Acts of Love
Authors: Roberta Latow
Acts of Love
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1995 by Roberta Latow
For Don Munson
Who always inspires in one
the rage to live
Loved, idealized voices
of those who have died, or of those
lost for us like the dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams;
Sometimes deep in thought the mind bears them.
C.P. Cavafy
LONDON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, EGYPT
LONDON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, OXFORDSHIRE
PARIS, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, LONDON
The train pulled out of Paddington Station, swaying lazily from side to side on the tracks. How grey, how grim London looked. No distinction by colour between pavements, buildings, sky, nor the atmosphere in between. Arianne closed her eyes. She could feel the train pick up speed and shoot forward as if at a target. ‘Away Day’ was the name fancifully conferred on a simple journey by the publicity department of British Rail. ‘Let the train take the strain’, cooed the advertisements. It was her own purse that took the strain, mused Arianne before relaxing into her seat, her eyes still closed. She liked the motion of the train. She found it somehow inviting. Maybe even anaesthetising. Once a week for an hour and a half she went under. The journey acted on her like some psychedelic drug; her mind seemed to turn to mush, all memory and thought dissolved. In a half-sleep she floated in space and time. Today, her last thought, before she slipped into the mental limbo of a passenger on British Rail, was, Maybe the sun will be shining in Gloucestershire. An hour later she opened her eyes. The sun was not shining in Gloucestershire.
The fields, broken by hedgerows and clumps of elm and beech of considerable age and girth, in the low chilly mist made of the countryside flashing past the train window a manicured landscape, a neat quilt of arable affluence. Today, here in Gloucestershire, all was monochrome too. It was as if the whole world had been painted battleship-grey.
Mesmerised by the greyness flashing past the window, Arianne saw herself and Jason emerging from the swirling mist, hand in hand. They were happy and very much in love. He stopped and took Arianne in his arms and kissed her. A carnal kiss. All their kisses were bodily, intensely intimate. It had always been like that right from their beginnings.
The beginning. That had been at a crowded house party at
Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in the beautiful Massachusetts Berkshires. She had been one of a hundred guests, mostly musicians, friends and patrons of the open air concerts that Tanglewood had become legendary for.
People spilled out of the old wooden house set among birch trees and on to the verandah, down the steps. Arianne felt somehow lost in the crush of summer people, all with glass in hand, full of chatter and laughter. A word here, there, was all she could muster with the friendly revellers. She was never very good at large parties, they intimidated her. Jostled into the far corner of the verandah, she loitered on the fringes of a small group of people making an effort at polite conversation, which no one paid much attention to, except for one man. Every time she opened her mouth he topped up her glass. A summer punch, pink, potent.
A sultry, sunny, summer day in the country. Heat, humidity, too many people and too much gin, a tipsy-making combination that sidetracked Arianne’s sense of isolation. She was feeling no pain, just euphoria, and a certain recklessness that caused her to scan the verandah in search of she knew not what.
Arianne’s first sight of Jason was through the throngs of people. He was flanked by two long-legged beauties, a blonde and a brunette, so young, so glamorous. His virile handsomeness, the mischievous light in his eyes, something wicked, dangerous even, in his face when he laughed, his lusty manner with the girls – all held her attention. She was captivated. Staring across the open verandah at him, time, place, vanished. She lost her heart. At one moment their gaze locked, and his smile was there for her and no one else. Embarrassment at being caught out caused her to look away at once.
Her first inclination was to flee from the party. But her host waved at her from across the lawn and she knew that was not an option. Someone spoke to her, someone else refilled her now empty glass. She was grateful for the distraction. It helped her to compose herself.
Late afternoon. Several barbecue pits with whole lambs skewered on spits were rotating over fiercely hot charcoal. From her perch on the verandah, Arianne watched a cellist and a
violinist arrange themselves under one of the birch trees, pick up their instruments and begin to play. Neither heat nor humidity had abated, and Arianne was definitely under their influence: languid, voluptuous. A swim in the lake came to mind, a nap under a tree somewhere away from the party, to revive herself. But she seemed unable to move.
Arianne felt someone tug at the hem of her skirt. She looked down. He was standing below her on the grass. His smile disarmed her. He reached up and swung her by the waist down off the verandah, removing her glass from her hand.
‘My name is Jason Honey. You can think of me as Prince Charming come to rescue you or the wolf who might just gobble you up.’
‘Do I look like I need rescuing?’
‘Yes,’ he told her, slipping his arm through hers.
‘Oh. And are you so hungry as to want to devour me?’ she teased. ‘How about just a little nibble? Would that not be enough for you.’
‘No. No more than it would be for you.’
He had not taken his eyes from hers and now she looked directly at him and asked, ‘Now how could you possibly know that?’
‘By the way you looked at me earlier.’ Arianne was feeling too aroused by his attentions to be embarrassed at being caught out this time.
Together they walked among the other guests away from the house and down the path that led through the wood. The scent of roasting lamb and rosemary filled the air and billows of white smoke rose from the pits to drift among the white birch trees. There was a special kind of gaiety enhanced by the music: jazz. The classical violinist and the cellist were jamming for fun, and the party shifted into overdrive. Arianne felt that at last she was one of the revellers.
They walked through the birch trees for several minutes in silence, leaving the party behind them. A couple leaning against a tree, kissing, and another pair of lovers walking arm in arm fondling each other were inspirations. Jason drew her closer in to him, and kissed her on the cheek. She felt herself giving in to him, wanting him, much more of him than she had ever wanted
of any other man. It was thrilling yet frightening.
The birch trees thinned out and soon they were walking under the still bright late afternoon sun through high grass and a field of wild flowers in full bloom that sloped down to the lake. She hesitated. ‘Where are we going?’
He laughed and pulled her along, answering, ‘To meet our destiny.’
She broke away from him and dashed ahead, parting the near shoulder-high grass and flowers as she ran. Jason caught up with Arianne and, grabbing her by the arm, turned her around to pull her into his arms. He held her bare shoulders in a tight grip and looked at her as no other man before him had ever done. He emanated lust, lasciviousness, all things sexual, and she wanted it all.
He pulled her close and rubbed her breasts up against his chest. He placed his lips upon hers and licked them and kissed them, nibbled at them with erotic hunger until she parted them. Then he was where he wanted to be and kissed her with passion, licked the inside of her mouth, sucked on her tongue. She was dizzy with desire for more, wanting only to give herself body and soul. Sensing her pleasure, he smiled and stroked her hair.
‘Why me?’ she asked him in a near whisper quivering with passion. ‘Why me?’
The kiss he placed on her cheek was sensitive, loving, as he used his hands to undo the buttons at the back of her neck. The white silk halter of her dress slipped down off her breasts to her waist. ‘Oh, perfect!’ he exclaimed at the sight of her nakedness.
Arianne’s breasts
were
lovely. Full, high, a voluptuous shape, and raunchy with their already erect nipples, large and dark aureoles around them. He cupped her breasts in his hands, caressed them and felt her tremble. Her pleasure in his caresses delighted him, brought a smile to his lips. ‘Why you? Because you love me. You need me. And at the party you stood out among the crowd as no other woman there did. Because you are beautiful, quiet, serene even, honest and true, and behind that façade I see a fascinating and very sexy lady. You appear to me unique, something special that I can love. And because you’ve fallen in love with me, even though you know romantic love is a totally irrational and unpredictable thing.’
‘Have I?’ she asked, astonished at his self-confidence.
‘Of course, otherwise what would you be doing here.’ He placed a finger across her lips as if to silence her. ‘No. Don’t try and explain it away.’
He kissed her again, only this time his kisses were for her breasts. His mouth sucked fiercely on her nipples, his tongue licked them, and he bit into the soft flesh. He left her with a trail of kisses between them and one on the side of her neck before he placed his lips upon hers once again.
Arianne told herself, ‘This is romantic infatuation, that mysterious process that is making me believe Jason is the only person like him in the whole world. If that’s what it is then so be it. I can live with that.’ It was an easy decision to make because Arianne believed this stranger loved her. His next words confirmed that.
‘I don’t know why I love you, but I do. I see you as special and I’ve marked you for my own.’
She watched him lower his braces off his shoulders, unbutton his shirt and fling it to the ground. His trousers swiftly dispensed with, he placed one of Arianne’s hands around his ample, erect penis and formed the other into a cup and placed it under his large and voluptuous scrotum. Then he eased Arianne’s dress down off her hips and watched it slip to the ground.
‘Whoever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?’ A great poet’s words said it all for Arianne. She dropped to her knees and without thought and driven by desire, she opened her lips and licked the knob of his penis, sucked it slowly into her mouth and savoured the taste of him. She moved on it with exquisite kisses and imbibed Jason deeply, to the very base of his penis, until her lips were caressed by the rough curls of his pubic hair. With pointed tongue, she licked the underpart of the pulsating organ and thrilled at the life force she felt throbbing in its veins. She sucked, ever so gently, his scrotum into her mouth and licked it, caressed the balls within the sac with pointed tongue and passionate kisses.
‘You’re wonderful,’ he told her repeatedly, and she marvelled at the sexual power she had over him. Marvelled because this was something new for Arianne, making love to a man, all inhibitions cast off under the summer sunshine. From the very
moment she had seen him across the verandah she had been behaving out of character. She sensed that nothing would ever again be the same for her after this encounter with Jason Honey.
‘More sublime even than I imagined,’ was what he told her as he laid her down in the grass between uncontrolled kisses, a fiery passion. He was rough with her when he tore the cream satin and ecru lace French knickers apart at her hips and pulled them from between her legs.
For a moment Arianne came to her senses and protested, ‘Please, Jason, someone will see us,’ as he moved his lips from her breasts down her body, to bury his face in her silky pubic hair, to lick it, and to bite, passionately, the mound beneath. He raised his eyes to look into hers and tell her, ‘So what? I wish the whole world could see us and all the erotic and depraved fun we’re going to have together.’ And with that he spread her legs far apart and licked in between her cunt lips.
Jason was delighted that Arianne was already moist with come from several timid orgasms which even she had not been aware of. All she had sensed was ecstasy and had given no thought as to where it had come from. He felt the silky smoothness first on his caressing fingers and then on his tongue. He adored the taste of her, it was like an aphrodisiac. Now her come glistened on the knob of his penis as he moved it back and forth across her slit and probed gently the place he was about to enter.
She was tight; it excited him that she would clench him so well. What further thrilled him was the realisation that she was quite innocent, inexperienced in the ways of hard core lust. She would be a delight to corrupt. And he fell in love with her that little bit more.
He gripped her hard by the shoulders. She very nearly called out in pain but forgot about pain when he fed one of her breasts into his mouth. He sucked hard on it, and bit deeply and she squirmed with pleasure and felt her body tense as a powerful orgasm began to build. He took Arianne with one powerful and deep thrust, calling out, ‘You are magnificent, so luscious to be inside of.’
She grasped his arms, and called out, again and again as he mastered her with his prowess as a lover, thrusting in and out of her with changing rhythm: fast, slow, gentle, with a certain
roughness, ‘Yes, yes. How beautiful. What bliss.’
And Jason, out of control, confessed, ‘I love you. You’re mine, mine.’
He wrung orgasm after orgasm from her. She came and each time her comings were stronger, more powerful: she drenched his penis with the warm satiny flow. He adored her for her sexuality. Her lust for him. The way she gave herself to him so completely. She was his, she could be no one else’s. He had indeed fallen in love. He came, after a long and exquisite period of fucking, in a gigantic orgasm that seemed to go on forever. Quite exhausted by Arianne, he lay his body full on top of her and, wrapping his arms around her, rolled them both on to their sides. He kissed her, first on her eyes then her lips, and he recited, ‘“When love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with harmony.” I’m going to marry you and never let you go.’
An express train on its way to London flashed by in a thundering sound that broke into Arianne’s vision of the past and brought her instantly back to reality. She smiled. How nice it was to come, even if it was alone and on a train. Arianne invariably thought about sex during that intermittent period between waking from a sensuous, drowsy half-sleep and reality.
Few people stepped from the train onto the covered platform of Chipping Wynchwood station. The prettified Edwardian rural railway station – all cast-iron columns and hanging flower baskets, dressed for winter: trails of ivy, holly, the odd alpine plant – looked deserted and chilled. The station-master, under a worn, comfortable cap, stood leaning on the handle of an empty railway freight-cart near the large wooden doors, one of which was open to let the passengers through into the car park.