The Pleasure Quartet (35 page)

Aurelia followed suit, unbuttoning the fabric that covered her slender form and casting it over a nearby chair. She was wearing a bra and knicker set in black, a harsh tone against her white skin. She was even paler than Summer. The underwear was high-waisted and generously cut at the bottom, but the bra was a skimpy, half-cup affair that seemed almost pointless to Noah, since it underlined her small, pointed, breasts but left them and her rose-coloured nipples totally bare. When she turned and faced him, Noah realised that the pants were not as full as he had first thought. A triangle of sheer, wisp-thin nylon displayed Aurelia’s slit and mons. He thought that he glimpsed a tattoo there too, but could not make it out.

He couldn’t help it, wasn’t sure if he ought to try. He was hard. His cock strained through his trousers, which he had opted to keep on, unless he was directly asked to undress at some stage.

Vincent was playing music through his laptop. A mix that Noah for once wasn’t aware of, with a heavy drum beat and electronic chords that washed over the room with a strongly hypnotic allure.

Vincent had begun tying Summer with practised, deft movements that Noah could barely follow, never mind replicate. Noah was relieved to see the younger man slip his finger through the bonds around Summer’s extremities, and periodically peer at the colour of her skin to check that she was not tied too tightly or turning blue. He seemed to know what he was doing.

Noah stopped paying attention to the specifics of the web that Vincent was weaving around her limbs and instead began to observe the changing seasons of Summer’s expression.

She had relaxed totally. Her body now hanging limp from the loops that bound her, just below her wrists. Her eyes were closed and a beatific smile had begun to spread over her face.

A low moan escaped from her throat when Vincent placed a metal implement between her legs and buckled the leather cuffs that were attached to each end around her ankles. A spreader bar. Noah had seen them in pornography, knew their uses, but had never actually seen or used one during sex or other circumstances.

Vincent picked something up from the case that was laid down on the floor near him and touched his fingers to Summer’s lips, indicating that she should open her mouth. He gagged her.

Noah’s thoughts began to race. His cock was now so hard it was throbbing, his restrained balls heavy and painful. There was a lump in his throat. He swallowed. She was becoming the Summer of his other, darker fantasies, the images that still haunted him at night time when the real Summer, her body so trusting, seemingly fragile and precious, lay next to him.

A line of drool hung from her mouth. Sweat began to bead at her brow. Her skin was dappled with red blotches, a colour that he knew mapped the surface of her body when she was most aroused. Between her legs, her slit was slick with juices and her lips were beginning to puff as the blood rushed to the surface.

Noah groaned.

It took an almost inhuman force of effort to keep his hands to his sides and not reach out and caress her, pinch her nipples which were visibly stiff and swollen, slide his fingers inside her, taste the juices that he could see running from her cunt.

Aurelia was lying sideways on the sofa, watching. She had slid her hand into her knickers and was touching herself.

Vincent picked up a whip-like instrument with a burnished handle in dark wood, polished to gleaming, and a fall of multiple leather strands – later, Noah learned it was made from walnut and horse’s hide and called a flogger – and began to hit her with it.

The sound of the first blow – a deep whump, like the beating of a heavy rug – made him jump.

The first few blows were relatively light, as Vincent gradually increased the intensity of his strokes. He was twisting the burnished handle back and forth in his hand like a tennis player switching from over-to under-hand grip, drubbing a rhythm onto the lower part of Summer’s bare buttocks and the upper part of her back on either side of her spine. Vincent’s eyes were glazed and every movement he made was in time with the beat of the ambient music; he seemed as hypnotised as she did. But his aim was true, each blow falling with total accuracy, avoiding the sensitive spaces around her organs and her spine.

Intermittently Vincent would pause his steady rhythm, pull his arm back and strike her with a mighty thud that made Noah wince and made Summer jump and grunt, but not once did she emit the sequence of sounds that Aurelia had told him was a signal she wanted to slow down, stop, or needed something. He longed to jump in and take the instrument away from Vincent, untie her and wipe away her sweat and tears and then hold her tight.

He also wanted to see her hit again, and again, and again. He was fascinated by the way the red marks bloomed over her white skin and faded and bloomed again, an animated map of lust. Noah wanted to create his own patterns over Summer’s body, to raise in her the same responses that Vincent was stimulating now.

She was glowing. The same way that she did after he had made her come.

Noah wanted to make her glow. Now and forever.

Finally Vincent slowed and then stopped his assault.

Summer was visibly in a daze. She hung totally loose from her bonds, almost asleep and apparently unaware of what she had just undergone, were it not for the twitching of her limbs and the wetness that glistened between her thighs and betrayed her unmistakable arousal.

Vincent stepped back. Motioned to Noah.

‘Fuck her,’ he said simply.

Noah looked to Aurelia for approval. Summer was not in any state, right then, to consent to anything.

Aurelia nodded an affirmation.

He hurriedly removed his clothes. His prick needed no encouragement, it had not softened from the moment that he had watched Summer undress.

Noah slid inside her. Came almost immediately.

He pulled out, their mixed juices slick over his penis. Saw the stream of their joined secretions running down the inside of her thigh.

Unbuckled her gag and removed it.

Kissed her.

Vincent reached up to her wrists and loosened her bonds.

Summer fell into Noah’s arms.

10

Journey’s End

Ever since I had been a child, I was always being told I was prone to unpredictability. A teacher, or was it a friend, had told me that I walked to the beat of my own drum. Peremptory voices inside my head insisting I should conduct my life by personal standards that didn’t rely on others.

I saw no reason not to continue down that path.

For several weeks I had reached a state of Zen-like acceptance with Noah, basking in the warmth of our relationship and its rhythms of blissful peaks of lust and necessary lows of holy silences.

Noah had gone up to Scotland for a couple of days to take a look at a band his A&R scouts on the ground had been monitoring for some time. The group were playing a club gig in Edinburgh and he would have to stay the night as it was unlikely to end before the opportunity to catch the last flight back to London.

As I wandered through the Maida Vale apartment, I realised this would be our first night apart in almost three months. Had I ever spent so long in such close proximity to the same man? Even when Dominik was alive, we were often apart due to my touring and his writing obligations.

Right now, Noah was probably still in his office by Notting Hill, just a stone’s throw away past the canal and the Harrow Road, still hours to go until his departure for the Scottish capital, but I already felt a sense of loss. Of withdrawal, at the very thought of a whole night alone in our bed. The breakfast leftovers were still strewn across the kitchen table, a slice of toast orphaned and now cold and useless, the empty cereal bowls, dirty cutlery, the strawberry jam pot open, its lid nowhere to be seen. I ignored the mess and rose from the chair. I was once again wearing one of Noah’s shirts, a blue linen short-sleeved one I had picked up from the bedroom floor, which he had worn for work the day before and that still smelled of him. My arse was uncovered, a morning sight I’d enjoyed teasing him with as I pottered around the kitchen earlier, fanning his libido and deliberately sending him off on his way with a hard on.

My phone was on the bedside table and I called for a minicab and rushed to dress.

An hour later, I was busy delving through the piles of cardboard boxes scattered across a cold concrete floor in the storage unit by the North Circular Road where I had left most of my belongings before departing London for the Ball, setting aside items of clothing I had almost forgotten about, knick-knacks, books I had never read, pieces of jewellery I would probably never wear again. Motes of dust hung in the air of the narrow compartment. Wielding the Stanley knife I’d borrowed from the office, I slid open another box with a touch of anxiety; I should have labelled them, I knew, but had not done so originally.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was the right one. Half a dozen violins, all carefully wrapped in double and triple layers of cloth. Not the Christiansen Bailly, of course, which I’d had auctioned to purchase a place in Rio, the proceeds still sitting virtually unused in my bank account.

I selected two of them, running my palm across the smoothness of the wood, wiping away the dust clinging to their sides, and set them down on the floor, and continued to make my way through the heavy boxes until I found the one in which I had packed all my sheet music. Rifled through them and selected a dozen or so scores almost at random. Shuffling the thin booklets I noticed one for Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ and ignored it with a faint smile. If there was one piece of music I could play with my eyes closed it was that one, and I had no wish to ever play it again.

I had come unprepared and had to go back down to the storage centre’s office and acquire an ugly jute shopping bag to pack the items I wished to take away.

At the flat, it took me several hours to tune the instruments properly until they almost sounded the way I wanted them again and I was then able to take a closer look at the bundle of scores, some of the music I was deeply familiar with and other compositions I’d never got round to tackling.

I settled on Saint-Saëns. Slowly reading through one of his sonatas and then the solo section of the third concerto.

Note by note, the melodies began moving from the page to my brain and then, instinctively, to my fingers, my whole body reading the music, absorbing it by osmosis. On the settee, the two violins sat, still mostly untouched, unplayed, defying me to pick up either of them.

I hesitated.

Made myself one cup of coffee and then another.

Gazed at the instruments, reminded myself of their respective sounds, how the one of darker wood, a violin I had acquired in a small music store in the backstreets of Genoa for a pittance, at the back end of short Italian tour, had sometimes to be coaxed into submission but then delivered a velvety richness of sound once tamed. The other, whose curves felt softer and whose shade of orange evoked a seductive warmth, had been the one I played when experimenting with Viggo and his band, I remembered, its lighter weight and suppleness encouraging improvisation.

I looked around.

Somehow Noah’s rooms felt wrong for practising.

Maybe I should move back in to my own place once the lease expired and I could claim it again. Or buy somewhere else?

I moved to the bedroom and searched through the right-hand side of the cupboard which I had allocated myself for my clothes. Checked out a couple of outfits but finally opted for that little black dress. My performing uniform of sorts. Also the one I had been wearing in Recife but which I had since had dry-cleaned several times to erase both memories and stains. And then worn again for Noah, on the occasion that I had him witness me in full flight under the influence of Vincent’s ministrations. Despite, or maybe because of, its history, it now felt the appropriate thing to wear.

The bus that would take me into the West End was just arriving at the stop, a few hundred yards from the apartment. The top floor was empty and I sat at the front, right above the driver’s cabin, watching as the Edgware Road unrolled in front of me as the bus stuttered its way through the heavy traffic into the centre. I alighted near Oxford Circus and walked east down Oxford Street.

I was seeking the pitch at the bottom of the Northern Line escalators, but to my dismay it no longer existed. Since my last time here, the CrossRail development had remodelled the station and I briefly wandered the corridors seeking out an area where I could busk. I hadn’t applied for or been granted the appropriate licence from TFL so hoped to find a spot well away from the station’s staff and wandering inspectors. It had been years since I let my previous permit lapse.

I finally found an area in a narrow alcove at the intersection of two wide, circular corridors connecting the Northern and Central lines. The light was harsh and a constant flow of commuters rushed by, with nary a look at the hirsute guitar player brutalising ‘Blowing in the Wind’. I hung around a little, standing in a corner until he finished his set, picked up his case full of coins and walked off, then promptly occupied it and took out my violin, shed my coat which I spread across the floor and began to play. I hadn’t brought the Saint-Saëns partition along with me and played from memory.

At first the sound was something of an echo-strewn screech, until I got a handle on the acoustics of the tunnels and modulated my fingering accordingly to extract a more harmonious flow, adjusting my angle of attack with the bow. It was still some degrees from perfection but at least the violin sounded more pleasant and acceptable as far as my demanding ears were concerned. Although I was also aware that the passing Tube users would generally not know the difference.

I wasn’t playing for them though; I was playing for myself.

I shut my eyes. Immersing myself in the music. The notes on the page danced along my closed eyelids. My fingers flew over the strings and my wrist strained as my arm guided the bow through its necessary motions.

Then the notes disappeared and the fuzzy image transformed, morphing into a ballet of colours as the music began to overwhelm my consciousness and animate me, stealing me away from the draughty corner of the Tube junction of corridors and its cavernous acoustics, transporting me into that zone I now remembered so well. Where I flew through the spheres, where my whole body was just an extension of the music, of my instrument, where my will faded and I became insubstantial, a mere creature of emotion.