Go: A Surrender (12 page)

He was quiet. “I’m glad I heard you,” he said.

“Me too,” I said, and I rolled over and pressed myself into
him, throwing my leg across his thighs, and the breeze skimmed across us, and
little grains of sand tickled our feet and calves, and the sun poured down like
forgiveness, and together we drifted off to sleep.

After some time I stirred. We were in shadow now, the sun
having traversed westward, behind one of the walls of the little ravine that
created this private strip of coastline. It wasn’t cold, but the tide was
moving closer, erasing the beach.

Beside me, Jack was still asleep. I sat up and surveyed his
body—his muscles and downy hair, the prominent bones of his knees and shins,
his half-hard cock—so solid and yet so fragile.

Our rules notwithstanding, I couldn’t help myself—I reached
for his cock. I ran the edge of my hand lightly along it, from the base up to
the tip, and it hardened, and he stirred, turning his head and squinting up at
me. I danced my hand away from his erection and instead traced my fingertips
across his stomach, down his sides. He shivered a little, ticklish. His cock
grew another increment, as if begging for my touch.

More boldly now, with him watching, I reached for it again,
running my thumb and forefinger up its sides, then letting my thumb linger to
slide around the little drop of wetness that had appeared at its tip.

He didn’t seem to be stopping me. The mere fact of this made
me wet. I bent to kiss him on the mouth now. His lips were dry and salty, as
were mine. I plunged my tongue into his mouth and he gently sucked it, and then
I withdrew, and nibbled at his lip. Now he reached up and cupped the back of my
head and kissed me harder, his tongue searching for mine, his breath hot
against my upper lip, and as we kissed I reached for him again, now wrapping
all my fingers around his cock and slowly, slowly pulling until I released the
head. He moaned into my mouth.

Breaking the kiss, he held me away from him and looked at
me: my face, my bare breasts, the little swell of my belly. “You’re so beautiful,”
he said.

“So are you,” I replied, and again I bent to his mouth,
drinking his kiss. Again I encircled his cock with my hand and slowly stroked
upwards, evoking another helpless sound from his perfect throat.

He bit my lip between his teeth and then let go. “Stop,” he
said.

“Please,” I said.

“No,” he said, and took hold of my wrist and moved my hand
away from him. Then he sat up and reached for my knee and pushed it gently to
one side, spreading me open, exposing how wet I’d become. “I want to make you
feel good,” he said.

All I could do was nod assent. I lowered my back to the
towel as he crawled over and knelt between my legs. He teased my pubic hair for
a few ticklish moments, and then he reached up one hand and laced his fingers
into mine. Then he dipped his tongue into my salty, honeyed slit and again he
moaned.

We both moaned. I opened my eyes and saw his shoulders and
his bare back and the blue ocean beyond, and I felt the strong, sweet, tender
strokes of his tongue against the swollen lips of my labia and across my
straining, yearning clit, and I was just about to surrender every last shred of
my awareness of anything—who I’d ever been, what I’d been frightened of, that
life couldn’t just be this, forever—when I heard children’s voices floating
over to us on the wind.

“Stop,” I said, sitting up quickly.

Jack sat up, too, wiping his chin, registering my alarm.
“What’s the matter?”

“There’s—” I listened. Had I just imagined it? Ruined this
on purpose? No. There they were again. Voices. “Can you hear that?”

That he could was evidenced by how quickly he dashed to his
damp clothes and pulled them on. I scrambled to do the same. We were just
decent when a raft drifted into view—two parents and two kids, paddling lazily
through the surf.

Seeing us standing there, the children waved.

We waved back, ridiculously. My pussy throbbed, aching for
the return of Jack’s touch. “Uh-oh,” I said, as they began to row ashore.

“Hotel?” said Jack.

“Yes,” I agreed, and he grabbed our towels and we began to
ascend the steep little trail that took us back to the top of the cliff. We
were in the sun again, and it was hot, and I was realizing I was very hungry.

When we reached the top I turned and looked down at our
beach. The family was climbing out, the kids already were dashing eagerly
across the rocks, peering into the little pools of cupped seawater.

Jack reached for my hand. I took it, and we walked across
the dry, crackling brush, the last few blazing, burning meters to our hotel.

We were sweat-slicked, salty and starving as we stumbled
into the coolness of my room.

“I need a shower,” said Jack, and I wanted one, myself. By
the time I emerged, clean and cool and wrapped in my towel, and saw him sitting
on the patio again, combed and nicely dressed and talking on the phone, I
realized we were no longer about to make love.

At dinner—at some quiet little beachside bar—Jack informed
me that everything was set.

“Set?” I echoed.

“For the party,” he replied. “We’ll travel tomorrow morning,
check in, and hopefully have time for a nap before we start getting you ready.”

“Getting me ready?” I repeated, again.

“You’ll be a centerpiece, of sorts. Unless—are you feeling
like you want to stop playing?”

The notion of being a centerpiece was titillating. I was curious.
But then, wasn’t too much curiosity a killing thing?

I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to stop. I wanted him to
want me to stop.

“Don’t
you
want me to stop? Or will you ever?”

He laughed, but not like it was funny. “I’ve wanted you to
stop from the very beginning.”

I was dumbfounded.

“Well, no,” he corrected himself. “From the second time.
Since Canada.”

“Why didn’t you say so?!” I exclaimed, upset. My mind was
racing backwards, replaying each scenario in an entirely different light.

“For one thing, I could see the game excited you.”

I blushed. I felt ashamed. If the game hadn’t been exciting
to him, maybe I
was
just a whore.

“No, no,” he said quickly, “don’t feel bad. I set it up!
It’s good you were excited—you were supposed to be. That way I haven’t been
using you, exactly. Though of course, I have been, in a way.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, miserably.

“I have a demon, is I guess the best way to explain it,”
said Jack, as if that were any kind of explanation.

And so he proceeded to tell me about his wife.

He’d met her when he was in New York and freshly out of
college. She was still a student. A bit of a late bloomer, she hadn’t even had
a boyfriend before. As for him, he’d gotten around, as the young men of Wall
Street do, but he fell hard for her and barely looked back. She was beautiful,
smart, ambitious, devoted..

“And mine,” said Jack, shaking his head, “she was completely
mine. Other men worried about their girlfriends’ exes. Rebekah had kissed her
prom date goodnight, in her words, ‘with tongue.’ That’s how innocent she was.”

I tried not to react. This was the fantasy. He’d married the
fantasy. I didn’t want to hear about her. But of course, something had gone
wrong. I clung to that as he continued.

They’d been married four years when she made a confession:
she was curious about other men. What they looked like naked, how they fucked.
She asked if Jack would be willing to help her explore—maybe find a swingers
club, something like that, something safe and discreet.

“But I said no,” explained Jack. “Worse, I lost my temper at
her for saying anything. I couldn’t see it as simple curiosity—the same
curiosity I’d had the chance to exorcise before I’d met her. I’d taken the
strangers home. I’d fucked all the different kinds of women, I’d tried the
positions. I’d had the obligatory threesome, the sex in a club bathroom, the
sex in a cab. It was all what was expected, and I’d done it, and I’d enjoyed
it. But now I was married and I loved my wife and the notion that she wanted to
do any of that—the notion that she could be curious about anyone other than me,
her wedded husband… Well, it hurt my pride, I suppose. And it hurt my fantasy
of her.”

Following her confession Jack found himself growing
paranoid. Was she thinking of other men when they fucked? Was she looking too
long at the waiter? He watched her constantly and fearfully. He checked her
browser history, read her email. Most of all, he became miserable. He tried,
initially, to be more sexually attentive—though she’d assured him that wasn’t
the issue—and yet found himself plagued by performance issues brought on by the
notion that he had to perform.

Meanwhile, she seemed to be doing nothing wrong. She
tolerated his fearful, accusatory silences when she was home late from work, the
barely contained rage with which he’d make then stalk across the room with a
drink. She accommodated the need for pharmaceutical aid in the bedroom with
barely a blink of an eye—though she’d long since ceased to initiate anything.
She was, after all, a good wife, trained to honor and cherish—or at least to
suffer his foul moods silently, following the brief moment of honesty she most
surely had come to entirely regret.

When she finally did cheat, he’d been expecting it so long
it was practically a relief. He knew about it immediately, from reading her
email, and so her increased cheer and affection—likely compensation for her
terrible guilt—just looked to him like treachery. She only kept it secret for a
week, but he hated her in that week—hated her fiercely, and poisonously, and
when she admitted to the affair, weeping and swearing it was a one-time thing,
he coldly told her the marriage had to end.

“It was all pride,” he said. “Pride, and some dumb animal
jealousy. Here I had a woman who adored me and even just the
idea
that
she was capable of having any sexual interest in anyone else in the world
scared me so much I made myself fall out of love with her.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“The divorce was ugly,” he said, shaking his head. “She was mad—who
could blame her? Said I’d made her feel like a dog, always waiting terrified to
see what kind of mood the owner would be in when he came home. It haunted me,
her saying that, because I realized that was the worst part of how I’d
acted—like she belonged to me, like she was my pet, and not a person.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “it was a long time ago now. I’ve
spent years going over it, and over it. Changing whose fault everything was,
alternating between knowing I’d ruined it, and letting myself believe for
awhile that she did. What I finally promised myself was that if I ever fell in
love again, I’d try to have a lighter touch.”

“I’ll say it’s lighter,” I replied, considering he’d barely
touched me at all.

“I’m trying to kill the monster, you see. Trying to show
myself there’s nothing to be afraid of. That sex is just sex, and…” he trailed
off.

“That love is still love,” I offered, looking at him.

“Yes,” said Jack.

Of course, I thought, he was still exercising perfect
control. He might be making his peace with jealousy, but the scenarios were of
his imagining and occurred under his supervision. Aside from being able to call
whether they should proceed or stop, these fantasies were out of my hands.

On the other hand, in some ways I liked it that way. He’d
been right when he said I’d be able to act out what would have been too
shameful for me to admit I could ever want. He’d been right to guess I wanted
it—wanted to experience being used—just a thing for fucking. But also to be
safe—to have someone beside me who knew I was human.

Still, I guessed what he was hoping for with this game. That
he could exhaust my desire. This, I understood, was the reason he didn’t want
to sleep with me yet. He was hoping to first satisfy my desire for all other
men, all in one dizzying, round-the-world go.

Then I would be safe for him to love.

I thought all this, but didn’t say anything. The game, at
the moment, was to my advantage: he wanted me, and I wanted him. But I also
didn’t mind playing the whore for a little longer, particularly if he was
convinced it was for his benefit.

Besides, it was clear to me the game had a second function:
penance. He’d punished one woman for her sexual needs and he was making up for
that by bravely accommodating another’s.

“Okay,” I said, to end my silence. “I think I understand.”

As promised, by late afternoon the next day we were in London, in an airy and understated flat. A sexy, tattooed chef and her assistant fretted
over
hors d’oeuvres
stations while our elegant hostess—a noted
photographer, Jack had told me—gave us a quick tour. The flat was filled with
art: her photos, a few sculptures, a giant painting that I told myself couldn’t
possibly be a real Pollock.