The Intimates (17 page)

“You've been playing a game with me tonight, haven't you? I'm old enough to know when I'm being toyed with, and that's exactly what you've been doing. Now I'd say that it's my turn, wouldn't you agree?”

She doesn't see me cautiously nod, trying to push a playful smile onto my lips. Her head is bowed, her features lost in darkness. She relentlessly winds the scarf around one fist, then lets it slacken before winding it around the other. I feel my heart beat faster; I try to stand up properly against the window sill. “Don't make it harder on yourself. You've had your fun – all evening. If I'm going to now have my fun I think it's only fair that we do things my way, don't you?”

She flashes forward and kisses me with such force that I almost topple through the window. I lose my footing and clamour for the window frame with one flailing hand, but she bats my arm away and makes me fall to the floor. I'm completely at her mercy. She loops the scarf around my neck and pulls me back up, kisses me again. As she does one hand snakes through my hair, her first act of tenderness. But I realise she is coiling the scarf around my neck. She breaks off the kiss, her eyes shining wickedly, and the cord tightens around my throat as she holds it taut with one hand.

“I wouldn't move an inch if I were you.”

As the scarf tightens, she reaches behind with her other hand, smiling a little as she unzips her dress. The fabric gasps open, she presses her hot flesh against me.

“Take it off me,” she whispers, raising both hands with the scarf. Her breath is hot and slightly sweet.

“Not so tight,” I say, in a weak voice that just makes her smile.

“Do as you're told,” she says, before giving me a taster of how uncomfortable the scarf can be. Air forces its way from my mouth as she yanks it hard, and I choke. For a moment my head dangles between the two ends of the scarf, I imagine it cutting through my neck like a cheese wire and my head toppling to the ground. I recover.

“Look at my body!” The white glare of the moon accentuates every contour of her flesh. Her skin is as ivory white as a statue, but every sexual advance streaks a flash of scarlet across it. “Take off my dress,” she whispers, keeping the cord taut.

Trembling slightly, afraid to break the tension with a laugh, I ease the zip to the base of her back. As I do her upturned breasts tear free from the dress, hardening a little as they come towards me. “Keep your eyes on me,” she orders, adjusting the scarf.

I badly want to exhale, to take in a lungful of air, but the scarf makes that seem a distant possibility. “If you're going to enjoy looking at my body you're going to have to pay for it, aren't you?” She ensures my vision is consumed only by her. “Now take off the rest of my clothes.”

I dare myself to look down; her body barely visible as one of the outside lights switch off. With her thin dress now coiled on the floor, only her stockings and knickers cover her body.

“Do it then,” she says, tightening the cord before treating me to a flush of clear air. As my hands tremble towards her I close my eyes, willing myself to act composed.

I know that she has felt under my mercy all evening but kept that hidden. She's showing a controlling, aggrieved side to her character. A side I always knew existed, but tried to ignore. Under pressure I see I have already learnt some of its requirements. I must also now refrain from revealing a sudden sense of submission.

The first rule is that I must not appear afraid. I must act with utter seriousness, and follow her orders to the letter while not showing any signs of weakness. The second is that I must maintain the illusion that I am secretly enjoying myself, as refusal to do so will be interpreted as an insult. It surprises me how quickly a trapped man learns the rules of his confinement.

I reach around her and slowly draw the thin slip of fabric from her waist. “Don't look down,” she says, her lips sparkling. “Just take them off.” She leans into me as I push the lacy material down her legs, and she bends as I draw them off her feet. Except for her stockings she's now naked – but I still keep my eyes trained on the froth of white I clench in my hand.

“Good. Now you can look at my body.”

In the instant my eyes pass onto it, the cord thrashes tight around my neck. I choke, splutter out air, and she laughs gaily. “You liked looking at that, didn't you?” she sings, as my hands reach instinctively for my throat. For the first time I start to seriously wonder how this game will end. “Did you really think you wouldn't have to pay for that pleasure?” My hands clamber for the scarf and touch something wet. The scarf has torn my skin, drawing blood. I wonder if she is purposefully bruising my neck.

I ease my hands around my throat as she laughs again, and I quickly learn that she was right. Seeing her long, exposed body charged me with pleasure; a pleasure soon neutered by the burst of intense pain.

“Lie on the bed.” She pulls the cord tight so quickly that I move over to it in an instant. She climbs onto it, her mouth grazing against my ear as she presses her body against mine. She kisses my cheeks feverishly, her breath hot and fast. “We'll have to keep quiet,” she whispers, pressing a finger to my mouth. Her head descends onto my mouth and she kisses me passionately, furiously, as if I finally now have the chance to pay her back.

Elise becomes the man and I become the woman – my role is to accommodate her, to allow her to find the source of her pleasure. Her tongue searches my mouth, her hand clamours through my hair. She presses my lips to her neck and forces them onto her breasts until our bodies lash against each other, keen to forge an urgent bond. I feel my need to please her rise; a need to match my body to her desires, while all the time playing the victim.

She thrashes her body against mine, her hair strokes my chest. She smiles with a pleasure that's uniquely hers. We press against each other until my body craves to join her. She's tricked me, making me lust for something that terrifies me, and in that moment she eases me into her. I feel that sense of relief, but the cord tightens so hard that the room begins to spin. I try to open my mouth, to beg her not to choke me, to try and break the silence of this game. But she pulls harder on the cord, and my head pulls to one side. I feel the wound on my neck widen, the bruising spread. Every inch of air is forced from my lungs as she pummels into my body. The light glares over her stockings and illuminates their crushing rhythm. “You like that, don't you?” she taunts, finally releasing the scarf as my body stumbles for air. “You didn't really think you wouldn't have to pay for it, did you?”

I want to throw her off. I want to just gorge myself on air, but she has no such concerns. To her, those few breaths were a plentiful reward. Her eyes are clenched shut, her lipstick smeared as her pleasure builds to a crescendo. Before, I would struggle not to tear her from me and lay myself against her, but this time she's possessed. I fear the moment my body will react to her fury, and I urge myself to submit. Be passive, I tell myself – just let her win. She twists and thrashes, and her nails embed themselves in my side until they draw blood. It begins to trickle down her fingernails, and her neck scarf falls between her breasts. I seize the opportunity to throw the scarf to the other side of the room. Even though she now has no weapon she continues to thrash against me with complete control. Without the scarf we are now just a man and a woman, but she still has total superiority. And the fact that she knows that makes me feel somehow humiliated. I know then that Elise has got her revenge. And, as if acknowledging that, she clenches her way into a tearing orgasm. I've never heard a woman make a more feral and unrestrained sound as she makes, gripping me in her fingernails. It irreversibly changes me, as if I've somehow now been freed from my role as a man.

Before the flush of blood on her chest has subsided she prises herself from me and lies on the bed. “Take me quickly,” she pleads. “Before people catch us.”

I hesitate, and try to steady my breath. I can't tell her I feel nothing for her but fear; that I can't imagine dominating her now, under any circumstances.

“What is it?” she asks, her expression full of accusation.

I wait for a few moments, and mentally count my wounds. The skin on my side is torn by her nails, the wound on my neck is bleeding, there's that slightly preserved twist in my windpipe. I know I shouldn't speak. I'll only stagger over words and tear everything apart. Impetuously, she leans over the side of the bed and pulls her crumpled dress against her body. Her scent is smeared all over the bed, but, even overwhelmed by it, my body still doesn't respond. I retract in fear, pull the sheets towards me. As my body feasts itself on air I realise it is still shackled to the girl outside. That I must preserve whatever little I have left for Carina.

“It's Carina, isn't it?” she snaps, reaching down to adjust her stocking. She looks over my shoulder, at the fountain outside. “I saw the way you looked at her. Does she have something I don't?”

“You're being ridiculous,” I say, knowing that the difference between them is all I can think of. I desperately want to be articulate, to explain away this sharp alteration of my feelings. But my body is still demanding that I focus only on survival and it seems unable to produce words. I know that even if the words do come, my throat will be unable to deliver them. I look back at her, sensing her anger build with every second that I don't speak.

“It's okay,” she says, pulling the dress over her head and zipping it up with one movement. “You feel you have something in common, don't you? It's that stupid book, isn't it?”

I feel my mouth fall open, but it suddenly feels dry. Confusion overwhelms me, as I realise the moment to respond has passed.

“It's not the book.”

“If you think she's better than me because you've both
failed
at something then perhaps you are right for each other,” she hisses, reaching down to grab her heels. “If I'd known you were bringing me here as some sort of accessory then I wouldn't have bothered.”

“It's not that, I brought you here because I wanted you to meet these people who've been a huge part of my life. But I've realised a lot of things tonight Elise. I'm not the person that you want me to be, and I can only pretend that I am for so long.”

“How could you have any idea what I want you to be?” she screams, and then her voice drops quickly to a whisper. “I want you to see how ridiculous it is that you feel a bond with these people, particularly that you feel a bond with
her
. If it was going to happen with her, Vincent, it would have happened by now. Do you really think I'm going to hang around and put up with this?”

“I don't expect you to.”

“Well I won't stay any longer then. Not for you, not for any of these other failures.”

As she towers over me on the bed I know she realises she has gone too far, but I stay silent. “Have you got nothing to say?” I am hit by the full force of what I need to say to her, but prevented from speaking by fear, pure fear at what she might do.

She suddenly looks vulnerable. “Vincent, I thought you were going to propose to me tonight. How stupid is that?”

“Elise, I am sorry. I am so sorry, you do not deserve this. I brought you here with good intentions, but tonight something has changed, and I don't think we can go on anymore.”

“I told Francoise you were going to propose to me, and then she teased me about it.”

“She shouldn't have done that. It was wicked of her to do that, but you shouldn't not have presumed that I was going to propose.”

“What should I have presumed Vincent? That tonight you would fall for someone else? You humiliated me. Look at what you make me do.”

Her hand slaps me, hard across the face, and then with an anguished cry she hits out at me. I fall from the bed, smashing a bedside vase as my head strikes against it. Looking down at the shards of porcelain I see drops of blood.

“I am being honest with you Elise. I don't deserve
this
.”

She steps towards me. In that moment I feel sure Elise could do anything. I'm prostrate at her feet. My body is still attached to her, yet quaking in fear at what she might do. She looks to the neck scarf, and an instant later, streaks over to it. I try to stop her, but she grasps it. I retract, back into the shards of broken porcelain under the window.

“Don't do anything stupid Elise. This little game has gone too far.” I feel sure at that moment that I have paid my dues to her. I have been choked, cut open, humiliated. My eyes plead with her to see that our balance has been redressed.

She keeps winding the cord round her hand. I grab my shirt from the bed, and move back against the window. She comes closer, looking down at me with utter pity. She laughs, and it's a very hollow sound. She screams, kicking the shards from the vase into my half-naked body.

I pull them from me, speckles of blood covering one hand.

“I'm going,” she says, her voice shaking with emotion. She paces around the bed, grabbing her handbag and stole. “I'm going to leave you to your pathetic little life. Hopefully you'll realise one day that your father is right.” She pauses for a moment, as if willing herself to meet my eye, but her trembling head does not raise itself one inch. And then she turns, and storms from the room. I lean back against the wall and close my eyes.

I crouch there for a while, waiting for my heart to steady again. But even with my eyes clenched shut something tells me I cannot relax yet. The window has been blasted open, and the second I look over to it, shouting fills the air. For a dreadful moment I wonder if Elise is berating Francoise as she storms from the house, but then I recognise Georgina's voice coming from the room below. It seems upset, angry, and the shouted reply it provokes seems to be Barbara's. Has Georgina caught her mother with Franz? I crane through the open window, the shadows in the room beneath suggesting pronounced movements.

“Don't make assumptions Georgina. You have no idea what Franz and I were doing,” Barbara says.

‘Well you weren't
talking
mother; I'm not a child. He was tucking his shirt into his trousers when I passed him on the stairs, and then when I come up here I see you adjusting your makeup. It's perfectly obvious what the two of you were doing. He is half your age mother, closer to mine than yours. You're an embarrassment.”