Staff meetings were never my strong point. Staff meetings on Monday mornings drove me to distraction. A staff meeting on a Monday morning, watching the woman I fucked on Friday night pretend to ignore me while she flashed her thighs at me under the boardroom table was a special form of torture.
It was going to be a long week.
I was not in very good nick to begin with. I had spent the weekend in a state of complete distraction. Images of my night at the Republic of Desire loomed up in front of me: the leather-harnessed girls, the ritual auction, Lucy”s passion, Selma”s cryptic remarks… and Lucy”s husky, suddenly vulnerable voice bidding me Till Monday in the street.
I could not concentrate on anything. Ages ago, one of my first girlfriends had told me that when a couple had sex, pheromones were exchanged between them, keying them in to one another”s chemistry, binding them to one another. It was the chemical basis for falling in love, she said, and it accounted for that disorienting, disarming stage after a first sexual encounter when your mind is constantly filled with images and memories of the other person. It sounded a bit simplistic to me. But chemical or not, Lucy had managed to get past my defences.
Nothing could hold my attention. My weekend rituals – shopping and cleaning on Saturday morning, a slow breakfast, a walk and music on Sunday – were in pieces. Mr Thelonious (that”s my cat, an aging, portly and very dignified chocolate brown Burmese) had been entirely displeased. Instead of sitting on the couch listening to music or watching old movies like I was supposed to, I had wandered aimlessly around the apartment, adjusting objects here and there, pacing the carpet, stopping suddenly to gaze out at the river, picking up the telephone and putting it down. I had even forgotten to brush him – an unpardonable offence. That same girlfriend had always said that cats don”t have owners, they have staff. Mr Thelonious was a case in point, and he was deeply disappointed in me. He had sat sulkily on the windowsill that Monday morning, barely suffering his ears to be tickled and evidently feeling that I was lucky he was not implementing major retrenchments.
Some of my feelings were of elation, and revelling in the fact that this strange and bewitching woman apparently wanted me. Some were of embarrassment and self consciousness – here I was, a man just into my forties, carrying on like a seventeen-year old in love with a pretty girl in her twenties. And some was confusion and fear. What was going to happen now? It was not as if this affair, or whatever it was, could fit into life at work. Things between Legal and Research were pretty strained already. I could only imagine the incendiary effect on office politics of dalliance between the middle-aged and rather controversial Director of Research and Charles Gaunt”s newest PA. Incendiary! Dalliance! Those were just the words Charles would use. I could already hear him sounding forth.
And then there was the matter of the other woman. Office rumours to the contrary, I could now conclusively say Lucy was not lesbian. But she could still be bisexual – and what was her relationship to the pretty Asian girl whose picture sat on her desk, and who dropped her off with a kiss outside the office every weekday morning? Liu Mi, I recalled her name had been. Were they an item? And if they were, what was I? Just a game? An experiment? A betrayal?
To make matters worse, the intensity of pressure at work seemed about to redouble. The Soft Information Co had managed to get its hooks into one of the biggest and most important contracts in its existence, and we were going to have to pull out all the stops to bring it off. Monday morning was really a council of war. The whole office was excited, and more than a bit uptight. Everyone had ants in their pants. I hid it well, but I was the worst off. Before the meeting, Lucy was nowhere to be seen. I had not been able to concentrate on my preparations. Every time someone walked past the copy room I had spun around expectantly. What was it going to be? The cold shoulder? More of the elaborate pretence of nonchalance? Or what?
The meeting had just started when the answer became clear. It was - Or What.
Lucy made her entrance five minutes late. People had just settled in, mugs of coffee positioned, piles of papers shuffled. Dear old Charles was in mid-pontification when she walked in. Everyone stopped listening. I have not seen many women make all the heads in a room, male and female, swivel simultaneously, but she did it.
She looked stunning.
Now , she was not dressed particularly seductively. As sexy-smart office wear goes, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Just an elegantly cut - even slightly severe – charcoal mini-dress and jacket assembly, ending just a tad above the knee. I have seen many young secretaries and temps show more flesh and not raise an eyebrow.
But you see, they had not been Lucy. And that made all the difference.
For one thing, no-one (except me, that is) had seen Lucy in anything but the plainest of clothes. Not that she dressed boringly. She”d just had very quiet taste. No dresses. Black chinos and brown knitted sweater, nicely finished, clearly expensive, but definitely not eye-catching - that was her office style. Blend-into-the-background stuff.
This was surge-into-the-foreground stuff. This was hey-baby-look-at-me stuff.
And we did.
For, and this was the second thing, the secret was out. She was a stunner. She was a beauty. Not a babe - babes don”t come industrial strength. She was the real thing. She had the supermodel cool. The glamour. She was gorgeous. She was dangerous. She was a goddess. She was a witch. And she knew it.
Under the circs, I was one of the few who managed not to stare. Charles, who is never a good noticer at the best of times, continued talking for a sentence or two more before he ran out of gas. All the other directors goggled. The only ones besides me who did not appear nonplussed was Vanessa (who noticeably brightened), Peter, the big boss, who is never ruffled by anything and Andrew Sexton, our rather geekish head of Strategy and co-founder of the company, who only seemed pleased because the meeting could now finally start.
Lucy pretended not to notice and swept smoothly up to her place next to Charles, who was still gawking. For a second it crossed my mind that he had not recognised her. The same idea appeared to strike Lucy, for she smiled cheerily and extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you - Lucy Temple,” she said. In the resulting gust of laughter she sat down and opened the waiting notebook computer. Charles” nose was noticeably out of joint but for once he was silent.
“Hi Lucy. Welcome. You look nice this morning.” This was Andrew.
“Sorry I”m late. Thank you.” She said briskly, starting to distribute neatly bound files from her smart little black briefcase. She paused and looked up, seeming to notice everyone”s admiring stares. “Well, this is the big time, isn”t it? No more kid stuff… We”re playing for real stakes now,” she said, looking directly in my eyes.
Indeed we were. It was the end of an era. No more safety for John Gray, I thought, feeling strangely calm and elated. All was on the hazard. The company, my career, and with my carefully won sense of stability. I had known for some time that the next few months at Soft Info was crucial. It was the test of my reputation and my position in the company. And now Lucy was in the works. A wild card if ever there was one. Who knew what would happen? I should have been scared, but what I felt at that moment was mostly a strange relief.
The staff meeting was one of those exhausting, nerve wracking battles where everything is happening at more than one level at the same time. On the surface, the appearance of consensus. Lots of talk of win-win, synergy, all that guff. Underneath, hostility, rage, positioning, sabotage. And the chief saboteur was Charles. His agenda was completely opposite to mine. What he wanted from this deal was safety. A relationship with a blue chip company. A long relationship. Respectability. Stock options. What I wanted – and I knew Andrew wanted it too – was edge. We are not a safe company. We deal in information. Market research of a very specialised kind, in very specialised niches. Not spying at all, though I do keep my ear on the ground. What had made us special was our independence. We had a reputation for giving controversial advice, making counterintuitive judgements, emphasising apparently irrelevant developments – and then turning out to be infuriatingly right. And Charles was often one of those who were infuriated. He hated controversy. He saw it has his mission to prevent us from being sued for defamation. He was terrified we would piss off someone important. When we started quietly advising people not to trust the integrity of a major global consultancy and auditing firm (no names needed, you know the one), Charles permanently went shade greyer – and when we turned out to be right, a shade more purple as well. He made it his business to object to everything I did, and squirted inky clouds of warnings and advisories around each of my projects. This meeting was no exception.
Lucy sat serene like a sphinx, tapping away at her notebook computer, her distracting long legs elegantly crossed at the ankle. Charles nattered away interminably, apparently unaware that the brief his assistant had handed out seemed to contradict several of his key points. I caught her eye. No response. Then her left hand crept under the table and she hiked that skirt up just one more centimetre. I tried not to focus on her creamy thighs. Pale, barely protected by the black fabric of her dress. I remembered the warmth of them against my ears, the sense of toned, living muscle beneath the skin, the delicate trembling of the tendons of her inner thighs, her beautiful, silky-hot cunt. I felt my loins stirring uncomfortably, and realised that there was no way I could adjust myself without everybody noticing. Except possibly Charles.
Oh fuck. I desperately looked at the paper in front of me, tried to focus my mind on something else. Lucy”s notes. Nearly and precisely listing the real issues, the strategic issues, not those her boss was raising. She was my ally. She was my girl. Her breasts had been soft against my skin. And she liked to have them licked and tickled. Kissing her pussy was like eating a mango, you got juice all down your chin. Stop that!
I tried to focus on what Charles was saying. Long-term relationship. Win-win. Security. Brands. Lexus-and-Olive-Tree nonsense. None of that mattered. What mattered in this deal was what happened with the information. Who controlled it. Who shared what. Who produced it. Who made the judgements. And how it could lead to more information. For information is like quicksilver. Elusive, liquid, reflective. And just like a little drop of mercury would absorb other smaller drops, information attracted information. It had its own gravity and life. What this deal allowed us was to get really close to huge masses of really complex information, and make it mix and tangle with ours. I saw it in my minds eye, like a galaxy forming out of cosmic dust. Dead, cold, inert facts, colliding with one another, forming a bigger and bigger mass that slowly warmed up, until the little glimmers of light appeared…
My mobile phone silently vibrated against my leg. Charles was still in full throat. I fished it out of my pocket. I had a text message. Anything to distract my attention.
It was some kind of spam, it seemed. Sent from an anonymous mail server somewhere, complete with those irritating little pictograms they seem to think we want to send each other these days. I looked at it anyway. It did not make sense. Do you want your… and then couple of small icons – a picture of a smiley sun, a drop of water, a bunch of grapes. Whatever did that mean?
The only association that came to my mind was that of a local take-away fast health food chain. They had had that exact logo – the sun, the drop and the grapes. Delicious, healthy, take-away food. They had tanked. No market. People wanted their fast food unhealthy. What had they been called? Juicy Lucy. That had been their slogan. Do you want your … I switched off my phone.
My Juicy Lucy was studiously taking notes, her face a picture of innocence. The hemline crept a centimetre higher. I looked away in confusion. Straight at Vanessa, who was watching me with sparkling eyes. She seemed to be loving the show. Oh God.
It was unbearable. I do not know how I got through that meeting. I think what saved me was Charles”s sheer irritatingness and stupidity. I had to start thinking about how to deal with his objections, and slowly, point by point, bit by bit, managed to beat back the tides of mediocrity. At last, with lunch in sight, the battle seemed to be won. We would go ahead with the deal. We would not appoint more staff – we wanted to stay small, and the client could take on the extra clerks and data capturers. We”d do the analysis, we”d put in the distribution software, and we would insist on the right to publish our own independent views of our client”s position in the marketplace. No buddy buddy stuff. The edge. If they wanted anything different, they could have gone to one of our competitors, and they hadn”t. The final negotiations would be on Thursday and Friday, the signing would happen on Monday. The key team – myself, Andrew, Charles (and his suddenly stunning PA) would have to fly up north to our client”s head office to clinch the deal. Consensus was reached. Charles was quiet. School was out.
Somehow I managed to get out of the boardroom, my briefcase carefully positioned in front of my crotch. My raging erection seemed to be refusing to go away. To the loo. I was not going to jerk off in the staff toilets – I had my principles - but perhaps relieving the pressure on my bladder might help.
I stood for a while longer than I really needed in the bathroom. I wanted to rest my forehead against the cool tiles. My erection was still there. I tried to stay with my breath, like my meditation teacher had advised me to. It is like that game you play when you are a kid – try NOT thinking about pink tigers. About the smell of sweat on her skin. About the taste of her tongue. About … but slowly I managed it. Zipped myself up. Washed my hands. Just keep focussed. Stay centred. One thing at a time.
She came in while I was drying my hands. I saw her in the mirror. Striding in like one of the big cats, a smooth, white skinned, black-clothed panther with hot black eyes. I wheeled to face her. Wanted to say something. But tongue was already in my mouth. Her left hand behind my neck. Her body pressed up close against mine. This was insane, I thought, I should push her away and get out. Instead, I returned her kiss, pressed her hard against me. I could feel the taut muscles of the small of her back, the heat of her skin through the fabric of her shirt. Her soft breasts against my chest. I slid my other hand under her skirt. The door rattled. Someone was coming.
I froze in a panic. Lucy vanished, swiftly and silently, into one of the cubicles. Closed the door. I desperately tried to collect myself.
“You all right, old chap?” It was Andrew. He came bustling in, laden with files, dumped them by the basins, and went over for a piss. Andrew came on like a terminal nerd - and he was one, a bit – but he was sharp as nails and his vague bespectacled eyes did not miss a thing.
“I am fine,” I said. “I may be a bit worn out but I”ll be OK.” How much had he seen?
“Tell me, John,” said Andrew from his place at the pissoir, “What are your thoughts about Lucy?”
“Sorry?”
“Lucy. That nice-looking girl. I”ve had my eye on her for a while.” This was even more confusing. Andrew was happily married, and his idea of locker room talk was discussing the latest trends in intellectual property. (Andrew was fervently opposed to the idea of intellectual property, and watched the big pharmaceuticals with the venom of Paisley watching the Pope).
“Can”t say the same here. What do you mean? ”
“She doesn”t fit in Legal. Can see it a mile away. Wasted on Charles. Good having her there – mole, you know - but it”s bound to come to a head somewhere. I”ve been having a chat with Peter.” Peter and Andrew had been friends for years, and they were forever having chats. They probably called each other at three AM, before going to sleep after a quickie with the wife. If Peter and Andrew agreed with each other, the matter was decided. “He agrees with me. I was wondering whether you”d like to have her.”
I was wordless. Behind Andrew, through the gap below the door, I could see Lucy”s slim ankles. One disappeared – she seemed to be getting ready to stand on the toilet lid to avoid detection – and then the other. Sure as hell I wanted to have her. But not in the sense Andrew meant. And I was not sure whether working with her would be a possibility. Too much of a good thing.
“Peter does not think you working with her is a possibility. Too much of a good thing, you see,” Andrew went on blithely. “Your, er, minds work in the same way. You click. Which is great. But strategically, you see, strategically…” - Strategically was almost a sacred word with Andrew - “strategically it would be better if you two could work together from different places. And I think her head is right for it. Strategy, you know. I need an extra brain, you know, in my section. It would make your position stronger. And mine. And we need to hold on to her you know. She”s a girl in a million. And I know you like her. Been seeing it for a while. You take care now John. ” He gathered up his files. “This is the big game. Real stakes, like she said. I really hope all goes all right for you.” He fixed me with a penetrating, enigmatic stare. “Come with me to lunch. I want to discuss these negotiations.” And I had the distinct sensation he was escorting me out, making sure he did not leave me behind in the toilets…
* * *
And so it went. Lucy had always loved teasing, and now she became more and more outrageous with every day. On Tuesday, after yet another meeting, I lingered for a second, leaning against a boardroom table and taking a call. Lucy came in and started stroking me through my pants, pouting at me like a Thirties starlet while I struggled to sound composed and tried to figure out how to end my call without upsetting my caller. One of the receptionists almost walked in on us, and once again I had to hide my crotch – it seemed to be the John Gray pose these days: briefcase or file holder ineptly clutched to the front of my pants. In my haste the files slid out of their container and papers spilled out all over the show. Lucy and the receptionist knelt down in front of me and gathered up the papers, Lucy with her legs provocatively splayed, grinning to herself like cat that got the cream.
On Wednesday I was in my office, in a meeting with Angus, one of the more staid middle managers, talking through the issues that would come up next week. A messenger came in with a big interoffice envelope. Still listening to Angus, I opened it and felt around inside it. Cloth. Thin, satiny cloth. Damp. Warm damp. I had almost hauled it out before I realised what it was. I almost dropped the envelope like it was hot, and hurriedly shoved it out of sight next to my computer. I had completely lost track what Angus was talking about. He did not seem to have noticed anything. How could he not? It was evident: the unmistakable scent of pussy juice. To my fevered mind it seemed to fill the whole office, dense and heady like jasmine flowers.
What would come next? If it was like this on an ordinary day at the office, what would it be like on the plane, and when we were all cooped up in our hotel?
* * * Thursday morning we arrived at the airport together. I”d packed my things, dropped Mr Thelonious off at the boarding cattery, and arrived at the airport gate in a bit of a rush. There she was, in her normal clothes again – beige pants, dark cashmere sweater, camel hair coat, notebook computer in shoulder bag, smart Samsonite suitcase. No hot come-on, no tease. Just her normal, warm, friendly self. Lucy the dependable colleague. No clue for any outsider that there was anything between us.
And precious few clues for me, too. For a few minutes I thought she was going cold on me. But then there would be these tiny, almost undetectable signals. Her ankle, barely touching mine under the table as we waited in a coffee shop. Her coat, brushing my jacket for a moment in the departure lounge. The fleeting touch of her hand as we boarded the plane. Just faint enough to make me wonder whether I was imagining it, just there enough for me to feel it as a pulse of warmth between us.
It was unbearable. Was she withdrawing? Or was she just being careful? Was she friendly? Or was I just dreaming it? I had certainly not dreamed that kiss in the loo. But why this will o” the whisp attitude? Was she playing with me? What was I doing here? It struck me that aside from our tantalising encounters and our professional exchanges, we”d never talked. What did I know about her? Who”d dropped her at the airport? What had I got myself into?
Fortunately I had plenty to occupy my mind. Once we in our client”s mammoth steely-blue post-modern skyscraper, things were a whirl of activity. We had to keep our wits about us. We were hobbits in the ogre”s castle, and the ogre wanted to do business. The hobbits needed to look sharp. And we did. Between me, Andrew, Peter and Lucy, were a dream team. We were smart and slick, we knew our facts, we knew our bottom line, and we covered for each other. It was good. But it was hard. And it kept on and on. Meetings with the IT folks, meetings with the legal department, meetings with the non-executive board members. Morning meeting, late morning meeting, power tea, power lunch, power dinner.
We did it, though. We were in top form. Somewhere during the course of the day, I heard a little voice in my head, saying it. John, you”re in top form. But somewhere beyond it, further still, there was another voice, bleaker and quieter, saying, - she hasn”t looked at me once for the last five minutes, she is sitting three seats away from me, she”s not smiling at me, her smile is a bit wan and reserved….was that her hand touching mine as she passed me the file?
We had supper at some utterly boring haute cuisine restaurant that had made its name in the 1970s and lost the plot since. I had run out of small talk for the suits, and I was utterly exhausted. I stared at my dinner – a consommé of something in a coulisse of something else – and thought, Mr Thelonious, please forgive me. I am catching the red-eye home and we”ll go to bed together…
But the day was not over yet. Our party was supposed to be whisked off to some waterfront spot for yet further confabulation (was there such a thing as power nightcaps?). I was not up for it and begged to be dropped off at our hotel on the way. In the taxi, Lucy and I were silent. I still was unable to gauge her mood. Was she just tired? Was she having second thoughts? I looked at her carefully and I could not fool myself. Her eyes were downcast, her mood oddly reserved – if I had not known her better, I would have said she”d been overcome with shyness. And yet, her calf was just perceptibly grazing my leg, and as I left the taxi her fingers touched mine. What was going on? If she was withdrawing from me, why these touches? And if she was still interested, what was it with the sudden hesitancy? What had happened to the brash girl of earlier in the week? What had happened to the tall, dark temptress?
I realised that without thinking about it I had assumed we would spend the night together. The Friday evening I would go back home, while Lucy and Charles would stay on for further meetings (power weekends!) and the signing on Monday. After that, Charles was going off to some lawyer”s conference or other and Lucy was expected to accompany him. Tonight was my last chance. I would only see her in ten days” time. And now this certainty seemed to be disappearing.
I went into hiding in my room. I wanted to sink into oblivion. I wanted to stop caring. I wanted to find an old Kurosawa movie and forget that I had feelings. I did find one – it was The Seven Samurai – but it all seemed to be about me. The young swordsman, inept with his feelings, not knowing how to get the girl, too clumsy to know how to react to her desire. Except that in the movie, he gets her in the end. I wasn”t the young swordsman, I wasn”t even the ultra cool steel-eyed archer, at best I was the grizzled old campaigner, too old for love, tired of chopping off heads, missing his cat, alone in a hotel room in a foreign city late at night.
Noises outside. My colleagues returning. Voices in the corridor. I tensed up. The room next doors to mine had been assigned to Andrew - Lucy”s room was upstairs – but if he was back, so should she. I tortured myself, telling me she was going to show up any moment, she was dropping her things, changing into something sexy, and then there would be a scratching at my door… I heard a toilet flush next door, the TV flick on and off, and then silence. Andrew getting his beauty sleep. Then nothing.
Half an hour passed.
It was after twelve. Exactly a week ago I had been at the club… I remembered my mood of heady resolve. My image in the mirror, looking back out at me, saying here goes nothing.
What was going on? You been around a bit, Mr Old Campaigner. Can you tell the young swordsman what to do?
I sat back in my armchair and summoned up before me the image of Lucy as she appeared to me throughout today. Not reserved, not cut-off. Those small sidelong glances, the tiny touches – those had been real.
What was it then? Could it be shyness? The idea seemed ridiculous. Lucy, the person who had overwhelmed me with her boldness? I was the shy one, the reserved older man swept away in her torrent of confident passion!
And yet, and yet… I tried to imagine her as she was right now. She was sitting in her hotel room, maybe sitting in the bed. Not soundly asleep. Not forgetting me. Waiting. Waiting for a knock on the door.
I remembered what Selma had said. “Claudia might end up outwitting Claudia. Lucy could end up tricking Lucy.” Lucy had enjoyed playing games. The careful charade of the first few months. The teasing. Breaking the rules in the club, where she was still Claudia and I was just some nameless man who would disappear before morning. Even this week: no more kid stuff, she had said on Monday, but she had still tried to turn it into a game.
But now it was past midnight. The ball was over. The princess, pretty as she was, was feeling like an ordinary girl again. And she was suddenly unsure of herself. Would I still like her when she was out of her party gear? When the fancy dress was stowed away?
What do we do when the games stop, Lucy?
Let me show you.
I was out of my door, night-gown wrapped around me, before I was even conscious of having made a decision. The hotel corridor stretched away in both directions, with that bland, timeless, placeless, artificial feel that you get in hotel corridors everywhere. Maybe they have consultants for that, I thought. People who specialise in making sure that every major hotel chain has its own unique distinctive feel of limbo, so that no matter where you were – Paris, New York, Seattle, Rio – you would actually feel you were somewhere else, somewhere more familiar, a parallel universe, that of your hotel chain of choice.
In this particular one – Universe Hyatt – the lifts in the elevator had walls in plush velvet and quiet, tasteful, smoked silver mirrors. The numbers on the touch pad gleamed amber and the door”s tone as it opened and closed was very soft and muted.
Bing.
The door opened again, and there, waiting mutely in a hotel-badged bath-gown, was my princess, in the corridor in her bedroom slippers. She just stood there with her eyes downcast, looking shy and confused and more than a little vulnerable.
For a long instant we just stood gazing at each other.
Once in a while, you suddenly have a chance to see anew someone you thought you knew well – to see them afresh, not through the lens built up from expectations and past knowledge.
I saw a tall, slender, beautiful girl, someone who had just come into the full power of her womanliness.
Full power? Maybe not.
She was beautiful all right, and womanly. But the old campaigner saw something else.
Some girls are pretty for a season. For a while they are cute little teens, and then they turn into stunning beauties. For a year or two or five of ten, they are graceful, beautiful, bewitching. And then something – stress, children, husbands, jobs – steals it away again. It has nothing to do with weight or wrinkles. It is something else. A quality of spirit, that disappears.
And in some women, that early beauty is just the early signs of what is to come. They are beautiful at eighteen – but the princess can not be compared to the queen. Forget everything you have been told about skin tone and hair colour. That is not what matters. Ask the old campaigner. What matters is sureness and confidence in lovemaking, confidence and strength in society - and a different beauty. A beauty that lives in a depth and clarity and warmth in the eyes, a grace and poise of figure and motion. A womanly power. You may have seen it in the movies. Katherine Hepburn had it. Susan Sarandon has it. Angela Basset is getting it. A man who has such a woman at his side is lucky.
And I looked at the young Lucy who was looking all bedraggled and lost, and saw the woman she would become, and wondered to myself – who will that be?
I suddenly wanted to be the man who would be around when her hair too was starting to be tinged with grey. She would still be tall and slender, with a long straight back. There would be beautiful laughter lines around her eyes. Most men hunting for someone to bed would look right past her – never knowing what they were missing. A lioness, a tigress, a graceful and sensual woman. A queen.
The elevator binged again and started closing. We both moved forward at the same time and ended up embracing clumsily in the hallway, the door gently chiming as it butted at my back. I pulled her back inside and we went to my room. I led her by the hand, and she followed quietly, almost passively. Once inside, she allowed herself to be held, allowed me to kiss her on her forehead, her eyes, and then, chastely, on her mouth. I held her for a moment, and then released her. She gazed at me wordlessly. My temptress, this beautiful young woman who thought nothing of dancing naked in front of strangers, who volunteered to allow herself to be raffled off at a strange, probably illegal nightclub, who had brazenly entered the men”s room at the office and all but invited me to enjoy her body there, seemed all of a sudden a little bashful, hesitant.
I tugged open her bathrobe and let it fall to the ground. Underneath she wore a slight little slip of a nightdress – pink, with pink with buttons halfway down the front that parted easily at my touch. This too, I tugged off her shapely body. She stood in front of me naked, vulnerable.
I took her hand again and led her to the bed, where we sat down side by side.
She did not look up at me, but sat with her hands folded demurely in her lap. I put my arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder.
We sat wordlessly for a while, looking at her slippers. They were pink, and fluffy and very old. Ages ago they had been designed to resemble bunny rabbits. But now three of the ears and one of the eyes had come off. I imagined her getting them from her dad at age fourteen or fifteen.
I knelt down on the floor and gently eased them off. Her feet were slender and delicately arched. She wriggled her perfect toes in my hand.
“Well, Cinderella,” I said, “care for a drink?”
Her eyes met mine shyly and she nodded. I went to the bar fridge. She drew her legs up and sat on the bed, her knees against her breasts and her hands across her ankles. She looked unbearably beautiful and unprotected. I suddenly felt awkward and strange, being a clothed man in the presence of a naked young woman and slipped out of my own night clothes.
I made it double whiskeys all round. We sipped them cross-legged on the floor, our knees touching. We did not speak. Speech was unnecessary.
After a while, she smiled, dipped her finger into my whiskey, and painted her nipples with the liquid as she had done when we had first met. And it was sweet to be able to lean over and kiss it away, and then to kiss her mouth in earnest, leisurely and slowly. It was sweet to enjoy her body when there as no-one around but us and the silence of the sleeping hotel.
My cock, sleeping on my thigh, stirred and woke.
She curled up and laid her cheek on my thigh, dreamily touching it, touching my balls, watching my loins awaken. She played experimentally with my foreskin. Softly she took me still half-erect in her mouth and gently sucked until I was stiff and hard, pleasure flowing from her mouth into me.
Then we kissed again. I tasted the whiskey in her mouth as well as the acrid taste of my own arousal.
My hand found its way between her thighs. There was already a hint of moisture between the lips of her sex, a slickness around the sweet little button of her clit. I stroked and tickled her lips and watched her face become a soft mask of pleasure.
We played like that for a while, my fingers at her slit and hers at my cock till both of us were slick with juice.
Then she lay back on the bed, her hips on the edge of the mattress and her feet on the floor, her thighs splayed wide to receive the pleasure of my touch. Her shyness was rapidly ebbing away. She was dissolving, relaxing, losing herself in bliss. Her engorged pussy lips opened like the petals of a flower as I gently tongued and sucked them, taking them into my mouth, running my tongue up and down. I gently teased her clit with the bottom of my tongue, and then plunged it deep into the slightly bitter-tasting outer passages of her cunt. She was making soft, throaty, noises of enjoyment. And for me it was pure pleasure as well, sending this beautiful, bold and gentle girl skilfully and surely down the river of pleasure. Nudging the raft ever deeper into the stream…
Her thighs were clenching and trembling slightly. She was tugging at my hair, pulling my face away. She wanted my cock now, wanted it inside her.
The bed was low off the ground. I quickly put the firm flat pillow from the seat of the armchair on the ground between her feet and knelt down. Just as I had thought: like this, my hips were level with hers, just at the right level for me to enter her. But slowly.
I let the shaft of my cock slide along the outside of her slit, and then butt softly at the little soft space between her lips. No reason to hurry now, no need to force things. She groaned with pleasure and spread her lips wide, grabbing me and easing me into her. I closed my eyes and echoed her groan. No matter how many times I have made love, I am always overwhelmed by that moment of first entry, by the warmth and softness that envelop me when I first slip slowly into that hot, tight, slippery passage. The sense of direct connection. For a long while it was enough simply for her to hold me there, and to watch her as she writhed with pleasure, running her hands across her own body, squeezing her own breasts and touching herself between her legs.
Then we were moving as one, in the groove, in the rhythm, joined at last in a road our bodies knew together. Her eyes never left my face. We let the river sweep us along, felt its gathering force around us.
Then, quite suddenly, she came, closing her eyes and crying out aloud. I was off my knees, I was on top of her, her thighs locked around my hips. I thrust strongly deep inside her, letting her orgasm deepen and break. She came for a long time, gasping and moaning, holding me to her with her strong, slender arms, sucking at my mouth, my tongue, my lips. At last the storm passed. I held her quietly for a while then, letting the tremors subside, knowing she would be unbearably tender for a few minutes.
Then we shifted farther onto the bed, so that I could support my weight on my knees and elbows now, and she let me begin moving again, looking dreamily into my eyes, circling my the base of my cock with her hand, egging me on and on till it was my turn. I came explosively, with a piercing sweetness penetrating my entire body, surrendering entirely to the sensation of my cock emptying itself deep inside her body. She held me again, hand in my hair, crooning softly, pressing my face against my neck as my body shuddered and shuddered
Minutes passed. Slowly we returned to the dimly lit hotel room and the sound of rain outside. I gently moved off and out of her and looked around. Our whiskey glasses were still sitting where we had left them by her slippers on the floor by the foot of the bed. Miraculously we had not kicked them over. I made a warm nest with of the bedcovers and pillows and we watched the rain pearl on the windows for a while, arms around each other, sipping the warming, fragrant liquid.
There were so many pleasures I had forgotten. The pleasure of timelessness. The gentle play that comes after lovemaking, the investigation and discovery of the other”s body. The downiness of the skin below the earlobe. A small mole on the flank beside the breast. Sweat cooling in tousled hair. Lips and mouth tasting of a whole mix of heady liquids. For so many years I had cut myself off, so scared of being burned again that I had not realised I had stopped myself from feeling anything Now I felt scared again. But I could not go back.
“What is it, love? You look so sad…” Lucy asked me gently.
I had no answer that I could put in words, and just held her tightly for a long while. Sweetness of life. It had returned to me. I did not know what would happen to us, but in that moment it was enough just to lie together in the pool of warmth we had created. Lucy looked long into my face and then kissed me on the forehead. She switched off the light and we drifted off to sleep.
Somewhere in the middle of the night we made love again. Or rather, she made love to me. I emerged from deep sleep to find her straddling me, my cock already hard and deep inside her. Her arms were tightly around my neck and her cheek was pressed against mine. I floated in and out of sleep, conscious of nothing but an enveloping warmth and softness and the increasing power and urgency of our movements. It was almost an animal lovemaking, deep and instinctive and empty of thought. I don”t know how long it went on. We came together, that time, crying out and holding on to each other. And then we slid back into sleep.
In the morning, she was gone. The whiskey glasses were neatly lined up on the coffee table. Her slippers were there too. And there was a note. It said,
“Stay here tonight. Love L”
“To be continued…”