The Pleasure Seekers (22 page)

‘But you will. It’s too late for either of us to turn back. This adventure is too great, it pulls us forward. Sexual oblivion on a grand scale? No, you won’t reject that or my ground rules because they’ll suit you as my erotic master, and me as your sexual slave.’

‘I’m intrigued. State your rules.’

‘You are never to ask me anything about my life, past or present, personal or business. Only anything that has to do with sex. You are never to take me into your life except sexually. I don’t want to know anything about you, not the way you live or love or hate, only anything you want to tell me that’s erotic and will add to our sex life. You are never to buy me flowers, or perfume, or a gift of any kind unless it is something sexual for us to play with. I don’t want to go the theatre or the ballet or a concert or even out for another meal with you. If I am to be your sexual prisoner, then that’s what I want to be. If you’re to be my master then that’s the way I want you and as nothing else in my life – not a suitor for my affections, not a romantic lover I might want something more from. We have to be everything to each other sexually, and
nothing more. I guess that pretty much states my set of ground rules.’

Brandon placed the last forkful of
foie gras
in his mouth and drank his entire glass of Sauternes. The mingled tastes of the goose liver and the slightly sweet white wine lingered in his mouth. Sensual, erotic tastes that excited the palate nearly as much as D’Arcy’s little declaration had excited his lust for her. He was certain that she’d known it would. His glass was refilled and he raised it and asked her to raise hers. ‘You were quite right, I do like your terms. That’s it then?’

D’Arcy placed the palm of her hand over his glass to stop him from drinking and told him, ‘Not quite.’

He looked amused. ‘And?’

‘And when the time comes for us to part, when it’s over, it’s over for good. No return performances. No phone calls. Just memories of a time of sexual madness we shared.’

She removed her hand from his glass and he placed it to his lips and drank; only then did she finish her own wine.

They had no difficulty with the food, it was delicious; what they did have difficulty with was the erotic tension that kept building during their meal. When the dessert trolley was wheeled in front of them, Brandon chose the trifle, his favourite pudding at the Connaught. D’Arcy was hardly able to eat it. The food had been full of rich, erotic flavours and now this seemed the most sensual of puddings; every mouthful of cream and jelly and custard and sponge soggy with sherry was sex to the taste buds.

Brandon watched her spoon the pudding into her
mouth, licking her lips without realising it. He laughed. Caught out! He was delighted he had her so finely tuned and receptive to the erotic that even a pudding was playing its part. He knew what she wanted: him, the taste of him in her mouth, to lick him from her lips.

He made a move to rise from the banquette where he was sitting and the waiters arrived to pull the table away. He grabbed D’Arcy with one hand and pulled her from her chair. They were halfway across the sumptuous busy dining room when he signed for the meal. The maître d’ most charmingly and with a knowing smile removed the dessert spoon she was still holding from her hand. Neither D’Arcy, Brandon, nor the maître d’ missed the smiles of approval and envy on the faces of several of the men in the room.

The rain had never stopped. To travel the distance from the Connaught’s entrance to the taxi was to feel that English chill that can come with autumn and a steady downpour.

‘I never know how to dress for the English weather,’ D’Arcy told Brandon. In the back of the taxi she snuggled up close to him for warmth.

The moment she told him that she realised how mundane all conversation was going to be with him. They were on another plane with each other, a place she had never been before, and she sensed that he was aware of that as well. As if to confirm her thoughts, he pulled her roughly to him with his hands on her face and tilted it up to look deep into it. The look he gave her before he kissed her, an erotic kiss that ravaged her with its passion and hunger, was telling her, ‘You’re beautiful and sexy
and mine, and do shut up or you’ll destroy something we will never be able to capture again.’ That was the thing about them: they were so well matched in their lust, and their desire to be together in it, that they understood each other. These were two people who would never diminish what they were.

A kiss – how can a mere kiss send a woman out of control of her life? How can sex take one over and add so much to one’s life that all else can be put in jeopardy? For the first time D’Arcy could understand that sex, as pure sex and nothing else, on the grand scale, was not so much the dark side of a man or woman’s nature but a powerful experience of pleasure and pain and life, an enhancement as well as an adventure for those pleasure seekers of this world who want to know what life is all about.

Who was to know what drove Brandon and D’Arcy into each other’s arms, what drove any man and woman together? But they were, in a house in Belgrave Square. A large and beautiful house of many rooms where they remained for eight days in an orgy of sex and where D’Arcy surrendered her life to lust. Never once did she feel that she would come to any harm in the arms of Brandon Ketheridge. Every minute of their time together was a sensual delight: the food they ate, the erotic films they watched, the pornographic literature he read to her. His collection of erotic art, from antiquity to the present day, was sexy beyond anything she had ever imagined: sexual acts, raunchy and thrilling, elegantly depicted in Persian drawings and Indian water colours. There were too Danish hardcore porn films that were less beautiful but powerfully exciting for Brandon if not for D’Arcy.
She watched them, and disliked them, and never did they watch that sort of sex film again. Nothing to do with prudery, merely that for D’Arcy they were distasteful and nothing she would want to be a part of.

As a sexual slave she obeyed her master but he was smart enough to know where to draw the line for his greater pleasure, and that was not having a sexual slave who merely obeyed, it was having one who obeyed and enjoyed and took off on every order he gave. What he did demand of his slave was that she fulfil every sexual fantasy she had ever had because he intended to satisfy every one of his. They did. Some things D’Arcy tried she would never try again but there were other things that she would definitely do again, with the right man, in the right place, at the right time.

It could have gone on for longer because the sex was great but it couldn’t because, as splendid as it was, it simply was not enough without romance, love, friends, work, the outside world and its trials and tribulations. They had to come down from Elysium, that place of ideal happiness: and it had been a special kind of ideal happiness for D’Arcy and Brandon.

No words, no explanations were needed, they were drifting away from each other and they both knew it. He opened a bottle of vintage Krug, his favourite champagne, and a one-pound tin of the best Beluga caviare and they lay naked on cushions in front of the fire with their delectable repast. He dipped his finger into the mass of glistening black beads and scooped a large dollop of it out to feed it to D’Arcy. She sucked it off his finger and
rolled her eyes with delight before feeding him some in the same way.

They drank and ate and fondled each other, and in spite of what they knew, they played lewd and very sexy games with the wine and the caviare. She had come several times before she placed cushions behind his head, the better for him to watch her, and cushions under his bottom, and mounted him, impaling herself upon his pulsating sex. They held hands, fingers interlocked, and she rode up and down on him, moved round and round in little circles. She could hardly catch her breath and her heart was racing, so acute was her pleasure. To be in control of his every movement, to have him where she wanted him, caressing every morsel of her most intimate self, to feel his hardness brimming, ready to come as he fed her more caviare from his fingers, was over-the-edge lust. They were both holding back, wanting it to go on for a little bit longer before a crescendo of orgasm sent them soaring higher, higher, closer to yet another few moments of sexual oblivion.

He squeezed so tight on her fingers D’Arcy felt pain, as if they were going to break. Never taking his gaze from her eyes he pressed a deep kiss on her lips and then on her breasts. His kisses turned to sucking and biting hard into her nipples. She knew what he wanted – to be ridden by her, harder, and faster. She obeyed and there were tears in his eyes when he raised his head from her breasts and gazed once more into her face. His voice was husky, filled with emotion when he told her,‘You’re the best of times, a goddess in your own right, a lustful angel, a lady whore who should wear a crown of
jewels more grand than the Byzantine Empress Theodora. Farewell, my lovely.’ There were droplets of blood on one of the pale smooth cone-shaped nimbuses surrounding her nipples.

They came together, not quietly, and their orgasms were long and strong and frighteningly exciting. They were near to fainting, were certainly for several minutes off somewhere in a vast void of sexual bliss, gone, gone, gone . . .

D’Arcy awakened from a deep sleep. She was in Brandon’s bedroom, in his bed, and alone for the first time since she had met him in Crete a week before. Crete, Livakia, her house, her life . . . she had left them all behind once she had come under the spell of Brandon Ketheridge. How had he done it, enchanted her into this most amazing sexual journey he had taken her on? How vulnerable, how ready she must have been to make it, to want to live to the very edge of life. Now she had been there and was back. It had been a fabulous voyage of discovery in many ways other than sexual, and it was so good to find herself again, and her life as she had known it before Brandon. It was like returning from a foreign land.

She went to his bathroom. Like his bedroom it was large and rich, elegant and with a certain masculine charm. She stepped down into the black and white marble tub recessed into the floor. It was large enough for four people and she turned on the several taps used to fill it swiftly. She bathed and thought about what she would do, where she would go when she left his house.

She was dressed and rang for Minnou, Brandon’s Thai
servant, who had attended them punctiliously during her stay. He arrived with the Chinese girl Su Lee who lived in Brandon’s house as a permanent sexual object, a plaything in his life. She carried a silver tray with a sumptuous tea for one on it into the bedroom and placed it on a round Biedermeier table in front of a window overlooking the garden. D’Arcy wanted to say something to Su Lee but she didn’t know quite what. The young woman had been at times part of Brandon’s and her sexual fantasies, and D’Arcy had shared with this girl some of the most intimate experiences she would ever have or not have again. Yet they had nothing to say to each other.

D’Arcy stood by the window powdering her nose, the last touch to her make-up. She looked at the girl eyeing the Fabergé compact D’Arcy was holding. It was very small and exquisite – oval, black enamel, trimmed and decorated in platinum and with a small diamond clasp. D’Arcy snapped it closed and held it in her hand as she told Minnou, ‘I’m leaving now. I want to thank you for being so kind to me while I have been here. I’ve left you a little note.’

With that she went to the large Biedermeier desk and fetched an envelope into which she had slipped five twenty-pound notes and handed it to Minnou. He tried to resist, guessing there might be more than a message inside, but D’Arcy told him, ‘Please, I insist. I don’t imagine we will be seeing each other again. Where will I find Mr Ketheridge?’

‘Mr Ketheridge will be here at any moment. He asks you please to wait in the downstairs sitting room
when you have finished your tea. And so I’ll say goodbye.’

He very politely bowed his head, they shook hands and he backed away. Su Lee went to D’Arcy and smiled. There was affection in the smile but she found no words any more than D’Arcy had. They were after all not friends, just two women who had played together in lust. D’Arcy had been an intruder into this beautiful young girl’s life with Brandon, whatever that life was, and she had been a delight when she might have been a problem. In appreciation of that D’Arcy raised the girl’s hand and placed the compact in it, closing her fingers over it.

When D’Arcy came down to the sitting room Brandon was there. He came to her and gave her a hug then asked,‘Is there somewhere I can take you? The airport?’

‘No. If I might, I’d like to use the telephone. I think I’ll stay a few days for some shopping.’

‘In the hall.’

This mundane conversation, how it pained them. They could see it in each other’s faces. She called several hotels, but with no luck. He went to her, took the telephone from her hand and called the Connaught, immediately managing to book a suite of rooms for her. ‘Don’t look so concerned, that’s the least I can do for you. And I will keep to the terms we agreed. We both know when over is over and out.’

There was one more hug and he said, ‘An affair to remember?’

She replied. ‘Yes, an affair to remember.’ Then she was gone from his house and into a waiting taxi.

D’Arcy turned round to take one last look at the house
in Belgrave Square where she had been a prisoner of lust, and then she sat back and relaxed. She sensed that that odyssey she had been on with Brandon had been much more than sex. It had to do with her life, her future. A new kind of excitement came over her as she thought about the unknown and what it might bring. She sensed it would be love and contentment and something more that she had never had before. She felt happy and secure. She could wait for it to come. Her emotions were aroused, principally gratitude at being who and what she was, and tears came to her eyes. She opened her handbag, the only thing she had brought with her from Livakia, and saw a small jeweller’s box inside. There was no note. She was surprised. So that was where he had been when she had awakened. She looked at the closed box for several seconds and then she opened it. Inside was a pair of antique Byzantine earrings. She gasped. They were magnificent. Large and long, of twenty-two carat gold and blood red rubies. They belonged in a museum or on an ancient Queen of Byzantium. She knew she must keep them, she knew he had sent them as a memento of where they had been, how far they had gone together.