Authors: Bronagh Pierce
Three
The break up with Alfonse was not a big deal to Ellie.
Alfonse had always seemed to feel that his attraction lay in his lack of
availability, and in a way it did. Not because Ellie wanted him more and more
the less she saw him, but because she liked him less and less the more she saw
him, to the extent that she was finally happy not to see him any more. That was
almost certainly not the crux of his strategy, and when she had tried to tell
him some weeks before that she wasn’t exactly turned on by his turning up for
sex and then not calling for three weeks, he had caused a big scene,
humiliating her in a packed bar, then stormed off and not called for three
weeks.
Ellie had decided with that incident that enough was enough,
and had decided not to waste any more time on him. She knew she only entertained
him for his purposes as a distraction and for the purposes of sexual
gratification, he being so vacuous in any other respect that while she could
get quite clouded over by the prospect of sliding on and off him for whole
weekends when they were first together, there was not a lot else to say or do
outside of that. This was what she had liked about him, the fact that he was
available for sex, and that he did not mind that she was not available to him
in any other way, but she still needed him to be reliable, because if he was
not reliable he was replaceable.
They had met through a friend of Mara’s, though Mara had said
she could not vouch for him, she did not know him personally. He worked in some
kind of sales office but it was never very clear what kind, or what his role
was. He never seemed to do much in the way of overtime other than as an
implausible excuse for not turning up somewhere and he never seemed to have
much interest in what he did or what he was going to do in the future, at least
not that they talked about. He always seemed to have money and was always
expensively dressed, and often he would be well dressed too, the occasional
over-reliance on casual sports gear notwithstanding. When Ellie did go out with
him she did not really know what they talked about, mostly he joked around and
tried to make her laugh and mostly she was happy to laugh, and since the
specific and only aim of their relationship was mutual sexual exhaustion,
talking was only really ever to kill time anyway, but if they could do it in
nice restaurants and bars then so much the better. He was younger than her,
maybe by five years or so, so he got to go out with an older woman and she got
to go out with a younger man. It wasn’t enough of an age gap to create a
cultural difference but their respective cultures were. Language was not the
barrier, his English was good and her Italian was good, it wasn’t really a question
of how they would say anything, but whether they had it to say, and
conversational highs had been discounted as a dispensable luxury quite early
on.
When he did turn up again after three weeks it was
nevertheless with a tedious regularity that you could set your calendar by.
When she had first met him and they were arranging a date he would take a
couple of hours to get back to her with something as simple as a text that said
yes or no to a proposed arrangement. It was not too long before she realised
that it was always a two-hour interval that he left and she had decided to
manage him out of that habit. One afternoon after they had been seeing each
other a few weeks she sent him a text asking if they were meeting that night as
tenuously arranged a few days before. He had not replied for the standard two
hours and even then his reply had been vague; he thought he may have other
options and did not want to commit himself, so he would let her know if he was
going to be free. Ellie had seen his younger brother at the street market in
the afternoon and he had said that Alfonse was seeing her tonight so as far as she
knew he did not have other plans but she did not like his off hand behaviour. She
decided that she was not in the mood for seeing him tonight so she would use
the opportunity to teach him a lesson. Ellie decided to wait until two hours
after his last text message, and then she sent him a series of short text
messages.
Alfonse had been lying on his bed when the first text had
arrived. He had been on the verge of getting back to Ellie after her earlier
text in which she had asked what their plans were. While he had been lying on
his bed waiting for the two hours to pass before he could reply to her without
seeming too keen, he had been planning his seduction. He was imagining Ellie
coming to him dressed, then he pictured her in various developing states of
undress, sometimes with her undressing for him, sometimes with him telling her
what to remove next and her complying with his demands. He was picturing when
and where and how he would touch her, when he would make her gasp, how long he
would taste her before he stroked her gently with his tumescence before she
would have to grab him and pull him into her as she bucked under the pressure
of waiting so long. He let that thought linger as he went to pick up the cell
phone to read the message that he knew must be from her.
The first flurry of texts said that she was sorry he was busy
because she had been looking forward to their date all afternoon. She was
feeling especially horny and had hardly been able to contain herself when she
had been lying in the bath thinking about him. Her breasts had become swollen
while she thought about him and her nipples were hard, and she didn’t dare
touch them because she was already so turned on. She really wished that he had
replied earlier because he could be with her by now, instead of having to play
by herself. Alfonse was startled and wanted to reply straight away but his cock
which had been on readiness alert for most of the afternoon was now suddenly
fully straining to be unzipped and it was all he could do to slowly release it,
never mind him concentrating on managing to text anything back. The second batch
of messages that Ellie sent a few minutes later said simply that she was now
out of the bath, covered in moisturising lotion and was reclining in the
armchair in her bedroom waiting to dry off but that it was very humid today,
with an occasional breeze through the window. She was feeling very turned on
and was struggling to keep her hands off herself, and she wished he had replied
earlier and they could have played on the phone. Alfonse was desperately trying
to think of something to say that would suit the mood but she was way ahead of
him, and his mind was anything but clear. Besides, he expected to be the
seducer and she was very much in control of the situation. Her third text was
much shorter and said that a bead of perspiration had slid down her chest so
quickly that it had run down to her erect nipple and had hung there for a
moment.
When she blew it off it had
landed on her soft inner thigh and run down again, and she was so turned on by
now that she had followed it with her fingers….
Alfonse had pictured all at once her soft tanned skin, her
hard pink nipples and her swollen breasts. He saw her chopped blonde hair
resting on the top of her angular shoulder, her piercing bright blue eyes
following the droplet of moisture down her voluptuous breast where it would
settle on her upward pointing nipple, and then he saw her soft mouth blowing
the drop of perspiration off and the crash of it on her thigh as it ran down between
her legs and she pursued it with her fingers. Already turned on with
anticipation and unable to control herself no more, her back arched and her
head thrown back, her legs parted now with the fingers of her right hand
alternating between vigorously stimulating her clitoris and stroking her labia,
the fingers of her other hand now alternating between stroking one breast below
the nipple, heightening the sensation and lifting the other to her tongue to
touch the tip of the other, pierced nipple. She was remembering Tom, and the
way he used to talk to her as he played with her, the things he said about her
body and how she turned him on to do it more. She was hearing his voice and
feeling his closeness; it was so much easier to imagine him when she was alone
than with another man. She worked away at herself as slowly as she could,
unable to conceal her sighs of pleasure, taking herself to the edge and then
slowing again, and finally working herself into such a frenzy that finally she
bucked several times, trembling as her orgasm washed over her with an intensity
she had rarely ever known. When she became aware of her surroundings again a
while later she had slid down the chair and was lying almost flat, her feet up
on an upright chair before her had stopped her from sliding down altogether.
She had her left hand still on her breast,
and with the other she pushed her hair back out of her eyes, smelling the
intense beauty of the smell of her sex on it as she did so. She felt so light,
and the tingling that had preceded and accompanied her orgasm had remained as a
delightful accompaniment to the swirling relaxation that enjoined her head and
body. There were now several text messages from Alfonse who had struggled for
some moments to gain the initiative before losing it altogether in a lonelier
orgasm of similar intensity but far less satisfaction. Ellie did not entertain
his several texts to her, replying only that she was spent force and would be
turning in early and maybe they could catch up next week. She found him more
amenable to prompt replies from then on, but found that she was already taking
him far less seriously than she had the first couple of times she had seen him.
She liked that fact – she didn’t like it about him especially, she just
liked the convenience of that arrangement whoever it was with. Alfonse
certainly looked after himself, and he was always energetic and ready to go,
but she sensed already that he did not like her to have any control over their
relationship, and that he had felt emasculated about the way she had carried on
without him that time. She had enabled him to get himself back on the podium
the following week and she had to admit that he had excelled himself to satisfy
her, but as far back as these early days he seemed determined to prove to her,
or maybe to himself, that if she did not need him then he did not need her
either. Part of her wondered whether his long absences were spent pursuing
other women or were just spent with friends ad-libbing episodes of bravado, but
mostly she realised, she didn’t really care that much either way.
Four
What she really wanted to tell Alfonse
when they did finally split up was that he had only ever been a distraction for
her, and that in the year that they had been together off and on, she had
realised that more and more. She knew she could have left that alone, but she
didn’t want to think anymore about him, and she would rather not leave anything
unsaid. For all that, she also did not want to say anything in anger, because
things said in anger, however bad they are, have that mitigating quality about
them, that sense that perhaps the speaker may not have meant what they said,
and that reduces the impact of it.
When they saw each other for the last time
their relationship had been over for three weeks and for Ellie this was a
parting shot, though for Alfonse that was maybe less so. He often stormed off
and then came back after three weeks, so to him this was just another date. She
had said that she was upset about their last meeting and she was unhappy with
him but she would see him, as long as they could go somewhere expensive and if
she were impressed she would show him later how impressed she was. She wanted somewhere
very expensive, very classy with carpets and chandeliers and tablecloths; it
had to have tablecloths. Alfonse took the hint, and booked a restaurant that he
had been saving for a special occasion. Sometimes he would know a chef or a
waiter and they would do him a favour and he was able to impress woman by
taking them to places that even with his good income he would struggle to
afford. Tonight there were no favours to call in, the restaurant was going to
be expensive but Ellie had been tantalising him with texts all day, taking
shots of lingerie that she saw in shops and sending him the pictures, making
suggestive remarks about what kind of a night they were going to have, and
generally warming him up from the night before they were due to meet.
Ellie had got home early and spent longer
than usual preparing herself, and since the overall effect was of titillation
she had gone as far as she dared in provoking a sexual reaction in him without
turning up ‘looking like an out and out slag’ as she later fondly recalled. By
the time she was ready to leave the apartment she looked so good she even
turned herself on a little bit, and had taken good care when having a shower to
alleviate some of the sexual pressure so that she wouldn’t get too turned on by
Alfonse wanting her as much as she knew he would. They arranged to meet at the
restaurant, and she did not leave the apartment until he had texted to say he
was waiting in the restaurant bar. When she arrived all heads were turned to
see her as she walked through the bar, which she thought she had carried off
quite nicely. There was a time when Ellie had been shy of attention, and when
she was with Tom she had dressed as she always had, in jeans and jumpers and
never using her figure to full effect, but since that time she had realised
little by little that she could use her sexuality to her advantage, and it felt
empowering to know that she could have an effect on a whole room like this with
very little effort. At first she had struggled to stay confident with it,
knowing that if she lost her nerve and tried too hard she would lose the
desired effect, but she had grown with it and learned to stage the process much
more effectively. It was all about preparation, and on occasions such as this,
the groundwork was certainly laid.