Tidal Wave (31 page)

Arabella, standing provocatively, watched him, aware that every word she uttered, every movement she made with her body seduced him.

Now he was naked. She saw his cock in full erection and his wonderful, large, heavy balls. She looked up from his cock and smiled.

He led her to the foot of the bed and sat her down on the edge. Then, gently putting his hands on her shoulders, he pushed her down flat. Spreading her legs wide apart, he stood between them.

Arabella trembled at the sight of him looming up over her, not knowing what he had planned, what his fantasies might be. He leaned over her and reached for two pillows, which he tucked under her shoulders, saying “Watch us, my love, my wife-to-be.”

He said it calmly, with a controlled passion, then he stood silently between her legs examining every inch of her with his eyes. Slowly he went down on his knees and pulled her gently toward him until she was partially off the bed, her knees spread wide apart, her feet planted on the carpet.
He ran his hands seductively over her luscious long legs encased in the black stockings and played for a few seconds with the ruffles of the black-and-white garters. She watched with mounting excitement as Nicholas admired her.

She watched him take the palm of his hand with fingers spread and run it up over her mound, catching the silky flaxen hair. She shivered with anticipation as he squeezed his fingers closed and pulled her pubic hair. He massaged her like this for a while, then with both hands he spread her open as wide as he could and bent his mouth to her.

Nicholas licked slowly with the most delectable long strokes. He sucked and licked, first one side, then the other. He inserted his tongue as deep as he could into the tender opening of soft, sweet flesh. It was exquisite and delicious. It was like being eaten alive. Her hips began gyrating on his willing tongue, and as her movements quickened he knew she was about to come. As he placed two fingers inside her she shuddered with release.

He stood up a moment later and looked at her lovingly. She was spent, legs still wide apart, her face pink with the flush of orgasm. She was beautiful in her nakedness with the magnificent jewels and whorish black stockings. A picture of elegant depravity.

He said, as he pulled her legs up around his waist and stepped closer to her, “I love the taste of you. It drives me mad with passion, makes me want to absorb your flesh into mine.”

She said nothing, her eyes riveted to his rampant cock, blood pumping through the veins that stood out on the throbbing thick penis. It looked as if it had a life of its own. She watched as he lifted her closer toward him and with one quick, hard thrust he drove into her. He was so strong, more wild and tough than she had imagined he could be. It was thrilling to be taken this way. He pulled her higher up off the bed into a position where he supported her as he moved in and out of her again and again with total abandon and lust. It was divine. It was powerful. It was joyful. She
grabbed him with her vaginal muscles and squeezed as hard as she could on him.

“No!” he called out. “Don’t do that. I’ll come too quickly. Just relax and let me do it all. Lie there and enjoy this.”

Arabella did as she was told. It was marvelous. He was so proficient and obviously reveling in her. It was glorious.

Nicholas was, as always, extremely imaginative between her legs. He was amazing, let every fantasy fly. He reached over to the nighttable and grabbed something. Before Arabella could see what it was, Nicholas was improvising with a kidskin dildo so that she felt as if two cocks were moving in and out of her at the same time. It was an incredible feeling. He saw how much she enjoyed it and that gave him the courage to be wilder.

Arabella submitted to him joyfully. His erotic arts gave her infinite sexual pleasure. Because they were performed with premeditated love and affection, they were an exercise in passion without hate or violence and carried out with care. It was sex with the desire to please, which resulted in yet another kind of love, yet another bond of affection.

The animal had taken over, broken free. Nicholas lifted Arabella to the carpet, on her hands and knees, and mounted her from behind. He rammed into her until they came together in an orgasm that seemed to go on forever. They were spent, worn out. They lay in each other’s arms, crumpled and limp on the floor next to the bed. Placing a pillow under her head, Nicholas covered them up with the satin eiderdown.

Arabella recovered quite quickly, but was still amazed at their debauchery, which was enhanced by Marvin’s unique gift to them — a treasure chest of sex aids and toys. They had not spoken one personal word to each other as Arabella and Nicholas, but as a man and a woman they had had a dialogue to last a lifetime.

Nicholas kissed Arabella tenderly, with love and affection. He reached between her legs and felt their wetness. He said, “You are divine. You give it all too, you know. For the first time in my life I’ve been able to really let go.
For the first time in my life I’ve experienced sexual love that is honest and open.”

“It’s perfect, isn’t it?” asked Arabella.

“It’s ideal love, darling. It was and is always wonderful for us because I can deny you nothing. We can deny ourselves nothing.”

Nicholas stroked Arabella’s hair tenderly, kissed her on the cheek, and slowly drew the eiderdown away from their bodies.

He said, “I lost myself and found myself at the same time. I’ll love you all my life for letting me lose myself in you.”

Arabella kissed his cheek and caressed him, snuggling up as close as she could to him.

“I feel incredible. You were exquisite, wonderful, everything I’ve ever wanted in a man, a partner, a husband, a friend.”

They kissed a few times, then he said, “It’s time I undressed you and put you to bed.”

He removed the jewels from her ears and around her neck, her bracelets from her wrist. He reached up and put them on the table. Then he spread her legs apart and slowly slid the garters off her thighs, removed her black high-heeled shoes from her feet, and slowly rolled down the black silk stockings.

“I’d like to take you to bed now, naked except for our betrothal rings, and make love to you not as a woman but as Arabella
the
woman,
my
woman.”

“Yes, I’d like that too.”

He stood up, straddled her breasts, and offered to help her up with outstretched hands. Arabella did not take them. He knew by the look on her face what she wanted. He lowered himself over her mouth and she swallowed all of his soft, flaccid penis. It grew hard and filled her mouth quickly. Slowly, lovingly, she kissed him and licked him with her tongue. As she disgorged him, they both smiled. He helped her up and they went to bed.

They made a gentle kind of love all night and through
the early hours of the morning, sleeping intermittently. When they were not making sexual love, they remained locked in each other’s arms and made love verbally and emotionally. They made plans for their private future and talked of dreams for their public life.

It was a night of sexual delights, but different from any night they had spent together because it was emotionally controlled by their commitment to marry.

Nicholas’s mind woke first with a sense of joy and happiness that Arabella was going to be his wife. His body next woke with a full morning erection, ready, waiting and wanting Arabella. He opened his eyes to see if she was awake. She was not there.

The door to the bathroom was open and he could hear her singing softly, “You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply …”

The sun was streaming through the portholes and the waves sparkled silver from its rays. It looked cold, choppy, but exciting. There was so much out there waiting for him, waiting for them. He wondered about the time, eager to dock and begin his new life with Arabella.

He sat up and looked through the bathroom door. She was busy putting on her makeup and doing her hair. He smiled to himself then called out, “You’re singing off key, my love.”

“Good morning to you too!” Arabella said, laughing.

“Good morning. What’s that at the foot of the bed?”

“Ah,” she replied. “It’s a present from me. In all the excitement of our engagement I forgot to give it to you last night.”

Nicholas reached out for his glasses and put them on. The large, rectangular package wrapped in silver paper could only be a painting. The writing on it in bright coral lipstick simply said, “I love you, Arabella.”

“Sorry about the lipstick, but it was all I could find impressive enough to write with at this hour. I bought the
painting a year ago to hang over my bed in my new home. I took it out of the hold yesterday wanting to give you something so you would remember the loveliest voyage I have ever had.” She paused before continuing. “That was before you offered me the voyage of a lifetime. I hope you like it,” she called out.

He began tearing the silver paper from his gift, then stopped for a second. Realizing what was before him, he looked up at her and said, in an almost somber tone of voice, “I want you to know that no woman has ever done this — given me such an extravagant gift. I’m overwhelmed.”

“
You’re
overwhelmed! What about me!” she said, holding up her hands and looking at her rings. She twisted her hands around for him to look.

Nicholas leaned the painting back against the post again and went over to her. Arabella spread her arms out wide and Nicholas walked in up against her. They kissed.

He said, “Thank you, my love.” They kissed again.

Then they both went to tear away the silver paper. They made sure the picture was set level and steady on the bed before they went around and sat in the middle of the bed next to each other. They looked at the Henri Rousseau in silence. It was one of his jungle scenes with a silver moon high up in a black sky. A naked maiden lay on her side in the foreground in a small clearning near a babbling brook, white orchids in her hair.

Nicholas was utterly speechless. He was absorbed into the painting, which was entitled “Maiden with Orchids in Her Hair.”

For what seemed like a long time, they sat on the bed silently, enjoying the genius of the painting. Arabella was captured once again by the sensuous, luscious garden, the power of the moon, the naïveté and sweet innocence of the naked girl. There was a whole world, a universe in the painting set before them.

It was the presence of Nicholas, naked except for his glasses, sitting back on his haunches, that finally drew her
away from the masterpiece. She watched him, completely engrossed in the world of Rousseau. An overwhelming tide of emotion began to swell within her. Eighteen years of an exciting full life flashed before her, yet she felt as if she were drowning. She was suddenly shattered by the awareness that she, like the maiden in the painting, had been alone in the jungle until now.

Oh, Anthony! she thought. Eighteen years. Eighteen years of loving you. Eighteen years of substitutes, diversions, loneliness I would accept as such because you could not or would not give me what Nicholas has given me in five days. Oh, Anthony, Anthony! What a loss!

Nicholas turned to Arabella. He reached out and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Neither of them spoke as he took off his glasses and put them on the table. He removed the robe Arabella was wearing. Gently and tenderly he lay her down on the bed, himself over her, as he kissed the tears from her eyes. He felt enormous pity for the sadness she suffered, but from this day on he would kiss her sadness away forever. Together they made the sweetest love either of them had ever known.

He pulled her into his arms and covered them with the eiderdown.

“No one has ever been so generous with their love for me,” she said.

“Nor me,” he said, and they snuggled tightly in each other’s arms.

Three long, melancholy blasts from the ship’s horn startled them awake.

“What’s that?” Arabella asked.

“That, dear heart, is telling us that the pilot boat has arrived and the customs men are boarding. We should be getting dressed.”

The phone rang just then — it was Missy announcing that it was eight o’clock, three hours until the ship would dock. She and Xu were in the kennels arranging to bring the birds
and dogs to Arabella’s cabin where the customs men would clear the entire Crawford party at nine o’clock.

Arabella turned to Nicholas after she hung up.

“Okay, Mr. Frayne. Are you ready for the real world?”

“You bet, Mrs. Frayne!” He leaned over for one more kiss. “I’ll go back to my cabin, shave and dress. After we clear customs we’ll go to the private gangway the captain has arranged for us and then on to the press conference.

“I think the best plan is that we meet in the dining room at nine thirty. What do you think? Does that give you enough time for the things you want to do?”

“Sounds fine,” answered Arabella, just as the phone rang again.

It was Marvin, who was waiting for Nicholas in his cabin to go over last-minute details of their exit from the ship and the reception waiting for them on the dock.

While the two men were talking, Arabella suddenly remembered Marvin’s engagement gift to them. She looked at the Japanese lacquered box with its magnificent panels of erotica sitting on top of the chest of drawers. The doors were open and the three drawers were pulled out a few inches.

She thought, I must check the box and make sure the toys are all put away. That’s definitely not something I’d want reporters to find!

She slipped out of bed and put on a white cashmere galabeah heavily trimmed in pale olive-green silk braiding and checked each of the silk-lined drawers to make sure that everything was in its proper place. Something was missing.

Nicholas hung up the telephone and looked at her. “Well, you have to admit that it’s a marvelous, exciting present! Objects of great beauty and certainly a great sacrifice as Marv bought them for himself from the late King Farouk’s collection of erotica.”

“I think it’s amazing and quite extraordinary, but I must say when I spoke to him just now I didn’t quite have the nerve to thank him for it,” Arabella replied.