The Lover From an Icy Sea (14 page)

“
Yes, ma’am. I’ll do just that. And thank you.”

Daneka walked to the front door and passed through, once again nodding her thanks to the doorman. As she rose the few steps to the lobby area, he informed her that she’d had an early-morning visitor—a familiar-looking young man—who’d come to see her at about four o’clock, and who’d then gone off for a walk in the park while he awaited her return. Daneka grimaced—an indiscretion she wouldn’t normally have displayed to her doorman. However, she said nothing to indicate either pique or pleasure, walked onto the elevator and pushed the button to ascend.

Once inside her apartment, she went directly to her answering machine. The message light was blinking, and she depressed the playback button. She listened to Kit’s message from several hours earlier and hurriedly disrobed, dropping her clothes in a pile on the floor. She then took a quick but very thorough shower.

She emerged from the bathroom, put on a robe, and began to towel-dry her hair. Daneka looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, her face then entirely without make-up and her skin slightly shriveled from the hot water. She was not happy with the image staring back at her as her house intercom suddenly began to buzz.

“
Yes, I understand. Please send him up.” She gathered her evening clothes and threw them into an empty bottom drawer, then returned to the bathroom to hang up her towel and retrieve a comb. As the doorbell rang, she started out of her bedroom towards the front door. Only then did she notice that her panties still lay on the floor where she’d originally thrown them. She scooped them up quickly, opened the same bottom drawer to her dresser, pushed them in under her evening clothes—and was careful to close the drawer tightly.

Chapter 18

No sooner had Daneka shut the drawer on her evening clothes than Kit pushed the buzzer at the front door. It was Saturday morning, and Estrella was not at home to answer. With weekends off, she was in the habit of taking the bus to New Jersey the evening before to stay with her family until Sunday evening. And so, in bathrobe, without make-up, and with hair uncombed, Daneka went, herself, to answer.

She threw the bolt and opened the door. Kit stepped through, trying hard—if with little success—to conceal his annoyance. He knew he was still in no position to interrogate her, much less make demands. But the quiet rage he felt was no less real for the absence of that privilege or possession. As if nothing had taken place between them the night before, Daneka stood before him stone-faced. Kit felt he might as well have been an appliance repairman who’d arrived long before the appointed hour.

“
Well, now, Kit. Who knew you were such an early bird and accustomed to making unsolicited house calls?”

That was it. No smile, no friendly word, no acknowledgement whatsoever of his right to be in her apartment at an hour that she, for a change, had not expressly appointed. Daneka turned and walked back to her bedroom, half closing the door behind her as she entered. Kit stood on the same spot where she’d just left him. He felt out of place, as if he’d rung the wrong buzzer. He wondered whether he should simply turn around and walk back out; return to his apartment; take down the photos of Daneka that had haunted him for the better part of two weeks; try to regain some sense of who he was and of who he’d been before this woman had become such an overwhelming force in his life.

His reverie was interrupted by the distant sound of fingers typing on a computer keyboard. Whatever pique he might’ve felt just moments earlier suddenly turned into fury. He no longer needed instructions or an invitation from her to sit, to stay, to leave—to do anything at all but follow his own gut. And his gut was now on fire. He stalked back to Daneka’s bedroom, threw the door open, and found Daneka seated in front of her computer. She’d apparently already forgotten his presence—or was at the very least choosing to ignore it. He walked up to her computer, reached down in back and ripped the power cord out of the outlet. Daneka continued to stare at a blank screen, her hands poised in mid-air above the keyboard as if she were waiting out some momentary glitch.

With more strength than even he knew he possessed, Kit lifted Daneka out of her chair and threw her down on the bed. She landed on her back and settled in easily. Slowly—very slowly—she undid the terry cloth knot of her bathrobe, then pulled the bathrobe open.

Daneka’s intent was clear. As he took off and threw his clothes on the floor, Kit kept his eyes trained on hers. The transformation would have amused him had he been in any mood for amusement. But in fact it disturbed him—then horrified him. Though still fixed on his eyes, her own appeared to be receding to somewhere deep within their sockets. They looked, but didn’t see. They were open and informed, but their own internal light was growing more muted by the second. She had simply switched off—or was looking for an alternative power source—and he was now that.

Still angry, Kit climbed on top of her—looking not to wage war, however, but to re-establish the peace. At the same time, he wanted desperately to find that moment of ecstatic communion they’d found the evening before. Daneka apparently wanted something quite different.

“
Fuck me,” she said. The first time she said it, he was again amused—though with mixed feelings—at her choice of expletive. That amusement rapidly changed into an odd combination of excitement and pain as she began to command over and over again, each time louder: “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” Her command drew out—like a syringe drawing blood—his very male adrenaline. He did exactly as she ordered. At the same time, he was overwhelmed by sadness. He didn’t want to fuck her; he wanted to make love to her. She was not a sport fuck—but the woman he wanted for the rest of his life.

His ears, however, heard something different. His ears heard over and over again: “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” He held her immobile. He held her hard, legs back against her chest and, from the knees down, wrapped over his shoulders.  He was a mechanical cock, and she was an equally mechanical cunt. Euphemisms now had no more place in Daneka’s bed than terry cloth aprons in a slaughterhouse. The more emphatically she repeated her command, the more emphatically he responded.

However much he might have been carried away by lust, Kit was still emotionally engaged enough to want her to come first. He’d been willing to follow her commands in the act itself, but he now wanted her surrender. It was not the male in him that demanded her surrender; it was the partner. He would, ideally, have wished it to be simultaneous. But he knew, too, that simultaneity couldn’t be programmed. He wanted her to stand at that bridge and say ‘yes,’ she would jump—to risk “the little death.” He wanted the clear demonstration of a willingness to jump, if only for a couple of seconds, without knowing at the precise moment of commitment whether she’d jump alone or with a partner. The point of launch was high up; from that altitude, the water would be unforgivably hard; “the little death,” certain. To suffer it alone would be horrid; to suffer it together, bliss.

*  *  *

Daneka sensed that Kit was just seconds away from coming himself. One little inducement and she knew she’d have him. “Fuck me harder!” she whispered into his ear.

*  *  *

He came.

He came ecstatically, but also with silent tears. She’d won; he’d lost. He would not find a partner this morning. Her response an instant or two later was appropriate, but Kit suspected it was also artificial. There was release in it, but no surrender.

After a few moments, he rolled off. His only desire was to hold her. Daneka lay on her side with her knees drawn up tight against her stomach, Kit behind her. He slid his knees up under hers from the rear and wrapped his arms around her. They were as close as they’d just been, less penetration. Her hair, however, still covered her neck. He blew it gently aside, exposing the nape, which he kissed, increasingly softly, over and over again as Daneka purred.

Kit looked up for an instant and saw, for the first time, his framed picture on the night stand next to her bed, then put his lips one last time to the nape of her neck and smiled.

They both fell asleep.

Chapter 19

Was it an hour later, two hours, three hours even when they both awoke in the same position in which they’d drifted off to sleep? Kit didn’t know, but it didn’t concern him. This was Saturday—and an opportunity to do what came naturally on Saturdays.

Kit kissed the nape of Daneka’s neck once again and she—as if on cue—purred once again in response. She then turned around to face him squarely; put her arms around his neck; pried his mouth open with her own; let the tip of her tongue dance gently over his teeth and gums. As his breathing became shorter, her tongue stopped dancing. She pried his mouth wide open and pushed her tongue in deep and hard as if she wanted to consume him. She then very slowly turned him on his back and slid a leg over him. Not releasing his mouth from hers, she pulled herself on top and straddled his hips, then transferred her weight to her elbows and knees and carefully placed herself at the tip of his erection.

As she pushed her tongue once again into his mouth, she eased her pelvis down. Kit slid easily into her as he pushed her tongue back with his own. She promptly released his mouth and propped herself up on her hands, rearranging the angle of her pelvis once again so that Kit’s penetration was complete, then closed her eyes and began to move her hips slowly back and forth.

He looked up and realized she was in her own world—and that her world, at this point, was at some distance from any world of which he was a part. Her mouth half open, Kit could hear gurgling sounds she was clearly unconscious of. Daneka issued no commands; she simply moved.

After a few more seconds, she heaved forward, put her face into the pillow next to Kit’s head, and screamed. At the same moment, he felt the contraction of her vaginal muscles like a gentle yet firm grip. He came in the same instant with such force that he wondered whether he might actually pass out. He couldn’t remember ever having had a more intense orgasm. Nor could he remember ever having had a more urgent and intense desire to declare his love to a woman.

Instead, he simply embraced her as the contractions receded little by little. He sensed she was once again breathing out of her nose—as she’d turned her face towards his and had it wedged up tight against his neck. Eventually, as he began to lose his erection, she slid off and settled down with one arm draped across his chest, one leg across his legs.

Now it was her turn to give his neck a series of little kisses, his turn to purr. This time, however, neither of them fell asleep. After a couple of minutes, Kit turned his face to hers and smiled, then placed a soft kiss on the end of her nose. She smiled back.

“
How about a walk in the park?” he asked.

“
Hmm. A wonderful idea, darling. Wonderful! But how about a quick shower first?”

“
Sure, go right ahead.”

Daneka stared back at Kit for a long moment. Then, she reached down between her legs, brought her hand back up, smeared the consommé across Kit’s chest, and grinned broadly.

“
I meant for both of us,” she said with a guttural laugh.

Kit chuckled quietly; got up and stood alongside the bed; waited for her to climb out. She rose to her knees and came to him, but with no clear intention of leaving the bed. Instead, her head now at the level of his sternum, she put her lips to his chest and opened her mouth. Her tongue left a thin trail of saliva behind as it made its way first from one nipple to the other, then down towards his navel, then further down still.

At seventeen or eighteen, Kit thought to himself, he might’ve been able to respond to a third challenge in such a short space of time. But at thirty, he figured the best he’d be able to manage was a chuckle of appreciation.

He’d clearly underestimated both his abilities and Daneka’s art. There was—as he was already discovering much to his pleasant surprise—some kind of magic in her mouth and in what she could do with it.  He’d had a second orgasm less than five minutes earlier, but he could already feel the blood moving and resulting in a third erection. With the grace of a cat, Daneka eased her body down and dropped both knees to the floor. At the same time, she turned Kit around on the edge of the bed, pushed his legs apart and moved in between them. Her hands moved up the insides of his thighs. She slipped one of them in under his scrotum, then moved an index finger back to a point at which she could begin to tease his anus. The other grasped his penis, which she slowly began to caress back to a state of full erection. Perhaps out of impatience, perhaps out of a desire not to be scrutinized too closely in how she performed her art, she placed her hand on his chest to let him understand she wanted him to lie back and enjoy the ride, though not necessarily the show. He understood, lay back, and closed his eyes.

As he did so, he could feel Daneka rubbing her face, nose, lips and forehead up against him; it was not long before he found himself once again in the state they both wanted him to be in—and that state wasn’t anywhere west of the Hudson. The next move was Daneka’s, and she made it without hesitation. As he had the previous night, he felt her mouth come down over him—lips as soft … as other lips.