Sexual Solstice (19 page)

At the end of the second day Gillian heard new footsteps, a heavier being, didn’t come and go, just came. There were some raised voices between the woman and a man, but nothing Gillian could make out.

Finally, late in the night of the second day, people still moving around upstairs, the door opened and two people came down, it was the woman and, and, Spokes! Spokes out of uniform. Spokes in a suit. Like the man and woman at the airport. What the hell was Spokes doing here? Was she dreaming? Was he a kidnapper? Just what on earth was up? He stayed behind the woman and gave Gillian a knowing glare, and winked. At once Gillian felt a tiredness and exhaustion long held at bay, settle into her, as if knowing that someone familiar nearby was a kind of reassurance that everything would be alright. But why? Was he working for Edgar? Was Edgar onto the kidnappers? Had Spokes been enlisted as a spy? “We have a member of our team who will be watching you if I have to go out. He knows not to hurt you. Those aren’t the conditions of the kidnapping. We want to return you unharmed.”

“Well I’m fine. I don’t need a baby sitter for heaven’s sake.”

“Just let him know you are okay when he calls down.”

“Sure.” Gillian acted blasé. Would she be rescued? How on earth did Spokes find her?

The two went back up the steps, with Spokes tipping his head, looking over his shoulder, in that characteristic way, looking from the front seat to the back.

M
uch later that night when the house was quiet, Gillian went to the dismal rusting bathroom, chains length and all, to survey the damage. There was a rusting shower but she took a chance, hoping to get the mouldy smell off her skin and out of her nostrils, and she washed her face clean of her makeup, all with the thought that Spokes had somehow come to her rescue. She tried to clean herself of the mustiness of the basement, the way Lady M would have tried to clean herself of her bloody spot, in the Scottish play––oh what the hell, Macbeth––could her luck get any worse? She thought of Robert and his theatrical superstitions (and his big cock), which led to the thought of the dancers, which led to thoughts of the pilots! Oh to think she had been having a variety of fun times high above Central Park just days earlier. She inhaled. Splashed her face. Gave herself a sponge bath. To her, it represented some kind of simple optimistic gesture that all would be well and she would be free of these grey people soon enough. As she came out of the bathroom, she heard the door, saw light, and then a shadow fall across the wall. She heard the stairs creek. It was Spokes, in stocking feet, jacket off, tie off, shirtsleeves rolled up. Gillian whispered into the dark, “Is that you?”

“Yes, yes, don’t worry, one’s out, one’s sleeping. I heard you running the water. Are you alright?”

“Yes, I suppose. Why are you here? Did you come to rescue me? I don’t get it.”

“Just play along. Do whatever they say. I’m here on my own. You don’t know me.”

“Are you working for Edgar? Did Edgar send you to find me?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“We have to move quickly. Here, kiss me first.”

“Kiss you? Of course. Of course I’ll kiss you.” Gillian felt what she had longed for, over the past week and beyond: the wall of emotion that existed behind this simple gesture. She couldn’t believe she had kept herself from Spokes’s touch for so long. She swore she would never let him go.

“If you’re here on Edgar’s behalf, I can’t go back. I can’t. I know now I don’t love him”

“Of course not, my darling.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He tried to set it up to look like you and he had both been kidnapped.”

“But why?”

“So that your kidnapping would look more credible. He told me nothing, obviously, but I knew something was up.”

“But why make it look like I was kidnapped? And how would he know if I was kidnapped?”

“He has kidnapped you. Edgar has kidnapped you. Don’t you see? He has set the ransom, and he has put up the reward.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, and I’ve know for a long time. He has wanted you out of his life. Simple. And he doesn’t want to share the Pritchard fortune doing it.”

“So he’d off me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I hate to say it, but that’s the idea. He has professionals coming. I interfered, eavesdropped. Spied if you will. I knew something was up. When he went missing I knew it was time to act. We have until tomorrow.”

“Fuck no!”

“Kiss me.”

Gillian held Spokes tight. She still sensed that firm solid torso, unmoving like a brick wall, yet so yielding to her warmth.

“I tipped off Scotland Yard about Mauritius. He was trying to lay low there, but I blew his cover. Even so, he’s trying to make them think he was abducted and you know, lost his memory in the process.”

“He’s crazy.”

“If the killers do a clean job, make you disappear, then they get an extra five million. Edgar wants no roads leading back to him. These people know I worked for Edgar, just not how. I had enough information to convince them I was in on it. Told them there was a change of plan since he’d been found in Mauritius. Told them I was Edgar’s proxy, to make sure that there would be no trail.”

“Hold me tighter.”

“My darling.”

Despite the chains, Spokes took her gently in his arms, he slowly unbuttoned her blouse and gently took her breasts in his hands. “How I have wanted to do this, for so long. I have wanted to touch these white breasts and take them in my hands and kiss them and touch the nipples with my tongue.” Spokes whispered to Gillian, placing his mouth beside her ear, his breath tickling with each word. “I have wanted to ravish you, ever since that drive, years ago. I have wanted to slide my hand up your skirt again. Touch you.” Spokes took one hand from her breast––replacing it with his mouth––and slid his hand up Gillian’s skirt, touching her as gently and warmly as a man who had been deprived for so long, could do. Gillian held on tight. She slid her hand into Spokes’s shirt, feeling the hair across his warm stomach. “I too have waited so long.” She kissed Spokes, relishing his day’s growth of stubble on her lips. Soon Spokes was responding, his lips venturing down Gillian’s stomach, his hands pulling up her skirt and then gently finding his way to her warmth. Gillian dug her fingers into his scalp, and clutched his hair as he brought a smile to her face. The feeling was like nothing she could describe. Here was a man who loved and worshipped her, every part of her. She closed her tired eyes and let him fill her with his love.

“Someone’s coming.” She heard a creaking upstairs and immediately Spokes was away from her talking loudly that he would bring her another pillow, and admonishing her for using all the hot water. He buttoned his shirt and stomped up the stairs.

The rest of the night passed quietly for Gillian, feeling reassured that Spokes was somewhere just above her, thinking of her.

Sometime around dawn Gillian heard a commotion upstairs. She heard the woman’s voice, the man’s and then Spokes. Were they on to him? Gillian was now more frightened than ever. Being kidnapped was one thing, delays with negotiation, back and forth confusion, but to be extinguished in a matter of days, now hours, was final, too final.

There were no other sounds for several hours, then what seemed to be a number of footsteps. Gillian checked the chains as she had already done countless times––there was no chance of cutting them, or breaking free.

It wasn’t until mid morning that she heard anything and it was what shocked her. A barrage of gunshots rang through the upstairs as well as sounds more distant. Windows smashing. Shouts. A scream. Finally the door opened and Spokes came rushing down the stairs, followed by what looked to be a S.W.A.T. team. Gillian instinctively hid behind the bed to spare herself at least a few more moments of life, but it wasn’t necessary.

Gillian squinted back at the Miami sun as she stood in the parking lot of the vacant motel, where she had been hostage. It was a place she couldn’t have pictured. Her wrists ached from the chains, her hair had gone wild from being washed and shaken dry. She stood in shocked silence as bodies were removed from the motel, the woman and man who had met her at the airport, on stretchers, and whether they were alive was questionable. Gillian started to weep.

“Don’t cry sweetie,” came a voice from behind. It was Spokes bandaging his hand. “You’re all right now.”

“I must look a wreck.”

“You are a sight for sore eyes. These sore eyes.”

“What now? More police stuff?”

The most you have to worry about is whether I get the reward for you being found, or you take Edgar to the cleaners. I’m fine with either, as long as I get you.”

Gillian broke down and wept openly. She had been surrounded by so many who had treated her so gently in the last few days. It was hard to believe she had coped with Edgar’s shut down demeanour for so long. How did she survive without love, unless it was with hope?

Spokes took her face in his big hands, “Promise me that tomorrow we continue that journey. The one we started years ago.”

That night Gillian and Spokes spent most of the evening at the police station under debriefing, and were then taken to a nearby hotel along the beach, under police surveillance and accompaniment. Gillian and Spokes kissed goodnight and spent the rest of the night in separate rooms. South Beach life went on below them while the two slept. In the morning news came that Edgar had been apprehended. They were free to go. No more hoodlums to try to cash in on anything.

Soon the last of Miami’s finest left the hotel, and Gillian and Spokes were in each other’s arms in a second. Spokes, still in his boxers and a hotel robe, brought her to his bed and laid her gently down. Gillian yielded, kissing Spokes with a passion she hadn’t expressed for years. There, with the seagulls crying and the sound of the surf, Spokes couldn’t restrain himself any longer, he let the robe drop to the floor, and then fumbled to get his erection out of his boxers and gently slipped his thick cock up between Gillian’s legs, touching her inner thighs all the way, knowing it would make her that much more welcoming. He felt the warmth as he entered her and started to pump, long and easily, as Gillian took him in. He kissed her neck, her hands, her breasts. “I have to kiss everything,” he whispered. “I have to kiss you all over.”

“I know you do.” Gillian’s hands moved across Spokes’s body, and she let herself touch his face, as if she wanted to remember as much about him, absorb as much as she could too, and to never forget this moment when they were free to celebrate their love for each other.

They ate breakfast on a terrace overlooking the boardwalk, Gillian sipped her coffee and took her time again with her survey of Spokes. She let her eyes wander over the rugged face, the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. The splash of grey on his sideburns. She took in the girth of his shoulders, his fingers as he took slices of orange to his mouth, his lips as he puckered to suck the juice from the fruit. “Do you think we can make the afternoon flight?” she asked.

“To?”

“Barbados. I finally have someone I want to share it with.”

“Too many memories?”

“Not enough. None, in fact. I would like to fill that void.”

“That I can do.”

And on the flight to Barbados, where he still couldn’t restrain himself, he took her to the washroom, where Gillian enacted her earliest and most pent-up fantasies. There was still something arousing about being somewhere that you shouldn’t be, doing something forbidden. “At least we aren’t smoking, then there would be hell to pay.”

“I’m smoking, in fact I’m on fire right now. I can’t keep my hands off you, my darling.” And it was true, as if Spokes needed to touch Gillian to know that she was real, and safe, and his. He touched her ears, her breasts, ran his thick fingers over her soft white skin.

And she responded by wrapping her thighs around Spokes, and once again he was rock hard inside her and she was transported––her mind spun, and she saw the stars high above them, and she could hear nothing but Spokes’s gentle and sudden breaths. Again Gillian let her body absorb his touch, let her nipples and breasts feel the freedom of touch, let her body be full of his manly warmth, and soon he tightened, and throbbed, his body arced and then relaxed into her. Breathing along her neck, as he kissed her, he licked the moisture from her skin. Gillian felt herself relax too, entirely into his arms. Part of her wanted to cry, but she was taken by laughter and the sheer joy of the moment. Back at their seats, nodding off on each other’s shoulders, playing footsie, and seeing how far they could extend their hands and fingers onto the other’s lap with out being seen soon gave way to the spell of the warm and fragrant Caribbean air that was filtering through the air vents, as the plane gently descended, and visions of turquoise and sand shoreline passed beyond the wingtip outside the window.

Sandy Lane was familiar to Gillian, and even some of the staff recognized her from the years before. But none of them had ever seen her in love, or happy, and consequently some barely recognized her. “God, they must have seen me as a real bitch,” she said, giggling. “And I was. No wrinkles, no joy, no sorrow, no nothing.”

Spokes looked at her. “I’ll protect you now,” he said. “I watched it unfold for twenty years. It killed me. I’ll protect you from that past forever.”

And, my dear Spokes,” she continued, as they were escorted to their beachside room, “that’s all I’ll have to say on the subject ever again. Ever.”

The porter opened the door and Spokes swept Gillian up in his arms and took her across the threshold into the room where she and Spokes spent their days languishing in bed, where Spokes would take her fingers and toes in his hands and kiss them until Gillian could bear it no longer. He’d tickle her thighs up and up and up until she couldn’t restrain herself. “Take me,” she said. “Take me, fuck me. Take your hard cock and put it inside me, gently and slowly. But do it now. Your touch is driving me wild. I can’t bear your touch. I can’t bear your fingers inside me. I am so sensitive. Please release me with your thick cock in me. Please release me. Please make me whole.”