Her One Obsession (5 page)

Overcome by her actions, fear of the unknown, her out-of-control behaviour, she hesitated and looked pleadingly into his eyes. That was the moment he took command of their lust and her life and Dendre relaxed into passivity. Each of them understood that rules had been set, roles delineated. She would love him as no other woman in this world could or would and he would love her for that.

‘You’ve never done this before, had oral sex?’ he asked not unkindly as he withdrew.

‘No,’ she answered, hardly above a whisper.

‘For a beginner you’re very good. That’s because you like cock and enjoy giving. I’m going to make you love it more and want me always. And I’m going to create an erotic world for us to dwell in, more exciting than anything you can imagine.’

‘Promise?’ was her only reply, and they both burst into gleeful
laughter. And Gideon loved her that little bit more because they could laugh together in their lust.

It was thrilling for him as he fed himself slowly into her mouth and down to the very back of her throat, feeling her take him over as he fucked and she instinctively used her tongue and sucked. He held back from coming and satisfying himself because he wanted her to share in that first exquisite orgasm they were to have together.

He swept her into his arms and they fell on to the bed. ‘Trust me, and I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world,’ he told her.

He unclipped the garter belt and tossed it across the room. Then, going between her now spread legs, he raised her off the bed and looked hungrily at her cunt. He caressed it, spread open her labia and licked the soft pink flesh beneath while fingering her clitoris and teasing the opening to her most secret soul.

Dendre had to bite into the flesh on the back of her hand to keep herself from screaming, so intense was her pleasure. She burned hot as a flame for her lover. She clawed at his shoulders and felt herself contracting her cunt, wriggling her pelvis. She was more alive than she had ever been in her life. All thought vanished from her mind. She wanted more, much more, to reach greater heights of passion that she now knew she had. At a glance he saw her caress her breasts, pinch her nipples, tear at her own flesh. It was thrilling for him to see how she burned for him.

Gideon liked loving her, enjoyed bringing her out of repressed lust and into the open. It excited him to set her free to enjoy her sexuality. In full command of her now, he slipped on top of Dendre while flagrantly continuing pleasuring her in cunnilingus. They assumed a position that gave them both intense oral bliss, where Dendre could caress his muscular bottom and back. They discovered an intimacy where all thought, all the world outside sex, was left behind as they soared to heights of erotic bliss.

Several hours later she lay in her lover’s arms, ashamed for having given herself so easily to Gideon, worried what he might think of her, embarrassed by the amount of sexual pleasure she’d derived from sex with a man she had only known for an hour. She felt anxious because he had changed her from the person she had been into a woman who was a stranger to her.

As for Gideon: he had never bargained on her being a virgin. He neither liked deflowering a woman nor having sex with one who knew nothing about erotic feelings or how to satisfy a man. But Dendre had turned out to be an exception to this. What she lacked in experience, she made up for in her appreciation of sexuality. Her skittishness about it, the fear and surprise that shone from time to time in her eyes, her sincerity, caused him to understand he was the first man she had ever been with and somehow he loved her more for that and was tender and loving when he penetrated her. He had caused her that most exquisite, frightening, yet thrilling moment of pain most virgins experience but had followed it with hours of pleasure that only great fucking can give.

Gideon had dozed off several times during their afternoon of love making. Now awake, he turned on his side to face her. She had draped a sheet over her and was lying quite still, looking vacantly up at the ceiling. There seemed no anxiety but maybe a tinge of remorse for something of herself lost forever. He kissed her on the cheek and stroked her hair and she turned her head so she could look at him.

‘You’re very quiet,’ he told her.

‘I don’t know quite what to say. I think I’m overwhelmed by you, what we have been together. I’m in awe of that.’

‘I know. Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked as he toyed with her hair and slowly removed the sheet from her body. She made an attempt to cover herself with it again but it was useless. He slid it slowly, teasingly, off her.

‘You mean the fucking, not
that
. You’re a big girl now, Dendre Moscowitz. You can say fuck. And, by the way, you were very good at it. Delicious, in fact,’ he told her.

‘I never knew I was capable of enjoying such sexual decadence,’ she told him, a slight smile on her lips.

Gideon began to laugh. ‘That’s better! But, darling Dendre, going down on a man or a man going down on a woman, sodomy, your riding my cock, my fucking you into oblivion, you running with the sweet nectar of orgasm, both yours and mine, is hardly decadence, just sex. Decadence, depravity, debauchery … not for our first erotic encounter. We’ll have a lifetime together to share those passions.’

Dendre’s heart fluttered at his words ‘a lifetime together’. He
loved her, meant to marry her! She flung herself against him and kissed him all over his face. Her eyes filled with tears of happiness. He eased her away from him and arranged her body in a sensationally wanton position. Her hair looked wild and sexy on the pillow. He positioned the angle of her head then draped the blood-stained sheet so that it lay just barely under her bottom and protruded seductively between her provocatively open legs, draped over one thigh, the corner of it culminating in her hand. He suggested she think of him fucking her, of her coming, and that she should use her imagination to bring herself to orgasm so that she might experience that delicious moment of bliss while he painted her.

‘I think you are magnificent and we should capture you on canvas, for us and for posterity. Men and women alike will adore looking at you, be thrilled by where you are, who you are, in my portraits. They will yearn for the erotic promise blooming before them.’ With that he ran naked through the studio to collect a huge sheet of paper and sticks of charcoal.

‘Gideon, promise me no one will see these drawings?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! One day people will line up in museums to see the drawings, the paintings, the water-colours, I will do of you. They will pay millions of dollars to possess you in oils, as I have had you in the flesh.’

‘Maybe one day, but for now it’s important to me that what’s happened between us remains personal, for our eyes only. It’s too intimate. I would die of shame if anyone but you and me saw them.’

Dendre had brought Gideon immense pleasure from when he’d first spotted her sitting alone on the park bench. He felt differently about her than he did most women he bedded. It was the purity of the love she felt for him. He had never experienced love and generosity, sacrifice of self for him and him alone. Once tasted it become an aphrodisiac for him. He wanted more, her kind of love, just for him, and all the time. She nourished all his senses. She would be a joy to mould into a muse, furnish his erotic fantasies and life as a painter. And he would raise her up always that little bit more, for herself. She would love him until death. He was as sure of that as he was that the sun would rise again the next day.

Looking wanton, as erotic and depraved as any woman in love
who wants to please her man, Gideon was aware of the sacrifice Dendre was making but he was not a man who appreciated martyrdom.

He sat down next to her and caressed her breasts, kissed her sweetly on the mouth. Not angrily, in fact quite tenderly, he told her, ‘I could never promise you that. I’m an artist, I don’t paint for my work not to be seen. That’s an unreasonable demand. Either you want to pose for me or you don’t. If we are to stay together, you have to give me everything from the heart, with no strings attached, or don’t give it at all. That’s how I’ll love you, what I’ll expect from you. If the time comes that you can’t do that, fair enough. We’ll go our separate ways. My work is my life, everything else comes after that. You have to think about that, whether or not you can live for my work, for me.

‘In defence of myself and how I want to live, I can promise you only one thing. One day the rewards will be immense, and if we are still together then we’ll have lived our lives to the fullest, have the world at our feet.’

Chapter 5

Gideon and Dendre were walking arm in arm towards the entrance of the nearest subway station. Occasionally he would stop to take her in his arms and kiss her lovingly. Like a bolt of lightning they had been struck by unexpected love and were, in their own individual ways, quite dazed by what had happened to them.

‘When will I see you again?’ he asked as he toyed with the narrow lapels of her coat.

‘I keep imagining I’ll wake up and today, you, what we have had together, will all have been a dream. See you again? I don’t even want to leave you,’ she told him.

‘Then don’t,’ he answered.

‘If only you meant that,’ she replied, and bit her bottom lip nervously.

‘I never say anything I don’t mean, Dendre.’

‘I should have been home two hours ago, my mother will be frantic. I have to go. I don’t think you understand – this is the most important and thrilling afternoon of my life. I’ve fallen in love with you, Gideon, and I need to come to terms with that. I’m a simple Jewish girl from Brooklyn who in her whole life has never expected or wanted to be anything other than that. And then you come along and turn my head and my heart around.’

‘Stay the night with me.’

‘I can’t. What would I tell my mother?’

‘I can’t believe you said that! You tell her everything, like some pathetic teenager? Mamma approval, Dada love. There has to be a beloved elder brother too. You live and think like a bourgeois, my dear, but you fuck and love the erotic like a libertine. Straddle both lives and you’ll have the best of everything. That’s what I want for you, to be happy.’

What was he telling her? There was sarcasm in his voice but
no disdain. There was too a hint of indifference as to whether she did stay the night with him and that frightened her. What if she lost him! The thought was unbearable. Tears came to her eyes.

‘Tomorrow. I’ll come to you after classes tomorrow.’

‘Why not tonight?’ he insisted.

‘I’ve never spent the night with a man. Try and understand, I have a family to answer to. We’re close-knit, everything to each other, and I simply can’t run away from that. I need some time to ease myself away from them, but I don’t want to make a mistake and lose you.’

They were standing at the entrance to the subway, Dendre looking wretched with anguish. He felt pity for her lack of courage, certainly not anger. It surprised him that he respected her because she wanted to do what was right for all concerned. He knew that if this was the stand she would take about her family obligations then she would take no less a one for him. Instinctively he knew she was the woman for him to marry, with whom to build a life and career. She was a solid foundation on which to place his ladder. With Dendre Moscowitz as his bedrock he could climb, rung by rung, through the art world to the top where he expected to reign supreme.

‘You won’t lose me. Tomorrow then, whenever it suits you,’ he told her with a smile.

‘You’re not angry?’ she asked

‘I’m never angry. If I don’t like what’s around me, I simply leave. Stop worrying, stop fidgeting. It’s never attractive. This has been a great day. Now I’m going back to the studio to work and you’re going home.’

They kissed and Gideon watched her descend the stairs and be swallowed up by the stream of people making their way uptown for the evening. She took only a few steps before she turned for one last look at him but he was already gone.

There were crowds of people waiting on the platform and Dendre distracted herself trying to work out where they had all come from since she hardly remembered seeing a soul on the way from Gideon’s to the subway station. That dead silence that happens at stations was suddenly broken by a loud swish of wind coming through the tunnel followed by the bright light from a train, the rattle of metal on the tracks. The train screeched to a halt, and
with a hissing sound and the sliding back of the doors, the train had arrived. Walking through the near-empty car, Dendre took a seat between a black man dozing and a turbanned Indian reading a paperback book:
Business Success in 80 Days
.

She swayed to the rhythm of the wobbling carriage as it sped under the city’s streets. For several minutes Dendre was mesmerised by the sight of people standing rigid, as if suspended from the leather straps and looped handles they used for support against the rock and roll of the underground train as it barrelled at high speed through the tunnel. Some read newspapers under the bright lights, others stared into space. She was used to riding the subway, changing from one train to another several times during the long ride back to Brooklyn. Here was familiar territory she could relate to. This was her world, the place where she felt secure. Where she had been with Gideon was foreign territory, but once experienced she knew she would rather die than leave it. She felt that no sacrifice would be too great to make for being loved by Gideon. She felt suddenly ecstatic, understood now what he meant when he told her he wanted her to be happy and that would mean her straddling two worlds, his and hers. He was right of course, and that was exactly what she intended to do. How clever he is, she told herself, and leaned back and closed her eyes. It was all set. She knew where she was going. They would be together all the days of their lives.

Dendre had changed trains for the last time. Once settled, she tried to relive her day with Gideon but couldn’t conjure it up. All that came were thoughts of her mother, father, brother. Gideon had of course been right about that too; there was an elder brother, Orlando, who adored her. Of course she could never tell them about Gideon, about losing her virginity and loving every minute of it. She would have to squirrel her happiness away and take it from its hiding place only when she was alone in her room, until slowly and carefully she was able to introduce Gideon to the family.

The Moscowitz house was not stylish: small, cream-painted, square in shape with a porch large enough to hold a wooden slatted swing hanging on chains, black shutters and window boxes with dead plants in them. It was flanked, more or less, by carbon copies
the whole length of both sides of the street. There was, however, a large tree in the overgrown yard at the back and a small patch of lawn with more bald patches than grass in the front. No, the Moscowitzes were certainly not stylish.

It was dark out and the porch light was on. Dendre put the key in the lock and pushed the door open. She was greeted by the delicious scent of her mother’s cooking: sweet and sour stuffed cabbage, roast beef, potato dumplings. The aroma and atmosphere of comfort and love blocked thoughts of Gideon and her lecherous afternoon from her mind.

It was only when the family didn’t rush forward in a panic to greet her that Dendre realised this was one of the three nights she usually spent studying art in Manhattan at Cooper Union. Instead her father greeted her with a kiss and took her coat. Dendre loved him as did most people who knew him. He and Orlando, her brother, were the men in her life, the only ones she had ever truly cared about. Now that she had met Gideon she had someone to measure them against. And compared to the vital, handsome, inspiring man she had fallen in love with, her father looked old, tired and worn out. That wrenched her heart. She flung her arms around his neck, gave him a hug and clung to him for several seconds.

Possibly for the first time Dendre saw him as he really was, without that thing daughters have of making their fathers their hero, the white knight always ready to ride up and save them. Hershel Moscowitz was a master furrier, a meek man without dreams, happy with his lot in life. He was a man dedicated to peace at any price, happy in the security of his religion and otherwise unambitious life. Dendre’s mother, Frieda, quietly dominated the household. Both her parents were book lovers, readers and voyeurs, rather than doers. Of the two it was Frieda who lived vicariously through novels, hence her children’s names, Dendre and Orlando, found in two blockbusters consumed on the annual week’s summer holiday in the Catskill Mountains, Upper State New York.

Dendre’s mind was reeling as she stepped away from her father. ‘How was school today?’ he asked. ‘And the art class, Baby? You had a good day, I hope?’

Fortunately, Dendre was left with no time to answer because her mother arrived, saying, ‘Schel, every night she comes home, you ask her the same questions. How interesting a day can Dendre
have at New York University studying bookkeeping? Bookkeeping is bookkeeping.’ It was not said unkindly, more matter-of-factly, and Frieda, who clearly adored her husband, stroked his cheek and smiled as she spoke.

‘You’re right, of course,’ he answered meekly.

‘Supper in twenty minutes, you two,’ announced Frieda, and placing her arm around Dendre’s shoulders walked with her daughter to the foot of the stairs, giving her a hug before turning away to return to the kitchen.

Dendre started up the stairs, stopped and sat down in the middle. This house and her parents’ love and respect for her wrapped themselves round her like the softest cashmere blanket. Dendre hugged herself. Her mother and father gave each other every support. Were she and Gideon capable of such love and devotion? Were they as capable of making enormous sacrifices for their children as Frieda and Herschel had made for theirs? All the family and her parents’ friends admired the Moscowitzes because of the life they lived: simple, stress-free, loving. Dendre realised that she had never heard a cross word in this house. Hard times (and there had been many), better times, they never complained, merely lived them out the best they could.

The family – aunts, uncles, cousins – all much better off, financially and socially, claimed that it was Frieda’s love for her husband, her devotion to his and their children’s needs, her selfish selflessness, that had kept the family as
she
wanted it. A pointless criticism since they had no proof that her husband and children were anything but happy and well adjusted for it.

A wave of anxiety swept over Dendre. She and her family lived in the bosom of middle-class morality. Theirs was a staid and boring life and they were content with it. Even now Dendre enjoyed being who and what she was, felt pride in her roots, though Gideon had seduced her away from them and showed her another way to live and love; above all to have a dream and follow it. She felt there was no turning back to her loving parents whose influence had kept her in the heart of the Jewish community which until now had always been the foundation of her life. To do that would be to give up Gideon and that was an impossibility. She wanted him to love her always as he had done that afternoon, again and again, forever. His passion had burned her
deep, marked her as his for life. She was his as she could never be another man’s.

She heard her mother humming in the kitchen and understood that she was indeed Frieda’s daughter; she could love Gideon on a grand scale as her mother loved her father. As for Gideon, there was nothing of her father in him. Gideon would love her the best way he could and that would have to be enough for her. Dendre made a pact with herself that she would abide by this. That seemed to galvanise her. She sprang up from the stairs, taking the remainder two at a time, and went not to her room but to knock on Orlando’s door and walk straight in.

Her brother looked up from the book he was reading. How handsome, bright, sweet and kind he looked to Dendre. She went to sit on the bed next to him. Orlando was the pride of the family, being in his last year at Harvard medical school.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi, yourself,’ he answered, a broad smile crossing his face.

Dendre noted that her brother always had a smile for her. He adored her. Being five years older than Dendre, he had felt protective of her ever since she was a baby. It was he who as a child had called her ‘Baby’ until it stuck and became her nickname. Dendre admired her brother. He was at Harvard on scholarships and worked two jobs as well to keep himself there. Herschel Moscowitz simply did not have the money to send a son through Harvard.

Now, having experienced sex and the thrill of orgasm for the first time, Dendre could understand why women ran after her brother. He had a sexuality about him that, combined with his self-assurance and good looks, was very exciting. How odd, she thought, suddenly to think of Orlando in a sexual context. She sensed that he would understand her passion for Gideon, and strangely would not be shocked by her choice.

‘When do you have to be back at school, Orlando?’ she asked.

‘Day after tomorrow.’

‘I’ve met someone. The man I’m going to marry. I think you’ll like him.’

‘Baby!’

‘I want to tell you about him – us. I want you to meet him. We’ll come and see you off at Grand Central.’

‘Do Mom and Dad know about this?’

‘No, and they mustn’t, not for a while yet. They have to get to know him first.’

‘He’s not Jewish?’

‘No, I don’t know what he is.’

‘Marry out of the faith and it’ll kill Dad, shock the family. Maybe you’d better tell me all about this great love? From the beginning.’

And so Dendre did tell her brother everything about her meeting with Gideon and falling in love with him. Though she admitted that she had gone to bed with him, she was careful to skirt around the details, feeling some embarrassment over discussing sex with her brother. The more Orlando heard, the more upset he was. He rose from the bed and walked around the room. His heart nearly broke for her when she told him that she loved Gideon beyond reason, beyond life itself. He went to her when she started sobbing.

‘Why are you crying, Baby?’ asked Orlando as he sat her down and placed his arm round her shoulders. She leaned against him.

‘Not from grief or despair but because I had no idea what it was to love as I do now. I’ve never felt as good as this in my whole life.’

‘Baby, are you sure this isn’t just sexual infatuation? Every woman falls in love with the first man they have sex with, and most especially if that first experience is a good one. By all accounts yours was and I like the guy already for that. A new world has opened up for you. You’re a woman now, not a baby. We’ll have to treat you accordingly, maybe even stop calling you Baby.’