The Pleasure Seekers (30 page)

‘That will open the gate, so just drive straight through. If you stop the gatekeeper will talk us to death,’ he explained.

The gate was a tree trunk stripped of its bark and a heavy stone tied with ropes at one end as a counterbalance crossing the dirt road. The gatekeeper, a tall young hulk of a man with a shotgun slung over his shoulder, had been quick because the makeshift road barrier was up by the time D’Arcy gunned the motor. They sped past him, waving a greeting, and Max called out, ‘I’ll come see you sometime late afternoon tomorrow, Petros. You can go home for the night.’

Looking in the rear-view mirror, D’Arcy saw Petros pull off his hat and wave back at them, a smile across his face and an arm raised, his hand making circles in the air, the expressive Greek gesture that meant something like approval, wonderment, admiration. Max had seen
it too, from over his shoulder, and turned back to look at D’Arcy and tell her, ‘Well, what do you think? Of course he’s surprised. I did tell you I have never brought a woman here.’

They were on the peak of the mountain and still climbing the private dirt road. Old, twisted and windswept trees began to appear, at first sparsely and then more abundantly. The peak was capped by a small wood. It was an enchanting place and particularly in the last moments of daylight. A haze of pearly blue-grey light was coming down as the black of night was coming up. The headlights of the 2CV bumping along the rough dirt road were like small beams of sunlight, frightening the odd rabbit, surprising the last of the birds flying into the trees from their day of hunting. Then quite suddenly the climb was over, the road levelled out, and there in front of them stood Max’s hunting ‘cabin’. It was something marvellous, only Max could call his hunting lodge a cabin.

It was much more than that. It was several steps up to the huge covered porch where rustic rocking chairs stood to attention like sentinels. D’Arcy should have been exhausted from the two-and-a-half-hour drive but she wasn’t, more excited by the place, the adventure, the prospect of a night with her lustful lover.

There was just enough time to unload the car and from the porch admire the spectacular, somewhat eerie view stretching out all around them before the last of the daylight vanished. With arms around each other they took a last look before Max opened the front door and led her inside. They had taken no more than a few steps
into the huge room when he gazed into D’Arcy’s eyes and told her, ‘I never in my wildest dreams believed there would be a woman so essential to my life that she would be standing in this room with me as you are now. It has suddenly come home to me what I’ve done, and it’s exciting, thrilling, but a little frightening.’

He took D’Arcy’s hands in his and brought them to his lips. He kissed them several times, then told her, ‘Don’t move, let me light the lamps and the fire.’

There had been no sleep for them, just the odd moment to doze off in, and their passion and hunger for sex and all things sexual hardly left them time for even those few moments apart. While Max was stealing one of those odd moments, D’Arcy lay wrapped in his arms, listening to his heartbeat, admiring the beauty of the man she’d fallen in love with, this consummate lover of women who was giving her more sexual pleasure and adventurous sex than she had as yet known.

She listened to his even breathing and came to realise that it was for this moment in this man’s arms that she had loved and left men, that she had gone on that extraordinary sexual odyssey with Brandon Ketheridge to experience sex as a libertine. Now she could not only understand Max as a sexual libertine but could share that part of his life with him as she might not have done had she not moulded herself into a woman who could enjoy her sexuality in the same way as he did his.

He was a master of the sexual seduction and corruption of women, she had always heard that and now she was experiencing it. He had infinite ways to reach into a
woman’s most secret sexual needs and desires, bringing them to the fore, drawing her out and making her erotic fantasies reality, to keep her constantly on the edge of orgasm and hold her off until she would kill, do anything he demanded, for that moment of intercourse where his penis took command and gave the most exquisite fucking. Max loved women, everything about women, what he could do to them sexually, the very many ways he could bring them to orgasm, the taste of a woman on his tongue, in his mouth. The night was over and their sex life had only just begun. D’Arcy was aware of that and that she would have laid down her life for more sex, an eternal erotic partnership with Max de Bonn.

Now it was suddenly very clear to her what she had been afraid of all these years: that she would indeed have been nothing but another notch on his belt, that he most certainly would have abandoned her as he had done all the other women he had had erotic affairs with, had he not come to love her first, wanted to make a life with her before they had entered into a night of such magnificent debauchery as he was giving her now.

They remained in the hunting lodge for three days and three nights. They walked in the woods, and Max hunted and fished in a rushing stream. The place was relatively well watered by a natural spring which created a narrow stream and even a small waterfall. They were alone with each other and nature at the top of the world and the views were staggeringly impressive, just like their three days of lust. Their sexual tryst never flagged. He took her in the woods, and on the bank of the stream, and in the lodge, in the most erotic and dramatic ways until he
had mastered D’Arcy and her orgasms. Max delighted in making her come, by the mere touch of his hand, a look in his eye, the sexual games he played with her. She was out of control sexually, yearned for his commands, his ointments, his sexual toys, for his kisses, and thought of nothing but being riven by her lover.

They remained there until the food ran out. And then they packed up and drove down the mountain, D’Arcy at the wheel. They stopped in two villages where Max was well known, to leave as a gift the game he had killed, to drink ouzo with the men he usually hunted with, and to introduce them to D’Arcy. Every one of the men had heard about her as the brave driver of the ‘tin can on wheels’ – the curious Cretans with their endless stream of questions! She answered them all and waited for Max to declare their relationship to them, but he didn’t.

All the way home they were happy. He touched her often, once even made her stop the car and open her jacket and blouse so he could kiss her breasts and suck on her nipples, so he could see her eyes when she came, and could bend her over the bonnet of the car, raise her skirts and enter her, taking her slowly but with deep thrusts that made her cry out and the sound of sex echo round the cliffs. They called out in sheer animal lust when they both came together in long and strong orgasms. They hugged each other for a long time, there in the road next to the 2CV.

It was still not enough for Max. He laid D’Arcy on the bonnet and drank their lust from her as if she were a golden vessel. When they kissed they could taste each other on their lips, in their mouths. Only then did Max
sigh, and replete with pleasure ask, ‘Would you like me to drive the rest of the way home?’

She agreed. They rode in silence for quite a long time, she resting her body against his. And then finally he said, ‘I have grown to love this car, it’s won a place in my heart.’

Their plan had been to be at the Kavouria for a late lunch, and they were. There were a few stragglers still at the table who greeted them. Mark was one, not quite drunk but well on the way. There was the usual banter as they agreed to join him and others at the table. D’Arcy and Max gazed into each other’s eyes as they took their seats and he whispered, ‘I get very excited thinking of you flushed with the warmth of our orgasms, all my sperm swimming round inside you. I’ll think about that all through lunch, it’s very sexy.’

They ordered food and their glasses were filled by Mark who said, ‘And where’s your lady friend?’

‘This is my lady friend,’ answered Max, and leaned over and gave D’Arcy a kiss, caressing her knee under the table.

‘D’Arcy, be warned – once a womaniser, always a womaniser. No, Max, I mean the dark beauty Schawahan.’

‘What are you going on about, Mark?’

‘Your African beauty has been waiting two days now for your return.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Installed in your house.’

‘D’Arcy, I don’t know what this is about. I must find out. I’ll see you later.’

D’Arcy took some teasing about the tall, slender, black
beauty whom they had all seen with Max many a time over the years. She had her lunch and lingered over it, waiting for his return. Then finally she left the restaurant and went home.

Several times she very nearly called Max and then thought better of it. He knew where she was. If he wanted to speak to her, he would be there or call. Hours passed. She missed him. Why wasn’t he with her? His sudden running off to another woman made her more uneasy than she cared to admit. She bathed and changed and made ready for his arrival. He was certain to call and bring his lady friend with him. Surely he would know that D’Arcy would make Schawahan welcome, that she could and would be able to cope with all the ex-lovers Max had left behind?

She was dressing when she thought she heard the sound of engines, a plane flying over her house. The sun was low in the sky but the light was still good, the sky blue – good flying weather. She did not even bother to go out on to the terrace to look and see if she had been right, that she had heard a plane, because she dismissed the very idea. A man in love does not fly off without a word. She almost laughed at herself for being so silly.

Half an hour later Max’s houseman arrived, not with a note but a message. Max had left Livakia. He would not be back for several days. He had to make the light or he would have come himself to explain.

D’Arcy was shattered by this news. He had done to her what she had always feared he would do: broken down her defences, wooed her to his bed, and seduced her to the extent of craving sex and more sex with him.
And then, having cleaved her to him, he flew away and left her behind. She felt seduced and abandoned yet again by love and sex, and yet – she knew he hadn’t lied to her, that he was in love with her, that he wanted her as he had wanted no other woman. But was it enough for a libertine, a womaniser, like Max de Bonn?

For the next few hours, D’Arcy relived the courtship that Max had laid upon her. A lesser woman might have ranted and raved at the loss she was feeling. Not so D’Arcy. The initial shock of his leaving without a word passed and all that remained was the memory of the utter honesty he had shown in his courtship of her. They were what they were to each other, and D’Arcy was a woman who knew the power she had and did not have over men. She had no idea what was going to happen in this thrilling affair with Max but whatever it was she felt she had no option but to love him and get on with her life. She wasn’t going to stop living because she had found Mr Right and her dream was going wrong.

Several days went by with no word from Max. D’Arcy missed him in a different way from the way she had missed every other man she had been involved with. The nights alone were the worst times for her, her libido would hardly let her rest in peace. She wanted sex and to feel on the edge of orgasm as he had kept her, she missed the excitement of her sexuality on a rampage, and just as much as those things, she missed his loving her, his adoration and respect for her, as he had put it, ‘for catching me’.

For the first time in her life she felt a part of herself had left Livakia and she was only half there,
so she left. She packed her bags and decided to go to Brett’s birthday party. Every year on 8 November Brett celebrated her birthday by having a party in the house she had inherited from her parents. It was an open house affair, no invitations. Those who knew her birthday knew that the door would be open and all were welcome to come and stay the three days she would be there. It was all so typical of Brett, to allow people to be free to do as they liked about her birthday, appearing or not depending on what they felt like doing. D’Arcy left a message with Max’s houseman. ‘Tell him I’ve gone to a birthday party.’ She liked the knowing smile on his face. It seemed to say, ‘Well, here’s one woman who’s going to give him as good as she gets.’ And she set off feeling quite happy.

New England was still relatively new to D’Arcy, but she had taken to it immediately. She had always known that that was where Brett had been born, a place she had never returned to because her parents had disowned her for being the black sheep of the family, unable to toe their line. It was therefore a surprise to them all that when the second of her parents had died, Brett announced that her father had left her his entire estate. Neither D’Arcy nor her sister or brothers knew what that meant – they had all assumed not much, since Brett and her children had lived a life of near penury until their fathers had each come into sums of money and everyone’s lives were made easier.

None of the children had ever enquired about Brett’s inheritance, it meant nothing to them, and so they were therefore surprised when she announced that she would use the house left to her in the Stockbridge Bowl for her
birthday parties, and that all the children were welcome to use it whenever they chose to. They were to consider it their family home. That had been five years ago when D’Arcy, Abelard, Vronsky and Rhett, her sister, all turned up for the first birthday party.

D’Arcy had tried calling her siblings. She couldn’t find Abelard or Rhett and Vronsky hadn’t made up his mind whether he would or would not go to the party this year. It was never easy to root him out of his studio in Provence, and he saw Brett quite often anyway.

But then that was part of the fun of Brett’s birthday parties: people arrived from all over the world, on the spur of the moment, taking off for a great party with nothing but fun on their minds.

The drive from Boston airport to Stockbridge and the Stockbridge Bowl was one D’Arcy enjoyed immensely. First the highway from Boston to Springfield and from there all secondary roads through the Connecticut River Valley, stopping off to lunch in Deerfield, one of its oldest towns. Possibly not the shortest way to get to Brett’s place but it was a way to get cross-country and see this part of Massachusetts that she enjoyed discovering. She liked that combination of old New England with its small quaint villages and towns and the well laid out fields of corn, apples and peaches. She always made a stop over at the Memorial Hall Museum to look at the colonial furnishings and then the museum village and did every one of the thirteen historical homes open to the public.