One Final Night (2 page)

I could see my face in the mirror and see hers too, both with eyes bright from desire. Then I was having my hair pulled back and I was gasping and being filled with his thickness. My readiness let him drive unhindered all the way home to squash against my warmth. His other hand was flat to the small of my back to keep me hard to the marble, my neck kept taut from his grasp on my hair. I felt like his horse, ridden roughshod, no care reserved for danger. This time I didn’t hide my joy, but let it out instead. The release was sublime.

The maid was swept away by the sight and smell of us, by the sounds of my ecstasy and the echoing slaps of flesh on flesh. She already had her skirt up before she sat upon the marble beside me and spread her legs. I could glimpse her in my periphery, but he made sure to steer my head around so she was all I saw. She was only young, barely out of her teens, thin and olive-skinned, like so many of the Turkish girls who found their way here for work. Beneath her rucked-up skirt she wore thin black tights and she went at them with her nails, snagging and holing the sheer fabric until she could rip it open and expose herself. The slut wore no knickers.

She was plumper there than me; full, dark lips swollen and lying heavy on the smooth skin of her mound. They would have been so gorgeous in the mouth. She squeezed and parted them, sucking in her breath to counter the hit of pleasure. I have never watched anyone do this, nor have I been watched as I have been taken, especially not this crudely, with my rear end thrust out to be slammed against. I am still mystified as to why I found this public rudeness so utterly arousing. The maid obviously felt the same. She was rubbing herself with blurring speed and still that was not enough; her other hand had kept a grasp on the mop handle and she began feeding her fat, wet quim with the wooden pole.

I would have sped toward a climax anyway but the sight of her just made it faster and bigger and noisier and messier. He was nearing his own finish and I wanted to feel the burning hit of it inside me, but instead he withdrew at the last moment. I could see a flash of him in the mirror, holding it, squeezing the thick girth like you might squeeze a hose to stop the gush. I wanted it on my back and rump, splashing the skin, but he let his spray go all over her, and she dropped the mop and held herself open to take it. I felt a little pang of envy that he had brought her in fully at the climax, but the electrifying vulgarity of his action quickly blanked it out. Anyway, perhaps he was just treating me with due respect.

He stuffed a couple of notes into the maid’s hand, presumably to buy her discretion, but in essence he was simply making a whore of her. She didn’t seem to mind. Our exit was more controlled this time, him leading us down, giggling, out into the sunshine. That should have been that. I should have saved my heart some future pain. I should have better protected it, my most vital of organs, after the last time had left it so battered and shocked, but I didn’t. Instead, I held his hand even when he tried to release the grip and I told him I had to see him again; my second bold demand of him that hour.

He took my number and even my name. If he hadn’t done the latter I’d never have bothered languishing around my apartment for the next few days, waiting for the phone to ring.

Chapter Two

I hadn’t guessed that his knowledge of the internal layouts of Capetian châteaux came from owning one himself. Because of his position I was only ever going to be invited there a handful of times. At first, I presumed he would prefer the secrecy of my apartment, but this never seemed to be the case. In fact, he owned similar himself within a kilometre of mine, but we never went there. While I was to be kept away from certain obvious people at his grand home, others, both guests and staff, he was perfectly comfortable to have me around. As time went on, I realised he actually preferred us not to be alone, regardless of how intimate we wished to be.

On my first visit, his man, Patrick, was there to help greet me with a glass of champagne on a salver. He told Patrick to “make sure my good friend always has anything she needs”. That’s how he always introduced me, as his “good friend”. It was never as his “lover” or his “mistress”, but then to some this epithet would become completely unnecessary. I told him the champagne was delicious. He was glad I approved; Salon is his favourite brand, the finest
blanc de blanc
to be had and made only in precious quantities. Two days later, three cases of it were delivered to my apartment. That is him all over. He wants to share good things. I’m sure he never called me “lover” because he thought that made me too much his possession, when he could never be mine in return.

The frantic dirtiness of our first coupling was not repeated on the second or the third time, nor even the next few times thereafter. It would take me a while to learn the prerequisites for him to behave thus. Instead, our passion was gentle; a slow, attentive build toward a hard release. I like to think we were cultivating something like love between us. For my part, the glow inside that wouldn’t stop quickly made him essential, and dependency on another is surely one definition of love? After my last ruined relationship I was sure I needed something less superficial this time, something where spirit and soul counted as much as physical attraction. Something that bound you, and didn’t leave you beached when the tide unexpectedly turned in another direction. Initially he was very tender, although in truth I missed the animal urgency of that first time. Fortunately, he knew this.

The next time we took our rudeness into the public domain was one afternoon high up a hillside, the one overlooking the oxbow in the river where rowers often beach up to have their picnic. It was the day I had my first inkling how different our views on relationships might be. In truth, I don’t count this the same as our other public shows because there was very little chance of us being seen right up there, but I did notice the difference in the way he made love to me. I quantify that difference as animal passion.

It certainly started with the same tenderness as all those times in my apartment bed. Nothing was rushed. We discussed whether or not grapes could be grown effectively on the hill. We ate from the hamper without trying to display our simmering passion. We picked out distant features across the river valley and the far hills. We pointed out the novice rowers and giggled as one made a horrible, clumsy dismount that left him knee-deep in water. But when he was on me the urgency was suddenly sweeping. My skirt was up and he was roughly pulling my scant underwear down.

‘I’m going to
fuck
you,’ he said, the first time I had ever heard him utter so coarse a word under any circumstances. The shock of it and the weight of him upon my chest drove the air from my lungs. As my mouth fell open aghast, searching for a response, the assemblage of thin, white cotton scraps that constituted my knickers was pushed in to gag me. It was just as well, really, for when he pushed my knees up level with my ears and slid inside me with that one long thrust, I might otherwise have screamed at the top of my voice.

There is an honesty about being penetrated in such a way. When you can be plundered completely without any prior direct stimulation, when you realise you are nothing but a hot, unctuous pool for him to dive right into, there is no doubting what your body thinks about it all. It has made an undeniably positive appraisal of your invader. Any contrary notions should end there. Your head might dilly-dally debating such things as caution, decency, and reputation, but meanwhile your body has been secretly readying you for what it craves and what it realises you should have. That was the thing with me: I had always assumed my head knew better than my body.

The force and speed of his rutting was immediate, sending those rude, wet sounds from my body squelching into the air to drown out the buzz of the insects going about their pollination duties. I shivered at the noise I was making, so loud in the summer stillness, an unintended beacon that simply must draw the attention of those below to our sordid act. He entered and left my body with such pace that I couldn’t divide the two, couldn’t mourn his slipping exit before exalting in the bliss of his forward drive. His urgency was brilliant but unnerving, sending us toward a crashing finish that would jolt and wrench.

But I understood his passion. The threat of exposure gave it an edge. There was an increased heat and tingle where he was sunk deep, like current was being passed through the cells and the juices of my sex. You want it to end, but the rush only leads to greater sensitivity. Everything is magnified. You can feel the sun hot on your face and make out the clear song of the lark in the blue above, but this is lost beneath the sound of your slippy lips smacking as he crams inside you. You have to keep your eyes tight shut because if you open them you will surely see the crowds drawn to your rude noise. The faster he goes, the more the intensity builds, panic and pleasure combined, so you are desperate to reach your finish but cannot help but cling to every glorious second before it hits you. It is both sublime and addictive, and it was only down to him that I ever knew it.

So there I was, up that hill getting
fucked
in broad daylight, with the lunching rowers not a hundred metres below us and only the height of the meadow flowers and those few grams of sodden cotton shoved into my mouth to prevent our detection. It was an apt place to be, up a hill. I liked to compare new relationships to an expedition up a hillside. You know it will be tough but you set out in great heart, determined to enjoy the whole trip although you cannot wait to be at the top. The thrill of what the summit will bring makes the first part so much more enjoyable, you hardly notice it. You don’t see any of the pits or rough patches. It gets tougher higher up, but the goal of the summit drives you on. If you are prepared enough, if you have packed your rucksack sensibly, you can avoid tumbling all the way back down.

At the top is everything. You get to sit in serenity and take in the view. You get to see the river twisting all the way down the valley. Everything was worth it. I cannot,
cannot
see the point in just stopping halfway. Why set off without meaning to go the whole distance? Of course, he was and is the definitive halfway merchant. I’m sure he would say something along the lines of, ‘It’s a nice day, let’s see how far we can get. Don’t worry about packing a rucksack, it’s just wasting time!’

Or he would ask the point of going up there at all.

‘Why go all the way up there to look at the river,’ he might say, ‘when you could be down at the water’s edge with the rest of us, and we could all dip our feet together? Who do you think is having more fun – you up there or us down here?’

Or I guess he could shoot down my whole, now rather strained, “love is the hilltop” metaphor simply by asking what we
do
once we are up there. Can one sit for ever, happy that the one splendid view is all you will ever need, or will you always, at some time or another, simply have to roll back down again, taking all the bumps along the way? Although it sometimes seemed like it, I never was more than halfway up with him. I would have gone higher if I could, all the way to the top. Looking back, he never made it apparent that he was reluctant to join me. He could have had anyone he wanted, but instead he deflected the constant flirtatious advances in deference to me, and that made me fizzle. He never treated me as his plaything. He would happily spend whole afternoons or evenings with us chatting away, watching films, listening to music.

However, it struck me one time that we never met for anything other than sex. No matter what we did, how many cafés and museums and galleries we went through in a day, we would always end up coupling. I knew that on meeting him, sex was at the top of the agenda. Our rendezvous could be dressed up any way you liked, but it was still just about him getting inside me. All the meals, the operas, they were all just foreplay. Did I ever resent this? No, strangely – but don’t ask me why. Probably because I craved him as much or more as he did me.

So one afternoon we were stood in the walled garden taking refreshment. A smart gentleman was shown in by Patrick – reasonably handsome, if a little portly. He was engaging enough, although I closed my eyes to soak up the sun as they spoke a little of politics, and the potential for the harvest, since the lack of rain was beginning to starve the grapes upon the vines. Then I noticed my man was talking to me. His voice had not changed. He had addressed me as an aside from the conversation, as if to keep me engaged and not bored. Yet the words he had said were, ‘Darling, why don’t you go down on your knees for me?’

It was not an enquiry but a suggestion. I blinked aghast at him, but there could be no doubting the meaning. He then continued his former conversation, lighting the two of them cigarettes. It was like he had asked me to pour him another cup of coffee. Then he looked at me again, the open friendly expression there as always, and he said, just to prompt me, ‘Darling?’

Just like that, as matter-of-factly as that. His friend hadn’t batted an eyelid either, as if such things could possibly be normal behaviour. But, do you know, I did it. I sank slowly down. On the way, he was already helping with his fly so that almost immediately it was naked and growing in my hand. I bashfully kissed the head once or twice but then desire dictated that there was nothing else to do but engulf it, so I did. Their conversation did not dry up but it became stilted as they watched me. At first I was very conscious of the noise I was making. It just sounded so unutterably dirty. However, as he grew in my mouth and I grew to my task, the slurps became a badge of honour, the louder the better, so his friend could see what a naughty, excellent young whore he had to service him.

I lapped all around the tip so that my greed and love of him was obvious. I made a show of taking him deep, slicking his taut, smooth skin with saliva that helped the glide of my fingers up and down his length. The friend had grown a bulge at my eye level. For one perilous, fleeting moment I thought I might lose restraint and grab to free him too, but I just about kept my hands on my man and concentrated on bringing the finish he clearly needed. My hands became a blur, even as he bubbled and spat hot into my mouth. I sighed hard and took him all, as rude as I knew I would look.

When it was over he thanked me and suggested we all sit down for our next coffee. We smoked and chatted and it was all the more jovial now the friend had seen my prowess, although the deed itself was not mentioned at all. The blood was raging through me but I felt no shame. I felt sublime instead, like Cleopatra on her throne, aware that my sensuality was well known, and proud of it. If you think for one minute he took advantage of me, then think again. When I had closed my eyes against the sun this is what I had been dreaming of, waiting for the time when we were alone. He knew that’s how my mind worked. He knew my soul was truly driven by lust even if I’d always tried to hide it. He suggested the act not for his benefit any more than for mine. The only difference between us was he didn’t care who saw us. And now neither did I.

He once took me over a billiard table at a private club. Admittance was men only, so I had to be smuggled in with my hair greased back, wearing a dinner jacket and a ridiculous false moustache. The doorman got a wodge of notes stuffed into his top pocket for turning a blind eye. The inevitability of my being taken was never discussed during the evening, and as it got later and later I even began to fear that it wouldn’t happen at all, but suddenly my cheek was flat to the baize and my trousers were around my ankles. The friends were grouped around a low table at the far end, drinking and smoking, light-heartedly calling upon my man to hurry up and take his shot. I think my first climax came the moment he slid inside me.

There are two things about our instances of public rudeness that you should know, both of which I only came to realise with time: firstly, he only chose witnesses who would behave with decorum, ones aware that it was happening and that they were
meant
to be aware, but never resorting to cat-calling or obscenity. It was not like I was a stripper in a bar or a whore performing for a crowd. Secondly, whenever males were present among the onlookers, he was always very careful not to expose me. Always clothes or angles prevented them seeing me bare, so some semblance of modesty could be retained. Here, for instance, from where they sat, they could see my trousers at my ankles and hear my naked flesh slapping under his thrusts, maybe they could even smell me, but none would ever see what he saw.

Another example: I had been smuggled in again, this time to his place, in through the servants’ quarters and up the secret staircase to the guest wing. I shouldn’t have gone there when I knew a certain other might well be present. However, in this case jealousy had made me impatient of waiting and I needed my fix of him. It was not a great day to pick, as it turned out. A local church was holding a gathering on his lawns and there were people milling about in the sunshine down below. His presence was not required but he would always want to show his support for such things.

I was instructed to stay hidden in one of the guest bedrooms and not move under any circumstances. I could see him down there, out where the stalls were being set up, laughing with the locals, occasionally looking up to pick me out at my window. It was nearly an hour before he came to me. I was wearing a loose skirt and one of the low-cut tops that he favoured, but he barely gave it notice.