Cathexis (36 page)

“Sorry, I need to do this” she said, splaying her tongue between my breasts and lapping like a heifer on a salt lick. Planting her hand on the slats between my legs, she ran her tongue across my breastbone and up my throat. “Mmm, salty”. She traced my upper lip, her breath like berries, before mouth raping me with her tongue, which she could swell and employ with uncommon aplomb. After the thoughtful mauling, she flashed her eyes like a comedy harlot and descending, redeployed her oral skills on my tits. Taking advantage of her rapt predilection, I inched my coco towards her wrist. She knew what I was up to and almost allowed me to make it.

“Uh uh uh, not yet” she said, removing her hand to join the other one on my breasts. “I love these babies”, moulding them into nozzles and managing to suck both nipples at once, sending my pelvic floor through the roof, reminiscent of our first time. Similarly prompting a serious internal obliquity, as my orgasm stepped out of the shadows. “Not yet” she said, arranging herself on her back, head on my lap and coco in range of my hand. “Feed me” she said. Leaning forward, I lowered them to her face and as her head lifted, I supported it with my forearm, drawing her to me, where she suckled and palpated, moving her head between each one, twisting my body so she could bestow her mouth on them with impartiality.

Parting her legs, massaging her silk; so soft - like the cloth I cleaned my glasses with. “Come on”
she coaxed, “this is gonna be perfect”, and gasped as I held her open and toyed with her saturation.

Working her with my hand the way she liked it, I looked down, a fierce, protective love, my actions repercussive on her face, which frowned and bunched around my nipples. When she gazed up, those preternatural eyes contemplated me as if I were the sea and they themselves reflected an endless blue sky.

“Oh my girl, I love you so much” I heard myself say and felt the breach of a sob, like a whale. She smiled a sign and her eyes rolled back in her head. “Jag kömmer”, arching her spine, rising to my hand, my orgasm was on too, dashing me against the rocks. “Oh God, oh God”, dipping and humming in harmony we shuddered and sang (the captain far above us) with reckless abandon.

Hammering chests we gawped at each other panting in the dead heat. “Epic” she said and then, “come on”, grabbing my hand, flinging open the door into the night, our footprints in the snow, naked in Narnia.

“Skitkallt” she giggled. Collapsing us to the ground, she scooped a screaming snow angel and I, completely overheated, lay face down as if I were in a feather bed. She padding my buttocks with cold pats. My body woke up, saving itself. “Unpleasant” I said, assailed by a searing ice cream headache. Scrambling to my feet. “Unpleasant”.

Dale roared with laughter as I skidaddled back to the warmth. Moments later the door banged open and fairies blinked in her hair. “I think I've had the full Swedish experience”.

“Not quite” she said, rubbing exquisitely a hand full of snow into my coco.

Stars through the steamy window, stars within me, her little constellation their negative. Her freckles, as if a jealous goddess had tried to mar her, but in so doing had only succeeded in flattering her further.

“Mink
...Minky”. A mirage of Dale
.
“You slept ten hours, wow”. No, it's the real thing. Stroking my hair. “Merry Christmas, baby”.

“God Jul” I croaked.

She came to my face, the star above me, inhaling, “I love your morning smell”, hooking my sleepy sand with her little finger. “The family are here”. On cue, the shriek of liberated children turned loose in the snow.

Too cold for the boat house, we slept in the cool planes of a king size bed, the thermostat in the big house cocked to an ambient twenty five degrees.

“Let's do our presents” she said, delving into her exploded suitcase.

For her, a bashed up biker jacket, much like mine. She shrugged her arms into it.

“Perfect” she said. “I love it”, hugging herself in the creak of leather, the smell reminiscent of Spain and library books.

For me, an authentic Swedish jumper, red ground with a busy arrangement of diamonds, cartwheels and ziggurats. And a smell like her hair. “And this” she said, blasé, placing a small, hinged box on the duvet, a hopeful smile belying trepidation. A thick silver ring, nestled in blue velvet, beginning her explanation. “I know how you feel about rings, Mink”.

Historically, I hadn't subscribed to the possession implication, nor was I keen to draw attention to my fishwife hands. Plus, the ring, a symbol of love and union, could be politely requested back by the giver as if merely on loan, just like the heart they'd borrowed and returned, dog-eared, coffee stained, and no longer legible – the ultimate retraction. Plucking it up, she warmed it in her fist. “I couldn't resist it ...look”.

Engraved in seraph capitals, 'MIN'.

“It means mine in Swedish”.

“I know” I smiled and offered my fingers. Taking my hand, she eased it onto the middle one, nudging it over the gnarly knuckle. She brought her lips to mine, a bolus of urgent emotion in my throat.

“I love you Mink, I'm never going to leave you, trust me”.

“Thank you” I said. “I do”.

The chime of metal on metal, like a sword fight between old men deep in the forest. Stamping and chattering, our words clouds, we were waiting for Nils in his workshop, mending Dale's childhood sledge for different children to enjoy. Lucas, Hannah and little Freja, the offspring of Björn and Birgitte. Björn, cousin of Dale, son of Uncle Magnus and Aunt Pernilla (I wondered if they had an inkling he would grow into a bear). Unlike Dale's warm palette - cinnamon, chocolate, peach and rose - his was platinum, winter sun, the gold of leaves, bluey fish scales and the rhubarb of snow-worried skin. A giant who would have born more of a resemblance to his uncle, if Nils had been Odin.

I searched for glimpses of his cousin in the ruddy countenance, which was largely obscured by a flaxen beard, and found nothing. But then he smiled and my heart kinked a little, as a fleeting suggestion of my girl played around his lips. “Let us hope that Thor's work is soon done” he said, nodding in the direction of the hammer blows. “Also, I hope my services will not be needed”. Björn was a paramedic.

That morning, presents had been unwrapped, kisses exchanged, glögg drunk, sausages eaten, children cuddled and chastised and cakes, coffee and champagne consumed. A black photo album,
on the cover 'Eviga Ögenblick' in silver Helvetica. 'Everlasting Moments'.

The first page parchment and then began Nils's homage to his daughters, as he put it. Some monochrome studies: Dale and I ascending the steps of the boat house in a bygone era. Us swimming the sound – one black dot, one white in a goose feather sea.

Sitting in Hulda, Dale's generous angles like an opulent Fellini and me, more Bergman – Sturm und Drang.

On the turn of a page, the world lit up. Saturated colour, almost abstract. Hot, vivid, luscious. Dale's white teeth, silver gypsy glint, from a dark aspect and me, in this instance, laughing back at her. Two different types of women, clearly in love and beautiful for it (was that really me?). A series of these on a clean, blue sweep. Dale's turquoise squint shaming the sea, her side-winding locks reaching for my gold spun tousles, as if the Moors and the Angles had put forward their quintessence. Finally, our boots set next to each other: same size, same style, same stout brown against the flaking red iron oxide of the boat house door.

“Aw, cute” said Dale.

“They just looked so ...”, Nils searched for the word, “like buddies ...companiable, no?”

Dale walking backwards into the bloody, petrol sky, sea birds wheeled behind her head like Giotto angels. I trudged in Nils's footprints, crushing the imprinted zigzags. Her eyes locked with mine in a juvenile game; if there were a tree stump or chasm, I would alert her, the red, woollen scarf wound around her mouth, disappeared into the leather jacket and re-emerged over her black jeans like a loin cloth, stepping back, wide and confident, like a Mohican tricking a tracker.

Inhaling the frigid air, my heart jerked a double thump and I blinked slowly. A mental snapshot to retain the image forever.

In the Floridian heat of the bedroom, sitting naked, except for my glasses, on the edge of the bed. I was engrossed in 'Myths and Legends', nearing the end, Valkyrie – chooser of the slain. Dale's legs appearing either side of mine. I inched forward so her feet could touch the floor. Her hands on my sides, lips on my neck, I stroked her long flank, her pubes bristling my tail. We fitted together, tillsammans, her tits at my shoulder blades. I watched as she rolled my nipples in her fingers, tuning up the gargantuan soft machine. Her coco heaved against me in a circular motion. Leaning my head back on her shoulder, succumbing, and perhaps because I was wearing my glasses, I told her that she was an insatiably horny miss. Cupping both my breasts in her big hand, she posted three fingers into my mouth.

“And you're not?” she said, drawing them in and out, pouting my lips with swelling speed.  Obviously, I couldn't answer.

Anointing my nipples with my own saliva she touched and tweaked, then returning to my mouth for more lubricant, she trailed a moist finger down my belly, before stroking it between my cleft. She grunted approval on my skin, a noise she knew I liked; primitive, checking her stock.

The book open on the bed, a Valkyrie bore down on me, summoning me with her finger. I had been chosen. Weaving me a story, my moans stifled by her hand over my mouth, her mouth on my trapezius, biting to keep me fastened, nothing now but the sound of sex, my legs flexed, my feet arching tiptoe.

“I'm going to give you a purple one” she whispered (we had coloured orgasms). Moisture between us now and heat, her hot breath on my neck, breasts flattened on my back, hips rutting against me, fingers flooding me, enfolded in her wings. She unstopped my mouth, her hand needed elsewhere.

“Talk to me, baby, can you feel me?”

“Oh God, yes ...Dale?”

“Yes, Minky?”

“But one girl rode ahead”.

“Did she?”

“Yes, white skinned under her helmet. The horses were trembling”.

“Were they?”

“Yes, and from their manes, dew fell into the deep valleys. Hail in the high woods!”

“Hail?”

“Yes, Frigga, Hail Frigga, spinner of clouds, oh fuck, Dale, how are you doing this?”

“It's my love”.

I closed my eyes and a purple flower bloomed in a black slab.

Chapter 19

We got back to Belfry Road in the dark. I knew before the cab turned off Grange Park my car had gone. I'd dreamed it last night; a pea green leaf floating in the gutter and disappearing down the drain. Poor Fritz, probably crushed for scrap.

She poured a consoling whisky at the kitchen table.

“I'm sorry, Minky, we can get you another one”.

But I didn't want another one. The naked wisteria nodded, unhinged in the black window.

She'd kissed me despondently and cycled into the morning long before the dawn, her hi-viz, a dwindling firefly.

Prudence and I on the sofa, breakfast TV on mute, staring at the rictus of congeniality on the presenters’ faces who were on tenterhooks in case Germaine Greer, forgetting she was in the Bennets', Crabtrees', and Guptas' front rooms, said 'bloody', or 'arse'.

I hated Dale's job already. But I had resolved to be supportive and kind; after all, it was only her first day.

My phone beeped 'Made it x'
.

'Good luck x' I texted.

The letterbox rattled, a figure blobbing about in the stained glass.

“Hello?” I shouted.