LAID & BETRAYED (Getting wrong with Mr. Wright) (6 page)

By the care she lavishes on her toilet, by the concern she has for her beauty set off by her adornment, a woman regards herself as an object always trying to at
tract men's attention.

I had planned to spend the evening with a girl from
university
. Why had I turned myself into an object of desire
? A
nd why had Camilla suggested we meet in
Dick's
,
where those precious objects are for sale?

A taxi stopped. It was my last chance. I had to tell him. Tell him it was all a mistake. Apologize. Go home. Take off your makeup and finish reading
A Spy in the House of Love.

He opened the door.

'I…'

'Please, after you.'

And I got in. The
taxi drove for about three minutes across Knightsbridge and a man in a grey top hat and tails opened the door for me when we stopped at the hotel. My heels tapped like castanets as I clipped up the steps to the foyer with its thick carpets and minions rushing about with trolleys and bags.
Nahume
asked for his key, and the girl behind the high desk gave me a condescending look as she handed it to him. I wanted to say, hey, I
'
m not
that sort of girl…

But perhaps
Bataille
is right, given the circumstances, every
girl is that sort of girl, that of all pleasure the greatest pleasure lies in falling from grace, in doing
what
you know is wrong
and doing it because you know it is wrong
.

We rose in the lift to the ninth floor. My heart was beating so fast it made my breasts swell out of the dress. There was still time to explain, go back down in the lift, but I bit my lips, followed him into a suite and listened as the door locked behind me.
I could smell Jo Malone Amber and Patchouli rise from my cleavage and
told myself I was
t
here in an intellectual capacity. Just as rich students go
to
dig wells in Africa to
understand the lives of
poor people, I
had left
Dick's
with this dark stranger
disguised as a
hooker
to
appreciate
the
feminine
temptation to yield.
Under my tutor's guiding hand I had learned that e
rotica is a psychological quest independent of the natural goals
, and what could be more erotic than standing there blushing in heels in a tight little red dress with the
first hour of night lying heavy as a blanket across the room

He took the flowers and placed them on the table. He then stood back and flicked his hand in a gesture that was obvious. This was the moment of truth, the moment when
the woman
transforms into
an object
.
I bit my lips. I
hesitated,
and he m
ust
have taken th
is
for
a professional tactic,
because he
immediately
reached
for
his wallet
. I watched as he counted
out five £
2
50
on
to the table
and
what went through my mind was
a picture of me buying rounds of drinks for my friends in the little bar on the beach at
Cabo
de
Gata
.

I looked back into his eyes.

'
You need
something
?
'
he asked.

'
No,
'
I said.

My fingers were already
at work
. I lowered the zip at the back of the dress and stepped out of the material. I unhooked my bra, ran my knickers down my legs and stood there in front of him
frightened
and
excited, the same excitement that had struck me a year ago to the day when I took off my clothes for Charlie
Wright
.
Sex
with boys i
s fun. I love it. But there i
s something
so marvelously
immoral
meeting a
man
like this and
stripping stark naked
for him
.
Bataille
was right,
in every woman i
s the desire to reveal her charms in exchange for a
gift.
T
he world is a market.
E
veryone
is for sale.
A precious object knows it is a precious object and wants to be identified as such. Payment for one's charms
attests
to your identity. It is
a form of narcissism.

A rationalization?

My knees were
shaky
. My mind swam in a haze of champagne bubbles.
The books I had r
ead
that past year
had a common
theme: looking at life from a different angle,
breaking taboos,
doing what you know is wrong because it's
wrong,
and doing so knowing you will come out from the shadow
s
into a brighter light
, a nymph turned into a butterfly
.

Nahume
walked through to the bedroom and I followed. He
threw his jacket over a chair and
pulled off his silver tie. He was still wearing his shirt and trousers as he sat on the side of the bed.

'
Come.
'

My throat had gone dry. I swallowed hard.

I stood in front of him, my knees touching his knees. He ran his hands down my sides, over the curve of my waist, my thighs. I could see lights in the sky through the long window, planes sinking like falling stars as they descended into Heathrow. He kept sliding his hands up and down, up and down. Then he slid his fingers over my tummy and across my ribs. He took my breasts in his palms and squeezed, harder and harder until it hurt and I winced with pain.

'
G
ood, you like. You like.' He looked up at me. '
Here.
Here.
'

He was pulling me sideways. When my legs were locked against his thighs, he bent me forward so that I was suddenly lying across his knees. I can
'
t even be sure how this happened. He started stroking my bottom, gently, like he
'
d stroked my sides. I stretched my hands flat on the floor and look
ed
down at my red nails through my hair. I opened my legs wider to keep balance and he ran his hand into the crack of my bottom. Sweat was pouring from me. I could feel it under my arms and on my back.

He kept on stroking, stroking. I relaxed. Then, out of the blue, I heard this hard ringing slap. I felt numb and disorientated. My bottom stung and I
realized
that he
'
d hit me. One hand was pressing down on my back, holding me still, and he smacked me again. I wriggled like a fish on a line to get away.

'
No, don
'
t. Don
'
t. Please don
'
t,
'
I cried.

B
ut he held me still and spanked me again, really hard, the sound vibrating around the room. My head was upside down. I felt dizzy. My throat was dry.
This had been a game
;
an intellectual experiment. After following my tutor's course work, I wanted to experience the erotic from the inside, objectively, not as an object.

I felt ashamed,
stupid,
too, my bottom in the air, my pussy wet, the pain running up my back and down my thighs. I kept wriggling, but he was strong and held me still, spanking me again and again. Tears fell from my eyes. I
had not
imagine
d
anything like this was going to happen. I thought we would have sex,
hot
sex,
any
kind of sex.
I was prepared for that, but this was more
intimidating, more intimate
.

Suddenly,
he stopping slapping me and started stroking me again. I was sobbing, my breasts hanging heavily below me. Then he started smacking me again, not as hard, but continuously, one cheek then the other. My b
ack and thighs were glowing and,
for some reason I can
'
t explain, it stopped hurting and my whole body tingl
ed
with strange new feelings, shame and guilt and horror, even a weird sort of pleasure I can
'
t describe,
but it
'
s like being a child and you don
'
t have to think for yourself, you just accept everything.

To my own complete surprise, I was sopping wet. He parted my pussy with his fingertips and pushed his long fingers up in
side me, stoking me, in and out
. He gave his fingers a good soaking then pushed them in my bottom, slowly, and it hurt at first but then the pain went away.

'
You like, eh?
'
he asked and I just sort of
moaned
. I couldn
'
t do anything else.

He pushed my legs a wider.
Then he took hold of my waist. He
pulled me up and twisted me round in one quick movement so that my toes left the floor and he had his head between my legs. He held my thighs and started licking my pussy, the crack in my cheeks. My bottom was in flames but his moist tongue made the fire go down.

I was standing upside down on my hands, my back straight
, my legs bent at an odd angle.
Nahume
gripp
ed
me by the waist so that I didn
'
t lose balance. He was like a piston making me wetter and wetter. My arms
had started
to ache. His tongue was a little animal burrowing so fervently into my pussy something totally humiliating happened. I started to climax. I pushed back and he kept going deeper inside me. I had been crying and now I was yelling, yes, yes, yes. Spasms were vibrating through me and my whole body turned liquid as I erupted in orgasm. I was
ashamed
and contented.

He rolled back on the bed. We were a mass of arms and legs. Then he sprang forward to his feet and undressed, dropping his clothes on the floor. He licked his fingers and smoothed back his moustache. There was barely any hair on his body and his cock was long and brown with a shiny purple head.

I lay flat on the bedcover and he straddled me, squirming forward. He propped a pillow under my head. I opened my mouth, closed my eyes, and he started to pump in and out of my mouth
like a piston
. My bottom was hurting again, but the rest of me was calm and I
was
thinking
,
everything I had learned that year was correct
:
the pleasure of sex is all the greater when
it is forbidden or illicit,
that the satisfaction of an affair comes from the secrets and lies
that have to be told
, that transgression is the triumph of the human spirit
.

He kept going, in and out, my jaw was beginning to ache, then he stiffened, his body shuddered and my throat filled with warm foamy semen
with a
taste of foreign food and far away places.
I swallowed it down.
He pulled out and looked
at me closely
.

'
Camilla,
'
he said and I nodded guiltily.
'
You good girl.
'

That was it.

I washed my face, dressed, slid the five red £50 notes into my bag and took my bunch of
pink roses
. He watched, lying across the bed, one hand behind his head, the other combing his pubic hair.

'
Here,
'
he waggled his finger and I approached. There was a notepad and pen on
the beside
table.
'
You put your number,
'
he said.

I was about to do so when I remembered Camilla
'
s number, an easy sequence of sevens, fives and threes, and that
'
s what I wrote.

Was there a slight spring in my step as I made my way down the long corridor to the lift? The doors opened. I pressed
the large green G for
ground floor and looked at myself in the mirror. There was a
discreet
smile at the corners of my lips and my eyes were bright and glossy.