Eighty Days White (11 page)

‘You should have told me.’

‘It’s OK,’ she said, shrugging. ‘He’ll get over it.’

Back in London, Neil was similarly unsympathetic to my plight.

‘It’s a bit creepy, Lily,’ he replied, when I told him I had been involved with an older man.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It just is.’

‘Try and explain why to me?’ I insisted.

‘He’s … old enough to be your dad. Don’t you ever look down while you’re … you know … and think … ?’ He was carefully trying to choose the right words to express his indignation.

‘No, I don’t think anything of the sort. Leonard is not my father. He’s just a man who happens to be a bit older than me.’

‘A bit older!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s more than twice your age. And … Leonard, that’s an old man’s name.’

I laughed out loud, confronted by Neil’s prejudices.

‘You just don’t understand. If the attraction is mutual, age is neither here nor there.’

‘But …’ he spluttered.

‘Anyway, it’s over now and I can see you’re clearly not willing to provide me with a shoulder to cry on.’ I slipped off the barstool.

‘Lily!’

‘Fuck you, Neil.’

He’d changed. He wasn’t the Neil that I knew any longer, so it was easy to walk away. Nowadays he spent more and more time at work and each time we saw each other he looked more like an advertising executive and less like my old friend. Tonight he’d arrived in a sharp new suit with his tie half loosened and I’d briefly imagined tearing it off him
and tethering him to the chair with it to show him that he wasn’t all that just because he worked in the West End.

Neil had been no help. It was just me and my memories, good old Lily and her sadness. I knew I would manage. Time would pass by and the image of Leonard’s face would become more and more unclear as his features faded. Hopefully the feelings he had evoked would also grow fainter and life would continue. Just a blip, I thought. I was determined to make a go of things, and if Leonard had encouraged me to see others, like Liana’s man Alyss had, to extravagantly sample life and its box of delights and what it had to offer while I was still young, I would. Not that I felt young; right now I felt like a million years old.

I’d seen a Holy Criminals gig advertised in
Time Out
and, on a whim, tried to get a ticket but it was sold out. When I mentioned it to Jonno at the shop, he told me he knew someone in their management’s office and volunteered to give her a call to try to get me on the guest list, although he joked that I’d never expressed any interest in the band until their drummer had come into the shop with his Icelandic buddies.

I arrived at the venue with my warpaint on – dark-purple lipstick, thick black eyeliner and short hair gelled – and wearing leather from top to bottom alongside my Doc Marten boots that Leonard had never liked. My name was on the list at the door as promised, and I was even allowed a plus one, although I had come alone. Jonno was not a fan of the controversial Viggo Franck and his band either.

I was even given an all-access badge, which allowed me to visit backstage.

I noticed Viggo immediately, all wild hair and tight
trousers. He was in a corner, surrounded by women lapping up every one of his dubious witticisms. I moved to the other end of the Green Room, where the drinks were generously laid out on a long table, with fruit, meats and cheese in abundance. I was clumsily balancing my plastic glass of red wine and a plate in which I had piled up crisps, nuts and an egg-and-cress sandwich, when someone brushed against me. I turned round.

‘I like your hair short.’

‘I didn’t think you’d recognise me.’

‘I never forget a teardrop,’ Dagur said.

I was allowed to watch the whole gig from the stage wings with some of the other hangers-on. The set was powerful and theatrical, even if the music still wasn’t on my precise wavelength.

Afterwards, Viggo retreated to his dressing room with a couple of tall short-skirted blondes in his wake. Dagur, still dripping with sweat, shirtless and exhibiting a splendid tattoo of a horse carved dark and deep into the taut skin of his back, approached me and winked. There was nothing sleazy about the way he did so, it was just a complicit way of smiling at me.

Nevertheless, I moved closer to him and, with slow deliberation, ran my hand over his brow. He kissed me. His lips were firm and demanding and when I leaned into his arms, he responded by placing just one hand lightly on each of my hips and holding me still so that he could continue to concentrate on pleasuring my mouth. He didn’t try to grope me or take advantage of his position too soon, and his way of keeping me simultaneously aroused but also at arm’s length attracted me like a moth to a flame.

The next morning I woke up in his bed. He had turned the heating on full and when I blinked my eyes open to welcome in the day, he pulled the covers off the bed leaving me naked and exposed to his wandering eye as I stretched lazily across his futon mattress. His apartment was practically bereft of furniture and the enormous low bed with its crisp white sheets and black walnut frame dominated the whole room.

‘That’s better,’ he said, when he’d removed the sheet that I had pulled around my shoulders in the night. ‘I want to see you.’

He had already brought me a cup of coffee on a tray and a plate of sliced fruit with a spoonful of honey dribbled over the top. Next to the cup of black coffee was a little jug of cream.

I could definitely get used to this. Guys my own age weren’t likely to bring me breakfast in bed. They were just too worried that the slightest kindness would make a girl think that a rock on the finger and a white picket fence was just around the corner.

Older men weren’t like that. They were nicer to women. Took it all a bit less seriously. I liked that.

Dagur was in his early thirties, I guessed. Maybe a little younger. He looked reasonably ordinary with his clothes on, though I supposed that might have been because he was always in the shadow of the charismatic Viggo Franck. But naked he was beautiful. Almost entirely hairless, muscled, and with that tattoo that rippled when he walked. I was getting wet again just thinking about it.

‘What are you doing tomorrow, babe?’ he asked. He was
sitting down on the edge of the bed with a laptop balanced on his knees. Every now and again he would reach over and idly stroke my ankle until I wriggled all the way down the bed so that my legs were hanging off the edge behind him and his hand was resting just below my pussy instead of on my calf.

He looked up and grinned.

‘Oh, like that, is it?’ he said, moving on top of me and slipping a finger inside me, casually moving it around until I began to moan and grind against him. The sheet scratched against my back as I slid further down the bed to push his hand in deeper. Last night had been good, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted Dagur to fill me again, fill all the parts of me that Leonard had left empty.

His laptop clattered onto the floor.

‘More,’ I said, ‘I want to feel more …’

My feet found purchase on the floor and I pressed down to gain traction as I wrapped my hand around his wrist and pulled, guiding him.

‘You’re too tight for that, babe.’

‘Try harder,’ I insisted, pushing his fist inside further. ‘Fill me.’

Dagur’s eyes flashed and in an instant he had me pushed hard against the bed with my legs over my head and his fingers slipping in and out of my cunt. He curved his hand around to ease its passage and I winced as his fourth finger slipped in and stopped abruptly at the knuckle.

‘Relax,’ he said. He leaned forward and stroked my cheek with extraordinary gentleness. Then he reached under the bed and pulled out a bottle of lube. It smelled strongly of cinnamon and was cold and wet against my skin.

‘Why don’t you try?’ he said.

‘Me?’

‘Yes. I want to watch you fist yourself.’

He took my palm and pressed it against his own, coiling his fingers over mine to indicate how much smaller my hands were than his.

‘I’m not sure that I can …’ My mind tried to conjure up the appropriate image, but it just didn’t seem possible.

‘I’ll help you,’ he said, then slid his hand out of me slowly and took hold of my wrist to guide me in. His fingers were damp and sticky.

‘Have you tried DP?’ he asked, as I slipped one finger, then two, then three, then four inside.

‘DP?’

‘Double penetration. Two men at once.’

‘No,’ I breathed, almost overcome with the thought that my entire hand was millimeters away from sliding into my vagina. My surprise had almost overtaken my arousal and for a moment I was distracted, imagining the physical possibilities.

I’d never had a threesome. But I knew that Liana had – her first boyfriend had wanted to experiment with his bi side and had invited a friend along one night, with her permission. Liana had told me how after she’d watched the two men suck each other off, they had agree to both fill her. She had straddled one and the other had kneeled behind and entered her anally. When she related the story I had imagined how she must have felt, like a queen, riding two of them at once.

She’d laughed when I told her that. And now I understood why. Most likely such a situation for her would have
meant a double loss of power. I saw it the other way around. Having two men looking at me longingly, worshipping my body, touching me the way that I asked them to. After she’d left, I’d disappeared into my bedroom and fantasised about it with the door firmly closed and my hand between my legs.

‘But you like the idea, don’t you?’ Dagur asked again. ‘I can see how wet you’re getting. Does it turn you on, thinking of two men’s cocks inside you?’

He had bent his head to whisper directly into my ear. His Icelandic lilt lent a rough, hard note to his words that made me catch my breath, and forget all the other distractions rushing around in my mind as my body throbbed with a sudden rush of desire. If I hadn’t already been lying down, then Dagur’s voice would have made me weak-kneed and light-headed. Leonard had been the first man to make me realise how much I enjoyed the sound of dirty words spoken aloud, but he wasn’t the last.

‘Oh God, yes,’ I replied. Every nerve ending beneath my skin strained for release.

‘Well, I can’t give you that now, but this will be close enough.’

His hand locked around the base of my thumb and wrist and he pushed gently until I felt myself open and I slid all the way inside.

‘Wow,’ I said, in wonder. The inside of my opening was not as I had expected. I was tight at my entrance, but inside, totally accommodating. I stretched and twisted my hand, exploring. For a moment I closed my eyes, ignored Dagur entirely and sank into the sensation of my fist pressing inside me, filling me to the brim.

When I opened my eyes, Dagur was staring at me with shining eyes.

He made a growling sound in the back of his throat and flipped me over onto my side, pressing my knees up against my chest and holding my wrist firmly in place.

‘More,’ I moaned. Even my fist wasn’t enough. Would never be enough to fill all the blank spaces inside me that Leonard had left behind.

I squirmed as Dagur tugged at my breasts, grabbing and twisting each of them in his palm, kneading my flesh roughly as though he had lost control of his own senses. His teeth were sharp against my skin as he brought his mouth to my bare neck and nipped.

‘I’ll give you more,’ he croaked. His voice was ragged. His finger pressed against my arsehole until that opening too gave way for him, inviting him in.

‘Oh God, you’re so tight,’ he whispered as he began to move his finger in circles and then added another.

‘More,’ I instructed, and Dagur let go of my wrist and fumbled under the bed again to find a condom. His hands were shaking almost as much as my body. Then he reapplied the pressure to my fist, pushing my hand deep inside again as his cock found its home deep within my arse and I cried aloud with the sheer overwhelming joy of it all.

The pressure of his cock brushed against my knuckles, separated from the bare skin of my hand only by the wall that stood between us, the separate entrances of my cunt and arse.

‘Can you feel that?’ I asked him as I slid my hand up and down to heighten the sensation.

‘Fuck yes, I can feel that,’ he said as he curled me up into
a ball and took hold of a knot of my short hair and began to thrust faster and faster until his body tensed and tightened and I knew that beneath the thin skin of the condom his semen was flooding inside my anus.

His chest was slick with sweat when he collapsed against me and held me against him without bothering to remove his cock. He kissed me gently on the lips and ran his fingertips up and down my flank.

‘Ow,’ I said, as I pulled my hand free. My wrist ached from having been trapped in an uncomfortable position. Dagur took my hand and brought it to his lips and kissed the back as if he were greeting a princess.

‘That was impressive,’ he said. ‘But you didn’t come?’

‘No,’ I replied. I’d never seen the point in lying about it.

‘It was strange. I could feel my muscles tensing as if I was going to come, but it was as if I was so full that I had no room to climax. Like I could tighten but not let go.’

‘Interesting,’ he mused. Then propped himself up on his elbow and shifted his weight so that he was leaning over me with his body pressed hard against mine. ‘I’ll fix that. If you just give me a minute or two to recover.’

He was true to his word, and we spent the rest of the day in bed together, a tangled heap of limbs in damp sheets.

It was early evening when I finally returned to my room in Dalston and crawled into bed to relax at last.

Any solace that I found in the pleasant ache of my body and the peace of my own company was lost in my worry for Liana that kept resurfacing no matter how many times I reminded myself that, like me, she was now a grown woman
and had always been able to take care of herself, even if her behaviour didn’t always tally with my own.

Finally, I resolved to phone her and check on her state of mind and, if necessary, attempt to cheer her up with news of my latest escapade.

‘Oh, Lily,’ she giggled, ‘you slut!’