The girl clutches at his shirt and sobs, when it is time for us to go. She becomes hysterical when the nurse and a servant try to pry her away and they have to sedate her. In the car Blake is very silent and lost in his own thoughts. The way she had clung so desperately to him had distressed me too.
‘It’s great how she trained all those animals, though, isn’t it?’ I say, in an attempt to take him away from his unhappy thoughts.
‘She doesn’t train them. An animal trainer works with them and everybody just pretends that she has trained them.’
‘Oh! Whose idea was it to do that?’
‘My mother’s.’
The brevity of his answer tells me not to go there. As ever, any talk of his family makes him clam up. I turn my head and gaze at the countryside and think of the fraught child locked away in that sad house, and the woman who won’t acknowledge her child’s existence, but who will go to elaborate lengths to create a private circus, which her daughter can ringmaster.
Twenty-six
It is a Monday night. Blake has already phoned to say he will be late. He has a meeting. I am in bed reading when he comes in. He stands for a moment at the doorway simply looking at me. He seems different. Not so held together.
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.
‘Just admiring your beauty.’ Even his voice is drowsy and very appealing. This Blake is like nothing I know. He begins to walk towards me. Sits on the bed beside me and his liquored breath hits me instantly. I suck in my breath.
He nods knowingly, sagely. ‘That’s right… Been drinking.’
And then underneath the smell of the liquor, perfume. Expensive. Crushed flowers, herbs, musk. I have smelt this before. More than a year ago. When he came back from his birthday party. The realization hits me like a fist in the belly. Victoria. I stop thinking. Pain and fury are rushing into my brain. I raise both my hands and push him. He is not expecting such a reaction and he falls backwards, awkwardly, to the floor. I hear the thud of his body hitting the floor.
‘What the fuck?’ he slurs.
I fly towards his prone body and with quick hands I unbutton his fly and pull the trousers down to his hips. I tear furiously at his underwear. I bend my head and smell his crotch. But the odor is familiar. His. I sit back on my heels and look at him. He has raised his head off the floor and is looking at me, astounded.
‘What’s good for the goose… You were with a woman. I smelt her perfume on you.’
He lets his head drop to the carpet and sighs heavily. ‘Yeah, my mother.’
Shit. Of course his mother was at the birthday bash last year too. I scramble over his prone body, and peer into his face. ‘Ooops… Sorry.’
‘Why don’t you finish what you started, Lana?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I reply, and start tugging his trousers off.
‘Take your clothes off and sit on me, but face my feet. I want to see my dick disappearing into you, and your pretty butt hitting my groin.’
I slip my nightgown off and ease myself on the hard column.
‘Ride me hard and fast,’ he says and I slam myself onto him.
‘Oh yes,’ he groans.
He is drunk and it takes longer than usual for him to come. By the time he does I am sweating and exhausted. I haven’t come, but all I want to do is lie down beside him on the floor. I slide off him and am about to fall sideways to the floor when he catches me.
‘I want you to rub yourself on my thigh until you come, but this time face me so I can see you come.’
I sit on his thigh, our juices squelching under me. The hairs on his thigh tickle me, and feel strange on my open pussy. I begin to rub myself on him while he watches me with avid eyes. The spasm of release comes quickly to my exhausted body. I slump against his body, my breast crushed against his rib bones, my cheek pressed on his chest.
‘How could a woman who has had a baby have such a tight pussy?’ His voice is rambling, sleepy.
I grin to myself. ‘The woman doctor who delivered Sorab said she always puts in a couple of extra stitches. “For your husband” she said.’
Blake chuckles. ‘That should be made standard practice.’
I rest my chin on his chest. ‘Why did you get drunk today?’
He sighs heavily. ‘Because today I had to make a very, very difficult decision.’
I raise my head up onto my palm and look into his eyes. ‘Involving your mother?’
He brings a finger to my lips. ‘Shhh…’
I sigh and drop my head back down. All these secrets. Why can’t he just trust me and tell me.
His voice is a whisper. ‘It’s a funny thing smell, isn’t it? Do you know the thing I missed most after you left?’
‘Sex?’
‘Sex? I slept with hundreds of women.’
I feel searing pain at his words. ‘In the beginning I had them all; brown, black, yellow, redhead, blonde, you name it. Got myself wasted and bedded them all. Then I began to be a little more discerning. They had to look like you, at the very least, from the back. If I drank enough and kept the lights dim, then I could fool myself that it was you, but the second I woke up, I knew: it was not you. They all—every single one of them—smelled of stale sex. No one had your smell. And I would practically run out of the door.’
His words, if they are meant to console or flatter me, have the opposite effect. I don’t like the thought of all the women he has been with paraded before my eyes. Everything he has had with me he has had with others. There is nothing special just between us.
‘Fuck my smell! Is there nothing we can do together that you have not done with anyone else?’
For a moment he simply looks at me as if pleading with me to recant. I don’t. A bitter expression crosses his face. He sits up. Almost I can believe that he is no longer drunk, but stone cold sober.
‘Get on the bed,’ he says.
I obey immediately. This Blake reminds me too much of the old Blake. Far away and distant. Cold. A stranger. I am almost regretting my request. He gets up, goes to the drawer where all the sex toys that we never got around to using are kept, and pulls out a vibrator. This one is not big like the black and orange one that he humiliated me with. It is white, shaped like a missile, and of a modest size. He shrugs his shirt off.
‘Lie down,’ he says. His voice is clipped and quite scary. This is not my Blake. Yet, he is mine. This Blake lives inside the Blake that I know and I want this Blake too. This Blake is my opponent, but this Blake also holds secrets. Secrets that I want. I am not all light and he is not all dark. To be whole, to know him completely I only have to embrace his darkness and make it mine.
Do I have sufficient bravery?
Of course I do.
I will take my torch and go where love takes me.
He puts the vibrator on the bedside table close to him. Then he positions himself so his cock is over my mouth. And I note the most surprising thing of all. His cock is flaccid. This does not excite him in the least. He is doing this for me. Slowly, he lowers his dick into my mouth. I have never had it half-soft before and it is strange in my mouth. But it makes me determined.
I begin to suck so hard and so well and it grows quickly in my mouth to double its size. He takes the vibrator and inserts it into my slick vagina. He twists and turns it a few times inside the slippery walls, then removes it, and puts it into my hand. I take it, surprised. It is not switched on.
‘Go on. Fuck me,’ he orders.
But I am paralyzed. This is neither sexy nor erotic for me. I don’t want to do it, and I can see in his eyes that this is unrelished territory for him. He takes my hand and, positioning it over his rectum, pushes my hand hard upwards. There is no real lubrication. Only the juices from my own sex. I see him jerk and wince with pain.