Eighty Days Blue (20 page)

Occasionally I felt a brush of cloth against my feet as he leaned against me, still fully clothed, and in the morning I would imagine how we might have looked to a curious neighbour or a fly on the wall. Some might say beautiful, others immoral; others still would call us ridiculous. A tired man in a crumpled suit and a naked girl on her knees and bound in front of him. I would bear the marks of his hand and his belt for the better part of the week, would have a sharp reminder of our last hour in bed together each time I sat down.

For now, though, I just let my mind swim into the sensation of his hand against my arse, the wetness seeping down my legs a vivid reminder of my body's response to this strange form of lovemaking that bound the two of us together as tightly as the rope round my ankles.

He paused for breath, resting his hands gently on my rear cheeks, and leaned forward, squeezing my hands to check that they weren't going cold, turning blue. I wiggled my fingers to confirm that I was OK, about the only movement that I was capable of at that moment, as the spanking had sent me into a trance.

He ran his hands over my body, caressing my legs, sliding his fingers inside me again, feeling no doubt the slickness of my lips, the lubrication that he had created; then he dropped to his knees and buried his face between my thighs, nibbling at my lips, fucking me with his tongue.

I heard the squeak of the drawer of his bedside table opening, a sound that during sex gave me the same thrill as the fizz of a can of cola opening on a hot day. It was a sure promise of something pleasant to come.

The lube was icy cold against the skin of my arsehole, though warmed quickly as he inserted first one finger and then another. Another man might have commented that I was tight there, but Dominik was ever silent, though his breath grew more and more ragged. I couldn't hear his heart beating, nor could I see the expression on his face, but I imagined that he was as lost in lust as I was, eyes closed and mouth smiling in satisfaction at the responses that he was eliciting from me.

He ran his cock up and down the cleft in my arse, the head of it soft and silky, slippery with lubricant, both of the chemical and the natural variety. He rested it against my arsehole and began to press, tentatively, then seemed to change his mind. He bent down hurriedly and untied my feet and ankles, his hard cock banging against my thighs as he did so.

The blood rushed back into my feet and hands, and I wriggled both, easing the inevitable pins and needles.

‘Are you OK?' he said, stroking my limbs, warming the parts of me that had threatened to go cold without the benefit of circulation.

‘Yes, please don't stop.'

There's something about anal sex. It's a sensation that I had experienced only a handful of times, but which always gave me the feeling of being owned, of giving myself to a man entirely.

Dominik returned his attentions to my opening. I held my breath as he pressed slowly, then harder, going deeper with every push, as I relaxed, opened myself up to him. I grasped the covers in handfuls as he pumped inside me. He had given up his silence now, and his pleasure was audible with each thrust.

He grasped a handful of my hair and pulled me up, using it like reins to help him push harder as his movements became steadily quicker and less controlled, accelerating to frantic levels until he came inside me, collapsing onto my back, his warm come filling me and dribbling down the inside of my leg.

He lay inside me until I felt his cock soften, his breath hot against my ear.

It was daylight in New York.

I began to shift, moving to get up, clean myself.

‘No. Stay,' he said. ‘I want you to feel me inside you like that.'

He curled up behind me, spooning, with his hand wrapped over my chest, holding my breast in his hand, until my alarm sounded, time for me to leave, as the limo booked
by
Susan would arrive at any moment to take me to the airport.

He was in the kitchen, making me a coffee when I woke to find bruises blooming over my body and the sheets smeared with shades of red, like blood.

The remains of my night-time lipstick, the colour that I used to make the transition into my evening person, had spread over the bedding, harsher than harsh in the day-time.

Midnight in Calgary, where the men all seem to wear cowboy hats. My hotel room here could have come straight from a catalogue of hotel rooms from the 1950s. Functional, grey, depressing in its colour scheme. The windows double-glazed so that not a sound from outside could make its way in. A pocket of emptiness and an empty girl standing at its centre.

Life without Dominik again.

The imagined marks of his hands across my body, like a road map of our relationship.

Just as I was leaving New York, on a mad impulse, I had packed the short length of rope into my case.

I tightened it round my neck as I wandered naked around the desert of the room.

I lowered my fingers to my midriff and beyond and touched myself, the image of Dominik imprinted on my mind, wishing for him to materialise by my side, take hold of the rope and just pull and tighten it until I came, or fainted, or died.

New Zealand, Australia, London, New York and now, of all places, Calgary. On the road again.

8

Infidelities

In theory, Dominik had been granted the fellowship so that he could research a possible project, a paper at least but maybe even a book on American expatriate writers and musicians in Paris in the immediate post-World War II years. It was a subject he found interesting and that offered extensive opportunities for genuine scholarship, as it had been pretty much neglected by other academics. However, the more he investigated the theme, the more he was losing interest in it.

He suspected he might find more research material about the subject in sources in the French capital than New York, and on a few occasions when his mood moved from indifferent to foul, during Summer's frequent absences in the course of her tour, he even contemplated flying out of Manhattan for a week to investigate this further in France.

A thought occurred to him, though, and he fished out the paperwork he had been given after the fellowship had been agreed and checked on the specific terms underlying it. He remembered from the ad in
Book Forum
that it was initially on offer not just for academics and researchers but also to novelists in need of financial assistance to complete an ongoing project. His fellowship had actually been one of a dozen, but he'd only come across the other recipients at the cocktail party that had greeted the beginning of their
residence
in New York. Two of them – a thin blond guy from Portland, Oregon, and a squat, short-haired, heavily accented Finnish woman – had actually been fiction writers.

Maybe he could turn all these ideas and facts into a novel. Not only would it be a great challenge, but also something money couldn't buy. He could invent a handful of new characters and have them mingling with all the real-life protagonists who had been in Paris during the golden years of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Existentialism: Miles Davis and the jazz crowd, Juliette Gréco, Boris Vian and Jean-Paul Sartre. Blend fiction and reality, and inject a dash of racy romance.

It could work, he reckoned. He had longed to write a novel for some time now, and had often fantasised about getting published.

This cheered him up no end. He'd been hoping Summer would call him that particular morning. She'd been in Maine, where she had played the previous evening, and often rang him early the following day after she had re-charged her batteries, to let him know how the gig had gone. He had stood by the phone like a teenage fool and she had never called. This was the second time this week this had happened. Following the concert in New Hampshire, she hadn't been in touch for a couple of days. Half of Dominik felt sad and neglected, while the other half dreamed of the punishments he might inflict on her, elements of humiliation they could both get off on. Somehow, though, it felt as if his imagination was drying up.

After returning to the loft from Summer's triumphant début at Webster Hall, he had cancelled his assignation with Miranda, pretexting an imaginary out-of-town
obligation
, somehow sensing the time was not right for an infidelity.

It's your fault, Summer, he thought to himself, as he checked out the business card on the back of which he had scribbled Miranda's number.

‘The elusive travelling man of letters, I see,' she said when he called her.

‘None other. Still want to meet up?'

‘Would love to,' Miranda replied.

He suggested they have early evening drinks at Balthazar on Spring Street, just a few blocks down the road from the loft. With Summer away so much, he'd grown into the habit of going there for a substantial daily breakfast, which then allowed him to avoid any further meals until dinner.

He'd barely had time to set the phone down on one of the granite tops of the kitchen unit where he usually left it when it rang. Summer, finally? Maybe, at a distance, she had sensed how unsettled he was and guessed he was planning to see someone else. Good or bad timing? he wondered.

‘Hello.'

‘Hello, stranger.'

Not Summer, but a familiar voice.

‘Hi, Lauralynn.'

‘I'm in town.'

‘Really. Just passing through or here for longer?'

‘It depends on quite a few things. Anyway, don't want to bore you with all that now. Would love to see you, exchange some juicy gossip, hear how you're getting on in the Big Apple. I've been reading about our Miss Summer – seems she's been making something of a splash, quite the little celebrity. I'm rather jealous and beginning to regret I
took
up the cello and not the violin when I was offered the choice at only eight years old, but at that ripe old age you just have no idea what is sexy and what isn't, do you?

Dominik smiled.

‘So, what do you say? I'm totally free tonight.'

‘I'm not.'

‘Summer keeping you on a tight leash, is she?'

‘Not at all. She's out of town, touring Canada. She was in Toronto somewhere yesterday, or maybe it's Quebec now – not sure. What about tomorrow instead?'

‘Can't. I'm auditioning for a three-month maternity-cover gig out in Connecticut. A chamber orchestra affiliated to Yale University. I'd be based in New Haven, but it's only an hour or so by train from the big city, I gather. One of the girls there is having a baby. Victor gave me the lead.'

‘Victor?'

‘Yes. He seems to know everything that's going on in our circles. Nice of him to tip me off. Haven't you two met up since you're both in New York?'

‘We haven't,' Dominik replied.

He was still uncertain what role Victor might have played when Summer was on her own in Manhattan. When he asked her if they had made contact, she had always proven evasive. Shifty even. He guessed something had happened, but part of him didn't wish to know exactly what. You can't rewrite the past, he knew.

‘Anyway, I'm taking the train from Grand Central to New Haven tomorrow afternoon and then will have three days of auditions and practice with the other guys. After which they will let me know if I'm good enough to join them. That's why I thought that maybe tonight . . .'

Dominik really felt like seeing Lauralynn. She had always intrigued and attracted him, even though he knew he was not her type and she preferred women. Her sense of fun was infectious. He reflected and then suggested, ‘Listen, I'd arranged to meet up with someone. Why don't you join us? We'll see how it goes. If we all hit it off, we can move on to dinner, make an evening of it. If it doesn't click, I'll know soon enough and you and I can go our own way. It's just a woman I met on a plane and thought was interesting.'

‘Oh, you naughty man,' Lauralynn chuckled on the other end of the phone line. ‘I like it. Don't tell me she's also a musician?'

‘She isn't. What makes you think I'm fixated on string players? I might also have a soft spot for the brass section, you know.'

‘Wicked, but I'd steer clear of percussionists if I were you. I'm told they're true cock-teasers,' Lauralynn said.

Arrangements were made. In order not to embarrass Miranda, they agreed that Lauralynn would walk into Balthazar a quarter of an hour after Dominik had planned to meet Miranda and pretend she came across them by pure accident. He knew she was enough of an actress to pull it off and make the reunion seem like a happy coincidence.

Miranda had excused herself and walked over to the wash-room. They were already on their third round of drinks.

‘She likes me,' Lauralynn said.

‘Does she?' Dominik queried.

‘I can tell. We gals have a special kind of radar,' she added.

‘Like guys' gaydar?' he asked.

‘Exactly,' Lauralynn whispered, leaning closer to Dominik over the glass-laden table. ‘She likes you too. Just observe the way she keeps on making contact with us when she's animated, brushing her fingers against your arm, my leg, sweeping her hair back. A terrible flirt, she is.'

‘A flirt is one thing,' Dominik said.

Miranda was sashaying her way back from the depths of the café, just a touch unsteady on high-heeled feet, a broad smile on her lips, her billowing white skirt contrasting with her black silk blouse, as she neared their table and squeezed herself on the banquette between Lauralynn and Dominik. Lauralynn wore her familiar cruising outfit of white T-shirt, jeans and black leather boots, and looked like anything but a demure cello player.

‘You two are so much fun,' Miranda said, her hands resting gently on the thighs of the two drinking companions on either side of her, almost grazing the thin material of Dominik's trousers, where his cock rested, in passing. He knew this was no accident.

Lauralynn was right. It wasn't just the alcohol speaking; it merely served as an additional encouragement.