Objects of Desire (31 page)

He could tell when she was coming. She had that way of holding her breath when she came near her moment. Her body tensed for several minutes, then a shudder and orgasmic release, a moan of pleasure. Once, twice. The third time he reached into the drawer of the table next to the bed and found a pot of cream, an amber dildo in the shape of a penis, carved with skill, a work of pornographic art.

How sensuous, how exciting, the feel of the cool, scented, white cream caressing her genitals. His massaging fingers, slipping and sliding in the thick cream, searching to excite yet more sexual thrills for Anoushka. So many erotic sensations with Hadon but this was somehow frighteningly thrilling. He was deliberate and controlling, yet obviously wanting to seduce her by his expertise in creating sexual situations she would find irresistible. Another erotic sensation to trigger her lust. Anoushka whimpered with anticipation.

She was silky-slippery, moist and luscious: mound, her cunt, between the cheeks of her bottom, her intimate orifices. There too he had anointed her with the cream. Every muscle of her body was relaxed. She
lay open and ready for him, wanting only to be taken possession of.

They were still lying on their sides facing each other, he whispering in a voice rough with lust for her how wonderful and exciting she felt in his hands, what he wanted to do with her, what he was about to do to her.

‘Yes, please. Oh, yes, now, Hadon! I want it all now,’ she told him between kisses and while using her own caressing hands on his pulsating penis. She made it doubly exciting for him because she too was using the cream.

Slowly this time, savouring the feel of her cunt thick with cream, he took possession of Anoushka. Before he commenced his fucking, he allowed himself to rest deep inside her, to feel himself throbbing, her cunt gripping tight his penis. He kissed her eyes, her nose, and then her lips, all the while whispering of his passion for fucking her. They were tender caring kisses, as tender and caring as his fucking was this time.

It was different, this satiny sensuous fucking. He found his rhythm, created a beat to fuck by, and her cunt joined him in tight grippings. Their hearts were pumping fast to the beat of sex. Gently, he used the amber dildo; or as gently as sodomy can be. She held her breath to contain her excitement for the pain that wasn’t pain but a new sexual sensation. She bit the flesh on the back of her hand for fear he would stop.

Hadon was a master at deflowering women in that way. Women who liked it and wanted it. And now
Anoushka was being had by him and his amber artefact, his deep and passionate kisses. Between them he told her, ‘The moment I saw you again, I knew I had to have you. I resisted, but it was useless. I don’t fall in love easily, I’m warning you that. I’m not even sure I like it, but I love you.’

As if his declaration had changed things, his fucking became more exciting for them both. He used himself and the amber penis at the same time and with skill. It drove Anoushka mad with excitement, and almost immediately into orgasm, intense, long and exquisite. She felt herself dissolving, vanishing into sexual oblivion. All reason gone.

She received Hadon sexually in the way most every man dreams of being received: in total trust, accepting of all things erotic he could deliver. This time she was peaking and he sensed it and let himself go. They came together, tearing at each other’s flesh, pulling at each other’s hair, driven by the power of lust.

In their moment of ecstasy they found oblivion, over the edge of erotic lust, and were the richer for it.

They dozed off in each other’s arms, and when they awakened praised themselves for having been able to give themselves up to each other so completely. This was sex without artifice, no games playing, pure animal feeling that comes from the libido, from the soul, the very core of being.

Lying in each other’s arms they talked and drifted off into sleep, only to awaken and feel the joy of being together. Secure in themselves and their togetherness,
they would doze off again. This went on all through the night between bouts of lovemaking.

The sun was up when they awakened and Anoushka asked, ‘Am I alive? Pinch me. I have to know I’m alive and what’s happened to me is not a dream, that you aren’t a dream. That I haven’t died in a moment of ecstasy.’

It was as if she had stolen his thoughts. He pinched hard and she reacted with a shout of pain. Then he knew too that he had not expired in lust. Every man’s dream: to die and be resurrected in lust, for eternity.

They bathed together and dried each other with large white bath sheets of soft towelling. He picked her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. ‘Don’t move, I want to look at you, remember every inch, every curve of your body.’

He took his time, and when he had registered her in his mind forever, asked her to open her legs wide. He went on his knees between them and lowered his head to her shaved mound, kissing it and the narrow band of pubic hair. He raised her bottom on pillows for a better view of her and opened her cunt lips and looked at her. He fondled the inner lips and then kissed them. He moved away from her to lie on the bed next to her and take her in his arms.

‘Now when you’re away I can think of you, your blonde hair, the wonderful face, how wonderful your cunt is, and how much I like the taste of it.’

What man had ever spoken to her like that and meant it? What man had ever revelled in her lust and
approved of it enough to tell her? What man had ever loved her for the real Anoushka? Maybe Serge. Not since him, and she had been a young girl then, had a man made her feel so wanted. There had been Robert and great sex for many years, but he had never done that, wanted to etch her cunt, her whole being, into his psyche; never once had he declared his love voluntarily once they had married. There had been Hervé and Piers, but they had been nothing like this, what was happening between Hadon and her.

There was something about Hadon. As hard a man as she sensed he was when she had first met him on the
QE2
, she had been able to appreciate his forthrightness. His attraction then had been his honesty, that he spoke straight from the heart. She knew from the first where she was with a man. No man, not even and maybe especially Serge, had ever been as straight with her. She looked at Hadon and felt whole and in control of herself, her emotions and her life. Right from the beginning that had been what he had wanted for her.

It was her turn. She raised herself and gazed deeply into his eyes, etching his rugged good looks and how he was with her at that moment forever in her mind. They would change places. Her turn to be the sexual aggressor, his to be open and vulnerable to her. She took his body over, tamed it and made it her own. She intended for him to feel every sensation of sexual pleasure she had. To that end she used every resource of her own and what she found in the drawer of the bedside table. And he, as she had done, gave himself over to her in lust.

Chapter 20

It was hot in the sun so they breakfasted under a large white umbrella on the terrace. Akito’s serving was impeccable. He was obviously making an effort and had placed a bowl of white tulips on the table.

Hadon and Anoushka had been talkative until they arrived on the terrace and sat down, then the spectacular view and the sight of
Black Orchid
lying at anchor on a blue sparkling sea, under a near cloudless sky, commanded all their attention. Being together in this place brought a powerful sense of contentment.

Hadon liked her silence, the way she looked at him and his haven: with the eyes of a woman in love. He liked the immediacy of their relationship, everything about the way they were together. He cleared his throat.

‘This is twice that I’ve given myself to you as I have never done to any other woman.’

‘Never?’

‘No, Anoushka, never.’

‘And so?’

‘And so you’re dangerous.’

‘How dangerous?’

‘You have the ability to enslave me sexually.’

‘And you mind that?’

‘Not as much as I thought I might, or should. No, in fact I quite like it.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’

‘That does not mean, however, that you’re not dangerous to me and my lifestyle. I’m not going to marry you, Anoushka.’

‘I don’t remember asking you to.’

‘In time you might.’

‘I won’t, you know.’

“How can you be so sure?’

‘Because, like you, I don’t want to be married.’

‘Then shall we settle for being in love with each other and live with that?’

She began to laugh. ‘Is this the same man who told me on the
QE2
we would never see each other again?’

‘Can you honestly say this is the same woman?’

‘Yes, the same woman. But with a difference.’

‘A big difference, Anoushka. Liberated ladies, ones with courage and adventure in their hearts, have always excited my interest, in and out of bed. Especially ones who keep surprising me as you do.

‘I see in you now something I never saw that first time we met. You want to eat up the world as if it were a cup cake. You’re a lady ready, able, and willing to live. Someone who has taken control of her life. You have no idea how appealing that is to me. I’m a selfish
bastard, I don’t want the responsibility of your life on my hands. Can you live with that?’

‘I don’t want to live without it,’ she replied.

‘Come here.’ He scraped his chair back from the table and patted his knee. Anoushka sat on his lap, taking her coffee cup with her. He placed an arm round her neck and watched her sip hot coffee from the cup. He broke off a piece of croissant and buttered it, draped a piece of near transparent Parma ham on it and fed it to her. Then he gave her an affectionate peck on the cheek.

‘I can be hard and ruthless.’

‘I’ve seen that side of you.’

‘Good, then you know what I can be like.’

‘But I have seen the other side of you too, the tender lover, the passionate sexual being. You don’t coddle me, you’re straight with me. I could love you for that alone.’

Anoushka placed her cup and saucer on the table and this time it was she who fed him with croissant and peach preserve, trying to hide the overwhelming feelings she had for Hadon Calder. She was struggling to keep a tight hold on herself and remain calm when she told him, ‘I do love you, Hadon Calder.’

‘Good. That’s settled. We have to go. I promised to get you back on board for two o’clock and I have to get back to work. You’re the only woman I have ever broken my schedule for. For the sex, yes, but for more than that. That inexplicable, elusive something that can happen between two people.’

He kissed her, this time because they understood each other, and eased her off his lap. ‘We have to go,’ he told her.

Only minutes later they were in the power boat and he was taking her back to
Black Orchid
. ‘Hang on to me,’ he told her.

She clung to him with one arm round his waist, a hand holding tight to a chrome grip attached just above the dash board. He threw a throttle full forward and the bow of the boat rose from the water. They sped towards
Black Orchid
, lying majestically in the bay.

Anoushka turned to look over her shoulder at Hadon’s cliffside estate, in time to see Akito waving farewell. He knew that she would be back, that she was already a part of their lives. She had a sense of home and, realising how much she had missed that, felt suddenly choked with emotion. How grateful she was to feel so alive again, to have survived the ordeal of utter rejection, the death of life as she had known it.

She took a deep breath, sighed, and looked at Hadon. Instinct made her throw both her arms round him and give him an enormous hug. He looked away from the sea to her and smiled. Understanding was in his eyes. The wind was blowing her hair back off her face. Anoushka felt giddy. She threw her head back and laughed, feeling as if she had beat the devil. ‘I love your home,’ she shouted above the roar of the turbo jet motors.

‘Good,’ he shouted back at her. It seemed only seconds before they pulled alongside
Black Orchid
.
Their arrival brought Rab and the crew to the rail.

‘Permission to board, Captain?’ called out Hadon, unable to keep a smile from his face, so amused was he by the reception he and Anoushka were receiving.

‘Permission granted,’ replied Rab, and sent down one of the crew to sit in the power boat, another to keep a line on it.

Anoushka and Hadon boarded and Sally went to her and placed an arm round her shoulder. They had big grins on their faces. Rab and Hadon shook hands and Anoushka introduced Hadon to Sally.

‘Hadon, I’d like you to meet one of my two best friends.’

It was she who brought up the subject of the work Anoushka was doing translating his novel, something that had been completely forgotten in their preoccupation with the carnal side of their natures, trying to cope with the shock of falling in love.

‘She’s so clever and works so hard on every word, and she’s always saying she couldn’t bear it if she were to lose one iota of the passion and beauty of your writing.’

‘I’ll send you your copy of the translation when I’ve completed the work, in about five weeks’ time,’ Anoushka told him.

‘No. Don’t. I’ll come and get it. I finish my book in two weeks’ time. You get on with your schedule and I’ll get on with mine. Afterwards I’ll take you to Japan for a holiday, in celebration of the completion of your first translation.’

‘When?’

The light in her eyes made him feel good. ‘Well, we’ll have to work out dates. I’ll be in touch.’

Hadon left Anoushka with Sally. No great goodbye or kiss, a mere squeeze of her hand and he walked to the rail to descend the ladder. Rab was waiting there for him.

‘You old devil! Can still pull the best birds, I see. But what about that little blonde? Isn’t she a doll? And if you think these two are special, wait till you meet the third one of the trio. We’re picking her up in Hydra. A honey to look at – very seductive stuff.’

‘Will they make the crossing?’

‘Let me put it this way – I wouldn’t bet that they won’t but don’t tell them that. These two have got guts and determination, and Anoushka has a real feel for the sea. Page, the one yet to come on board, I have no doubts about. Beauty and guts, adventure in their hearts, and me training them … have
you
any?’

‘Not a one, except love might step in and bust up the trio.’

‘You don’t know these women if you think that. They’re not making this crossing to forget a broken heart. They’re making it because they want an ocean adventure. These ladies are buddies who have put together a dream, and no man’s going to bust that up for them. I hope you’re not thinking of trying?’

‘Me? Not me, old buddy. I like their spirit, real-life heroines. I’m rooting for them.’

‘Me too, but don’t tell them that either.’

The two men laughed. ‘I’ll be calling you, Rab, might be joining you for a few days when your schedule permits.’

Hadon was over the side and down the ladder. As soon as he had cleared the schooner it was all hands on deck, sails unfurled, and
Black Orchid
the training ship was on her way to Greece.

Piers Hazlit was on a river expedition in Guyana. They were charting rivers, estuaries, waterfalls, following a course down the Essequibo from the North Atlantic Ocean across the length of the country into Brazil and the Jauaperi River. The Jauaperi flowed into the Negro and that flowed into the Amazon, the end of their journey, across relatively undiscovered land and water ways. They were also recording flora and fauna. The expedition had been in the planning for three years, and was his kind of adventure. Interesting, undisturbed places and people, uncharted territory, with competent, experienced colleagues including a doctor who had taken leave from Guy’s Hospital, and serious documentary film makers in tow. They were a party of nine.

At night, exhausted from the heat and the humidity and a day’s hard travel by motor boats, one of which carried a dismantled microlight plane, sitting round a camp fire with a gin in his hand, Piers’s mind would sometimes stray from the jungle and wander back over other adventures, other expeditions. His findings safely recorded at the Royal Geographical Society were
always an anti-climax for him. Adventure, discovery, that was the real reason for making his expeditions; that and to write his always anxiously awaited travel books. This journey was no different than any other, with the exception of one thing.

During his previous travels he had always known that there was someone at home waiting for his return: Sally. He had not realised until this expedition how much he’d enjoyed having the security of someone keeping the home fires burning, or at least the illusion of Sally doing that. How important it had been to know that Sally was sleeping in the bed at Chalfont or in the house in Hays Mews. That life had been going on in his absence: civilised, normal, boring even.

For all her silly parties and girlie lunches, the gossipy, frivolous and endless phone conversations, Sally had at least always been there for him when he wanted her. He thought of her now and how she would jump at his bidding, meet him wherever he wanted her to be.

He thought of Anoushka, her homely qualities and new adventurous spirit, her children whom he would take to his heart as he had taken her. He knew that he could give her the home she yearned for, an even better lifestyle than she had lost.

He met her, fell in love with her, felt compassion for what she had been through, and bedded her. The sex had been better than good, they had had sex on a grand scale, but that had come after he had fallen in
love with her and had decided what a good life they could have together.

He had wooed her as best he could in the short time they had been together and it was a great affair, but that was not what he wanted from Anoushka Rivers. He wanted marriage or nothing. In her, he sensed the things, he had missed all those years with Sally: love for him, not love for what he could give her. A wife, the mother of his children, his hostess, his best friend to travel with. Those same things Sally had wanted from him, he now wanted from Anoushka. He had to be strong with her. He would have marriage or he would have nothing.

Piers, a man whose life was always full, rich and rewarding, was not a man who pined for anyone or anything. That was how he assured himself of never getting hurt. He only really wanted what he could get on his terms. It had been easy enough for him to leave Anoushka behind emotionally. He had no problem with waiting for an answer as some men in love might. He would be there on the dock waiting for Anoushka’s answer as to whether or not she wanted him when
Black Orchid
completed her crossing at Mustique. But in the meantime he would contact her and say that if she wanted to be with him, she must agree to marry him. It was as simple, as cut and dried as that. On many levels he wanted Anoushka, she satisfied his needs, his passion, but he wanted a wife more. He could appreciate that she had a great deal of past to be finished with before she could give him an answer, and
she was right to hesitate. He travelled light emotionally, she had to be the same. At least Sally had been right about that.

Whereas Anoushka and Hadon had little to say to each other about their pasts, and Jahangir and Sally were only living in the immediate present every day for fun and each other, Page and Oscar spent their first three weeks together after years of separation making love, having long and exciting sexual trysts, and talking.

In Page’s arms one night, after a particularly erotic night of lovemaking, Oscar told her, ‘The priesthood was an unnatural place for me. The mind wanted to be there, the heart believed that it belonged there. Uncertainty had always been my nature: love for women and freedom, a voracious libido, pride and belief in myself as an individual … I met you, and in your arms I found my true nature could be denied no longer. There’s nothing unnatural about my life now.’

They spent time talking about their lives during their years of separation. It was a way for each of them to bring the other into those years, a way of dissolving the time lost between them. They hardly left the house, wandering from room to room, touching every window, every wall, opening every door, every cupboard. Making their mark on their house together.

‘It’s beyond my wildest dreams, beyond anything I imagined it would be. And you did it all by yourself without me, for us.’

She could see how moved he was, and he was right to
be moved. Now that he was here with her, she could view the house from a new perspective, through his eyes, and afresh for herself. She too was moved, could understand even more why Anoushka and Sally had been so drawn to the place, how it had wrapped itself round them and enchanted them. It had, besides simplicity and majesty, beauty and an incredible peace, an other-worldly feel. It had always been a house built on a foundation of romance and love. First the sea captain, who still walked as a ghost through the rooms, then Oscar and Page.

‘I’ll make it up to you. For the rest of my life I’ll make it up to us. It’s marvellous, it’s wonderful. You’re marvellous, we’re wonderful. It’s just as we planned it, but the reality is far better.’