La Suite

Jérôme, her
husband, lover, best friend, sexual guide and partner is dead. What
does life hold now for Gaëlle and her desire for erotic
experiences?

Gaëlle finds
herself desperately alone. She’s missing Jérôme badly. Her sexual
fires have burned low, but have they gone out? A chance meeting
with Gabriella, her former secretary, reawakens thoughts and
memories of those passions that had led her to explore the far
reaches of her sexuality. Deprived of Jérôme, her husband, lover
and guide, Gaëlle will have to accept the responsibility of daring
to plunge into any new and exciting experiences. In that process,
what will she discover about herself, her erotic desires, her
friends from the gym and strangers whom she has yet to meet?

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This book is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
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La Suite

Copyright ©
2013 MP Frank

ISBN:
978-1-77111-601-5

Cover art by
Ashley Waters

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reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or
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Smashwords
Edition

La Suite

By

MP Frank

My patient
editor and proofreader. You know who you are!

Chapter
One

Gaëlle paused
at the fitness-room door and took a moment to observe her friends
in action. Beatrice, trim, dark-haired and, as usual, not sweating
at all, was on the static bike. Beside her, the curvier, shorter
and sweat-soaked Mercedes was talking as fast as she was pedalling.
Leila, as lean as one of her compatriot distance runners, was
striding out on a treadmill. Gaëlle looked hard at her and wondered
whether Leila was becoming too thin, like Alice, who was doing her
stretches. It wouldn’t be good if, as Alice put on flesh after her
anorexia, she met Leila going the other way. Leila, Mercedes,
Beatrice and Alice were all pretty women, she reflected, surely
much more attractive than herself. Was that a partial explanation
of why, as far as she was aware, she was the only one to have
explored her sexuality so deeply and so extensively?

On the other
treadmill was a woman Gaëlle didn’t recognize. She was tall, with
olive skin and short dark hair. The woman turned her head, perhaps
sensing she was being observed, and Gaëlle caught a flash of
dramatic blue eyes. She went to warm up.

When Mercedes
got off the bike, she came over to Gaëlle.

“Potential new
blood,” she said, hitching her head towards the unknown woman.
“What do you think?”

“Well, if you
see her as a suitable candidate, go and ask her,” Gaëlle said,
pausing in her bench-press repetitions. She listened in as Mercedes
approached the newcomer, who had just stepped off the
treadmill.

“Hello, I’m
Mercedes,”

“Maya.”

“When you’re
done, would you care to take coffee with the international girls’
group?

“Girls? I’m a
bit old for that, aren’t I? And why international?”

“You’ll have to
meet them to see. And if you’re here, you’re young enough.”

“Why not?” the
woman said and laughed. “With an intriguing offer like that, how
can I resist?”

The woman
called Maya had finished her workout, showered and changed.

Mercedes
reappeared. “Ready?” she asked. Maya nodded. Mercedes led her to
where the gang was sitting round a table in the cafeteria and said,
“Introduce yourselves, girls.”

“Beatrice,
Swiss.”

“Leila,
Moroccan.”

“Alice, Breton,
from Carnac.”

“Gaëlle,
Half-French, half-Italian.”

“And I’m
Mercedes from Mallorca. So now you understand the international
bit.”

“I do. My name
is Maya and I can expand your geographical circle a little, north
and east. My mum is Norwegian and my dad is from Greece.”

“I knew it!”
Mercedes said in triumph. “As soon as I saw you, I just knew you’d
fit in!” And so the gang of five became six. Newly appointed as
Directrice of a major Collège in the area, Maya was an entertaining
and sometimes challenging addition to the group. Anyone who made a
categorical assertion had to be ready to defend it against Maya’s
rigorous logic.

* * * *

“Come on,
girls, get yourselves over here,” Maya called, as soon as Gaëlle
had left the changing room. Faced with Maya in teacher mode, the
others gathered round.

Maya had
assimilated herself into the little group and after a couple of
years, it was hard to remember a time when she hadn’t been a
fixture. Now, it seemed, she was taking on the leadership role.

“Circle time,
Maya?” Beatrice asked.

“More like a
summit meeting,” Maya said. She looked round at the group. “I may
be speaking out of turn, but I’m going to do it anyway,” she
began.

“No change
there, then,” Mercedes murmured.

“You’ve known
Gaëlle longer than me—”

“That’s not
important,” Leila said. “Time is irrelevant when we’re talking
about friendship. You’ve just as much right to call a meeting as
any of us.”

Maya smiled at
her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said. “We owe a lot
to Gaëlle,” she began.

“Yes. Gaëlle
listens, she helps, she’s always there when you need her, she’s a
good cook—” Mercedes began.

“If I may get
back to what I was trying to say,” Maya interrupted, using her best
classroom voice. “We’ve tried our hardest, but I think that we’ve
maybe done too much for Gaëlle. She’s becoming dependent on us for
even simple things. Her heart hasn’t been in her work-outs here for
some time, and that can’t be good for her self-esteem. I propose
that we pull back, and let her get on with her grieving. Feeling
bad about Jérôme’s death shouldn’t stop her from doing her own
shopping and washing. It just leaves her with more time to feel
sorry for herself.”

“I’d never have
thought that of Gaëlle,” Mercedes agreed. “She used to always be so
positive.”

“None of us
knows how we’ll react in those circumstances,” Alice commented. “I
never expected to feel as awful I did when my mother died. We
fought like cats, but it hit me hard. I ended up punishing myself,
and look where that led. Without you all, and Gaëlle, of course,
I’d be dead, too!”

“We have to
accept that Gaëlle is going to mourn for as long as she needs,”
Maya said. “Can we agree to back off? We can organise a rota to
call and visit, so she doesn’t think we’ve abandoned her, but adopt
a lower profile for the time being. Settled?”

“Settled.”

* * * *

Left to her own
devices, Gaëlle was obliged to look after herself again. One
morning, she was already in the shower with wet hair, when the rude
noise from her shampoo bottle told her it was empty. Resisting a
strong temptation to burst into tears, she dried herself, dressed
and prepared to face the shops.

As she left her
new apartment in Petite France, it dawned on her that spring had
arrived. Sunshine was lighting up the half-timbered houses that
lined her street. It cheered her up just a little, and she decided
to walk into town to get some fresh air, as well as to buy her
shampoo.

She was
drifting along when she became aware of the snarl of a large
motorcycle, revving hard very close to her. She glanced up.
Eighteen years with Jérôme told her it was a Guzzi; the cylinders
sticking out were a giveaway. Jérôme! Her husband’s name brought
tears to her eyes. She sniffed hard and moved on, vaguely aware
that the motorbike noise had stopped.

“Gaëlle? Madame
Gaëlle?” called a rather muffled voice from inside the full-face
helmet.

Gaëlle stopped
and turned. The diminutive figure in red leathers perched on the
Guzzi was anonymous until the helmet was removed, releasing the
long black hair and slightly red face of one of her former
secretaries.

“Gabi!” Gaëlle
said, trying to raise a smile. “What a surprise!”

“Just let me
park the beast, and I’ll be with you,” Gabi said, putting her
helmet back on. She fired up the engine, and ignoring the heavy
Saturday morning traffic, shot across the road to a space just
vacated by a car. She gave a one-finger salute to the man who had
anticipated parking there, jogged back to where Gaëlle hadn’t
moved, took off her helmet and hugged her ex-boss.

“I heard,” she
said. “I never knew your husband, but everyone who’d met him said
what a lovely man he was.”

“Thank you,”
was all Gaëlle could think of or manage to say before the tears
started.

“I’m sorry.
I’ve upset you now, haven’t I?” Gabi said. “Look, my apartment
isn’t far. Come and sit down and have a drink of something.”

She took an
unresisting Gaëlle by the arm and escorted her into a nearby
building. They climbed two floors in silence.

“Here we are,”
Gabi announced with pride, as she opened the door. “Welcome to my
new Strasbourg nest. It’s small, I know, just big enough for one.
When I’m in Brussels I share an apartment with another girl who
does the same job as I do, but here, I wanted my privacy.”

“It’s very
practical, though,” Gaëlle commented, looking around. The apartment
was indeed compact, a living room with a corner kitchen, and off it
two doors, one half-open to the bedroom.

“Can I use your
bathroom?” Gaëlle asked. “I must look a mess.”

Once inside she
looked at herself in the mirror.

“What a sight,”
she muttered.

The mirror made
it obvious how uncared for she had become in the half-year since
Jérôme had died. She had no makeup, her hair needed cutting, and
the anorak she had flung on looked shabby. She took it off, looked
at her reflection again and sighed. The pullover she had grabbed
was in no better shape. She pulled a comb through her hair and went
back into the sitting room.

“I’ve put the
espresso machine on,” Gabi told her. “Will coffee be all
right?”

“Oh,
anything.”

“Just give me a
moment to get out of my leathers and I’ll be with you,” Gabi said,
heading into the bedroom. “Sit down. Make yourself at home.”

Gaëlle sat down
on the sofa. It was ten years since she had seen Gabi, she
calculated. It was evident that the young secretary she remembered
had moved up in the world, and was now a confident thirty-year-old.
Gaëlle looked around. She liked Gabi’s flat. It could have been
gloomy but for a large mirror which brought extra daylight into the
sitting room. A reflected flash of pink caught Gaëlle’s eye. She
looked again. From where she was sitting, the mirror gave her a
view past the half-open bedroom door, to where Gabi was changing.
Her naked back and bare buttocks revealed that she’d been wearing
nothing but a black thong under the scarlet skin-tight leathers.
Gabi half-turned and the voluptuous breasts that Gaëlle remembered
were revealed in the mirror. Gaëlle caught her breath. Gabi pulled
on a tee shirt, then a pair of jeans. She was zipping them up as
she emerged from the bedroom. Gaëlle looked away.

“There,” Gabi
said. “I do love the sensation of leather on my skin, but it’s not
comfortable for sitting around.”

“I hadn’t
thought of you as a biker,” Gaëlle said, glossing over the fact
that she hadn’t thought of Gabi at all for several years.

“I wasn’t. I
got the idea from my flatmate. We’re here half the time and half in
Brussels, you know? She has a big Ducati for when there isn’t much
to carry, so I followed her example. It makes the commute much more
fun when the weather’s good or when I do it at night. Nose down,
flat on the tank.”

“I can see the
appeal, but I think I’m too old for that sort of thing.” Gaëlle
said.