Shadow Girl (7 page)

A finger is pressing for a tight admission. A finger lubed by oil and the wetness of the craven creature.

She pleads through her excitement.
Please, not in there. Not in there
. But the sleek thing is too busy playing whore. Ingratiating and debasing itself. ‘
Oh yes, fuck me there
,' it says. ‘
Take me. Bow me to your might
.' The creature salivates copiously and purses its lips to welcome the trespasser. ‘
First come first served
,' it moans. ‘
And second come gets beautifully served too. And third come even better. All, all will get served.
'

Her breath catches in her throat. Three. Three fingers probing her, moving back and forth in unison, in and out, deeper each time, marking her as their prize. Grooming her, feeding her more oil and spineless desire. Each slow intrusion loosens her further. Saps the stiffness of her reflex clench.

The beast inside is fawning hard.

‘Let's get serious,' warns the voice.

The fingers withdraw and something meatier nudges her, demanding to be let in.

Please no, not like this
. She pushes out in response — a pathetic, last-ditch attempt to deny the obvious. But this, ironically, aids in her lover. Her arse is filled slowly, intractably. Despite the lube, this brings tears to her eyes. She bites her lip, screws up her face. Stifles a yelp.

The man enjoying her could not care less, it seems, and maintains a slow, torrid momentum, increasing pace by increments.

‘Don't fight this,' he says in a tone that brooks no objection.

‘
S'il
. . .
S'il te plaît
,' she groans. ‘
Viens dans ma chatte. Ma chatte
.'

The thought echoes in her head like a taunt.
Please, come inside my pussy
.

A sharp sting on the fullness of her flesh. He has punished her like a wayward foal. Another slap, and a third. She winces at the branding. She has overstepped the mark, she realises. She is not to speak, not to make demands. The rules are clearly laid out. She has no say in how she gets screwed.

He presses on, faster now.

So this is what it has come to. She is being taken like a common whore. Tied up and arse-fucked without so much as a by-your-leave. And the spineless creature is loving it. Lapping it all up. Relishing each second of her humiliation. It is a wholly pliant mouth, welcoming the victor's thrusts. Sucking and slavering with a singleness of purpose. Anxiously growing fat on lust. Yes, the creature is loving this. Loves to see her used and abused by such crushing vigour.

And she gives in to those new feelings. This appetite for submission. She is aroused by the contemplation of her servitude.

Her lover burrows on, going deep, flooding her with a twisted brand of pleasure — raw and sweet and insidious and pervasive all at once.

And then, without warning, her hips jounce sharply and she comes with a gut-wrenching groan.

Oh God, that came out of nowhere! She did not think she could soar like this, from her arse. She didn't know. She couldn't know.

The avid thing is quivering in delight, licking its lips, temporarily satiated.

But the thrusts resume after a short pause.

No, please, she can't take any more. She can't. She's drained. She's done.

To her surprise, the beast perks up, grovelling anew before its master. It is drawn back to the feeding and the fattening. To the sucking. To the unabashed cravenness.

Before she knows it, her guts have exploded again, thrown her into a bizarre bliss warp.

Oh God, oh God, she had no idea. This is so insanely, so freakishly gratifying. She is spinning in seventh heaven. How could she have guessed this felt so good? Guessed there was such need in her? Such raw hunger? Such ardour to be soiled?

And her demon is growing fast. Growing sleeker and more slippery, more voracious and more servile. It has sprung small tentacles lined with myriad pleasure pads. Tiny buds of desire eager to soak up more humiliation, to tether her more securely to her subjugation.

She is panting, groaning, straining against her bonds. Her cheeks are flushed. Her brow is glistening, burning with sweat. She lets loose a long, animal noise. Her brain, her whole body is on fire — tripping on a weird spike of chemistry. She abandons herself to this orgy of sensations. Abandons herself to the gasping and the bucking.

To the submission, to her craven needs.

Time, it seems, has folded upon itself.

‘Speak, say something.'

She looks into Yaouen's face, uncomprehending.

She has just crawled out of another bliss hole and her mind is a daze. The last hour or so is one long blur. She is sitting butt naked astride his lap, facing him, on the couch. Although he has untied her, she feels more captive than ever. Bound to him by invisible fetters, by the creature still stirring inside her. By the hypnotic pull in his eyes.

She knows she has lost her grip on this relationship. She has been swept out to sea and left drifting. She is so abysmally out of her depth. And yet she cannot find the strength to grieve for the safety of the shore.

‘Say something,' he repeats.

Thankfully, the mist in her eyes is clearing.

‘
En
. . .
En français?
'

He holds her in a patient gaze, while stroking the small of her back.

‘English, please.'

‘
Je ne sais pas quoi dire
.'

‘Anything, say anything. Something easy, with no diphthong. Like kiss.'

His fingers are drawing delicious figures across her back by way of encouragement.

She looks worried but duly positions her lips.

‘Kuss.'

Again.

‘Kuss.'

‘Try “French kiss”.'

‘Fringe kuss.'

A pause.

‘
C'est bon, j'ai bien dit?
'

She realises she has spoken French. She makes a valiant attempt to focus, willing her lips, her tongue, to do her bidding. Her mouth moves slowly, and far more than necessary.

‘Have-I-seeded-right?'

She looks at him expectantly.

Yaouen seems puzzled, then gives a smile of recognition.

‘Said it right? Can't you tell?'

‘No, I'm fried I cunt.'

He represses a chuckle. ‘You mean, you're afraid you can't?'

She nods. ‘Why do you keep repetitioning what I sigh?'

‘Interesting.'

‘What's wonk?'

‘Nothing's wrong. Things are following their proper course. Some tweaking left to do, that's all.'

‘I'm not spooking right, am I? What's my Tinkle-Inglish like? Please don't white-fib.'

‘Your Tinkle? . . . Well, let's say your English is a touch idiosyncratic.'

‘Idiosynchromatic? Which means wot in this case, exactickly?'

He looks her squarely in the eye.

‘To be blunt, your vowels tend to shift, your consonants are on the wonky side and your vocabulary is highly creative.'

Great, she thinks. She would be somewhat downcast were it not for that lovely feeling in her back — courtesy of Yaouen's fingers. Yeah, marvellous. She's a bloody language freak.

‘I'm a bloody language fruitbat in the belfry,' she says.

‘I couldn't have put it better myself.' He smiles. ‘Look, don't worry. One or two more sessions at the most and you'll be speaking better than the Bard of Avon.'

‘I suppose I should be thankfool then.'

‘You don't fully look it.'

She abandons herself to his gaze, hoping to find some answers beyond the magnetic sheen.

‘Wot's going to hairpin to myself after that? When I spook proper Tinkle-Inglish?'

‘Happen to you? Whatever do you mean?'

‘Ken I just go walkies back into my old life? Ken I really?'

‘You can go walkies . . . You can walk into anything you want. You're all grown up. When I've fulfilled my moral contract, the world's your oyster again.'

‘Don't take me for a fool's gold, Youyouen. I don't wholly comprehandle this, but you've metachanged me somehow. If I didn't know any bitter-better, I'd say you've cast a spill on me or something. I'm not my old selfie. I ken feel it. I ken feel this bonk to you.'

‘This bond?'

‘Yes. And there's this urgenting in me. It is so strong, so overpottering and . . .'

She hesitates.

‘And a little hairy scary to tell you the truth of the pudding.'

His face is indecipherable, even more so than her utterances. A faint light is dancing in his eyes. Then he breaks into a smile.

‘Now now, you're dramatizing. You're a bit shaken after the events of the last few days. Quite normal in the circumstances.'

His fingers are playing lazily on her back.

‘Anyway, about that tweaking. Just thought we might get warmed up for tomorrow's session.'

Without giving her time to gasp, he slips his hands under her thighs and, in one fluid motion, spins to the side and collapses her on the couch. Then deftly flips her legs over his shoulders, lifts her hips off the seat and, having decided to skip all preliminaries, verbal or otherwise, begins to tongue her in earnest. This time, she makes no attempt to protest and submits meekly to his ministrations and her own baffling urges.

She is halfway through her third helpless moan when there is a discreet, but audible,
ratatat
on the door. The clit massage comes to an abrupt halt.

‘Damn it,' says Yaouen, absent-mindedly removing a pubic hair from the tip of his tongue.

Damn it, she thinks, groaning in frustration and opening her eyes. Her creature seems to have wound itself tightly around her pussy. It is clearly loath to withdraw.

‘Terribly sorry. We may have to suspend the proceedings.'

Yaouen lays her back delicately on the couch, disengages from her legs and rises to his feet. He takes a few nimble steps and disappears into the passageway to the door.

Too flustered to make a move, Sandra just lies there, her breathing still off key, and waits for him to come back. There is a sharp click and then she hears him talking to someone through the crack which he must have opened in the door. Voices kept low, an indistinct babble of sounds. She is not quite sure, but the other voice sounds female.

After perhaps a minute, Yaouen reappears within her field of vision, looking thoughtful.

‘I suggest you put something on. I'd like to introduce you to someone.'

He picks up his own clothes wherever they chanced to have fallen upon the floor and begins to dress, humming a little ditty.

She looks at him. How the hell he manages to look as fresh as a mountain peacock after three days of almost constant screwing is beyond her comprehension. She for one cannot ignore how thoroughly churned up inside she is.

She finally stands up, feeling far more wobbly on her feet than she would like. She can't see her panties. And where's the rest of her clothes, her jeans, her socks? She swears under her breath. Luckily, the T-shirt Yaouen brought with him this morning, apologising rather hypocritically, she thought, for tearing up three of her blouses, is lying abandoned at one end of the couch. She quickly picks it up.

No sooner has she thrown that on than Yaouen, now fully dressed, returns from the door with the mysterious caller in tow.

The blood rushes to her cheeks and she tugs down at her shirt with a nervous grip, to screen her rosebud. This draws up the back of her garment, undraping the two shapely moons of her rear side — which is reflected in the large wall mirror behind her and therefore sumptuously visible to anyone addressing her.

Yaouen steps aside to reveal their visitor.

‘Hi,' mumbles Sandra with an uncertain smile, her hand still clutching her shirt.

The smile freezes on her lips.

‘Jenny!
Qu'est-ce que tu fais là?
What . . . What the chicken licken are you doing here?'

‘Hi, Sandra.'

Jenny does not seem the slightest bit apologetic to be barging in unannounced and intruding so blatantly on Sandra's privacy. She is beaming like a Cheshire cat.

‘Ooh la la! Love your T-shirt.'

‘Oomph,' snorts Sandra, failing to see the appeal of the buxom toon figure on her chest. The glossy-haired, wasp-waist stunner is posing in a tiny cocktail dress under the caption ‘Maid in Heaven.' ‘
C'est pas du meilleur goût
.' Definitely not in the best taste, she adds privately to stress her point.

‘And I can see your French has improved,' says Jenny with an impish look.

‘
Tu n'as pas répondu à ma question
.'

‘Ah yes, your chicken licken question. Well, that's a long story and . . .'

Jenny throws Yaouen a side glance. She seems to be waiting for a signal from him but his gaze remains locked on Sandra. And the smile floating on his lips suggests he is rather enjoying the moment.

‘Explanations can wait,' he says at last. ‘But just so you know, Jenny has been working for me.'

‘
Elle bosse pour toi?
' repeats Sandra, eyes widening. She cannot believe her ears. ‘
Mais c'est quoi cette histoire?
'

‘English please.'

She looks peeved.

‘
Jenny comprend le français, non?
'

‘She does. And she speaks it more than commendably, but I think you need the practice. Best to create the right sort of mood for the final recovery phase, don't you think?'

‘Okey-donkey,' she says, articulating, ‘but I need an explicational.'

She turns to Jenny.

‘I wank to know what the hellabaloo you're booing here and how cum you are chummy yummy with Youyouen. I wank to know if you've been spying on me eensy weensy spider like. And I wank to know the where and the whyfore of all this.'

Jenny's face goes through various shades of disbelief, then amusement, but she manages not to laugh.

‘I love your T-shirt, but I love your English even more.'

Yaouen has moved to Sandra's side and murmurs in her ear.

‘As I said, we'll talk later. We have more pressing business at hand. Be patient.'

She would like to insist but seems unable to open her mouth. His words have trickled into her like some strange paralysing poison. Her body goes limp against his and her resolve to get answers drains away, leeched by his touch.

Clearly, the guy has got under her skin in a major bad way.

Yaouen has turned back to Jenny.

‘You had something to show me. Of the utmost importance, you said.'

Jenny flashes Sandra a broad smile, then flips a tablet out of her bag and points to the screen.

‘Let's make this a tad bigger, shall we?' says Yaouen.

He brings the tablet to his lips, whispers something inaudible and blows softly on the screen. With the faintest hush, the page sweeps out of the device and floats up to eye level, shining brightly. It has blown up to poster-size.

‘Much, much better.'

Sandra is staring in surprise at the large electronic canvas before her. If a jaw was made of rubber, hers would have dropped to her neckline. How the heck, she marvels, did Yaouen pull that stunt?

‘How the heckle and jeckle did you do that?' she asks.

Yaouen shushes her with a raised finger.

As for Jenny, she does not seem the slightest bit put out by the floating page. She points at the photo in the middle.

‘Latest news, fresh off the Web.'

The image inflates to fill up the whole frame. An impressive sight, as it turns out. There, hanging in midair in the hotel room, is a sculpture looming high over a sea of dark rooftops. There is no mistaking what it portrays. This is not your standard abstract or symbolist concoction. No bizarre blend of cow, corkscrew and crop-duster.

‘That's a hellava woman,' commends Yaouen.

His eyes seem to glisten more than ever as they appraise the nude, which is glowing in the twilight with the colours of earth and fire.

Sandra takes a step forward to peer at the picture. She has forgotten all about her silly T-shirt and not wearing any panties. She is tempted to reach out for that luminescent skin.

It is hard to tell what the statue is made of. Marble maybe, for it looks so polished as it radiates in the light of dawn. But the tones are not quite right.

‘Wood. It is made of wood,' mutters Yaouen. He appears to have read her thoughts.

Although this is a still image, the figure appears — oddly — to be pulsing.

A snap of Yaouen's fingers. The camera zooms in on the artwork, then begins a meticulous scan of its features.

Head thrown back, almond eyes half closed, full lips parted in a silent moan. The woman is frozen in provocative abandon. She has thrust out her voluptuous breasts, arched her back in wanton disregard of the laws of rectilinear decorum and pushed up her flowing hair to reveal the lines of a perfect neck. Her other hand is splayed provocatively over the curve of a smooth pubis, daring anyone to follow its fingers to the darkness of the mons.

There is something infinitely beautiful, and outrageously lewd, and terribly otherworldly about the figure. As though she had not sprung from the chisel of man but grown like a plant from the earth. From some deep, shadowy pit where grace and power conspire in ruthless sympathy.

Even thousands of miles away, Sandra feels the pull of the mystery nude. She is drawn to its primal inevitability, to its potent allure, displayed in counterpoint to the zillion houses and composites of modernity. Her eye follows the sleek waves from neck to breast, from hip to thigh, from thigh to calf — then is halted by the splayed hand.

With some alarm, she senses her demon stirring again.

She tightens her grip on her shirtfront.

‘Fascinating, most fascinating,' mumbles Yaouen, still in earnest contemplation.

Another snap of his fingers. The vista widens, bringing the city back into view. He continues his silent survey. Jenny too is keeping quiet.

Sandra forces her gaze away from the figure and looks at the buildings. A European city, most likely. There is something familiar about it. She has seen that spread of roofs before, at least in photographs. Rome perhaps, or Barcelona. But no, it cannot be. There is no sign of the Colosseum or Gaudi's immense Sagrada Familia.

Then she notices a hill in the distance, far beyond the carved figure. A small knob of earth lost in the urban sprawl and also covered with buildings. On cue, it seems, a framed window opens where the hill is standing, to afford a blow-up of the area. Yaouen too has turned his attention there.

She examines the vignette. The mount is crowned by a lofty basilica. A mix of Western and Eastern style, would be her best guess. Massive white dome, quartet of cupolas. Sloping lawn at the front. Two long ribbons of steps on either side. A tall thin tower at the back. She has definitely seen this before but can't quite place the monument. A picture glimpsed in a book? In the window of a travel agency? Then she gets it. The poster on Dr Leclaire's office door. She can still see its caption spread out in large white capitals: le Sacré-Coeur.

She is looking at Montmartre.

She stares at the vignette a little longer, then redirects her attention to the cityscape.

‘So then, this is . . .'

‘Paris,' says Yaouen, his eyes boring through the picture.

‘Porous,' she echoes. She should have known.

But mixed with the recognition is the instant awareness that there is something wrong with the scene. That sculpture. The giant woman shouldn't be there. And where on earth is the . . . ?

And then she has another jaw-dropping moment.

This time, it is Jenny who fills in the blank.

‘The French have just woken up to this. The Eiffel Tower's gone. Vanished, vaporised. And this is what they've found instead. They are terribly upset.'

She pauses, then adds mischievously, ‘At least some of them are.'