Beginnings (9 page)

She felt his breath. He saw the tiny blond hairs and the pores in her skin, he saw the rosy tint of her aureole appear out of the milky soft flesh.
Both nipples were erect and for a moment there was not a sound, not a breath, as his mouth came to rest softly against her breast, his lips making an ‘o’ around her nipple.

Heat. He flicked his tongue against her nipple, barely touching it. Then she moaned. It was unlike many of Emma’s moans – this one had no prelude. It escaped as naturally as a scream from a fright.

This moan excited her devious mind. But it also surprised her. The shudder of pleasure that seemed to sound an end rather than a beginning was unqualified and intense.

The mental pleasure of her seduction had been revealed as a far deeper physical one. This excited her more. Never before had she felt so like her lover. She was beginning to feel the excitement she assumed Jason was experiencing, one that she had failed to experience in her mad rush to experience every pleasure she could. She had never taken her time. Gimme, gimme, gimme … had been her motto. She had never been a boy. She had never been a girl. She had despised normal boys and normal girls. They were complacent and sated. Small pleasures amused them and, to her general dismay, they appeared satisfied with the slow speed
of their development. And she still thought that she was right to despise them. She
half
thought she was right to. The older she got the more she wanted. She wanted more for the Emma of the past and the Emma of the future. Lately she had begun to want to have been the parallel Emma, the Emma who didn’t move at breakneck speed through adolescence. Now she really wanted to experience life timidly. It was something which she had thought was outside the realm of her experience, until now. Now she felt this beautiful new appreciation. This moment with Jason was lived vicariously. His awe was the key. He was living each moment fully aware of the movements of his lover, drawing meaning from them and making judgements from them. He had placed his trust in Emma, knowing and accepting that at times she would betray it or at the very least toy with it, and he relied on her dominance completely.

That moan had signalled an end of the pretence that she was in control. She had been swallowed whole by her own fantasy and had emerged a part of it. Layers of manipulative planning ceased to exist in one sudden burst of simple pleasure.

Again his mouth teased her nipple and again she was faced with the sweet pleasures of celebrated
inexperience. So many men and women had done just what was being done now and yet … Nothing like it had been done.

She had kissed more with Jason than she had done for years. Being kissed. Kissing. Jason wanted to kiss her, he wanted never to have to stop kissing her. The teacher was being taught. Each touch of the tongue, each breath and movement was pleasurable and exciting. But these excitements led nowhere. This was the lesson that Emma had had to learn. Kissing was the end in itself. Jason had been more than happy with her kisses. So Jason had altered her as surely as she was altering him. But he did so unnoticed. What she hadn’t counted on and what was most welcome and surprising was the change in her.

Jason’s breathing was getting faster, he was shaking with the blind and unacknowledged frustration that this unexpected feast was inducing. Running through him was mad desire, an adult lust that he did not know how to act upon. He felt excited and hungry. He felt what his eyes and mouth saw and tasted. He had anticipated a reaction and was rewarded with Emma’s moan. He was fully functional. He could roar like a wild beast. But he shook and his hands, which he raised
to touch her hips and stomach, were weak. He wanted to lie her down and climb onto her. But he was fearful. He wanted to do things he didn’t know about, or was unsure about. He knew what a man did to a woman when they had sex. He’d seen enough porn. What he didn’t know was how he, Jason, could do it. Every part of him was surging. He was hard and his balls ached. Her breasts, like a red rag to a bull, were determining his entire world.

He took a deep breath.

‘Baby!’ whispered Emma. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Do you like it?’ he asked, staring up at her.

‘Do you want the truth?’

He nodded.

‘I’m in a dream world. Kiss them. Kiss them more,’ she whispered, looking at him and, for that moment, loving him. She had played so many games, had been so many people and so many Emmas that this time, when she really wanted to convey to her lover the truth, she doubted her ability to. She heard the words and knew their truth but worried nonetheless.

She needn’t have, Jason’s critical faculty was not even switched on, these words filled him to the brim. He leaped forward, not in space but
in confidence. Jason looked from her face to her breasts and took one in each hand. Emma’s hands joined his, she placed hers on the back of his and directed and was led as together they caressed her breasts.

Emma was drifting in and out of that curious new state. She tried to keep herself in it, she tried to remain the new lover, but Jason was behaving differently. He kissed her breast and then bit her nipple. A kind of madness had crept up on him. He saw and hungered for her breasts and felt that Emma had given him permission to do as he pleased. He assumed that he was being a good and impassioned lover. He squeezed her nipple.

‘Gently,’ she whispered. She had let him go for a bit, she was half enjoying the artlessness of his attack, but that bite had hurt and his movements were becoming faster and harder. He took her nipple into his mouth while rubbing and squeezing her breast and his hunger directed him to bite again.

‘Hey, that hurt!’ she said, pushing him away. ‘Don’t do that!’

Jason stared at her, uncomprehending. She saw that he was stupefied. She was a little amazed at her own behaviour. There had been lovers
before who had been rough and there would be rough lovers to come. But somehow Jason wasn’t allowed to be that way. His roughness should have been a turn on – wasn’t it why she was with a young, inexperienced lover? It might have been. But things change. Emma was changing. The situation wasn’t as it had been.

When she had masturbated while showering she had thought of Jason as something of a plaything. She had plotted and schemed. But now she wanted to share the experiences of young love. She wanted Jason to love her as though she were eighteen too – to be cautious and fearful and careful. She knew that Jason was reacting to Emma the older woman, the woman who was experienced and who had seduced him. She suddenly wanted to cry. She was confused and seeing Jason’s young face staring at her like that made her feel awful. She felt the consequences of her behaviour rolling towards her like a freak wave. To dabble so casually in something as important as someone’s adolescence! To take pleasure in another’s inexperience. Men have done it. She had been the willing recipient of a number of men’s efforts to educate her, to lead her, mould her. Wasn’t Jason reaching out to her? Wasn’t he a willing participant too? She doubted
this. She knew how to manipulate men. She found it easy. It was easy. Jason was eighteen.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, after an awkward few moments.

‘I’m fine. I just thought you were getting a bit rough. I’m sorry I pushed you away. You’ve made me a bit crazy today. You’re just too damn cute and I am too damn …’ She leant forward and placed her palm against his cheek and then kissed him. He left the kiss.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I give in to my desires too easily. No, that isn’t right. I place my desires before … Yes that’s it.’

‘What?’

‘Am I a bad person?’

‘No.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Kiss me again.’

He kissed her, and kept his hands by his side. Her kiss was possessive. He understood that she still liked him. He was warmed and relieved by this kiss. But he was also still bursting at the seams. If she had decided then and there to undo his jeans she would have caused him to come by the mere presence of her hand. His balls ached and his hard-on demanded release. He still wanted to eat her. He would have carved her up and eaten her
raw and he would have been sated. Yes, to have her! That was the theme of his new novel, possession. He wanted to have her. He didn’t know how. But he wanted it now.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. You make me crazy,’ she said, and she brought him close and hugged him. He was very aware that her naked breasts were pressed against him but he restrained himself from acting upon the many impetuous directives his cock was sending him.

‘Well?’ she asked after a while.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘I think you should go,’ she said. ‘No. That sounded bad. Don’t worry. We went a bit far. But I want to have my cake and eat it too. I’m sorry. I should have stopped. But when I saw your face I felt so, mmm, and then you touched my nipple and … you know.’ She made to laugh and then just sighed. ‘You’re so damn cute, Jason. I should have more restraint. You’re young, you have much to learn and I have much to teach. I had plans for you, Jason. I was going to teach you everything.’ She turned his head so that she could plant little kisses on his lips. ‘And you’re a good kisser and you’re beautiful and I want to do things to you.’
She kissed him properly. He was eager and she held him tightly.

‘Now go and leave me in peace. I’m a mess.’

Jason left with barely a word. She heard him go down the stairs. But then she thought of something. She ran to the stairs leaving the towel behind. She called after him. He turned from the back door and came to the bottom of the stairs. She hid behind the corner and looked down on him. He gazed up at her smiling.

‘Don’t you rush off home and pull off. I want you to promise me you won’t,’ she said.

Jason’s face reddened.

‘Come on, I know you were. Why else would you leave a half-naked slut like me so fast, with barely a goodbye?’

She observed his face with amusement; he was actually shocked by her words.

‘Promise me you won’t,’ she repeated.

‘I wasn’t going to,’ he said. ‘You’re crazy, Emma.’

‘Don’t do it! Go home now. But be good!’

THIRTEEN

Emma was making dinner for David and herself, but nothing was going quite to plan. She couldn’t keep her mind on the task at hand and she kept stopping mid-action. Her mind was filled with thoughts of Jason.

David was late and dinner was turning into an unmitigated disaster. Frustrated with her efforts she abandoned the attempt and glanced out the kitchen window across the side passage towards the blackened window of Simon and Anne’s large rumpus room. As she did so someone switched the light on. She moved back from her window and
picked up the abandoned mushrooms and started chopping them. But she knew that if you stood in the right spot, her kitchen window afforded a fairly good view of the rumpus room. This knowledge would not let her be. She had to know if Jason had turned on the light. She wanted to look at him. To talk with him. She needed to see him.

She turned off the light and leaned over the counter to peer across the way. Jason was sitting on the couch with the phone to his ear. He was facing away from her. The TV was on. Emma wanted desperately to go over to him but she expected David home at any moment. She hadn’t rung Jason before for fear of alerting his parents to their mismatch of a friendship. But she took a chance, counting on them to have Call Waiting.

Jason answered.

‘I can see you, cutie,’ she said, and watched him turn around and look in her direction.

‘I can’t see you,’ he said, and she saw him trying to.

‘Good,’ she answered. ‘Who are you speaking to?’

‘Jess.’

Emma felt a pang of jealousy and then laughed at herself.

‘Your girlfriend?’ she teased.

‘No … no.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I want you to come here at … um … come at twelve. I’ll leave the back door open.’

‘I can’t, Emma.’

‘Why can’t you? Are you meeting Jess?’

‘No. I can’t get out of here. Mum and Dad will hear.’

‘Can’t you move quietly? I want you here at twelve,’ she demanded. ‘I need you,’ she added.

‘I’ll try.’

‘You better come, or I’ll come and find you.’

‘OK, OK.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’

She hung up and then she smiled mischievously and dialled again.

‘Hello?’

‘Did you pull off?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Did you want to?’

There was a pause. She listened to his breathing.

‘Tell me. Jess is waiting,’ she urged.

‘Yes,’ he sighed.

‘Can you hold on till tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, bye.’

‘Bye.’

‘Wait! Jason, are you there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I didn’t wait,’ she revealed and hung up.

Jason was lying in his bed in his parents’ house. He was dozing. Dreams seduced him from consciousness. In his hand he held his alarm clock. His finger was still on the button to silence it when it went off. Now he slept. It was ten-thirty, the alarm was set for twelve.

In his dreams he overslept his appointed time. He slept badly and tossed and turned, rolling onto the alarm clock as he did so. Now his dreams were made worse by the uncomfortable presence of the small square of plastic and metal beneath his lower back. He dreamt of being stabbed. He woke up.