Going Too Far (28 page)

He snorted. ‘No, but I couldn’t walk at their pace. Decided I might as well get up here, give you these and get on, if I can have my pullover back. The other chaps have got some food and hot water bottles, though by the time they get here I don’t suppose you’ll get much heat out of them.’

I suppressed a laugh as I returned the sweater and put on yet another man’s woolly. Odd the things you suddenly find yourself doing twice in one day that you’ve never done in your life before. Idly I wondered if I might get stuck into a pattern of only feeling aroused while wearing a sweaty jumper. In reality it would probably be an easier peccadillo to maintain than either bondage or exhibitionism, the other new tastes I’d picked up on my travels.

The Englishman waved away our thanks, saying he wanted to get on. Red’s reiteration of the warden’s warnings to leave the campsite met with a tolerant smile; he was obviously hardy enough to look after himself. With no slackening of his swift pace despite his descent and re-ascent of the mountainside, he shook our hands and set off.

‘I bet he’ll go right up to the viewpoint and back to the valley today,’ said Robbie with admiration.

‘But what for?’ I asked curiously. ‘He won’t see anything.’

‘Because it’s there,’ said the guys almost simultaneously. Well, I guess it’s just a boy thing.

As we toasted each other and our hosts and fellow guests with wine that evening the events of the day seemed surreal. To go from being tied up halfway up a mountain in a blizzard to eating a Christmas Eve dinner in a warm and cosy guesthouse was too great a contrast to be believable. I half wondered if I had dreamed the events of the day, or conversely if the celebratory meal was a hallucination brought on by hypothermia.

The rearguard of the rescue party arrived just as Robbie and I had laced on the boots; Red’s feet were too large for the biggest pair. The two men were from the hut in the valley and decidedly pleased to see us. I guessed they suspected the Englishman was a complete fruitcake leading them on a wild goose chase, especially as he had run on ahead with their boots and sweaters. They did indeed have hot water bottles, which were still warm enough to be a delight to hold and, even better, a bag of empanadas, South America’s version of a Cornish pasty. I let Red and Robbie do the explanations, as their Spanish was so much better than mine.

We followed the men down to the valley, ironically moving below the snow line, to find two park wardens waiting for us at the hut, one of whom was the one from the campsite. Robbie followed up my announcement of myself as the woman who’d been reported missing with something more cogent in Spanish. They sniggered at our story – well, God knows it was unbelievable stuff – but clearly they had no choice but to accept that we had definitely had our boots stolen and could not stay in the park. After a rapid-fire conversation that I don’t think even Robbie could understand they gave us a lift to the park gates, where we caught the last bus out before Christmas.

The landlady was surprised to see us back in town only the day after we’d left. Robbie answered her briefly, smiling. Obviously the true story sounded too far-fetched; he had merely said that the snow had been very heavy and we realised we were ill-equipped. We were in luck. She had a room for us, and invited us to join her family and the other guests for Christmas Eve dinner.

It was only as we were going to bed that I thought we should have gone to the police.

‘Or did the park wardens call them? I suppose they must have done.’

‘No, they wouldn’t have done,’ said Red neutrally.

I was puzzled. ‘Why not? Someone holds up three people at gunpoint and the authorities do nothing about it! That’s a great advertisement for hiking in the national park, I don’t think.’

Red and Robbie exchanged one of those private glances that meant, shall I tell her, or shall you?

‘We couldn’t tell them the truth,’ said Red. ‘Remember the look that Englishman gave us when we tried to tell him. Anyway, no harm was done, apart from losing our boots.’

‘No harm?’ I repeated incredulously. ‘You two had a gun pulled on you; we could have frozen to death and he’s stolen your papers, not to mention my films. How can we let him get away with it? We’ve got to tell the police.’

Red pulled me on to the bed. It was big enough for three, but none of us had any energy left.

‘In the eyes of the police Carlos is a respectable Peruvian businessman. We’re foreign backpackers; two of us are students. If we filed a complaint against Carlos don’t you think they might believe him rather than us? Particularly if he tells them we tried to get in the way of a perfectly legitimate business opportunity he’s trying to pull off, just because we’re violent anti-capitalists?’

‘But he lied to the warden about me being missing,’ I said stubbornly. ‘We can get him there.’

‘The park warden wouldn’t even remember what he looked like,’ said Robbie gently. ‘And I’d put money on Carlos having an alibi. Like he spent all of the Christmas holiday tied up with your mate Susie.’

‘Ha ha.’ I wasn’t amused. ‘I bet the warden would remember him. I think you’re wrong.’

That bloody look again. ‘What is it?’ I shouted. ‘Tell me or I’ll shout the house down.’

‘Well, I had to say something. I told them you’d cheated on Carlos with us so he’d pinched our gear, but then must have been afraid we’d die and so reported you missing.’

‘Great,’ I said grimly. ‘I thought they were giving me funny looks. They must have put me down as a real slut.’

Red burst out laughing. ‘Well, it’s not too far from the truth, is it? Anyway, you like being a slut.’

Very funny, I thought sourly as I stripped and threw my clothes on the floor. I barely heard Red get in next to me, or was it Robbie? It didn’t matter.

Three days later we were on the road again, this time to cross the final border into Argentina. I had less than two weeks left and still hadn’t seen everything I had planned.

Christmas Day was a non-event, the town being closed and our celebration having taken place the evening before. We lay in bed, got up to watch some TV, had a walk around the windy town and went back to bed. Robbie spent most of the next day at the internet café on line to friends at home and in the States and, despite my usual distaste for communicating with home while travelling, I sent an e-mail to Kip telling him exactly what he’d got me into.

We spent a brilliant week sightseeing on the Argentine side of Patagonia, but time was running out. In less than a week I had to get my plane from Buenos Aires. Even though Red and Robbie hadn’t planned to go that far north at this stage of the trip they didn’t want to leave me. Not that they were exactly emotional about it – they were still Australians after all – so they merely said that Buenos Aires would be the best place to replace the missing boots so they could do the walks they’d planned. In reality I knew that after all we’d been through together they didn’t just want to wave me off at the bus station and never see me again, so they decided to come with me and maybe return south later.

After a stop-off by the sea to break the long, monotonous bus journey, we reached the capital with four days to go before my flight back home. For the first time in ages it was actually hot, about thirty degrees, and after checking into a hotel as a treat for our last few nights we put our shorts on again and strolled around the noisy city streets, revelling in the bustle and life.

Apart from the sights I’d planned to see in the city I most definitely wanted to go to a tango class. Red and Robbie told me I was alone in that one, but I managed to drag them along to a lesson on our first night. Of course they were hopeless but I was thrilled. Most types of dancing seem banal, boring or just plain embarrassing to me, but there’s something about the tango. I spent as much time as I could hogging the instructor, Luis. Although he wasn’t attractive, being rather short and slightly podgy, he – or rather his dancing – made me feel that I was the most desirable woman in the world. As he bent me backwards and looked into my eyes I melted.

The streets were thronged with people when we left the class, mainly couples, women in revealing tops and short tight skirts, dark handsome men in white T-shirts and jeans, cruising languidly in the sultry heat. The neon-lit night throbbed with energy and possibilities and my body was still pulsing with the erotic rhythms of the tango. We sat in a restaurant and ate steak and drank red wine but the guys knew my mind was on other appetites. Our conversation dwindled to a minimum as we substituted eye contact and half-smiles for words; we didn’t need to discuss what we were going to do next.

We skipped coffee and went back to our room. Though we had a fan we opened the balcony doors to let in the cacophony of the non-stop traffic and the all-night record shop over the road. In the glow of one bedside lamp Red stripped me while Robbie’s coarse voice murmured appreciation of my body and suggestions as to what they should do with it. The heat and sensuality of the dance and the couples on the street who I knew were coupling themselves by now pervaded me with languor and I lay back as though drugged. Red and Robbie seemed to understand my passivity and slowly, with infinite patience, touched every pore of my body, inflaming every nerve end until I almost fainted with pleasure and longing, though they didn’t allow me release.

‘It’s too hot to sleep tonight. We’re going to make love to you till dawn,’ said Robbie’s disembodied voice, as he kneeled on the floor at the foot of the bed to caress the soft skin of my inner thigh, slippery not just with sweat but with the molten liquid that trickled uncontrollably from my sex. ‘This is all for you, Bliss. We want to cover every inch of you with virtual tattoos that you’ll always remember us by.’

I shivered as his fingers feathered my thigh, moving to make sure no tiny morsel of skin was untouched, like an artist meticulously dotting my body with a pointillist technique, his touch as gentle as the stroke of the finest paintbrush. But I couldn’t concentrate on it fully as on the other side of me Red was running his fingers up my arm from my wrist right up to the curls that I had allowed to grow in my armpit, running his fingers around them as if flexing them for later, when he would wind them through my other, more luxuriant hairs.

They followed their caressing with kissing, retracing their fingers’ movements all over me, then jointly sucking insistently at my nipples like babies, until finally their tongues penetrated me simultaneously. I kissed Red back with my mouth, not hard but with swollen parted lips that received his tongue fleshily and moistly in imitation of the wetness and softness Robbie was probing below.

I wanted to ask him to let me come now, to move his tongue to my clit and let it flicker over it just a few times, which was all it would take to make my cunt flicker and flare in response, but my mouth was still engaged with Red’s tongue. Unable to articulate what I wanted, my body started to quiver. As though it had communicated its needs to Robbie he put his hands under my buttocks and lifted my hips, slanting me towards Red who moved his head downwards. As Robbie’s tongue lapped at my moisture and gently rimmed my anus Red’s tongue skitted almost imperceptibly over my clit and unbearably gradually licked me harder and harder until I exploded.

It was almost dawn.

I woke around eight thirty with Robbie’s stiff cock nudging me behind. In contrast to the lovemaking of the hours of darkness, as I turned towards him he pulled me on top and entered me without preamble. Almost sardonically he made his excuses for his forwardness as he presumed I was already satisfied. Amused by his straightness and unable to refute his statement I shagged him quickly and energetically, enjoying the functional fuck for its own sake. Red slept despite the bouncing bedsprings and after Robbie came we too sank back to sleep. The next time I woke up Robbie was in the shower and I gave Red a similar efficient fuck, so we were all ready to face the day.

Despite the intensity of the night before Red and Robbie turned me down flat when I suggested another tango class. Although I felt almost achingly tender towards them both I was frankly relieved. I wasn’t going to succumb to the lure of the tango with Red hauling me around like a sack of coal, a ludicrous parody of the beauty he had given me the night before. It only lasted an hour and a half anyway, so I agreed to meet them in a bar later. Part of me also knew that they had to re-establish themselves as a twosome again once I had gone, and bonding over a few beers seemed to be the Australian way of going about it.

Once again I loved the dancing and was on a high when I joined the guys in the bar. They had probably already had more than enough already but we got some tapas and I had wine while they continued to down the beers. We drank and joked like three best mates and fell into bed with all thoughts of sex erased from our minds. It seemed to be the perfect arrangement and so we agreed to do the same the next night.

Except that the next night, after the boys had gone to the bar early claiming dehydration, the room phone rang to say I had a visitor. I took the lift downstairs, part of me pretending to wonder who it was, but knowing deep down there was only one person it could be. Deep down I was right. Carlos was at reception, dressed in his cool cream business suit flashing a big smile at me.

‘
B
liss. I’ve missed you. You look beautiful.’

His tone was tender and he put his arm around me caressingly. What on earth the desk clerk thought I couldn’t imagine. After all I was already sharing a room with two other men. Maybe he too thought we were brothers and sister.

‘Well, I expect I look a bit better than I did last time you saw me,’ I said tersely.

He laughed and held out a bag. ‘I found some belongings of yours and the boys. Oh, and I had your photos developed for you.’

There was a glint of humour in his eyes, which took me aback. Surely disappointment should be his reaction to finding he had my films instead of Red and Robbie’s, not amusement.