I Was Waiting For You (10 page)

The joint was delicately taken from her fingers.

Did she actually sleep or was she just daydreaming?

An instant later or maybe it was already hours beyond the stroke of midnight, Giulia opened her eyes. There was a chant swirling across the campfire, drunken or stoned voices singing an old barely recognisable sixties song in unison. Marta was dancing, her wild hair flying, obscuring the crescent of tonight's moon; another couple, right by Giulia's side, were embracing, limbs entwined, murmuring sweet nothings or could it be gentle obscenities into each other's ears. Giulia looked around, here was a tangle of legs to her left, all moving tentatively as if their dance had slowed down and was unfolding in deliberate slow motion. As she moved her head, a powerful wave of dizziness engulfed her. With difficulty, as if fighting against a river's current, Giulia peered up at all the legs, the unsynchronised ballet gesticulating in front of her eyes.

Overcome by sudden nausea, all she could register was the four or five cocks dangling just inches away from her face, as the men continued their unstable movements in a parody of dancing. Her eyes focused on the varied penises. Dark, pink, long, thick, cut and uncut, floating in the shadow of the thin slice of moon, illuminated by the sparks from the camp fire.

She tried to raise herself but she was still too disorientated and she stumbled. To regain equilibrium, she had to grab hold of one of the dancing men's legs. It was the guy with the buzz cut. She was so close to his crotch that she could even smell a trace of urine rising from his semi-hard cock. He was circumcised. Memories came flooding back like an uncontrollable torrent. Giulia's throat tightened.

A hand settled on her head, guiding her even closer to the rising cock of the man.

“Good girl,” someone said.

The penis made contact with her parched lips.

The other men in the circle all moved closer.

She remembered the large sunflower sewn to her old tote bag in Barcelona. She smiled as if she compared herself to the flower, she was now its apex, its centre, and every cock surrounding her was a petal.

She half-opened her lips and allowed the man's penis to enter her mouth. Closed her eyes. The group began to clap as she started sucking the thick meaty trunk.

The first man came quickly, but as he retreated from her taking a few steps back nearer to the campfire, another cock was presented. She swallowed and opened her mouth wide open. This was unreal, she thought, her stomach tingling, knowing all eyes were on her, as if she was putting on a show for everyone there on that endless beach.

She serviced them all. One by one. By the end she felt hollow and the effect of the pot had begun to fade, and her mind was now in turmoil at what she had just done so willingly. No one had even attempted to force her. Although mentally disembodied, she had somehow called them to her, to her mouth, her warmth, like some crazy form of primeval earth mother. And they had answered her call and the circle of men had naturally converged towards her.

It occurred to her that every man had tasted sort of different.

But tiredness now got the better of her, and Giulia slumped to the ground pulling her scattered clothing around her and quickly fell asleep.

At dawn, she awoke. Stieg and Marta were no longer there, but many others, some strangers, others whose faces she recognised still from yesterday, were curled around the embers of the fire. It was like a topsy-turvy landscape of bodies after a battle.

Her head was now quite clear although she had the beginnings of a migraine. She rose, throwing the remnants of her improvised clothing aside, and headed towards the sea to cleanse herself. Naked in some twisted form of paradise, she reckoned.

O
NE OF THE MEN
lived in Germany, so Cornelia concentrated on the two others for now. She was aware that the trail was unlikely to lead her to Giulia. The Italian girl had probably disappeared altogether, fled back to Italy, reintegrating a world of deceptive normality, and was unlikely to ever be a threat to anyone again. Good for her. But Cornelia had now been forced to intervene twice in this sorry affair and felt she had no choice but to retrace her way up through this network she'd uncovered. Maybe it was a sense of duty, being professional to the end, that now motivated her.

She hoped that,if she could ascertain why the kill had initially been sanctioned, she would be able to assess the danger and take the necessary action.

Getting to meet Enrico Santaclara proved relatively easy. A brief period of surveillance outside his suburban villa in the Neuilly area soon pinpointed his routines and he, like most men, was ready to be deceived by a woman's good looks and sexual candour, and within a week she had inveigled herself into his life and his bed.

He lived alone behind the high gates of the expensive, sprawling property with its wild, untended gardens, in a large, sparsely furnished house of polished, wooden floors and echoing rooms. Untouched art books littered the coffee tables and expensive prints and erotic lithographs adorned the white walls, turning the labyrinth of interconnected rooms into a private museum open only by personal invitation. The kitchen was all shiny copper pans and dark, imposing black ovens and a massive ebony-coloured fridge freezer which could feed a regiment for weeks in the event of a nuclear war, but in Cornelia's presence Santaclara would only use the microwave. Or maybe she hadn't yet graduated to the point where he would condescend to cook for her or allow her the liberty of the kitchen. It all somehow reminded her of a stage set, every single detail perfect but awaiting the spark of life to take on the necessary added dimension that would make it resonate. In fact, there was also something theatrical about Enrico Santaclara.

The man was silver-haired, tall and lean, his voice clipped but suave and his Italian accent melodic, whether he was speaking French or English, the latter he spoke with an easy fluency, serenading Cornelia with suggestive sweet talk from the moment he realised her ready availability and evident curiosity. With him, she had quickly realised that there was no point pretending to be a naive tourist and, instead, made no secret of her worldliness and possible experience. The best way, she felt, to seduce a seducer.

She had informed him that she was in Paris for several months attending an advanced business studies course, paid for by her hedge fund employers back in Boston, but had quickly established the fact it was pretty useless and unlikely to teach her anything she didn't already know, so was now just enjoying most of her time in the French capital to relax, philander and see whatever came up. Her name was Marti. A diminutive for Marlene, a name she didn't truly like to be used in her presence, she had told him. The explanation appeared to satisfy him.

He turned out to be a good lover, ardent and enduring, just a tad rough at times, which she had expected from his connections with the network she had uncovered in the course of her perfunctory investigation. Demanding too. Cornelia didn't mind the exercise in the slightest. A girl had to do what a girl had to do, and anyway body parts were just body parts and she preferred her relationships with no emotional strings attached, and enjoyed pretending that the men were in control.

“You like?”

“I like,” Cornelia replied with a hushed tone in her voice, as the man's nose dug into her mons and his tongue brushed up and down her clit, arousing her, playing with her, pleasing her. She was tied to the bed, her hands cuff-linked to the metal bedposts, her ankles held wide apart with thin silk strips connected to a pair of leather belts nailed by metal studs to either side of the bed on the wooden floor.

She squirmed as Enrico's warm, halting breath streamed across her bare stomach and the pressure against her cunt increased and he slipped a couple of fingers inside her, stretching her open.

“You still like,” he asked. His fingers digging deeper, while his tongue tirelessly kept on brushing up and down against her hardening nub.

“Hmmm, hmmm …” she nodded.

It was the first time he had bound her. She had offered no resistance.

“Good,” he mumbled, his lips occupied, lapping up her now flowing juices. “Ah, you taste nice …”

“Am I a slut if I tell you it feels so sexy to be tied up, to feel helpless and at your mercy, at a man's mercy?” Cornelia whispered.

He raised his head from her genitals and looked at her with a cruel smile spreading across his lips.

“Not at all, Marti. It's natural. Very natural. It means you are reconnecting with something that lies deep inside you, a kernel of your own sexual identity. You crave to submit. That's what it is. Goes back to when we were cavemen. Things have changed since in society, but there is that fire still buried in the depths of your mind and body, the essential law of domination and submission, of men and women. The true balance. It's good you accept it. Really good.”

She didn't need any lectures.

But she quietly moaned again as another finger opened her wider. The pleasure was real. There are some things you can't disguise.

“Good girl,” Enrico said. He looked her in the eyes. “Now I'd like to blindfold you. Is that OK? If there's anything you don't like, object to, all you have to do is say so, you know. I'll stop. We can even agree on a safe word. Look at it as an adventure, see how it goes, no?”

“OK,” Cornelia said.

Shortly after her sight was taken from her, still spread-eagled across the bed and obscenely open to his touch and explorations, she felt a cold, large object being inserted into her. Then another at the rear after she had been lubed up and he had raised her rump by placing a hard cushion under her to facilitate the angle of penetration.

Next came the nipple clamps.

She held her breath. This she didn't like. But she offered no resistance or objection.

She blanked her mind totally, banishing the genuine pain he was now casually inflicting on her, moving into a mental zone of both appreciation and indifference. At the same time, the adrenaline flowed freely inside and her endocrine system booted into action and she could even perversely manage to enjoy the way she was being defiled. It made no sense, but then she was no an average woman and she had long been aware that there was some sort of broken short circuit within her senses and soul that allowed her to do these fundamentally bad things or accept certain things to be done to her and her body. Cornelia had dabbled in the arcane rituals of BDSM on previous occasions. It had left her unscarred, if puzzled. But if this was what it took to properly close an inopportune chapter in her life, she was willing to go through with it with her eyes wide open.

She felt trussed and stuffed like a turkey when Santaclara brutally took hold of both her ankles and forced her spread legs even further apart. It made her sinews scream, as he forced her open to a yet more revealing and humiliating angle. Cornelia just hoped he wasn't about to immortalise the session by taking photographs. That would be too tawdry. And she would then have to later locate them and destroy the evidence before the fool spread it over the Internet or wherever it served his kicks.

‘You like the view,” she joked, her voice rasping.

“Very much so. Somewhat pornographic, to say the least,” Enrico said.

More ridiculous than arousing, Cornelia reckoned. But it took all tastes.

“Just don't put a carrot down there,” she added, with a mocking tone in her voice. “I don't think the colour orange conjugates elegantly enough with my skin shade.”

Santaclara chuckled.

“It's good you have a sense of humour. A virtue seldom seen in American women,” he said. “But do take this seriously, Marti. I see you're no novice, though.”

“I've dabbled,” Cornelia said.

“And it excites you?” he asked.

“Sadly, yes.”

“That's what I thought. I think you'll make a very good subject.”

“For what?” she asked, as he tightened a new pair of thin leather buckles around her ankles and began adjusting a spread bar between them to maintain the impossible, strained angle between her legs.

“If you enjoy this sort of play, this scene, my dear Marti, I believe I can answer all your dreams and beyond. It doesn't have to stay here. We could make it a long journey further down this intriguing road.”

“Surprise me,” she said.

“I will,” Enrico said, behind her back. “But enough of your repartee, young lady. I want you respectful, and silent.” His fingers moved to her mouth, pulled her lips apart and placed a ball gag there which he fastened at the back of her head.

“There,” he said, satisfied with the paraphernalia she was now encumbered with.

Cornelia didn't appreciate the fact she had been silenced. It turned her into more of a victim than she wanted to be. She no longer had access to the humour that could defuse the sordid side of the power exchange. The bastard visibly knew all about the psychology of domination. She drew her breath, speculating as to what would come next.

“Let's put this slut through her paces,” Santaclara said.

Initially, he attempted to break her physical resistance with a clever and ever fiercer catalogue of implements, from paddle to whip, until the sore skin of her buttocks screamed to high heaven and blood almost burst through the deep, raised lines of purple criss-crossing her arse cheeks. Cornelia steadfastly refused to emit the slightest sound. This only encouraged Enrico Santaclara to test her will further. He moved her around on the bed and pulled Cornelia to her feet and attached a different set of metal clamps to her nipples to which he connected small weights and then did the same to her labia. Her whole body was now on fire, pain and anger coursing like a whirlpool through her veins.

He marched Cornelia out of the bedroom and down to a cellar with padded walls. Here she was fitted with a dog collar connected to a metal chain, a leash which he pulled her by and then ordered her down to her knees, where she was made to crawl like an animal on all fours while still having to prevent the thick objects stuffed deep into her vagina and anus from falling out, parading subservient in a circular motion with her chin downwards and the ball gag was briefly removed and she was allowed to drink some lukewarm water from a dog bowl on the cold stone floor to avoid getting dehydrated.

Satisfied by her performance so far, Santaclara pulled her up to her feet by the metal leash, almost choking her in the process, ordered her to raise her arms and attached her wrists to a pair of metal links fixed to the cellar's ceiling. With the spread bar still holding her long legs wide apart, Cornelia was now like a picture of crucifixion. Fortunately for her, the improvised dungeon did not appear to have a wooden cross or nails.

Now she was standing, the weights attached to her parts grew heavier and ever more excruciating and an involuntary tear of pain streamed down her cheek. Observing this, the man cruelly smiled, pleased with his performance and her reaction to it so far.

“Good girl,” he said.

And then punched her hard in the pit of her stomach. Cornelia exhaled violently and was unable to draw breath for a moment or even bend in reaction, totally immobilised as she was, which made the impact of his fist even worse. It would leave a bad bruise, she knew. Oh, how he would be made to pay her back for all this when the time came. But first she must play along, as distasteful as it was proving, and find more about the network he was involved in.

Santaclara walked away and out of the cellar, not saying a word, steps echoing on the stone, leaving her alone for a short while. This allowed her to regain her composure and concentrate on banishing the pain. She tried to disconnect but there was an undertow of want still playing with her cunt. There was no way she could suppress it.

When he returned, no doubt suitably refreshed, the smell of cigarette smoke on his breath, Cornelia felt like shouting at him under the ball gag to fuck her then, fuck me now. But he smirked, observing her needy expression and calmly denied her that pleasure. This was edge play.

The games continued. The man certainly had a fertile imagination and a clear-cut talent for keeping her on the thresholds of pain and pleasure combined holding back on any sort of reward or personal gratification until she was almost mentally begging for relief or further humiliation.

By the time he tired, Cornelia could hardly hold herself together, physically or mentally, and when he untied her and loosened her bonds, one limb at a time, she couldn't help herself from collapsing into his expectant arms, which he held aloft anticipating her fall.

“There, there,” he remarked. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”

Cornelia tried to say something in some vain form of defiance, but her throat was too dry.

“Let's take you upstairs, where you can relax a bit, have a sip of water, put something on, Marti. I like you: you have attitude, pride. You know you could have asked me to stop at any given time, but you didn't. You seemed determined to test your limits.”

“You have no idea of my limits,” she spat out, straightening herself and forcing herself to raise one leg and then another to demonstrate she could walk up the stairs unaided. His hand playfully caressed her sore, marked buttocks as he walked behind her.

“But you enjoyed it, didn't you?” he asked. “You were visibly in the zone. So wonderfully wet.”

She glanced down at her thighs. She had leaked badly, dried secretions of lust like snail trails marbling her pale white skin.

There was no way she could even deny that she had found pleasure in the pain, in the experience.

“It was … fascinating,” she said, fumbling for the right word.