Secret Souls (13 page)

Chadwick was bending over, slipping his shoes from his feet, removing his socks, when she felt his hands caressing the top of her head. She could hardly contain herself. Never had she dreamed that having sexual control of Hannibal could be so thrilling. She slid herself up his body and they kissed. She could feel his penis throbbing through the denim cloth and against her belly then her mound. She slid her hand under the jeans and caressed his hips and then slid down his body once more, this time sliding off his jeans as she went.

That first sweet yet acrid scent of warm and erect male genitalia was a natural perfume which sent her over the edge of erotic desire. It acted like a click in the head that switched her into
over-drive: yearning to give and receive all things sexual, all acts, to reach the ultimate in erotic bliss. She caressed his penis with her lips and mouth, licked his scrotum and sucked the large and loose sac and its spherical contents into her mouth, playing with them with her tongue as she stroked his stunningly large penis and its handsome knob of a head with her hands.

Continuously stroking one hand after the other, so as to give him the greatest pleasure she could, she soon had him on the edge of orgasm. So was Chadwick, she was breathless with passion, they were past the point of no return. She could think of nothing else but the joy of feeling him burst forth with all the lust and come he could muster into her mouth. Desire, passion, need, they all played their part in Chadwick, wanting to feel his warm, sweet and salty life force trickle down her throat. Nothing less would do. Everything more could follow.

For Chadwick the taste of Hannibal’s first orgasm was like nectar from the gods. She came in a copious, emotionally draining orgasm simultaneous with his. She had never had such an out-of-this-world experience, but that was what she did, for a few seconds, have. When she returned to the here and now, she released Hannibal who raised her from her knees to have her once again on his lap and hold her in his arms. He placed a long and passionate kiss upon her lips after which they slid from the settee on to the cabin floor. Clinging tight to each other, Hannibal kept whispering over and over again one or other of: ‘My glorious dear girl’, ‘My heart’, ‘Chadwick, my love’, between kisses that scorched their hearts, their very souls.

Chadwick had no sense of how long she slept or indeed whether she had slipped into a doze or had swooned from the sheer force of her many orgasms in such a short span of time. But once more she felt herself come alive to Hannibal’s kisses, on her closed eyelids on her lips. Her first words, issued barely above a whisper and even before she opened her eyes, were, ‘Hannibal, I have always had, and will always have, a fever for you. Forgive me, please forgive me.’

She had shown Hannibal with her body and the passion of her soul, her lust, that she understood what was at stake by her
actions. At last the moment was right for him to take on their sex life. It was what she wanted, what they both wanted. He kissed her and licked her lips, then as they lay gazing into each other’s eyes, he told her, ‘Chadwick, there is nothing to beg forgiveness for, there never will be, we’ll work at there never having to be. You were magnificent, you are magnificent. Let your fever rage. Mine does for you, I’ll prove it to you.’

Chadwick was still dressed as she had been when they had boarded the plane, except for her shoes which she had kicked off earlier. Now, lying on their sides facing each other, Hannibal raised her white crepe de chine blouse over her head and dropped it on the floor. The white wide linen trousers and her silk panties were soon dispensed with and she lay naked except for cream-coloured stockings held high on her comely thighs by a wide band of elasticised lace.

Now it was Hannibal’s turn to seduce Chadwick to him. He intended to mark her forever with their first sublime sexual encounter and not leave a vestige of doubt as to how thrilling their sex life was going to be. He proceeded with caresses that excited her flesh, kisses, licking and sucking, nibbling, even biting into her flesh. How well he used her breasts to give her sexual pleasure and excite his own lust to taste her further.

He titillated Chadwick with his hunger to possess her and give her the ultimate in sexual pleasure by leaving not a morsel of her body free from his fondling. Still in his arms, he rolled her over and advanced his kisses down her back over the luscious full and firm orbs of her bottom. He caressed them and slapped them lovingly, and bit into the flesh of those cheeks, licked the deep crevice between them and what they hid.

She had come several times, short lazy orgasms, even before he placed his mouth over her most intimate and private place, her cunt, and began sucking the labia, penetrating her with a hungry tongue. Chadwick was crazed with lust, he was a master of cunnilingus. She came rapidly and often and felt as if her life’s force was draining away – so much so she had to beg Hannibal to stop. An impossibility, at least until he had had his fill of the taste of her on his tongue, in his mouth.

She was unable to hold anything back from Hannibal; she whimpered with pleasure, sighed, actually moaned as she came. She trembled with excitement when he carried the silky smooth moisture from her on to his fingers, rubbed it on her lips and licked it off with his tongue.

He wanted her warm and wet, the easier for him to take her with one forceful thrust. His lust for her commanded that because he wanted Chadwick to feel the pain and pleasure of sex with him, to know his power and passion for all things sexual he wanted to experience with her, how divine total sexual submission could be for her, and most especially the very special bliss of fucking and coming together with someone you love.

Hannibal sensed that he would not have been her first fuck, he had never wanted that. He would not have been able to live with that. He was however certain he would be her first experience of sexual intercourse with a man who loved her and would do so to the death.

He held her down firmly with one arm across her chest, fondling her breast with his hand, pinching hard at her nipple, a calculated moment of distraction as he thrust as hard as he could. With his scrotum slapping against her, his sex took possession of her; there was no more me and you, they were as one body. Chadwick was feeling the force of his sex. Its throbbing awakened her flesh as if she had been scorched by fire. That act, those sensations, was so very raunchy as to drive them both into a frenzy. A scream roared in her throat. Hannibal stifled it with the palm of his free hand placed over her mouth and whispered in her ear, ‘Chadwick, you are my majestic life, the most sweet and delicious of women, and so it begins for us.’

He then removed his hand and she called out. She gasped, panted, as unbound sexual pleasure, the savouring of Hannibal’s throbbings within her own flesh, took possession of her life. Her voice was throaty with lust when she told him, ‘Hannibal, you are so sublime, it feels too marvellous, more marvellous than my fantasies. The dark and lonely nights of desires, hopes and dreams, over at last!’ Her heart pounded so hard she thought it
might break open, and Hannibal, his hands on her waist, began his thrustings to a beat of passion and love.

They hardly spoke during the next few hours. Instead they experienced every inch of each other’s bodies, used their lust to eat that much further into their souls. Lilana had made of Chadwick a sensual and sexual woman who was open and ready for an erotic life, with or without Hannibal. He understood that by the way she reacted to the sex they were experiencing. How gloriously exciting it was for Hannibal that she was so sexually free, so adventurous, without shame for her lust and the power of her sexual drives. Chadwick was a natural born libertine who had only been honed by Lilana.

They were dressed and sitting together as the plane taxied down the air strip. To watch the waves rush in and dissolve on the beach and the sway of the coconut palms as the jet rushed forward on its carpet of grass runway was to land in paradise. The sex that Hannibal and Chadwick had had on the plane had irrevocably changed their lives, but strangely not the way they were together. As they looked through the window of the plane Hannibal realised that they were the same two people who already loved each other in so many different ways. This was just another. They were merely adding to their lives. Chadwick issued several more ground rules which he happily obeyed and they left the plane for the speed boat waiting to take them to the small island they could see from the beach.

It was on that island, Lilana’s private island, lent to Chadwick for this, her seduction of Hannibal, that they spent the next three days, making love, exploring each other’s bodies and getting to know the boundaries of sex – or if indeed there were to be boundaries of sex for them. There were not, and that discovery was like a life-long aphrodisiac for the lovers. During those days and nights of erotic bliss they never discussed the future, they were too busy living in the moment, adjusting to the many surprises each was discovering about the other.

Ever since Hannibal had met Chadwick as a twelve-year-old child she had always produced intriguing surprises; there had never been anything obvious about her, what she thought, nor her
feelings – quite the contrary. She had been always consistent in that, and here, now, on the island, in this the new phase of their relationship, she was as she had always been: experiencing everything to the fullest, expecting nothing and internalising everything, storing secrets to be treasured.

Her latest surprise for Hannibal was her ability to be, when they were not in a flagrant sexual assignation, both the seventeen-year-old Chadwick of a few days before and a mature, sophisticated, quite chic and sensuous older woman in love with a man almost three times her age. This, of course, was a most unbeatable combination in the seduction stakes, and she used it upon Hannibal until he was quite dizzy trying to separate these different Chadwicks. When he realised that it was an impossibility, he also realised that he was dealing with a dangerous woman, and that that was the excitement of Chadwick. He now understood that what she was demanding by her actions was that they would have a conventional life together for all the world to admire and that they should also have a tremendously erotic, even bizarre, sex life together. How clever she had been to understand that those were the things that would get him and keep him to the death. Could she sustain it? A better question might have been, could he?

A dozen times he would ask himself, Why me? He had seen the looks men gave Chadwick, always had even as a child. She had sexual charisma, could have any man she wanted. And always the same answer was there for him: love chooses, fate shoots the arrow, they saved each other and so belonged together. They were hopelessly indebted to each other, were committed to make each other happy for the remainder of their lives, They were one body, one heart, one soul.

Chapter 7

As they stepped from the plane on to the tarmac almost exactly where their sexual odyssey had begun, Chadwick marvelled at how extraordinary a woman could feel having been sated by sex. Hannibal’s wonder was that coming home had changed nothing. He felt happy, new life surging through his blood, and sensed that together things could only get better for them. He could visualise no clouds on the horizon, as he had expected there might be once they had returned home to New York. They were only a few steps from the plane when he grasped her hand. They stopped and faced each other; there was such happiness vibrating between them they could not help but smile.

‘I was very good about your ground rules, was I not?’

‘You were marvellous about obeying
all
my ground rules.’

‘I would like us to stop off for a drink at the Carlisle before we go home. I think there are things to be said, and that it’s my turn to establish some ground rules for us to live by.’

‘So do I, Hannibal.’

‘And you will obey them as I have obeyed yours?’

‘Yes, Hannibal.’

That was the answer he had expected but the way she said it told him that he need not even have asked the question. Chadwick had made up her mind to submit to him in all things for as long as they loved and lusted after each other. He squeezed her hand, it seemed more rational than shouting out his delight with her for the world to hear.

In the Bemelmans Bar at the Carlisle Hotel they looked like well-dressed beachcombers among the smart Madison Avenue
chic drinking their extra dry Martinis and Manhattans and listening to the sound of discreetly played piano music: Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart. Hannibal asked for a quiet corner table. His luck was holding, one was just being vacated. The Chase family frequented the bar, a blind eye could be turned to their dress for this one evening. It surprised and amused rather than annoyed the head waiter who hosted the bar.

‘A bottle of my usual champagne,’ ordered Hannibal.

‘Not the Krug, Hannibal, the Cristal if you don’t mind?’ suggested Chadwick.

Hannibal corrected the order. Here was a subtle change: Chadwick quite firmly declaring her preference, and albeit politely demanding from him what she wanted without hesitation. Everyone, including Chadwick, knew his preferred champagne was vintage Krug. Not that she had not asked for things before; she had as a child, a young adult, but never as a woman relating to her lover, the man in her life. He could not help but take her hand in his and kiss her fingers as they gazed into each other’s eyes. He liked her so very much in this, her new role.

Chadwick would never love Hannibal any more than she did in that moment. She had expected as soon as they stepped off the plane that he would hide his feelings for her in public. All the way from the airport her confidence kept slipping at the very idea. The slide stopped here, now and forever with the touch of his lips upon her skin. She smiled as her heart sang.

‘There is no question in your mind that I love you, and want you sexually in my life, is there, Chadwick?’

‘No, none whatsoever.’

‘Good, that’s going to make our life together much easier to handle.’ He smiled at her. Chadwick saw relief in his face, he even afforded her a smile.

The waiter arrived with the champagne cooler and opened the wine, filled their glasses and placed a plate of cheese straws on the table.

They sipped from their glasses and listened to the music. The Bemelmans Bar had always been a treat for Chadwick. Not only Hannibal but Warren and Diana often took her there with their
friends. It seemed tonight to be no longer a treat but just the right place, at the right time, to be with Hannibal.

As if reading her mind he told her, ‘It seemed somehow more right to come here and lay down
my
ground rules before we go home. It would be wonderful if there were no need for ground rules in this relationship, but by the very nature of who and what we are and have become to each other, I don’t think I can handle this unless there are.’

‘Should I be worried about this, Hannibal?’

‘Not in the least worried but you may not like what I want for us. I don’t, but I know we have to live with it. You are a seventeen-year-old, beautiful, intelligent and sexually exciting girl – maybe not my daughter in blood, but in spirit. For a man such as I, who has lived an impeccable, irreproachable life for himself and his family, and who has a solid moral code he has tried to abide by, to engage in an erotic affair with you is no easy thing. It will come as a shock to Warren and Diana, my friends, my business colleagues, the staff at home. Gossips will make a meal of us. I will be seen as a dirty old man who has used and abused you. Few will understand that a deep and abiding, most genuine love came first. That
we
lusted after each other.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not to you now possibly, but it might one day after I’m dead and gone from your life forever. Chadwick, I don’t for the moment feel tortured because I’m going against what I believe is morally wrong, being sexually besotted with my adoptive daughter, but I might one day. I want to protect us from that. I want to make it as easy as possible for me as well as others to accept us. And most important of all, I want to be certain that I am, we are, what you want.’

‘I am certain.’

Hannibal had sent the waiter away, saying he would tend to the wine. It was at that moment that he chose to do so. He refilled their glasses and took a deep swallow of his then topped the glass up once more before he spoke.

‘I believe you are, but you are seventeen years old and with a
lust for sex and men. I don’t feel that at seventeen you can make a decision like giving up all men for me, loving, being infatuated, with me alone. Your never having lived outside my love for you is marvellous for me but is it enough for you? Saying yes to that now is a decision you might one day regret.’

‘You don’t want me?’ The devastation could be heard in her voice.

‘No, you have my word, I want you now and for always. Chadwick, you must never think otherwise. But I’m a man of more than fifty who has lived. I don’t want to cheat you of your youth, and young men, and sex and passion, the flirtations that go along with being seventeen. The balls and house-parties and fun – and if it should happen, a love greater than ours. The father in me wants those things for you, though the lover will have at times to grapple with them.

‘When you’re away at Yale, I want you to go out with boys, have a sex life simultaneous with ours. I want you to make having other men a part of our sex life. That may seem strange to you now but it won’t be, it will enhance our own erotic world. You are a clever woman – I don’t think I can go on calling you a girl when you have shown me how much of an erotic woman you are – and it is that woman I appeal to now. Chadwick, I beg you to be discreet about what we feel and want from each other, very discreet, for the next two years.

‘I don’t want to, I will not, hide you in some back street, like a kept mistress. You deserve better than that. We deserve better than that. I want for us to unfold these new feeling we have for each other with caution, for our sake and the sake of others around us, until our sexual life becomes as natural for them to accept as it is for us to have.’

‘You’re thinking of Warren and Diana?’

‘Yes, mainly.’

‘Then discretion is one of your ground rules. A two-year test period is another. That I remain sexually active with other men is yet another. I do have that right, Hannibal?’

The tone of Chadwick’s voice told Hannibal she was not happy with his ground rules. ‘Correct, Chadwick.’

He took her hands in his and kissed them before he continued, this time unable to control his passion for her, the lust he felt in his loins at the very idea of the pleasure she would derive from men other than himself coming inside her. This fiery and yet still contained beauty who lusted after him and loved him with the fullest of hearts, moved him with her honesty. She had always been quick to understand, quick to meet her fate and grasp it with both hands. He had not the slightest doubt that she would accept and abide by his ground rules.

‘If you still love me, feel the same intense sexual passion for me two years from now, I hope you will agree to marry me, Chadwick. Nothing would make me happier than for you to be acknowledged by the world as my wife.’

Ever since Chadwick had found the crashed plane in the woods and touched the cut on Hannibal’s forehead with her hand, life had been a continuous stream running with chance, change and fate. So many lives found, so many lives left behind. She picked them up and lived them and became a master at never looking back, never looking forward. She had spent her entire existence expecting nothing and taking whatever she wanted from the life that had been dealt her. Hannibal’s proposal had not been expected but she had no doubts that she would marry him in two years’ time. They were too much each other’s world for it to be otherwise. She leaned across the small table and kissed Hannibal on the cheek, grazed his lips with hers and then sat back and raised her glass and drank in a celebration of chance, change, and fate.

Diana and Warren loved Chadwick; they often discussed between themselves her many qualities, not the least of which was her unbelievable generosity of soul, her selflessness. Incredible from a backwoods child of twelve who had lived the life she had. What was as remarkable was that she remained all through her growing-up years the same, though she had been transformed from white trash to a pampered and privileged young woman by Hannibal, Warren and Diana.

At first her selflessness had shown in her attachment to
Hannibal, but soon after getting to know Diana and Warren they too were considered before herself and in such a way that it took years for the family to realise it. Chadwick had many mysterious qualities that enchanted. She did however appear somewhat remote from people and events, appearing royal or goddess-like, and that was incredibly attractive. The family found Chadwick’s selflessness, and air of self-containment, admirable considering how spoiled she might otherwise have become. They had something by which to measure her qualities: both Diana and Warren were themselves spoiled and demanding, no matter how they tried not to be.

Diana found it easy to love Chadwick. Watching over her with pride came naturally, as did her enjoyment of Chadwick’s happiness. The affection she had for her adoptive sister was without doubt an unexpectedly selfless side to her that surprised everyone.

During the months that Chadwick had been seeing Lilana, Diana became aware, very nearly without realising it, that the underlying sensual quality about Chadwick was developing into something more overt: sexual charisma. She was not at all jealous of it, but rather enjoyed the idea of Chadwick becoming
a femme fatale
and having a thrilling sex life. She enjoyed one herself.

Almost immediately on Hannibal’s and Chadwick’s return from the island, it became evident to Diana that both Warren and her father were reacting to this new sexual charisma of Chadwick’s. Diana wanted to dislike, disapprove, make a scene, about the new way Hannibal looked and sometimes touched Chadwick in front of not only them but close friends. She somehow could not bring herself to. She loved them both too much, their happiness sang like the finest of birdsong, and they were terribly discreet, so much so there were times that Diana thought she imagined what she was seeing.

The night before Chadwick left for New Haven and Yale University the two women were in Chadwick’s room packing before they went down to a family dinner: the Chases, Sam and his family and Andrew and his, who always shared the momentous occasions in Chadwick’s life. Diana was feeling
extremely emotional about Chadwick’s leaving home. She realised that Chadwick had become an intimate part of her life, the loss would indeed be a tremendous wrench, and she wanted that never to happen. The realisation of what good friends the older and younger woman had become, and that Diana loved her, possibly even more than Hannibal or Warren, came as a surprise but one she appreciated.

It was those realisations that prompted Diana, apropos of nothing that had been said between them, to rise from the four-poster canopied bed where she was sitting to go to Chadwick, hug her and ask with a good deal of urgency in her voice, ‘You are just going off to school, aren’t you? You won’t ever really leave us, will you? You’re family!’

It seemed the very best moment for Chadwick to speak up. ‘No, Di, never. That is, if you can forgive me
anything
?’

Diana never knew whether it was intuition or that special enigmatic power that Chadwick possessed. Was it the way she could tell you everything with few words? It might even have been that strange magnetism of hers that drew one to her. Who was to tell and did it really matter? Diana somehow instantly got the message: Chadwick and Hannibal were lovers. She had to sit down, not so much from surprise or shock as the inevitability of the situation and the knowledge that now for certain they would always be a family. Chadwick sat down next to her but avoided looking directly at Diana. They sat there for a very long time, silent but somehow together, each of them contemplating their situation.

Finally it was Diana who made a move. She rose from the bed, sat down at Chadwick’s dressing table and began packing bottles and jars, perfumes and powders, into Chadwick’s open travelling case. She looked in the mirror, stopped what she was doing and studied first her own face and then for some time the reflection of Chadwick sitting on the bed. ‘Would you like to wear my red chiffon?’ she asked. A very selfless gesture since it was Diana’s favourite dress and the one she had planned to wear to dinner.

For Warren, coming to terms with the new relationship between his father and Chadwick was far more complex. Firstly
because he had seen it coming for a very long time, secondly because he was in love with Chadwick and, like his father, had been ever since that first time he saw her. He had wanted her sexually since her sixteenth birthday. Warren had been made aware of just how much only when his friends began to take notice of Chadwick as a young beauty with a difference: ‘Your sister is a young woman without any artifice or games playing about her sensuality, and that excites lust,’ they insisted on telling him.