Anarchy of the Heart (7 page)

"Afterwards - you know, after the beach -
they walked me back to the car," she said. "It was Sofia who said
they'd love to meet you, and maybe see both of us again." 

"Sofia."

"You'll like her. She's really
beautiful."

They managed to find a parking space a few
minutes' walk from the restaurant, to which Leo followed his
fiancée down a warren of tiny little shadowy streets, which were
essentially just alleyways lined with an eclectic mix of little
stores - charcuteries jostling with art galleries, wine merchants
opposite discount shoe stores.

Leo was impressed at his fiancée's
navigation. She often seemed to impress him in her ability to
remember things like this complicated route through Old Nice, but
she'd only been to this restaurant once, and when she'd left it had
been dark.

Then at one point on the way, she grabbed his
hand and pulled him into one of the little stores tucked alongside
one of the alley-streets, and it turned out to be a pharmacy.

"What...?" he mouthed, though he didn't
object to her dragging him in there.

She found a certain shelf and plucked two
little boxes from it, to hold up in front of him. 

Condoms.

"Well, you don't want to go into this
unprepared, huh?" she said, one eyebrow raised. "If you do end up
liking them, I mean."

Leo felt his lungs suddenly emptied of all
breath, as though he'd been kicked in the chest. Wow, condoms. This
was serious. They hadn't bought condoms for years. This all seemed
very sudden. He hadn't even met Marco and Sofia yet.

He was definitely getting the vibe that
Caitlyn had been thinking about all this a little more than she'd
let on so far.

"Uh... of course," he said, trying to hide
his reaction.

Purchasing those two little boxes suddenly
brought it all into sharp relief: they were actually considering
involving other people in their sex lives. Another guy penetrating
Caitlyn. Leo penetrating another girl. 

It was so shocking.  

"Okay," his fiancée pulled him over to pay,
then handed him one of the boxes, while she stuffed the other in
her little bag.

Leo felt curiously light-headed again as they
headed back out onto the street, and their journey continued
onwards towards a little restaurant on the Rue Droite.

"This is where you came before?" he asked her
as they went in, more trying to keep calm than out of real
curiosity. 

"Only briefly - it's nice, isn't it?"

For a place that appeared to have such a
small frontage on the street, the restaurant was deceptively huge
on the inside. Lively, but not too crowded, there were plenty of
tourists, but also a good contingent of locals, which Caitlyn had
always said was testament to a restaurant's quality in a city like
this.

Weaving through the tables behind his
fiancée, Leo felt so hugely nervous, as though he were just about
to take his driving test again.

"Oh, look!"

Leo felt another little stab of anxiety
pierce his heart as he looked over to where Caitlyn pointed, a
secluded corner where a dark-haired guy sat opposite a blonde at a
table laid out for four.

Marco - for presumably this was he - turned
and smiled broadly in their direction, obvious recognition and
warmth in his expression as he caught sight of Caitlyn. He was
perhaps a little shorter than Leo was expecting, around Caitlyn's
height, with closely-cropped dark curls and a kindly tanned face.
Not exactly a male model, though certainly charming
enough. 

Leo was slightly amused that his own fear and
paranoia had led him to believe Marco would turn out to be the face
of Calvin Klein underwear. 

"The beautiful Caitlyn!" the guy rose to
greet them, kissing Leo's fiancée on both cheeks like a long-lost
cousin. "And this must be Leo," he said, stepping forward to shake
Leo's hand.

"Marco, right? Great to meet you," Leo
reflected Marco's beaming grin, trying to return some of the man's
ebullient confidence as he shook his hand.

Actually, there was something strangely
reassuring about Marco. He was a little more athletic in frame than
Leo, the muscles on his golden arms emphasized by the extra-short
sleeves of his thin yellow t-shirt, but otherwise relatively
ordinary-looking. There was something curiously non-threatening
about him.

"Caitlyn has told us so much about you, Leo,"
the Spaniard said. His English was good, much better than Leo had
imagined during the previous night's role-play.

Caitlyn was kissing both cheeks of the blonde
now, but then Marco urged her forward to introduce her to Leo.

"Leo, Sofia. Sofia, Leo."

Sofia was quite something to behold. She was
petite as Caitlyn had described her, but he was more than a little
taken aback by her beauty. She was more classically good-looking
than any of them, with gently-tanned skin and piercing
blue eyes, accented by makeup. 

And all that immaculately-groomed golden hair
sweeping gracefully down to below the modest swell of her breasts,
that would make anyone want to run their fingers through it.

"Leo," she smiled warmly, reaching up on
tiptoes to kiss both his cheeks, touching him gently on the arms to
support herself, saturating his lungs with her exotic perfume as
she greeted him.

"Sofia, nice to meet you," he said, finding
himself amused at the fact that the French girl actually wore quite
a different scent to the one employed by his fiancée in her little
role-play session that morning. 

"Likewise," she said, squeezing her face into
an even broader smile.

They took their seats, with Caitlyn sitting
beside Marco, and Leo next to the divine Sofia. Leo fund himself
wondering whether his fiancée might not actually feel threatened by
this French beauty, she was so startlingly pretty.

Was Caitlyn really intending for him to be
with her, in the same way they intended her to be with Marco? It
seemed insane.

"Some wine!" Marco said to break the ice, and
began pouring a glass of red for Caitlyn.

"So you don't have a business meeting today,
Leo?" Sofia asked.

Leo chuckled, "No, not today thankfully."

"You Americans, you work too hard."

Marco joked, "It's the American dream, no?
Chasing after the white picket fences..."

The Spaniard reached over to pour Leo some
wine, but Leo held up a hand. "Oh - I'm driving," he said.

Marco grinned, "Just one, no? We're not in a
rush for you to go driving off anywhere."

How could he not accept - the guy was right,
they were on vacation. They weren't in a rush to do anything. The
casual, relaxed attitude that both Marco and Sofia exuded was just
the right spirit for it all, and it reminded Leo that he needed to
keep calm himself. 

"You had a nice evening after you left us,
Caitlyn?" Marco asked now, as Leo supped a suitably chilled
rosé.

Caitlyn looked across at Leo for a moment,
blushing a little as they both recalled to mind the events of the
previous night. 

"I think when we saw you last, you were a
little worried it was getting so late for you to be away from your
fiancé," Sofia said, endearingly as though trying to get Caitlyn
out of trouble with Leo for staying out so late.

Caitlyn smiled. "Leo's very forgiving. But I
think he was more interested in finding out about you guys, and
hearing about what happened than - "

Marco interrupted her, explaining to Leo:
"You don't feel bad - we got a little carried away there on the
beach..."

"Oh, no, no," Leo said. "I mean, it sounded
pretty wild, but you know, we're on vacation..."

"Leo and I talked all about it," Caitlyn
said, adding: "More than talked."

"You are a lucky man, Leo," Marco said. "Your
fiancée, she is very beautiful."

They ordered some lunch - a mouthwatering
slice of pizza for Leo, a plate of steak-frites for Marco and a
fresh salad with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil for Caitlyn, while
Sofia opted for a dish of artichokes and asparagus with some kind
of delicate white fish, marking out her credentials as the stylish
one amongst them.

Over a few glasses of the light, fruity rosé,
Leo found himself quickly warming to Marco and Sofia, and he could
see exactly why Caitlyn had pretty much forgotten about him during
her sojourn in Vieux Nice the previous evening.

Conversation was very easy, laughter quick to
come by, and the time simply flew by. Even a mid-afternoon switch
to water was no dampener for Leo.

But while he relaxed into it all, that
frisson of underlying nervous energy never quite left him, and he
sensed the same was true for Caitlyn, too. He didn't mind it
so much - actually finding it quietly thrilling, underpinning
everything, that they were doing something slightly
dangerous. 

There were moments during the afternoon when
he forgot about the whole situation they were putting themselves
in, but then a lull in conversation might bring back to mind the
idea that something quite strange was happening with this European
couple.

Leo would find himself looking at Caitlyn
sitting so close to Marco, her arm occasionally touching the
Spaniard's, and imagine what would happen if the guy suddenly
leaned over and kissed her, or if she dropped a hand in his lap, to
tease out his cock and coax it up to full hardness.

He even tried to picture the two of them in
full embrace, Marco's cock slipping inside Caitlyn's pussy, as if
to test his own reaction. 

Did it hurt? Was he really going to allow
it? 

It wasn't too much to cope with, however, and
if anything he felt it was a good way to work through the feelings
he was facing. 

Occasionally, as he looked over at his
fiancée, her eyes would latch onto his for a moment, and she'd
flush a gentle scarlet, making Leo suspect that she was also trying
to imagine certain scenarios. In those moments when their eyes met,
they were both able to silently check with each other, to see that
everything was still okay, while signaling their own
contentment.

Yet for almost the entire afternoon, on the
surface the four of them seemed to avoid any mention of what was
apparently on the table. Conversation remained strictly on other
subjects, as though mentioning anything of a risqué nature
would prove a faux pas at this table.

It kept things relaxed, as though this was
any normal lunch between four friends, and Leo supposed that was
the intention of Marco and Sofia, to keep things light and
non-serious, so they wouldn't scare off the American couple.

But what had Leo been thinking? That they'd
just give a quick check of the goods and that would be
it? 

This afternoon was more like a first date,
with the assured, experienced European couple taking things easily,
and the unversed American couple happy to take guidance from
them.

At times, though, it made Leo wonder if
either Caitlyn had made up the whole thing about challenging their
boundaries with these guys - or whether Marco and Sofia had quietly
decided over lunch that they didn't want to be with Leo and
Caitlyn. 

Perhaps Leo himself was not up to standards
for this confident Spaniard and his glamorous French
girlfriend.

As the evening rolled in, Leo was beginning
to wonder if he and Caitlyn had made the grade. He only had the
friendly body language of Marco and Sofia to go by until, at last,
the conversation started heading towards relationship issues.

"So Leo, you two are getting married soon?
Caitlyn's ring is very nice," Sofia was saying.

Leo smiled at his fiancée, who stretched out
her hand to show off her glittering diamond. He said: "Caitlyn's
already planning it all, but it's not likely to happen for another
six months or so."

"Very exciting. You're looking forward to
it?"

"Absolutely. I think once it happens, it'll
be a wonderful day." 

"I'm sure the bride will make sure of that,"
Marco said, raising a glass in silent toast to Caitlyn. Then he
asked Leo: "You think when you're married, things will be
different?"

 "I don't see why they should," he
replied. "It's still just us - we already live together, we do
everything together. Marriage is just telling everyone else this is
how it is for the rest of our lives - and having everyone else
recognize it."

"I guess being married is more like a
bureaucratic thing than anything these days," Caitlyn said, taking
a sip of wine. "In the States, you get tax benefits, and so on. But
it'd still just be us, as we always intended, doing what we're
doing."

Sofia laughed, "Marriage has changed for our
generation, has it not? No longer so necessary when you want to be
with someone long-term."

Caitlyn asked her: "How about you and Marco -
are you ever tempted to tie the knot?" 

Sofia smiled, "We're going to wait until
we're thirty," she said, as though it were very much decided.
"We're like you, I think. Not in a rush. I don't know if there's
much benefit for us to be married at the moment."

Marco said: "And, like you, we know we're
together... how do you say? Until death do us part?"

Sofia looked into Marco's eyes, and Leo could
see a tenderness between them. The two of them had been together
longer than even he and Caitlyn, which had seemed surprising to Leo
at first as they discussed how the two had met while Sofia had
attended university in Madrid. 

"You think you will be as happy to try new
things when you are married?" Marco asked, and it was the closest
Leo thought they had come to discussing the real subject at hand,
since they'd started their lunch.

"I'd hope so," Leo said, looking over to
Caitlyn, who was blushing a little again.