Triptych, An Erotic Adventure (18 page)

She spread her knees as wide as she was able. She wanted to feel his come shoot right up into her guts. She wanted to feel his cock pulse at the door of her womb. The damage was done now and she was determined to underline it with this second, deeper connection. He pulled back and she groaned sharply in disappointment. She tried to lift her hips up higher, but he held them firmly against the ground.

‘Hang on,’ he told her, ‘I don’t want to come too quickly.’

‘Come like a horse,’ she said, shocked by the coarseness of her language. ‘Come like you are going to tear me up inside.’

‘Oh fuck.’

And he lost his grip on her just long enough for her to struggle out from under him, tipping him onto his back like a wrestler taking advantage of a particular hold, flipping him and climbing him with a frantic desperation. She bore down on his cock, plunging her body up and down, taking as much
of him into her at each thrust as she could hold. She reached her climax on the thud of a downward motion and he kicked back up into her, gripping her waist so tightly that his fingerprints would mark her for weeks.

He came. She felt it, the hot gush of his seed pumping into her. His open shirt was in her fists, his hips were bucking and she gripped him with her cunt, drinking him to the last drop, fresh sperm adding to the orgasm before this. She was swimming in his slippery juices. Her hair was tangled and sweat-slicked, her skin so damp that she seemed to glow in the spill of fluorescence from the Chinese takeaway. Her nipples glared out over the singlet, over the bra that had been so roughly pulled down. She was glorious in this moment and he spasmed one last time, his eyes wide with wonder as he burned the vision of her into memory.

She took a shaky breath in and stood. His cock slipped out of her with a sucking sound. Her cunt dripped and the splashes dotted his stomach. She felt in this moment a power she had never known. She had fucked him twice without love. She had fucked him and he had let her take his sperm into her.

She stood above him, sweating, panting, shaking back her tangled hair. Her flesh spilled from her top, her skirt lay like an abandoned skin on the footpath beside them. The red fluorescent light outlined her still-hard nipples and turned her matted pubic hair to flame.

There was the rhythmic click of someone walking past across the street. They might be seen. Someone might turn
into their alley and find her there in this moment of glory. For once, the thought of discovery did not cause her anxiety. She would stare them down, dare them to comment. She had just had sex twice with a man she barely knew. The kind of sex other people enjoyed, sex with a man who was not a relative. Sex with a man to whom she owed nothing.

‘That was amazing,’ he said quietly. ‘I have never had sex with a married woman before.’

‘Well. Now you have.’

He reached for her hand and she helped him up from the dirty footpath. She could see the damp stains on the pale fabric of his open shirt, wondered if her own shirt would show the signs of their coupling. Would Aaron know? Would he be able to tell?

‘My husband watches pornography on the internet while I am asleep,’ she said. She had thought she might be ashamed to make this confession; it surprised her to find she wasn’t.

‘Is that why you just had sex with me?’

‘I suppose it is. Is that terribly wrong?’

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m glad you did. You are by far the most gorgeous woman I have ever fucked.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Have you looked in the mirror, ever?’

Katherine found herself blushing again, the succubus banished. In her place, this shy angel lowered her eyelids. She noticed her breasts still spilling out of her singlet top and
adjusted herself. Looked around for her skirt; bent and held it pressed to her naked loins.

‘Katherine, I am sorry if you are going through something difficult at home, but I am also not sorry because what just happened was incredible. I just hope you don’t regret it too much. And if it never happens again, well—that one time was so awesome.’

She kissed his cheek and she paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘You are the only other man I have had sex with apart from my husband. Ever. In my whole life.’

‘Really?’

She nodded.

‘Well, any time you want a repeat performance. Any time. Seriously. All you have to do is mention this alley and I’ll be hard in a second.’

She laughed. ‘I like you, Trent. But I don’t know you very well, and also I love my husband very much.’

He glanced at her and she watched his shoulders begin to shake as he was overwhelmed by a fit of giggles. It was infectious. She laughed with him.

‘Oh god,’ she said, ‘we are ridiculous.’

‘It’s okay if your husband watches porn on the internet, you know,’ he told her when he had his breath back. ‘Everyone watches porn on the internet. It’s no big thing.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘Nah. Everyone I know does it. I do it.’

‘What do you watch?’

‘I don’t know. Girls doing it together, hetero stuff, some gay boy stuff sometimes. Not that I’m gay or anything, just that it’s interesting, you know? I don’t think what you watch is any reflection on who you are. It’s like how you like
Lolita
— come on, I saw you reading on your lunch break. But it’s not like you are a paedophile.’

‘Don’t you think Nabokov is different?’

‘Sure. It is incredibly clever writing,’ he shrugged again, ‘but what’s the difference really? It was considered to be pornography when it was first published.’

‘So you are trying to tell me that one day my husband’s internet sex will be seen as great art?’

‘Course not. I’m just saying watching it doesn’t make him a bad person.’

Trent began to button his shirt. His penis hung out of his tugged-down pants like a wilting flower. He slipped it in and zipped himself up, trembling and laughing. ‘Look at my hands.’ He held them out and let her watch them shake. ‘You know my knees are like jelly now?’

She took his hand and stood brushing the dust from the back of her dress. ‘I know I shouldn’t have made you come inside me. I’ve just…it never…’

‘Well I’ve had my tests, but you shouldn’t take my word on that. You’re on the pill, I take it?’

‘I’ll get the day-after pill tomorrow.’

‘Okay. Thanks. And, just, thanks.’

She grinned. ‘Crazy. Anyway. I had better get home.’

He kissed her a little awkwardly and they walked off in their separate directions. Katherine glanced behind her at his retreating form. He looked so slight and vulnerable. He looked so unlike Aaron. Sweet boy. Someone she could like but could never grow to love. Still, the passion that had overtaken her so suddenly made her smile a little. She could barely believe what had just happened.

Katherine stood at the entry to her apartment block. She held her card up to the electronic lock. Touched the doorframe to get her balance. Aaron would be waiting for her. Aaron would be inside. She took a deep breath and pressed the button to call the lift.

Two in the morning. Wide awake. She felt alive, her body tingling with wakefulness. She realised now that she had been asleep for many years. Finally she had woken, and the world had changed in her absence.

She placed her feet firmly on the carpet, moved quietly down the stairs. Aaron sat in front of his computer. This time he was settled in the lounge chair, facing away from her, the back of the chair obscuring most of the laptop, which was perched on his knees. Again the rhythmic jerking of his elbow. She could see it rubbing at the arm of the couch.

She stepped forward as quietly as she could, peered around the high back of the lounge and saw a man on the screen, his penis in his fist, a fast and furious tugging.

She placed her hand on the couch gently, so that Aaron
did not feel the touch of her fingers, and watched him watching some other man.

It was as if she were observing him from a great distance. She watched his hand on his penis, the quickening of his rhythm. She knew him so well it was almost as if she were standing outside herself, watching her own body bring itself to climax; he was close.

She bent towards him. At the moment of ejaculation she lowered her face to his ear and slipped her tongue inside it; he had always liked that.

This time it made him leap from the chair just as his ejaculate leapt from his penis, and sent the computer crashing to the floor.

They sat at the kitchen table. Aaron poured a shot of vodka for each of them.

‘Ready?’

It was ridiculous. She laughed. She tipped her head back and swallowed the liquid, feeling the slow burn of it coursing down her throat.

‘What are we?’ she asked him. ‘Eighteen?’

‘Do you remember when you were eighteen?’

‘God, you were so skinny. Do you remember?’

‘And you, Kiss-Me-Kate, always thought you were right. My year of being right. Remember?’

‘How awful.’

‘Wasted on the young.’

‘Yes.’

He filled her glass once more, tipped more vodka into his own glass. ‘I loved you so badly I thought I was going to die.’

‘I still love you, you know.’

And he kissed her then, gently, and when he pulled away from the kiss said, ‘So do I.’

‘So. How does this work.’

‘You sure?’

Katherine wondered for a moment. Placed her hand on her stomach. There was an excited whirlpool starting deep in her guts. Half elation and half fear. That perfect mix of emotions. She gazed into his deep blue eyes and nodded carefully. ‘Never surer.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Hold on tight. Get ready for the ride.’

Katherine was gorgeous. A simple fact: his sister was extremely beautiful. She had been since high school, when her body caught up to her sudden height. She’d grown into herself quickly, developing a kind of grace that set her apart from the other girls. He would watch her from a distance, noticing the attention of the boys. Katherine would meet him at the school gate and they would walk home together, tight as they had always been, and the other boys were jealous as he took her satchel from her and carried it all the way home.

His sister had only become more beautiful with age. He opened the world wide window and felt himself glow with pride. Katherine was still here beside him, still the most
beautiful girl he had ever seen. Aaron understood why she had strayed, albeit briefly, and was grateful that she had made her decision to stay by his side.

‘You call them up directly? Like a telephone?’

‘Oh no. It is a completely random connection. Unless you have exchanged your Skype address with them.’

‘You do that? Exchange addresses?’

‘Only twice. The first girl was called Susanna. I never saw her face but I suppose that is the closest I have come to infidelity.’

She lowered her eyes, he saw her cheeks begin to colour at the mention of the word.

‘Maybe you should have met up with her in person. It would serve me right, I suppose.’

‘God, she might have been a boy for all I know. It is like that on the internet.’

‘And the second exchange of addresses? Did you fall in love with her too?’

‘Ah no. That was the zoo girls. I suppose that was more curiosity than anything. The world is a strange and various place. That is one thing I have learned in all these years.’

He typed an address in the bar at the top of the screen and an image flicked up, a man’s torso. She could not see his head. His body was a different matter, or one part of it was: there was a huge red cock in his fist, bigger than anything Katherine had ever seen on a man. She held her hand in front of her mouth to hide her sudden laughter.

‘Can he see us?’

‘Not yet. I can turn our webcam on if you like.’

‘Can he hear us?’

‘Not until I activate the mic. Do you want him to hear us?’

She touched his arm. He could feel the excited energy radiating off her.

‘I think we should get our story straight first.’

‘What story?’ He liked the sweaty glow of her skin. The widened eyes. The way she perched forward on the chair.

‘They don’t know who we really are or where we live, right?’

He nodded.

‘So we could tell them any story we wanted, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why don’t we tell them the truth?’

‘The truth?’

‘They’re going to think we are lying anyway,’ she said with a little half smile. ‘They’ll think the sister-brother thing is just a tease. The fun will be pretending to lie by telling the truth.’

Katherine took charge of the game. She had always taken charge. When they were kids she would organise their days with military precision. Now she ordered him to turn the webcam on, told him he should take his clothes off. Started to undo her own buttons as if these were the rules of the game they were about to play.

‘Are you sure? The internet can be a dangerous place.’

She pulled the computer to face her, unclipped her bra and angled the camera to take in the sight of her generous breasts.

‘Well hello there,’ said the man on the screen in front of her. ‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’

‘Sore cock too if you keep pulling it like that.’

His gorgeous sister. He remembered now how sassy she had been when they were kids, the filthy language flowing so prettily from her mouth. Somehow in the intervening years he had forgotten this, recasting her as an angel, something sweet and untouchable. He wondered now how long this had been happening. The illusion of her politeness was certainly shattered as she settled into this conversation.

‘Who’s that man there?’

‘Him? He’s my lover.’

‘So am I going to get to watch you be lovers?’

‘I suppose you will. But there’s something else about him you must understand.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘He is also my brother.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. We used to play doctors and nurses under the kitchen table when we were little.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You think I’m making it up but in fact it is true. Shall we show them, Aaron?’

‘Darling, I will do whatever you tell me to do.’

And he would. He was waiting for her instruction, she was in charge. He lifted his arm as he was told to and pulled his shirt over his head. He showed the man his penis when she ordered him to.