Black Lace Quickies 3 (10 page)

In the shower, camouflaged by steam, she soaped her breasts for a long time, paying more attention than was necessary to the nipples,
which
felt so hard under her fingers that she thought they would never again turn soft. But as much as she wanted to she couldn’t bring herself to rub her pussy. Not yet. Not when so many things about her body, about sex, about Tristan, were still so uncertain. She noticed other girls spending inordinate amounts of time with loofahs or flannels or bare fingers, bent over, mashing them against the soft flesh of their pussies. She heard the squishing of thick lather and the low sighs barely audible above the hissing showerheads. She wished for some of their daring. As she stepped from the shower she smelt the unmistakeable aroma of female sex and wondered why it was that, no matter how much she dabbed the towel against her sex, she could not get it dry.

Back home, alone in the house, she tried to finish some coursework as she waited for Tristan to arrive. But her thoughts kept returning to the figure lurking at the end of the hockey pitch, to that face barely visible beneath the hood of his ample jacket, pulled up against the wind and rain, to those eyes trained on her. When the doorbell rang, she started as if from a trance.

‘Hi Tam,’ said Tristan, blustering in in his tracksuit.

She returned his kiss briefly, then led him into the kitchen, where a pot of pasta and sauce spat and bubbled on the hob. After ladling some into
two
large white bowls, she sprinkled them with grated Parmesan from a packet and set them down on the breakfast bar, at which Tristan was by now seated.

She barely spoke, mechanically taking in forkfuls of pasta and letting his talk of student-union politics and rowing victories wash over her. She looked at his smooth face, at his skin, unblemished, almost supernaturally clean, at his ash-blond hair and thought again of those words of her mother – ‘If I were twenty years younger, God almighty …’ The look on her face as she had said it – Tamara would never forget that. Tristan was, by anyone’s standards, the university catch. The face of an angel with the physique of a Greek god. The golden boy. Who could resist?

He needed to be gone by seven, he told her as he rejected the brownie she offered him. That gave them an hour to kill. His perfect white teeth flashed at her as he grinned. She let the dishes clatter into the sink, wiped her hands on some kitchen roll and followed him into her bedroom.

He was bare-chested on the bed before she had even crossed the threshold, hands behind his head, a knowing smile on his lips. She stopped, looked at his hairless chest, at his flat brown stomach with its encroaching mesh of curls the colour of burned sugar. Lowering herself on to the bed, she placed her hand on his belly and brought her face down to him, inhaling the mint and tea-tree aromas of his deodorant. He encircled her
upper
arm with his hand, quite tightly, and pulled her up towards him, his lips seeking hers.

‘I’m still hungry,’ he said when she finally pulled her head away.

‘Tris,’ she began. Already she hated the whiney tone in her voice.

‘Oh, Christ, Tam.’ His chest rose and fell heavily. ‘Not a-bloody-gain.’

‘I’m just not sure –’

‘Not sure I’m ready.’ His voice rose a few octaves in imitation of hers.

‘Tris, please. Just –’

He sat up, threw his shoulders back and looked at her with those baby-blue eyes of his, a look that said, ‘They all want me, I could have any girl I want, and you dare to refuse me. Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘OK,’ she conceded, tearing her gaze away from his, bending forward to undo her shoes.

At once he was upon her, dragging her back on to the bed by her shoulders, then rolling her over and pushing her skirt up over her thighs. All the while his mouth was on hers, his tongue probing her. She struggled to breathe, felt suffocated. She felt his hands tugging at her knickers, felt the give of the elastic over her buttocks as they were yanked down. Then he sat up, and she watched appalled as he slipped his tracksuit bottoms down over his hips, revealing a flawless cock that looked polished as a pebble, scrubbed and pink as a mollusc emerged from its shell. A clean velvety
cock
that demanded to be held and to be worshipped. He was holding it in his hand, as if proffering it to her. She took it gently in her fist and watched as its little gummy eye wept a clear tear for her. She leant forwards, hesitantly, and flicked it away with her tongue. It tasted salty and warm, like jellied sea water. Tristan’s lips pulled back from his teeth and a hiss of satisfaction escaped between them. His face was darkening. She watched, amazed by the simple power she was wielding over him, as the tip of his cock pulsed and reddened. He was trying to thrust against her grip, to roll his foreskin back under her fingers, but she wasn’t moving against his motion.

‘Please,’ he said.

She dipped her hand beneath his balls and ran a fingernail along along the seam of his sac. He trembled, threatening to fall against her. Another tear of pre-come dripped across her wrist. She opened her mouth and placed the throbbing bulb of his cock beneath her lips, without touching him. She breathed hot air over him, allowed her saliva to drizzle his head. He sounded as if he might start crying. But something felt wrong.

She released him and he fell back, his eyes open and shocked. ‘What?’ he managed.

She couldn’t put it into words. But it was something to do with the way that it was suddenly more about the actual act than any intimacy between them. She felt that she could have been
anyone
and he would have been happy. He didn’t pay her any heed, not like the gardener. She was invisible to Tristan; she was something hot and wet to deposit in when he wanted to. Well, not while she was in control of things.

She moved back over the bed, away from him, pulling her skirt down. ‘I can’t, Tris.’

He stared at her, then before she could say a word packed himself away, hastily, leaving his shirt untucked, and pulled on his tracksuit top. ‘I’ve fucking had it with you, you frigid cow,’ he shouted on his way out of the room.

She lay on the bed and listened to doors slamming as he made his way through the house and back out on to the street. Then she undressed fully, retrieved a pot of yogurt from the fridge and went to run a bath.

As the sweet scent of geranium oil permeated the air, she looked at herself in the mirror. Like Tristan, she had a kind of physical perfection that aroused lust in many, envy in some, not least Jane and Julie. Not that she cared about that. Who wanted to hang out with bitches like that anyway? She was glad to be rid of them. But something was bothering her and, as she looked at her long lean limbs and symmetrical curves, she realised what it was: no matter what everybody else said about him, not matter how much even her own mother wantonly lusted after him, she just couldn’t find Tristan sexy. Did that mean there was something wrong with her?

For months now, ever since they started seeing each other, he’d been coming around after working out at the gym, rubbing her breasts, putting his hands further and further up her skirt. It didn’t matter how often she’d protested, or what form that protest took – I’m only seventeen; I’ve got my period; my housemates are going to be home any minute – he was determined to get her between the sheets. She’d thought it was fear; now she realised his basic lack of respect for her – his reducing of her to a pair of tits and a tight pussy – revolted her.

Or was it sex itself that revolted her? Still looking at herself in the full-length mirror, she sank to the tiled floor. She pulled her long auburn hair back with one hand and studied her face. Perhaps she was just one of those non-physical people you heard about sometimes. People who just don’t have any interest in sex, who can go a whole lifetime without. She opened her legs and stared between them in the mirror. Her lips, surrounded by downy fronds of copper-coloured hair, gaped a little, allowing her to see into the nest of pinks and reds. It was darker than she had imagined, meatier, more swollen. She thought of butcher’s shop windows, of slabs of steak, but the image didn’t disturb her. She licked her fingers and brought them to her pussy. She’d never even masturbated before. Did that mean she was asexual? Did all the other first-year girls wank?

She glanced down again. She was wet. She
moved
her fingers and began to explore her folds and creases, the delicate petals of herself. She closed her eyes. This was
good
. This was better than good. She reached for the towel beside her, slid it beneath her and lay back, spilling the yogurt as she did so. Fuck it, she thought. To her left she could hear water coursing from the taps and wondered vaguely if she should get up and turn them off before the bath overflowed, but before she could decide a jag of pleasure ripped through her loins. It was as if she’d touched some button. That must be my clit, then, she thought. She gasped, laughed, swore. Her free hand lashed out and smeared the slick of yogurt. She brought it back to its twin and slathered the cool, creamy stuff all over her hot pussy. Her fingers squelched and sucked inside her as she delved for a rare sensation that stayed tantalisingly out of reach. Everything she was seemed focused now on the hole at her core. She didn’t recognise the creature in the mirror, hair plastered to her forehead, hands jammed between her legs, her breasts quivering as she hit a rhythm that she knew would bring her the climax she desired. Stars danced inside her.

‘Tamara, are you in?’ she heard from the hallway, and she stifled a moan of frustration, jumped up and climbed into the bath, submerging herself completely.

* * *

She rose in the dark, dressed in silence and left the house. She hadn’t worked out how she was going to get there, but when she saw Dave’s bike leaning against the fence she figured he wouldn’t notice if it went missing for an hour or two.

She rode through the streets, through the orange pools of light cast by the streetlamps, looking up at the dark windows she passed, wondering what people were dreaming of behind their closed curtains, or what they were doing to each other across the beds, up against the walls, on the stairs … She travelled slowly; she wasn’t in a hurry. She’d dressed in her hockey shorts – they were to hand – and the night air was icy on her bare legs. She felt more alive than ever before.

The gate was locked, as she had known it would be, but the wall was easy to scale for someone as athletic as her. She paused as she hit the ground, looked around her at the strangeness of the deserted park laid out beneath the moon. It could just have been that she was spaced out from not sleeping and from the shock of the glacial air in her lungs as she pedalled, but she didn’t think so. To see this public space, usually so full of activity – not just hockey players, but dog-walkers, joggers, gangs of schoolboys sneaking a cigarette in the lunch break, little old men napping on benches – devoid of all life and movement was bizarre. It was like entering an alien territory where none of the familiar rules applied.

She followed the main path towards the house, then continued to the right when it forked. The shed lay a few steps away, side on to the house and the door to the changing room. She hesitated. Part of her wanted to go into the changing room, to inhale its rich, earthy odours of sweat and mud and rot, of old forgotten things. But she was pretty sure that would be locked too. The shed, on the other hand, she could see from where she stood that the door to that was ajar, and that a faint light emanated from within. She stepped up and grasped the handle, her breath caught in her throat.

He was working by the light of a storm lamp, a cigarette crumbling to ash in an ashtray beside him. He was rapt in his work, easing his sturdy fingers down into the soil and moving them carefully until he had loosened the root system and could pull the seedling out. Beside him on the wooden workbench were a row of larger pots to hold the burgeoning plants.

He hadn’t heard her pull the door open, and she was able to watch him a while. She could see his face clearly now, side on at least, and the first thought that came to her was that he was hairy, very hairy. He didn’t have a beard, but his stubble was advanced, his eyebrows thick and unruly, and she could even make out a few hairs sprouting along the line of his cheekbone. His hair, now that it wasn’t hidden by a hood, appeared bushy and tangled, with sprinklings of grey. His eyes
were
small, intent, inspecting every plant as he transferred it over to its new home. He seemed to stroke them as he did so, give them an encouraging or reassuring little rub with his fingertips.

She looked him up and down, noted that he was shorter than she had realised, probably a little shorter than herself, with a slight paunch. His clothes, corduroy trousers and a brown jumper, were worn and ill-fitting. But it was his hands to which her eyes kept returning, those weathered extremities with their mud-encrusted nails, their surfaces lined as road maps. It was as if dirt had worked its way into every pore and crevice, year on year, until it had become a part of his very being. Those hands, she thought, were this man’s life. His contact with the universe. She imagined them on her, rough and greedy, leaving grubby fingerprints on her clean innocent breasts.

He had stopped now, and stood expressionless, looking down at his workbench. He seemed lost in a reverie, and suddenly she felt like an intruder. She had no right to be watching him like this. At least when he watched her, both parties knew about it, and all the other players too. This was something else.

She walked away, out past the house and the door to the changing room towards the pitch. She didn’t know what time it was, but thought that the sky seemed a little paler now than when she had arrived. She hadn’t got far when she heard a noise behind her, and when she looked over her
shoulder
she saw that the shed door was closed. So he
had
been aware of her, she thought, and now he was shutting her out. That was fair enough. She had been spying on him and he’d been too polite or too shy to tell her to go away. He was obviously a loner, wasn’t good at dealing with things like that. But she’d overstepped the boundaries.