Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire (17 page)

“Yes,” I said aloud. And in so doing, burst out laughing at the totally crazy spontaneity of it all. She hugged me tight, drawing lips into hers.

“Then leave it to me,” she whispered. “I’ll arrange it all. And you’ll never look back, I promise you.”

“I can’t wait,” I said. “I hope Bruno can afford to have us both off at the same time.”

“Maybe if we both
get him off
at the same time?” she sniggered.

I threw myself into her, squeezing her close. We slept in fitful dozes throughout the day, and the evening, until the night came and we did it all again.

The next day, I kissed Honey goodbye and tried to focus on reality, as uncomfortable and unwanted as that was. My mind was too busy imagining the delights and wonders of Tokyo, exploring and experiencing new and wonderful things to have much energy left over for mundane chores.

Honey had things to do so I went along to the Klub to give Bruno the news in person, and to confirm that we would be able to take leave together.

I found him standing in front of the stage, shouting things up to the lighting man, who was up in the gantry above.

“Now, red and yellow,” he said, and twin pools of light splashed over the old red curtains. He turned to me as I arrived.

“Just figuring out the new lighting rig,” he explained. “Less old-fashioned and more like what they have at rock concerts these days.”

“Looks fab,” I said. “Bruno, I’ve had an offer from Honey. She wants to take me to Tokyo. Is that going to be any kind of problem?”

He rubbed his chin, pondering. “How long for?”

“We’ll be there for two weeks,” I told him. “With maybe a day or two to recover.”

“Hm, shouldn’t be a big hassle. I can pull in some relief cover, I guess. Even if we just advertise a temporary position for a month or two, to give us a bit of an overlap and some options. Yeah, go for it. You only live once, eh. And I’m sure Honey will go down very well in Asia.”

“I’ll also need someone to look after my cat, Boris. Do you know anybody who could do that?”

He looked me in the eye. “Phoenyx, I’d love to take care of your pussy for two whole weeks.”

I laughed, as I was supposed to. Underneath it all, Bruno was such a good guy, and I knew I’d have no worries about leaving Boris in his hands. Or anything else for that matter.

I swept my hair back and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks so much. I’ll leave you the key to the apartment before I leave.”

I got home that night tired but happy, after a long walk around the big stores, shopping for new clothes. I planned to take a long, hot bath, have an early night, and call Honey first thing in the morning to talk about the forthcoming holiday. I would have been thrilled and trembling with the excitement of it all – my first ever time on a ‘plane, my first time out of the country – if I hadn’t been so tired. I had no idea that trying on and buying clothes could be so exhausting.

I put Boris out, grabbed a messy sandwich from what was left in the ‘fridge, and then I heard a
clunk
from the door. It was a heavy, no-nonsense knock, demanding a reaction. I opened it with a sigh, not really in the mood for anything – not even Honey – and took two steps back in alarm.

Unbelievably, it was Mrs. Groenenberg, standing there frowning at me as she usually did.

“Um, good evening,” I said. “Everything okay?”

“I expect it will be. Care to let me in?”

That sounded ominous. I stepped aside and she moved past me into the hall, twitching her head around as if searching – or sniffing out – something. She closed the door behind her and turned the key.

She marched down the hall and went into the bedroom. After a few moments of trying – and failing – to figure out her cryptic actions, I hurried after her. She was peering at the bed, the half-open wardrobe in the corner which revealed my Klub attire, standing with arms folded tight the way my mother always used to before she gave me a lecture on tidying up, growing up, etc. All that was missing was the foot tap-tap-tapping impatiently on the floor.

“You had another woman here last time,” she said eventually.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that, since Honey had made herself pretty damn obvious. So I just nodded, and smiled, humoring her.

“Oh, yes. So I did. She was a friend. Just visiting. She’s not staying here, if that’s what you—”

She spun on me so quick I found myself back out in the hallway and pressed against the bathroom door, just to escape her personal circle of anger.

“No. It’s not what I’m thinking, at all. And don’t you dare go putting words in my mouth.”

I started to panic. “No, um, I wasn’t,” I stammered. “I know the terms of the lease here. I’d never—”

I crumbled to a halt as she moved towards me, closing in, pinning me to the door by force of presence. I felt her breath on my throat, like a she-wolf, I imagined. All through my childhood I’d been warned against the male of that predatory species – but was the female even deadlier? I didn’t want to find out. I tried to smile again, but my emotions had broken and fragmented, pieces lost and scattered out of sight. I scrambled after them but they were out of reach. I felt a gulp bulge in my throat.

Her eyes presented no clear motive, emotion, or intention. I’d read somewhere, probably in one of my mother’s true-life murder books, that the eyes of a killer can look like that; calm, cold, even dead. That silly dream, about Mr. van Leer and his psycho mother – all those years ago – couldn’t have been some kind of warped premonition of hideous death, could it? A warning from the darkest pits of my soul that if I didn’t stop my wicked ways then I would end up dead – horribly, horribly, dead; gouged and slashed and eviscerated in a case worthy of a whole chapter in a book about the new breed of ‘serial killers’.

All those thoughts burned through my mind in a flash of time, and while I didn’t see my whole life replayed before my eyes, I did expect that horrible picture show to commence at any moment, heralded by the appearance of a slice of naked shining steel in my landlady’s hand.

“I’d never...” I squeaked, trying to pick up the fragments of my previous thoughts, and I felt a warm sigh of relief wash over the front of my neck from her direction.

“Good, girl,” she replied, quieter now. She lowered her eyes, seeming calmer as she set her stare upon me. I wondered what had eased her mind so, and followed her gaze. She was staring at my chest, my tits squeezed under a thin, tight white tee-shirt with no bra. I tried hard not to snigger at the ridiculous thoughts running through my head now. No, she could never…

But then she
did
, against all possible reason and expectation. She reached out and touched me, tracing a line with her finger down my right breast and stopping when it reached the bulging nipple, which only began to prickle and stiffen at her touch. I hated how sensitive my body could be at times. That widened her eyes and she looked at me with a strange and suddenly changed smile.

“Uh...Mrs. Groenenberg?” This couldn’t really be happening. Not my own landlady, who was almost old enough to be my…

“Yes?” she breathed.

I didn’t know what to say. Or what I was trying to say, or what I
should
say. Her finger continued to play around my nipple, stroking it, and then I began to realize why she had locked the door earlier. I just froze there in the hall, knowing that she had me over a barrel. She could throw me out in the street if she wanted to, and I knew then that I would have to please her, and try not to get her back up.

“Do you love being drooled over at the club?” she asked. “When you’re naked and showing everything that God gave you.”

I fought back a terrified smile. “It’s okay,” I said vaguely.

She stepped closer. “Do you think they masturbate over you? Your lithe, young body and your heavy ripe breasts, swinging and bouncing before you.”

A nervous laugh snuffled around at the back of my nose, and nearly manifested as a spray of snot. I put my hand to my face to hide the stupid snakelike grin which was slithering across it.

“Um, not that I’m aware of. They don’t do it in the club, anyway. That’d be illegal.”

I bit my tongue, tried very hard to think of boring and un-sexy things so I wouldn’t guffaw in her face. This
had
to be some kind of joke, no?

“What about afterwards? What do you think they lie awake thinking about at night? Don’t you believe they might touch themselves, imagining you being there with them, and showing off just for them?”

I nodded.

“Stroking their rigid shafts with thoughts of you spreading your legs, exposing your tender hairy hole to them...wishing they could ram it inside you, spray their sperm all over your face, squeeze it deep into your tight little arse and make you scream with pain and delight, all at once?”

I felt a deep red flush rise from my neck to my forehead. And yet my body betrayed me again, for my teats toughened even more at her touch, and I could feel that deep, swirling sensation in my crotch which told me that my flesh was ready for action, even if my mind was not quite decided and my spirit was confused.

I nodded.

“And does that excite you? Does it make you wet between your legs, and long to feel something rough and hard up there?”

I nodded again.

“Good,” she whispered, still tracing occult patterns over my chest. “Would you ever like to please one of those perverts who pay to watch you expose yourself?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” I said, realizing that my nipples were now thrusting through the thin fabric.

She stepped back and cast sultry eyes up and down me, and slipped a hand inside her blouse. She flicked buttons and opened it down to her waist. Her breasts hung heavily beneath, no bra, nothing. Somehow, I didn’t think this was Mrs. G’s usual Sunday churchgoing outfit. She loosened her neck scarf and let it flop between her tits while she sucked her cheeks, her stare still fixed upon my chest.

“You filthy-minded little whore,” she sneered, curling her lip at me in real or mock disgust. But I was too far gone now to have my sex drive derailed. “Dirty, dirty slut. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I am,” I squeaked, not knowing what I was saying now, or why.

“Take your top off.”

I did, slowly, rolling it up and over my head. I shook my hair free and dropped the shirt at my side. Her hands were inside her blouse, stroking and caressing her breasts as she refused to take her eyes off mine.

“Perfect,” she purred, and licked her lips. “Now, play with them. Just like you do on stage.”

I did so, lifting them up and teasing them. Flattening them under my palms, while Mrs. Groenenberg rubbed her nipples. I pulled one up and flicked my tongue over my teat, licking over the bristling pink bud to leave a glistening trail of saliva all across it.

She leant against the wall and pulled her skirt up to her waist, showing garters and stockings – and swollen, glistening labia peering out from between her thighs. No panties. The bitch was dressed like a showgirl underneath. What the hell was she playing at?

I stopped.

“Don’t look so shocked, girl,” she snapped. “This isn’t the first time you’ve seen another woman’s private parts. And it won’t be the last, will it?”

I shook my head.

She unzipped the skirt at her hip and dropped it to the floor. Parted her legs and ran her hands along her thighs. Her pubic hair was dark sandy yellow, and more reddish than that which was braided long and tight behind her head.

“Kiss me. Get on your knees and
kiss
me, you cheap little whore.” She dragged a hand through my hair and flung away a long tangled tress dismissively, petulantly.

I got down and put my face between her legs, inhaling her moist desire and fresh sweat. I kissed her labia, gently, tenderly, looking up to check I was doing okay. Her wiry fuzz encroached onto her inner thighs, and was already scented with the tang of her juices. She’d been playing with herself before she turned up at my place, I realized; the dirty old slut, who had the cheek to call
me
names. I fought back a widening, wicked grin as my fingers parted her soft, moist labia. She growled and shook her hips as I did so.

“Hmm. Yes. More, more. Lick my cunt like the slut you are.”

She grabbed my hair and pushed me harder against her. I could taste her excitement as she squirmed and writhed above me, her hands slapping against the wall in an awkward rhythm of forbidden desire.

“Oh God. Fucking God, yes. Deeper, whore.
Yes
.”

I pushed my tongue as far as I could, flicking and probing. I pushed her clitoris out and rubbed that between my fingers. She was oozing and trickling so hard I knew that her orgasm was imminent, and I peeled her lips wider to wiggle my tongue in further, deeper, penetrating her dark hole of desire as I felt her whole body stiffen and tremble, riding the crest of the wave.

“Fucking Christ, yes,” she screamed, and a gush of warm juice burst over my face. She came again and again in quick succession, almost drowning me with her lust as it bubbled up my nose, in my eyes, and ran off my chin down to the floor as I gasped beneath. She growled and sobbed, pushing, rubbing my face against her, all over her soaking, leaking orifice. When I looked up she had her cross pendant clenched in her teeth, rattling the chain of it as she thrashed her head from side to side.

When her hips finally stopped bucking and her dribbling rivers had subsided, I knelt back, hoping I’d done a good job. She looked down at me and cupped my glistening cheek in her hand. Ran her fingertip across the smeared wetness and then sucked it dry between puckering lips.

“Good little whore,” she whispered through a dark and dirty grin. “That was fantastic. I haven’t squirted like that in years.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Groenenberg.”

“Good. You keep calling me that. Maybe one day, I’ll allow you to call me
Mistress
.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Groenenberg.”

She pulled up her skirt and fastened it again.

“Next time, you can do me from behind, on my hands and knees. Your perfect whore’s tongue in my cunt and your fingers in my anus. What about that?”