The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes (22 page)

At home in the shower as he soaped Evelyn’s breasts while she washed her hair, Hal asked, “So, was last night what you wanted?”

She let the water run over her head and cascade down her breasts, carrying sweat, soap and dirt. “Yes, it was,” she said. “I think we’re learning what to do with three, don’t you?”

“It worked,” he said. “I liked it. But this is nice, too.” He soaped her breasts again, rubbing his palms in circles over them.

She sighed as she placed herself under the flow of warm water again. “I’m glad it worked out, I just wouldn’t want to lose track of this, though. Us. The pair.”

“I don’t think we ever would,” he said. “It’s just nice to have variety, someone like Rebecca, a different taste. I’d like to have many different tastes to share with you.’

“What?” she said, stopping with her hand on the faucet. She felt a physical shift, as though they had momentarily uncoupled and changed directions before rotating together again.

“You seem surprised. But you were a different person, too, with Rebecca there, and that was really interesting. Maybe confusing at first, then just exciting.” He began to whistle, which Evelyn realized she’d never heard him do before.

“We have time for boiled eggs before I have to leave,” she said, turning off the faucet, and grabbing a towel off the rack.

Rebecca woke alone. She’d heard them leave earlier, as she’d known they would, but had preferred not to let them know she cared about being left alone, calmly rolling over and drifting back to sleep so they wouldn’t realize she’d been awake. Why fuss about it? She pulled a large cushion over herself, thinking of moving out, finding a bigger place, a better job, a lover who wanted only her.

“Enough of these screwed-up sex fiends,” she mumbled to her pillows, including herself in that description because she had to admit last night had been a charge, until they’d left her. If she had the energy, she’d climb up to her loft bed for the rest of the day, but no, she decided it would be better to clean out her cupboards, throw out that Chinese food, probably rancid by now, and invite Hal for lunch. The best part of last night, she decided, was when she’d had him in her mouth, shutting out Evelyn, even the mainframe of Hal, just his cock in her mouth, like everything she’d ever wanted.

She dialled their number, knowing Hal would be working at home alone by now. “Hi,” she said when he answered brusquely with a single “Yes?” no doubt expecting a call from work.

“I loved last night,” she said after a pause. He didn’t recognize her voice, after all that?

But then he said, “Rebecca!”

She listened to his breathing quicken. “I was just thinking, you guys left so suddenly I didn’t even wake up to say goodbye! Would you like to come over for lunch?”

“Well . . .” He sounded doubtful. “Evelyn’s at school, so I don’t think she could make it.”

“She used to come over for lunch all the time,” said Rebecca. “But I guess she’s having a busy day today.”

“Yeah,” said Hal after a pause that made Rebecca smile to herself. “She sometimes serves lunch at the Culinary Institute’s restaurant. We should go there, it’s a great deal.”

“And let student cooks practise on us?” Rebecca protested. “No, I’d rather have you to myself today.”

“We’d have to make reservations in advance anyhow, it’s really popular. So, OK, I’ll come over. Not for that old Chinese food, I hope.”

“Oh, God, no, I tossed that out. How about soup? Tomato soup with cheese? We called it Blushing Bunnies in Girl Scouts. Hardly gourmet, but good.”

“Blushing Bunnies?” he laughed. “Sounds as good as your blushing behind. I’ll be there.”

Well, well, she thought as she got ready, putting blush on her lips, her cheeks, and thinking about doing her ass, too, but that would probably just rub off on her clothes. She didn’t think he’d be ready for a nude greeting at the door, but maybe soon. She found two cans of tomato soup in her cupboard, and some rather hardened cheese in the fridge, but grated and melted it would taste fine. At least it wasn’t turning green.

When the bell rang at noon, she buzzed him in and greeted him at her open door with a kiss. “Back so soon?” she murmured, then, daring, slipped a hand over his cock, which rose beneath his jeans in a greeting of its own.

Take Me to Carnevale

Maxim Jakubowski

They had arranged to meet in a small café on the left hand side of Campo Santa Maria Formosa, right opposite the church and the hospital. It was February. It was Venice. A thin morning mist still shrouded the city, floating in from the lagoon, like a shimmering curtain of silk, half obscuring the old stones, the canals and the normal sounds of the floating city.

The connection had been made over the Internet.

He hadn’t even brought his laptop with him on this Venice trip, but the apartment they were staying in, which he had agreed to house-sit for friends travelling in India, had a computer in almost every room and a wi-fi connection and it had been, for both of them, almost too much of a temptation. Like allowing their fate to be decided by the vagaries of electronic availability.

Emma had been sitting on one of the sofas, half reading and half daydreaming, while he listened to music on his iPod. Right then the soundtrack by Nick Cave for
The Assassination of Jesse James
, he would remember later.

“I don’t know,” Emma had said, and he had known exactly the precise words she had uttered, just from reading her lips behind the threnody in his ears. It was something she often mumbled when things were not quite right.

He’d switched off the music and turned towards her. “What is it?”

The green of her eyes emerged from a sea of sadness. “You know . . .” she replied.

He knew. Oh yes, he knew. They were just going nowhere, and no earnest conversation could put them back on track. Even in Venice.

They had reached the city a week or so earlier, arriving at Marco Polo airport. To save money, they had not gone to the extravagance of taking a water taxi but, instead, the bus which took them across the Ponte Della Liberta to Piazzale Roma where they had caught a vaporetto down the Grand Canal to the Rialto Bridge stop and, following the map they had been emailed by his friends, had somehow made their way on foot to the apartment, dodging the customary labyrinth of small bridges and lesser canals.

By now they had seen a multitude of churches, several handfuls of Titian and Canaletto paintings, eaten too much exquisite food to jade the best of palates and suffered an indigestion of baroque and classical architecture and the silences between them were growing longer.

From their bedroom window, they could see St Mark’s Place and the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile across a bend in the Canal. But the weather was cold and humid and the old building’s heating was stuttering at its best and they’d had to wear sweatshirts most of the time both inside and outside.

Maybe he should have chosen the Caribbean where they could have lazed naked on a beach and the warmth might have seeped into their mood. But Emma had never been to Venice and he had promised her he would take her anywhere she wanted, and she was aware that Roberto and Marta had offered them the apartment here should they ever wish to visit. Geoff had been to Venice several times before and, to be frank, had never been too much of a fan. In summer, the canals smelled and he disliked being just an anonymous part of the tourist crowds. In truth, he was not a great traveller.

Emma, on the other hand, was twenty years younger and always sported an enthusiasm for new places and experiences that he no longer could pretend he had. And he secretly knew he’d never possessed the joy or curiosity even when he had been younger himself.

Although it remained mostly unsaid they both knew to a different degree that their relationship was doomed. The age difference, the opposing temperaments, the cultural differences, the weight of his own past, her own ambitions in life. But love still bound them. His, full of despair that she might well happen to be the last great love of his life; hers, full of wonder that Geoff had somehow become the first great love in her life but with her mind, her imagination nagging her daily about the roads not taken and all the future roads that were still to be reached.

In an effort to combat the due date on their affair, they had come to Venice. In her mind, she had wanted to confront beauty. In his, it was just a melancholy vision of past literary memories of Thomas Mann, Byron, Dickens or Nic Roeg, which resonated in the greyness of his soul, the delusion that a trip to a new place could repair the stitches that were coming apart in their affair.

“Carnival begins tomorrow,” he had pointed out to her.

“Really?” she had exclaimed, her eyes widening in anticipation.

“Yes.”

“Will you buy me a mask?” Emma had asked.

“Of course.”

“And I will get one for you,” she suggested. “Something darkly romantic, that would just suit you.”

“Why not?”

“And we acquire them separately, and they remain secret until the first evening we go out and wear them. A surprise!”

“A lovely idea,” Geoff had readily agreed, the fleeting thought of Emma quite naked except for a delicate white Carnival mask shielding her face, and her green eyes peering through the disguise already warming his heart and suggestible loins.

His finger lingered on her knee, and he shuddered. The electricity between them still worked.

“Can we go online and read all about the Carnival?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. They made their way to the guest bedroom where the nearest connected computer stood on a rickety trestle table their host often used to mix his paints on.

Above it, by coincidence, hung slightly crooked on the wall by the window, was a gaudy painting of a woman in chains wearing only a black mask which obscured her eyes. Roberto’s latest BDSM variation.

They surfed freely for the next couple of hours, learning all about Carnevale and its origins, the stories of Casanova, the types of masks and their significance. One link led to another and yet another until an aimless stroke of the keyboard took them to the website where out of sheer prurient curiosity they arranged for the meeting in the bar on Campo Santa Maria Formosa the next day.

At first, Geoff had been somewhat hesitant, but Emma’s enthusiasm had swayed him.

“It will be an adventure,” she said.

“I suppose so,” he answered.

“Don’t be so old,” she added.

Geoff smiled wryly. She always knew how to silence him.

“Yes, it’s all because of Attila the Hun.”

They were sipping espressos at the back of the small café. The man was in his fifties and had silver hair and was explaining how the earliest inhabitants of Venice had been exiled all the way to the lagoon by the invasion of their native lands by foreign hordes.

“Fascinating,” Emma commented.

“And the bridge that connects us to the Italian mainland was only built by Mussolini under a century ago. Before that we were isolated and you could only reach the city by water.”

Geoff ordered another round from the hovering waitress. Mostly San Pellegrino mineral water; neither he nor Emma could cope with too much coffee at this time of day.

“It’s a party,” the man who called himself Jacopo said. “But we try to organize matters so that we adhere to all the old traditions of the Venice Carnevale, not the diluted versions that have sadly evolved over the years since Carnevale’s heyday.”

“We understand,” Geoff said. Emma looked him in the eyes, and nodded.

“It is strictly by invitation, of course,” he continued. “Normally, we try to restrict attendance to pure Venetians, but as you know, there are fewer of us now. The younger generations are all leaving the city. So sad.”

He looked at Emma. Her dark hair shone glossily; she had washed it just before they had left the apartment to walk here. When wet, her curls ironed out naturally and her hair extended then to the small of her back. Geoff observed her, too. She looked luminous. Already excited by the prospect of the party they were being informally interviewed for. As if a fire was rising inside her, bringing light to her features, heat to her hidden senses. Geoff recognized that gleam in her eyes. It was invariably present when she had been fucked. He kept on watching, transfixed as Jacopo’s words swept soundlessly over him. The man with the silver hair also kept on observing Emma, as if weighing her in his steady gaze.

Geoff returned to reality, reluctantly abandoning his vision of Emma’s fascinated attention to the man’s words.

“Naturally, you remain masters of your destiny. A polite ‘no’ will always be an acceptable response to overtures, although it is hoped that all guests will participate freely and openly in the proceedings.”

Again, Emma nodded, her chin bobbing up and down.

Geoff sighed discreetly.

It was true that they had often discussed the remote prospect of others joining in their games, their lovemaking. But they had never reached the stage where they had actively done anything about it.

Something inside him – something rotten or diseased? – had always imagined what it would be like to see Emma mounted by another, harboured the curiosity to witness how another man would touch her, make her moan. Because he found her so beautiful, part of him felt she should be shared with the whole world, so that all and sundry could truly understand why his love for her was so strong and overpowering. But it was a long road from thoughts to the realities of the flesh.

She had even asked, “Would you be jealous if it happened?” and he had been obliged to dig deep into his thoughts and had finally answered quite truthfully “I’m not sure, maybe if I could watch. I wouldn’t want you to fuck another man behind my back, that’s for sure.”

“Wonderful,” Jacopo said as he rose from the café table. “You are a lovely couple. I think you will enjoy our parties a lot.”

They had jointly agreed to attend the opening of Carnevale the next day. He had slipped over a piece of paper with the address.

“Every party takes place in a different locale,” the man with the silver hair had said. “They can only be reached by the canals, so you will have to make arrangements accordingly.”