Going Too Far (12 page)

This point was proved when I got back to the guesthouse later that day, having spent the afternoon at the thermal spring swimming pool with two American girls I’d met in the courtyard, to find Carlos sitting outside my door.

‘
H
ow on earth did you know I’d be here?’

I sipped my Tequila Healer. We were in San Pedro’s ritziest cocktail bar, by which I don’t mean anything resembling the Met Bar. It was a bit early for strong liquor but I needed some alcohol in my system to get over the shock of being tracked down when on an impulsive, where-shall-I-go-tomorrow type of trip. Not to mention to calm the seismic shifts my sex muscles were undergoing at the sight of the dark, delectable Carlos in jeans and T-shirt, the fluorescent whiteness of the latter being the only thing distinguishing him from your bog standard traveller. I’d forgotten how seductive that wide, thin-lipped smile was, with just a hint of tongue and tooth showing.

‘You told me where you were planning to go, remember? It’s not hard to work out how long you’re likely to spend in each place. I bet there are people here you’ve met before.’

He had me there.

‘So how did you know which guesthouse I’d be in?’ I demanded suspiciously.

He shrugged. ‘Deduction. Not rock-bottom cheap, but fairly basic, pleasant, courtyard ideal for a girl travelling on her own. Anyway it wouldn’t have taken all day to go round every guesthouse in the town to find you.’

I sat back and shook my head. ‘But you didn’t know I was still on my own. What if I’d picked up some guy and was sharing with him?’ Or a girl, I thought, but I decided to tell him about Gabi another time, probably when we both had most of our clothes off.

His look was opaque and for a second I wondered if he knew about Red, then realised there was no way . . . unless he’d seen me with him at Macchu Picchu.

‘Of course, we almost met up before, but you got in your car and away without seeing me,’ I teased.

‘What are you talking about?’ He stared at me, completely taken aback.

‘At Macchu Picchu,’ I said smugly. ‘I saw you come out of the hotel with some other men in suits and get into a fancy car and drive off.’

He shook his head, smiling. ‘Not me, Bliss. I haven’t been there for . . . oh, months, when I first came down here.’

I didn’t know what to say. Without doubt it had been him. Sure, he could have a double: dark handsome Latin types can be interchangeable, but a double with the same suit, even the same shirt?

‘Carlos, are you sure?’

He laughed loudly and took my hand. ‘Unless someone hit me over the head and I had a bout of temporary amnesia before being returned to normal, I am absolutely sure. Work’s been taking up all my time. This is the first time I’ve left Lima, and I shouldn’t really be here, but I’ve been working twenty-four seven and seeing you was a good excuse for a couple of days off.’

Puzzled? What do you think? It was him all right, so why was he denying it? But as stubborn as I can be, there was no point sitting there all night pantomiming, oh yes you were, oh no I wasn’t, so I dropped the subject and told him about my adventures though, as I’d decided, saving the Gabi detail for a later, private moment.

After dinner we wandered back to the guesthouse hand in hand and I was starting to wonder what restraints Carlos might have brought for me when he confessed he was going to exercise the ultimate restraint and go straight to his own room.

‘I’m sorry, Bliss. After such a hard few weeks and the journey down here I’m completely done in. I don’t want to disappoint you by giving you less than one hundred per cent. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, I promise.’

He pressed his lips to mine and then went into his room, leaving me feeling like I was in a reverse fairy tale where the handsome prince had vanished after a kiss. Sue and Donna, the Americans, were sitting with a group of Israeli guys in the courtyard and I joined them briefly but I couldn’t get interested in the conversation. Feeling vaguely depressed I too went to bed.

Red and Robbie hadn’t turned up; Gabi had gone south and Carlos had appeared almost miraculously only to disappear again. I almost wished I’d offered to buy Gabi’s vibrator, but as I was on a promise from Carlos for the next day another night of abstinence would get me nicely ready for an explosive reunion – unless he had any more surprises up his sleeve.

There was no reply from his room when I banged on the door the next morning. Either Carlos was still in a really deep sleep or he’d got up early and gone out. Feeling more than a bit pissed off I went round the corner with Sue and Donna for an extravagant egg breakfast. We got back to the guesthouse having decided to rent bikes for the morning and explore – sod Carlos – only to find him sitting outside talking to Simon and Garfunkel.

‘Oh, hi,’ I said casually. ‘Can’t stop, we’re off to rent bikes for the morning.’

‘Great,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Sorry I didn’t get up when you knocked earlier. I was in such a deep sleep it took me ages to get my head together, and by the time I opened the door you’d gone.’

‘How do you know it was me?’ I challenged grumpily, wishing I hadn’t made the bike arrangement.

He just laughed and put his arm round me. ‘I’ve been talking to the tour guide. We can get on the trip to the Valle de la Luna this afternoon to see the sunset over the sands. How about it?’

‘OK,’ I said grudgingly. ‘Sue and Donna are booked on to that trip as well.’

‘Yeah, we’re going too; it’s supposed to be fantastic,’ enthused Garfunkel, or should I say Marc.

‘So, you go on your bike ride while I book the tour and get some breakfast,’ said Carlos, kissing the tip of my nose.

I felt slightly aggrieved, as though he was calling all the shots, but then he had said he’d been tired so I could hardly blame him for sleeping in. It still seemed bizarre that he’d come all the way from Lima to spend some time with me and we had spent the previous night apart and now were going to have separate mornings too but, hey, I hadn’t even expected to see him for a couple of weeks so I couldn’t complain.

By the time we met up for a quick lunch I was in a better mood. We’d had a few laughs on the bike ride, even though the ancient ruins we’d planned to visit had somehow eluded us, but we weren’t too worried.

The coach trip to the desert was a blast. Marc and Christian took their guitar and turned out to know some other songs, mainly old Dylan stuff, which again thanks to Mum I knew better than most people, and the guide was happy to cut the commentary to the minimum so we could sing along. It was enjoyably naff, though I wasn’t sure exactly what Carlos made of it; I think he was relieved when we got off the bus to tour the old mine workings.

The guide led us through one of the abandoned shafts. He distributed a couple of torches around but unless you were the one holding the torch it was a case of feeling your way along. At first we were able to stand up but soon got to a point where the guide told us we had to go on all fours. There was a delay as people got themselves crouched down to go through the narrow tunnel. Carlos, who was behind me, put his hand on my arse. I was only wearing thin cotton drawstrings and wriggled against him, enjoying the thrill of such intimate contact in a crowd who knew nothing about it.

He moved his hands round to the front and pulled me back against him. He was as hard as I could want and I rubbed against him as his fingers made their way purposefully down to my clit. Suddenly they moved to my tits and started squeezing and mashing . . . until I realised they weren’t the same hands. Carlos’s hands – or so I assumed, though I started to wonder exactly whose hands were whose – were now snaking down inside the loose waist of my trousers and inside my knickers.

Was I going to shout for help? Like hell. Two people were fingering me and, frankly, I wasn’t that fussed who they were. We had been in a fairly close group as we went into the tunnel, me and Carlos, Sue and Donna, Marc and Christian. I was happy to get some finger action from any one of them, especially in the weird darkness of the mine. I even started to wonder if the whole thing was a set-up. After all, someone must have been taking forever to get through the tunnel. As the hands on my tits started teasing and squeezing my nipples, which had quickly hardened, the hands down my knickers started to scoop up my wetness on to my clitoris. Just as I wondered if I could come without knowing who’d made me the person in front turned and got down on all fours to get through the tunnel and I got ready to follow.

Once through we found ourselves in a chamber where the torches cast a dim light and I looked at the people either side of me. Christian was on my left and Donna was on my right. I could have sworn the person behind me, who I thought was Carlos, had come out of the tunnel and moved to my right. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know that Donna was definitely not the one pressing a cock into my arse so I could draw no conclusions, which merely served to increase my excitement.

The guide moved off with the torch and gradually the other torchlight also started to disappear. I too moved towards the vanishing light only to bump straight into somebody who turned and kissed me hard on the mouth.

That was a man. But was it Carlos? His tongue was insistent and I responded but, even more eerily than before, there was no other contact; my body pressed forward but on to nothing. Abruptly he turned away from me and walked after the others. Following, once again I felt a hand grab my buttocks.

By the time we got out of the tunnel I was dizzy with excitement and desperate for some release. I searched the faces of my friends but no one gave anything away. Yet someone had touched me who wasn’t Carlos. Someone who wasn’t Carlos may have kissed me. But I hadn’t cried out or complained, and couldn’t ask all four of them which one had groped me in the dark. If it had been a set-up by Marc and Christian, Carlos would hardly have been over the moon himself. I kept quiet.

We arrived at the valley, where great sculpted hills of sand rose up from the desert floor. Wrapping up as instructed we climbed to the top of a massive sand dune and sat waiting for the sun to set on the desert. It cast a red glow over the landscape and everyone used up too much film, especially me. The best bit, though, was running and rolling down the dune like five-year-olds. I found myself lying at the bottom in helpless laughter watching Carlos trying to ski down the slope using feet only and slipping and getting sand all over his cashmere sweater.

We were all subdued on the way back. Maybe because it was getting dark; maybe because it had been so beautiful, or maybe because we had exhausted ourselves by running down the sand or even just by trying to keep warm.

Back at the guesthouse Carlos held my hand and took me along to the end of the courtyard where his room was. As soon as he closed the door I burst out, ‘Who was it?’

He raised one eyebrow elegantly. ‘Who was what?’

‘You know. Groping me. Kissing me.’

He shook his head, an amused look on his face. ‘Not me. Tell me what happened.’

It was impossible to believe that he hadn’t been one of the perpetrators, or that he hadn’t organised the other one, but I told him. At each stage of my story he moved his hands.

‘Like that? Like that?’

‘Yes,’ I murmured, as his hand slipped down my trousers and into my knickers.

‘Exactly like that?’ he demanded. ‘Someone else’s hand felt exactly like mine?’ He teased my clit with a feathery, barely-there touch.

‘Yes – no, it wasn’t the same – I don’t know.’

‘It excited you, though. Whoever it was.’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t care who it was.’

‘No.’

‘You preferred not knowing who it was.’

‘Yes.’

He laughed softly as he pulled my trousers and knickers down to my thighs. I obligingly helped him by taking my shoes and socks off, then my sweater and vest.

‘I’ve got sand in some odd places,’ I breathed, hoping he’d get it out for me, but he was busy getting something out of his holdall. I had wondered if he’d brought any of his gear with him and I wasn’t disappointed.

I thought it was a blindfold and when he moved it to my face felt a fraction cheated. It was good last time, but if he was going to dress me up at all I wanted to see it. But suddenly the black fabric was in my mouth, not over my eyes. I opened my mouth to protest but it was a proper gag, not just an improvisation with a piece of cloth. Not only did it cover my lips tightly, but there was something hard wedged between my teeth.

‘I hope you don’t mind, Bliss,’ he said silkily. ‘These rooms aren’t soundproof, as I found out last night.’

It briefly flashed through my mind that he’d had someone else tied up in here last night and the neighbours had complained, but I dismissed it. Anyway I wasn’t going to feel jealous if he had; I’d just like to know the details.

The black garment in his hand wasn’t the corset. Instead he pulled round my waist what seemed to be an extraordinarily wide black leather belt, which came right up to my breasts. Turning me round he pulled both ends of the belt and fastened it together, with Velcro I guessed. I was turned once more and he arranged my tits over the black below them. I wondered if that was all I was getting to wear when the familiar black collar came out of his holdall, together with handcuffs. Two pairs.

First he cuffed my wrists behind my back and then got me to kneel on one of the beds with my back to the wall, knees wide. The other pair of cuffs then closed over my ankles, and then my head was jerked back. He was fastening the collar to the ankle cuffs. I was almost looking at the ceiling.

‘I think it’s unlikely you’ll want to close your legs, Bliss,’ he said drily. ‘But just in case you do . . .’

He didn’t need to say any more as he fastened a black leather tie around my leg just above one knee, then the other. Each one was yanked back, pulling my thighs even further apart, and secured, not to the cuffs, but to the wall. I couldn’t see to what but deduced he must have pressed some sort of ring into the soft wood earlier.