Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (50 page)

The lessons gather pace. He tauntingly resets your experience of sex, obliterating every touch, every thought that has gone before him; wiping you clean, saturating your memory with his caress and his alone. He slips inside with a groan, as if it’s all, almost, too much. He roams your body, discovering new nooks, crevices, valleys, new plains of torment.

‘I like exploring,’ he smiles.

He’s meticulously careful never to come inside you; he ejaculates on your stomach, neck, through your hair, dabs it tenderly on your lips and kisses it off, spurts it in triumph. He’s always careful, so careful, to never rub away at the skin around your lips – the moth’s kiss, first, always – so as not to draw attention to any of this. Your father must never know, no one must.

Now you’re on top – ‘Throw back your head,’ he commands as his eyes eat your body up.

‘Keep laughing,’ he commands. ‘That’s it,
glorious
.’ You feel empowered, strong, lit.

‘Love that body God has given you, all its miraculous gifts,’
he commands, ‘what it can do, what it’s changing you into.’ As you do, you realise the great secret: an enjoyment of sex isn’t about technique, or cleavage, or a perfect body.

It’s about confidence.

Returning, always returning. Because he has burnished your days with light. Your emboldened back as you walk down the corridor of your house, as you roam the aisles of the supermarket. You’re sure everyone must know,
something
; it is in your eyes, your shoulders, your new height, spark. Love, you now know, is the supreme propulsion of life – the great repairer, rescuer, uplifter. You feel sexy, sexier than ever before, you are turning into someone else.

He says you have the most beautiful innocence, a radiance. He loves your passion for life, for living, he says it shines from you and is in awe of it. He says you have an absence of cynicism, you’re not afraid to lower yourself with enthusiasm and some people think that’s a weakness – like a smile or an apology – but he doesn’t. He loves that you don’t wear perfume. The smell of the earth in your skin, your hair. Under your arms, between your legs. He wants you to love your body, to know it, to not be afraid of it. He says you must never lose your sense of ludic, a word he loves, your playfulness, your spark. You must never be pushed to the side of your life, from the core of who you are, you must never let a man do that.

He could never do anything to hurt you, he pledges, doesn’t
want to push you, needs you. You cannot sleep properly, cannot eat properly. You keep running to the toilet, diarrhoea, can’t stop smiling, staring into space, lost. You fly on your bike and then fling it aside in its ditch and run up his road; never quite sure if he’ll be there, jittery, craving. Turning your head at his gate as you whizz past in the car – always checking – that it’s not stopped, this secret Woondala life, that it will never stop.

You will do anything for him now to keep that gate ajar, you are bewitched. He has whispered of collars, of handcuffs, other people, men, women …
let’s see how far we can take this
. You do not know what is next. You want it. You trust him. You are ready to be laid bare, stripped.

Ready, at last, for the next step.

As you walk away on a sun-smeared afternoon there’s an enormous joyous raucous shriek: a white cockatoo – then twenty, maybe thirty – before you, all around you, playing. Landing on the roof and the falling fences and flimsy tree branches that don’t quite support their weight, flopping upside down, clinging to the rocking branches and working their wings, squawking and playing and squabbling and you laugh out loud, at all of it, all, its joyously screechy fabulous magnificence. Seizing life, seizing all of this. You sit in the middle of the dust and extract your battered little book.

But then other days: a souring. A falling away. No, not today, you just want to read a newspaper, rest, in stillness and laziness; put it all aside like the richest of chocolate cakes you have gorged upon too much.

And then.

The whisper behind your ear.

‘I want to do so many things with you. Before it’s too late.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Explore.’

He turns you around, he kisses you tenderly, once.

‘Please,’ he says. ‘Will you let me,’ he says. ‘For a lot of women experimental sex is associated with pain. Coercion. Fear.’ His lips, a flutter of a butterfly against your ear. ‘But it doesn’t have to be like that. It can be a gate opening to an entire other world of … bliss. If you want it. Enough.’

You say nothing. You give him nothing. You squeeze your legs on your bareness. Gasp, just.

The grand and meticulous experiment.

He brings out a small leather suitcase.

‘We’ve only just begun,’ he smiles. ‘But it all, of course, has to be on one condition: everything we do is of your own free will.’ You nod. ‘Just remember that pleasure is all about surrendering ourselves, and accepting pleasure is a big leap for a lot of people. No one’s born a lover – we all have to learn.’

‘Even you?’ You tease.

‘Oh yes. Me most of all.’

He opens his suitcase. Takes out a blindfold. The softest velvet, as black as midnight. He ties it around you; his cock in readiness, firm into your back. Gently, so gently, he turns you around. He slips something flat and heavy into your hands.

A book.

The surprise of it.

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.

Written eight hundred years ago.

‘Don’t return to this house until you’ve read it. Until you’re ready for the next step. They were medieval lovers. And this is to show you that these things have always been done, and
will
always be done. If you dare. If you want it.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘And I think you do.’ He kisses you on the lips, once, the moth’s kiss. ‘With someone you trust …’

Late, at home, you devour the words, hidden under your blanket as if not even the walls or the night air can bear witness to what you are reading; midges hovering and you slam the book shut on them as you come – your fingers between your legs – and come, with anticipation.

The key word: joy.

Those two deeply religious, searingly intelligent people were having a huge amount of fun.

Written in your notebook, in readiness.

You are a foreigner in his country, a child in his nursery; all is new, wondrous.

You are ready.

For anything.

Because you are doing this to learn.

It is, after all, what you asked for in the first place.

He is ordered, he is ready. Before the two of you can proceed there are two things you must know.

‘I want you.
You
.
No one
else. Believe it. And secondly, stop worrying. About everything.’ He taps your head, his voice lowers. ‘Trust me.’

The softness of his cheek against yours.

You have been reading, preparing, priming, learning. For this moment, the next step. You no longer angle yourself during sex as if you’re viewing the scene from the ceiling, no longer direct yourself into the most flattering positions. You’ve learnt to accept your body, with all its faults, don’t care what you look like.

‘I just don’t notice, alright,’ he’s admonished more than once. ‘I’d much prefer you relaxed.’

You nuzzle in gratitude, breathing him in deep, and you open your body wide, wider to him, wanting to offer yourself for his pleasure and his alone, wanting to snare him forever with infinite sex.

And lo and behold, you feel more womanly than ever before.

He is right.

You are ready.

Thrumming with it.

The day is stretching into lengthening light, soon you must go. He asks you to stand. Naked, still. He says he wants to prepare you for next time. When it will start. Give you a little taste.

He slithers off the silken grey ribbon from its black box, kneels, slips it around your waist like a tailor at a dummy and ties it just above your belly button, in a bow.

A present, to be unwrapped.

‘Close your eyes,’ he whispers.

The long trails of the satin are teased over your bareness, goosebumps spring to life under their coldness. Gently, so gently, he instructs.

‘Now put on your clothes and pedal away tall, on your bike, and imagine all that is ahead. In two days. Don’t undo this ribbon until you’re home. Think of everything we’ve learnt so far. Anticipation. Secrecy. Imagination. Surrender. Trust.’

He kisses your lids, first one, then the other.

‘Love.’

The moth’s breath against your ear.

‘Restraint …’

The trails of satin whisper between your thighs.

‘And release.’