes to look at her and saw it wasn’t sweat but tears falling from her face.

  She turned away from me.

  ‘I thought London would be a good place to get lost in. Somewhere you could spend all your life walking through, surrounded by crowds and never seeing anyone.’

  ‘At the airport were you leaving or arriving? I didn’t know, you had no luggage with you and you came with me, I didn’t know why you were there. I don’t know.’

  She rested her head on my chest, moving so that I still knew the warmth of being inside her.

  We fell asleep like that, or I did. When I was aware of her breathing it was heavy and even. During the night our bodies merged more times, our limbs twisting around each other as we sweated our lives out onto the hotel bed.

  ‘Who do you want to be?’ she whispered into my ear at some point in the darkness when my hand was pressing between the flesh of her buttocks. ‘You called me Catherine, who do you want to be?’

  I almost said my real name, but I remembered the name I had used online.

  ‘Ed,’ I said. Ed had sounded like a man who could write the things I wrote to Catherine.

  There was a moment’s silence as my fingers delved deeper into her.

  ‘Short for Edward or Eddie?’ she asked.

  ‘Just Ed.’

  ‘Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed,’ she breathed as I pushed my way into the tightness of her ass.

  I woke up with my head resting on her chest and my hand feeling the moistness between her legs. I flicked over her clit on my way to her stomach where I traced over the faint silvery lines of stretch marks. Perhaps she had had children like my Catherine. Perhaps she was my Catherine.

  ‘One moment,’ she said.

  Her body rolled out from under me and she walked to the bathroom. I admired the rear view of her hourglass figure, the smooth expanse of her back curving into full and shapely buttocks, then I reached for her handbag. There was a small hardback book written in one of the Latin languages I couldn’t read, her place marked by a downturned page. Next I looked at her iPod, she had been listening to Amore o grillo from Madama Butterfly. I played a couple of seconds and then flicked through the rest of her selection, more opera, many bands I wasn’t familiar with and then all the usual suspects: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, David Bowie, Oasis, Radiohead etc. I replaced the iPod and then looked at the things that interested me most, her purse and her passport
laying innocently in her bag and both containing her real identity.

  I removed her passport, there seemed something seedy about opening her purse. I ran my thumb over the red passport cover. As I began to open it, my hands were shaking. I looked up. It was one of the moments when I knew what I would see before I saw it. Catherine was standing there staring at me. She was naked but I couldn’t look at her, my eyes stayed on the carpet as she came over to me, took her passport and her handbag from me and began to get dressed.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I needed to know.’

  ‘You don’t need to know anything.’

  ‘I wanted to know.’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  I swallowed hard and looked at her, I was scared I would start crying. She was already dressed, complete with torn top, stained skirt and the lapdancer shoes I had bought her yesterday.

  ‘I had a fantasy,’ she said, ‘you won’t understand. I wanted to submerge myself in the Thames, I wanted someone with me, inside me. I thought you could be the one. Something about you I thought matched something about me.’

  ‘You wanted to drown yourself in the middle of London with me fucking you?’ I said, my voice sounding too high, reflecting too much of my shock.

  She shook her head. ‘I told you you wouldn’t understand.’ She put her handbag over her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go. Let me buy you some new clothes, I can’t let you go out like that. Don’t. Don’t look at me like that. I had a right to look in your bag for fuck’s sake, I licked my spunk off the street for you in the middle of God damn London.’

  ‘I mistook you for someone else,’ she said and left.

  I stared at the closed door.

  ‘I thought maybe you were this girl I met on the internet. I hoped you were her, because I fell in love with Catherine within moments of her talking to me. I lay awake at night every night dreaming of her. During the day no matter what I was doing I couldn’t stop thinking of her. I wanted her more than I wanted to breathe. So I ended it as I was married and I was sensible and didn’t believe you could fall in love with someone without meeting them. I mean, I didn’t even believe in love. I believed you met someone you were sort of compatible with and made the best of it. But Catherine made my heart beat. You made my heart beat. I am sorry,’ I said to the empty room.