Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (52 page)
Read Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Online
Authors: Nikki Gemmell
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Erotica
You bowl into his study without looking back, heart roaring. Take the scraps of coloured paper and the gum leaf from your pocket and open his pot of Clag liquid glue – the glue you used to eat as a child – and stick each torn strip of paper to his wall, one beneath the other, in a ladder of neatness by his typewriter. You varnish them to the old, yellowed newsprint on his wall in a line of permanency he will never forget.
‘What are you doing?’ So quiet behind you that you jump.
‘Trapping them. With you. Forever. Because I can’t have them at home. My dad might find them. And because you need to be reminded of what you’ve written. Every day. Every single day for the rest of your life. You must never forget. Alright?
Any
of this.’
That last sentence raw, urgent, teared-up.
He turns you around. He kisses you. The moth’s first kiss in your trembling.
‘I won’t.’
He lifts you into his arms and carries you to his bedroom, pausing just once, to kiss again, on its threshold.
Human life is so full of pain. The mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer, and sunshine.
Nothing more life-affirming than this, now, as he is poised above you. Something deeply spiritual in it as he moves, in silence, staring into your eyes. A divinity to it. You know now it is the most exhilarating mystery available to us, as humans. You are communicating on the deepest level – in silence. Both of you cracked into vulnerability and honesty, into light.
You have never felt closer to someone in your life.
‘I can just see us in Grandma’s feather bed with the two kids between us,’ he murmurs in the golden quiet of afterwards, as you lie together in his sheets within an afternoon of soft pattering rain. ‘I’ve never felt that before.’
You roll away and wrap his languid arm around your belly. Something here is turning, softening, the rabbit sex has died today into something quieter, more solid. The sweetness of skin against skin. The stillness and sanctity of no talk.
It has come to this.
But away from him, that night, a warning; no it can’t be this, surely not.
An article in a fashion magazine abandoned by your stepmother, about the dangerous allure of first love. That first passion that can whisper through your blood your entire life and become the standard of intensity by which all other partnerships are measured. You sense, that night, a shiver of a truth: that the man in reality will always fall slightly short of the man in your head, the concept of him – that the known will never quite arouse the way the mystery will later, alone. The shock of reality – sour breath, wrinkles, flaccid stomach, dulled teeth – all is forgotten with that precious little bauble of wonder and chuff that you carry to bed with you, every night, into your sleep.
That you love, and are beloved.
There is nothing else in the world that you want.
You have found a love that will be the foundation for your entire sex life to come, you sense this, even now. And God knows if you will ever be able to replicate it – if you are being
spoilt for life. Is this Tol’s way of expressing his love? Stamping you with these memories so that forever onward you will be dissatisfied, disappointed, until you give up; bound by worship and longing for an experience long ago, ruined by it.
You pick up your notebook.
There will never be anyone else.
Year by year the fierce experience of life, through death, circumstance or change, narrows the circle of those who own friendship
By the dam bank, naked in the softness of the mud, he tells you he wants to marry you out here, that it’s like the two of you are welded by the elements, by the land and the water and the air. Yes, you breathe, yes. The sweat and the semen gluing your skin and he suddenly presses in, so fierce, as if he’s trying to extract the life-force from you, thudding his torso against yours and murmuring,
it’s like we were made for each other, we fit
, as you curve into each other,
you keep me alive
; and his cheek is soft against yours as you stare up at the cloud-dotted blue and feel a peace blooming within you, because this is right, you fit. Yes, married out here – by the sky, and the dust, and the air. Anointed by ochre, and light.
‘I’m ready,’ you tell him.
‘Really?’
You nod. Ready for the next step.
That night, in preparation for God knows what, you order your notes. Because you have no idea what you’ll be writing in the notebook next. So, now, a collation of all you have learnt from this summer about what works. For whatever is next.
It is a gift to experience sex with someone you love: For then the pleasure is multiplied thousands of times over, becomes sex full of emotion, the best.
A gift to experience sex with a man who treats lovemaking with reverence: Because with that comes a generosity of spirit – he won’t get you to do anything you don’t like.
A gift to be with a man who is not intimidated by you: Who is not afraid of women.
A gift to be with someone who knows what they’re doing: Whose touch hums; who is assured, gentle, confident. Who cherishes women so that his love for them – and their bodies – illuminates the experience.
A gift to be with a man who will hold a woman, just that, as she comes: Wrap her in his arms, still her shuddering but
not intrude upon it, share the experience but not snatch the pleasure from her in that deeply private moment.
A gift to be with a man who is kind: When a man is attentive and considerate, when he listens to what a woman wants, then she’s gone, like a dog rolling over for its tummy to be tickled.
A gift to be with a man who tells you that you’re beautiful: Who instils in you a sense of confidence. Who empowers, not chips away or wears you down.
A gift to be with a man who respects the mind: For some, the best sex they’ve ever had may well be the sex they’ve never had. You can be much better at it by yourself, in your imagination.
A gift to be with a man who coaxes you to break down barriers and enter places you’d never usually explore: But gently, so gently, with tenderness.
You shut your notebook and enfold it across your chest, lying on your back.
Poised.
On the brink of God knows what.
‘There’s something incredibly erotic about a woman –’ his voice drops into breath, he can barely say it – ‘bound.’
A sharp intake of your breath.
‘Hidden,’ he continues. ‘Wrapped. Think of Heloise and Abelard. Unwrapping themselves, all their clothes, their known lives – for each other, no one else. The cheongsam will be waiting in that ditch where you leave your bike. Will you wear it? For me?’
You nod your obeyance.
‘What we’re about to embark upon is a form of bondage … but not as you know it. The best type of bondage can be very life-affirming, relationship-affirming; it requires a heightened level of trust between two people, a willingness.’ He whispers, cheek to cheek. ‘A closeness that doesn’t exist in normal life. Absolute surrender, trust; a communion of equals. Are you ready?’
You nod, your eyes dancing.
He picks up a heavy art book. Flicks through it. You
weren’t expecting this. He runs his hands over a picture of the
Mona Lisa
.
‘Look at her. What is this woman’s story? She’s a mass of erotic contradictions. There’s the sober clothes, the demurely folded hands, but this,
this
–’ his fingers trace her lips – ‘the extraordinary smile. This painting is all about sex. Don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ you laugh, seeing it. ‘She’s just done it. Or is thinking of it.’
‘Absolutely. And it’s a big reason, I suspect, why this picture is still so alluring five hundred years on.’
You gaze at the sexual contradiction on the glossy page before you. The hints of a private, supremely confident eroticism behind the sternest of public masks; the sombre clothes, the knowing lips.
‘Reserve and sexuality.’ He looks at you. ‘An explosive combination. My favourite. Never forget that.’ He buttons up your flannelette shirt, right to the collar, and steps back. Nodding.
‘Explosive. ’Til next time, my love.’
You want to crumple to the ground with torment, anticipation, wetness, want; you do not. It is only then you notice the thick rope Tol has taken from the couch, is wrapping around his wrist, pulling taut, jerking it.