Katie In Love: full length erotic romance novel (7 page)

6

Svengali

There is a lot more to
The Game
, of course, but the message contained in the book swept into my mind that New Year's Day after lunch at
Pinchitos
and we returned to my flat.

Tom took my keys to open the door and, after the cold tramp through the frigid streets, I bathed in the warmth pumping from the iron radiators. I had left the heating on and the living room at three in the afternoon was as hot as that summer's day ten years ago. I tossed my coat on a chair and was about to unbutton my jacket.

'Wait,' he said. 'Will you do something for me?'

My breath caught in my throat.

'...what did you say?'

His request had sounded in my ears as if someone had shouted from the past. He was holding out his palms.

'I'm sorry?' he said, and I took a breath.

'I just read your mind, that's all.'

'I'd better be careful what I'm thinking.'

'Yes.' I took a beat. My heart was going pitter-patter, like rain on a window. 'Don't they say we are what we think?'

'Do you believe that?' he asked, and I shrugged.

'I have a friend who reads the Tarot.'

'Did she say you were going to meet a dark handsome stranger?'

'She doesn't like giving me bad news. Anyway,' I said, glancing around the room. 'Who is this handsome stranger?'

He grinned and threw his jacket on top of my own, pinning it down.

'Music,' I suggested, and scrolled down my iPhone: 'Avril
Lavigne, Bach, Gypsy Kings, Hotel Costes, KD Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Mozart, Pink Floyd, Tribe 8…'

'Tribe 8?'

'You like them?'

'Never heard of them.'

'It's a dyke band. How about random?'

'Isn't that a compromise?'

'No, it's eclectic.'

'No, it's a compromise. Hotel Costes,' he then said, and I set the iPhone in its dock.

The room vibrated with drums, brass, maracas, a mélange of sound roaming the space.

'So, Tom Bridge, you were saying?' I continued, and he sat in the armchair.

'I said, will you do something for me?'

'You already know I will,' I replied.

He crossed his legs. 'Take your clothes off for me.'

I stared back at him.

'I am a doctor,' he added, and it made me smile.

The thing is, like that day long ago at Black Spires, it was hot and my jeans were sawing into my crotch like a cheese wire. I was desperate to strip off my clothes. Did he know that? Had I beamed out my subliminal desires and he was responding to them?

'You want me to take my clothes off?'

'Yes.'

I raised my shoulders, as if surprised, and tried not to show that I was rather pleased as I unhooked the first of the row of brass buttons on my jacket, one button leading to the next like I was playing an accordion. Being naked for a woman isn't the same as it is for a man; our clothes acquire different associations. We don't dress in clothes, we masquerade in the robes of contrivance: too tight, too small, the contours outlining shapes and displaying slivers of flesh like promises, like the trailers for a film. Nudity is a logical progression.

An idea for a story jumped into my mind, a continuation of my experiences with Roger Devlin. After being seduced, the female protagonist becomes obsessed with the camera watching her during sex and puts the films online – she always wears a mask, of course, and charges customers 99 cents to see the edited movies. She is in league with her web guy, a facsimile of my web guy, Bradley, a boy devoted to barter – he'll fix my laptop for free if I fix the irritation in his blue jeans.

'Bradley, you're twenty-two years old.'

'In my prime, right? You know what, Katie, I could give you a real good seeing to.'

'Bradley, if you put all that testosterone into repairing my machine it wouldn't keep going down on me...'

He did a little shimmy. 'You've got a way with words, Katie, I'll give you that.'

My face must have showed my thoughts; I'm an open book, a blank page.

'What are you thinking about?' Tom asked.

I stared back across the room. 'I'm not telling you,' I replied, and held the jacket out for him to inspect; it was rather gorgeous – a shade of blue that's not quite blue and not quite anything else, cerulean, kingfisher, lazuline.

'Do you like the colour?' I asked, and he didn't answer the question.

'You should wear more green,' he said instead, and paused, 'to match your eyes.'

'Yes, doctor. Would you like me to change my hairstyle as well?'

He smiled. I liked his smile, natural, full-lipped. The low sun edged his face in gold, making it hard to see his expression. I dragged the rollneck over my head and shook out my hair. He leaned forward to watch as if he were at the theatre following a scene on stage. I took a step towards him and pointed down at my boots.

'Can you?'

He untied the laces. I lifted my feet in turn so he could remove my boots, which he placed beside the chair. Next my socks, stretching them out and placing them on top of the boots with a neatness I approved of. The snake's head on my belt clasp had blue eyes, to match the jacket, a detail. I released the clasp and writhed like a plume of smoke as I lowered my jeans. I sat on the edge of the sofa to pull the material over my feet, and stood again, barefoot on the carpet.

'You have beautiful feet, they're your best feature,' he said.

'Oh,' I replied.

'Apart from all the other best features, obviously...'

'Too late, give me my socks...'

'Absolutely not.'

'I'm going to console myself counting all my shoes...'

'You can do that, Miss Boyd, in your own time.'

'Bully.'

I twirled in my underwear and was struck by a thought that took me skipping through to the bedroom. There were shoes everywhere, breeding like mice in every corner, in bags and boxes, under the bed, lined on racks at the bottom of the closet where I hide sometimes; ankle boots, riding boots, boots with moons and stars, boots with chains and silver heels, court shoes, ballet pumps, trainers, flip-flops, Jimmy Choo sandals with straps as intricate as a cat's cradle and Jimmy Choo black patent stilettos like objects of wonder in a museum. I must have a hundred pairs of shoes and culling them is like killing baby seals.

Now where was I?

Ah yes, the bottom drawer, which I opened, and stared down at the blank eyes of the mask waiting there as if with secret plans of its own. Just as when you glance at a pair of shoes and it feels as if destiny is at work, when I first saw the mask in a store in Soho, I knew we were meant for each other. My hands reached out as if drawn by the motions of the moon and I slipped the elastic bow over the back of my head. The mask fit to my face as if drawn from a mould, the curve below my eyes shaped to my cheekbones, the angle across my brow like two wings that meet in a coxcomb of tiny black feathers. I turned to the mirror and instantly felt as if I had become somebody else, someone I didn't altogether recognize, but who, I knew, would be able to glide across the dance floor at
Pink
without need for words or justification. Just as I had concealed the tattoo beneath my hair, in the mask I concealed myself beneath a veil of mystery and anonymity.

It was years ago, I was young then, and the very thought of going to a lesbian club had sent me into a spasm of fear and anxiety. The two friends who were taking me to
Pink
had promised that there was no pressure to do or be anything, although they had not taken into account that, in a mask, the pressure doesn't come from without, but from some untapped source within.

I took a long look at myself in the mirror, my other self, the masked self, and slinked cat-like back to the living-room. I clawed at the air.

'Sssss,' I hissed.

'It suits you.'

'It's to hide my feet.'

He made a hook with his finger.

'Come here,' he said.

I rolled my shoulders as I edged on all fours towards him, nose twitching. I arched my back. I purred as I slithered my paws up his legs and stood, resting my palms on his knees.

He nipped the sides of my knickers between his long fingers and thumbs. I sighed with pleasure and the air flew like a small bird from my chest. He gracefully, as if removing peel from an orange, slid the fabric over my bottom and down my legs. He took my thighs and nuzzled my pubes with his nose. Instantly I was wet. Instantly I caught my musky bouquet, piquant as an animal in heat. The mask makes me feel wanton. The drums beat louder. He turned me around and I dropped into his lap, legs open. He made me comfortable and a single finger stroked between the lips of my vagina in a soothing motion. I wriggled.

'This sweater's awful, it's all scratchy,' I complained.

'A present from my mother...'

'Can't live with them, can't be born without.'

'Cynic,' he said, and I laughed.

'There is something incredibly sexy about a girl in a mask laughing.'

'I shall write that down,' I told him.

'You'll forget it.'

'I don't forget anything.'

I nearly fell off the chair as he leaned forward to pull the fisherman's sweater over his head. I dragged at his shirt, he took it off, and it was cosier when we laid back in the same position, my spine angled across his chest, the pad of his finger moving between my legs, softly, like you might stroke a sleeping kitten. He investigated my breasts through my bra, the faint swell of my tummy, my sticky-out hipbones.

'Your BMI is in the first percentile.'

'Does that mean I'm too thin?'

'No, it means everyone else is too fat.'

He eased me away from his chest and removed my bra, placing it on the table beside the chair, one cup tucked in the other. I adore being naked, and I adore being naked in the mask even more. I laid back and he continued stroking me, his right hand between my legs, his left inspecting my breasts. I wondered if he were feeling for lumps. I didn't ask. I wouldn't have wanted to know.

'I love your breasts,' he said.

'More than my feet?'

I felt his chest vibrate and knew he was smiling. I liked being explored in this way, anonymous in the mask, submissive to his touch. His palm shuffled over my waist.

'I love your hips.' He mused for a moment. 'They're like sails.'

His tongue swept over my ear and his free hand brushed my scalp.

'I love your hair, it's...autumnal.'

'When all the leaves are falling and it starts to get cold?'

'Noo,' he replied, stretching the word. 'It's like a rainbow, no, a kaleidoscope. It's not brown or russet.' He sounded like a doctor listing symptoms. 'There are flecks of bronze and gold, red and copper.'

'It can't make up its mind,' I said.

His right hand left the place where it belonged; he twisted me to one side like a wrestler and used both hands to pull the hair away from the back of my neck. He had discovered my tattoo and paused like he was looking at a Rothko in a gallery.

'Do you like it?' I asked.

'It's unique.'

'Hardly.'

'Why's it hidden?'

'Why not?'

He brushed my hair back, straightened my mask, and looked into my eyes.

'Green,' he said.

'Unlike my jacket.'

He laughed as we got comfortable again. I knew he would be puzzling over the tattoo, the whys and why there, those questions people ask, and he already knew me well enough to know there was no point in asking. His right hand slipped over the contours of my body, his finger coming to rest back in the moist delta of curly pubes. His other hand stroked my hair, my chin, my shoulder, the length of my arm, a poem on his lips:

                            cranium, mandible, clavicle

                            scapula, sternum, ribs

                            humerus, radius, carpals

                            metacarpals and phalanges

He lifted my hand and kissed my little finger.

'Is it going to be better now?'

'It'll take another two or three months.'

I sighed. 'How boring,' I said, and he changed the subject.

'How long have you been here, Katie, in this flat?'

'Two or three months,' I answered; an echo.

'It's really super,' he said, and I thought: what an old-fashioned word; I would have said marvellous or wonderful. 'Where were you before?' he then asked.

'I thought you knew?'

'I can guess, Kensington, I'd say, maybe Notting Hill?'

'Down by the river, actually, in Chelsea. I had a little garret, you know, the poet thing.'