The Pleasure Seekers (2 page)

It was at those times that she would remember she had been there just like them, and Mark would break their hearts as he had not broken hers. Those women fell for the dream, and the pleasure of being in love. They were under the spell of sex in the heat, of it all: Mark’s pitch, and the place, not the man, the real man within, whom he so cleverly kept hidden. Maybe the bond they still had between them was that they had never been fooled by the trappings; they were hardened pleasure seekers who
knew there was more to be had than they could give each other. It had saved them, kept them friends, not left them with broken hearts, nor bitter about each other. There was something else besides: they had been born on the same day of the same year in the same time zone. Significant? Maybe not, but difficult to discount.

D’Arcy rose from the bench, placed a kiss on Mark’s cheek and left him as she had found him. It had been her plan to go directly home, bathe and change and then go to Laurence, but meeting Mark had changed all that. She was halfway down the village. She took a turn off the path, and another, and then climbed several steep stairs and let herself through Laurence’s weatherworn gate. She called out, announcing her arrival, and was suddenly struck by how much she missed Laurence when she was not with him.

He appeared in the door, a smile on his lips. Whenever he heard her voice or saw D’Arcy she brought that particular smile to his lips, and he knew exactly why. He had never met a woman like her before. D’Arcy Montesque was pure pleasure. She had been born and bred to live for it and had no neuroses about it. She was the least complicated, the most sexy and loving woman he had ever been involved with. She wore her intelligence and talent like an invisible coat, but not her beauty. She wore that, like her mother before her the locals said, displayed proudly, merely to give them pleasure. And it was true: to see anyone as beautiful as D’Arcy was in itself a joy. Her kind of physical beauty lifted the spirits, brought people a moment of pure bliss.

He watched her now as she rushed up the last few
stairs to him, her auburn hair shining silk-like in the sun, violet eyes full of joy, face so young and fresh. Hers was a chiselled beauty: the high cheekbones and pointed chin; a perfect oval face, strong and sensuous yet somehow mysterious, and with an enchanting depth to it he had yet to fathom. Her long slender neck and collar-bones were exposed above the wide crescent-shaped neckline of the fine white linen dress she was wearing. The sun was behind her and he could see clearly the shape of her body: the extraordinarily long legs, slender hips, the heavy and succulent breasts that enticed with every step she took. Around her waist a belt of bright blue glass beads caught the sunlight. In her hand she carried the long linen jacket she would have worn in Chania or the mountain villages she might have stopped in on the way home. D’Arcy never dressed to offend or incite Cretan lust.

‘I didn’t expect you until much later.’

It was not what she had planned: sex, to be ravished by Laurence right then and there. But the moment he appeared in the doorway she was overcome with the desire to couple with him. D’Arcy had always found Laurence incredibly sexy. There was erotic attraction between them, that special sexual chemistry of something primitive, animalistic, when need and desire to die for a few seconds in the bliss of orgasm block out all else.

They suited each other physically, mentally, erotically. She found his English reserve exciting. And to see it crumble as he threw all sexual caution to the winds was thrilling. Sexual abandon and the quest for pleasure and
nothing more was what kept them together, enhanced life and their relationship while allowing them to remain their own independent selves.

D’Arcy said nothing. She didn’t have to, she was speaking to him with her eyes, with every curve of her body. There was an aura of sex about her, a scent. She was luscious as ripe fruit, and she was offering herself. He plucked her from his doorstep like a warm peach, an offering from the gods.

He pulled her into the coolness of his house and his arms. She dropped her jacket and he heard her beaded belt clatter on the stone floor. He stopped kissing her only long enough to pull her dress over her head. Her body was warm and damp with perspiration and her skin had the faint scent of honeysuckle. It invaded his senses, she invaded his soul.

The roundness of her breasts, the weight of them in his hands, the pale pink of their nimbus, smooth and silky, cone-shaped and tipped with short slender nipples against the tan of her skin. They were breasts that tantalised and were to his eyes the most sensuous and beautiful he had ever seen. Naked she was like fire and ice. He seemed as if mesmerised by them as he stood back from her and slowly unbuttoned his shirt, climbed out of his jeans. With every move she made – to slip out of her panties, remove her shoes – she used her body to incite his lust, and it worked, he wanted her more. She was sexually loose, free, and incredibly elegant, but lewd in her lust. He could never get enough of her when he wanted her as he did now. Secretly he liked to think of her as the corrupting factor in his sex life, that she was
the one responsible for their depravity. He used even that to excite himself.

He draped an arm round her waist and let his hand drop to caress her smooth clean-shaven mound, to slip his fingers between those most private of lips and fondle her as they walked through the house to his bedroom. Together they sat at the foot of the bed, looking not at the spectacular view from the window in front of them but at each other. How much she wanted him could be seen in her eyes; her body seemed to scream for sex, in any form, in every way. He could deprive her of nothing. Her desire had the ability to drive him to extremes, to do anything to bring on the long and strong orgasms she revelled in. He loved her and hated her for that and because she had possession of him. Laurence had not the will nor the desire to drive her out of his heart as he did all women he thought might change his life. He merely settled for secretly resenting their love affair while happily living with it.

Such mixed emotions overtook him now. He gently pushed D’Arcy back on the bed. Her luxuriant hair spread out across the rough white cotton sheets, she threw back her arms and smiled at him. Had ever a woman looked so wanton, so open and ready for a man, sex, the taste of come? He wanted to bathe her in it, drown her in pools of luscious sperm. D’Arcy always accepted orgasm as the elixir of life itself.

He lay on the bed next to her and rolled on his side to face her. She was on edge, bursting with pent up sexuality, sensuous, hungry for him and his sex. She lowered her gaze from his eyes to his phallus, so large
and pulsating with desire for her, and then looked at him once more, deliberately licking her lips ever so slowly with pointed tongue.

There was lust and a huskiness in his voice. ‘And so it begins. A voyage to oblivion,’ he told her as he pressed a deep hungry kiss upon her mouth and continued other kisses down her body while he slipped over her, straddled her with his slim, wide-shouldered muscular body and draped his scrotum over her face, sliding the knob of his penis between her lips. The feel of her warm moist mouth, her tongue encircling him with caresses, made him close his eyes for a moment with a shiver of pleasure and push a little bit deeper, wanting more as he slid his arms under her knees and raised her legs off the floor to spread them wide apart on the edge of the mattress. With deft fingers he searched out those most intimate of lips and sucked on them, nibbled at them, licked them as nobly as she was tending to him. He found her small, ever so sensitive bud, the clitoris, that can deliver as strong and pleasurable an orgasm as exquisite penetration. He excited it and was rewarded with a taste of honey as she came on his tongue.

He immediately slid off her body to stand at the foot of the bed between her legs. Laurence gazed at her for one brief moment before he raised her legs and none too gently pulled her bottom up off the bed. He held her that way by the waist and in one forceful thrust sank himself as far as he could into D’Arcy.

To be penetrated by a man at the right moment in the right way was for D’Arcy one of the great joys of life. She had not moved since the moment Laurence had pushed
her down on the bed. Now she closed her eyes and raised her arms as if to heaven and called out in a voice filled with passion and that special moan that comes only with sexual ecstasy: ‘Oh, yes, yes! Laurence, it’s wonderful. You’re wonderful.’

She came and came again. Her orgasms drove him wild, they always did. The more she came and the stronger her orgasms, the more out of control she was in her submission to him, the better the sex was for him. He gave in to his own lust; he was ready now to deal with sexual depravity, all things carnal. Until D’Arcy such desire had only been possible in his fantasies. He penetrated her again and again in that position then changing his rhythm, the pattern of his thrusts, rolled her over on to her knees and took her from behind. The excitement of being riven again and again in these two positions was sublime for D’Arcy, and the thrill of sex with her like this no less so for Laurence. Then the moment arrived for them. They came together in an explosion of lust which they rode out on for a few seconds into oblivion. He had been right when he had told her: ‘And so it begins.’ For indeed that was only the beginning of sex for them that morning.

The post and the newspapers arrived by boat – how often was dependent on the weather, the boatman and what else he had to carry to Livakia, if indeed he felt like making the trip down the coast at all. The delivery was the first highlight of the day for D’Arcy and every resident of Livakia. Like everything here it was a casual arrangement, though since it was the boatman’s
livelihood and he lived in Livakia, the post at least was more or less reliable.

The port was where the Livakians did all their living when they weren’t in their own houses; there, and in the narrow streets off the port, climbing up the side of the amphitheatre-like hill. There was a well-stocked grocer’s shop, Mr Katzakis’s, selling the best of the Cretan cheeses and honeys and olives, all sorts of foodstuffs native to the island and Greece. It smelled strongly of rosemary, lemons and Retsina. Amid the open bags of beans and flour, barrels and kegs and shelves of tinned goods, were upturned boxes where you could sit down and drink Retsina run off from a barrel into old-fashioned copper measure cups, smacked down on the makeshift tables with chunky, stubby glasses.

It was always cool, dark and relaxing when one stepped out of the sun and into Katzakis’s emporium. You could read the paper or your post, having picked it up at the post office, drink a glass of Retsina so strong it could strip the paint off walls while nibbling at slivers of cheese, slices of salami, a dish of black olives. You had to bring your own bread. There you could pass the time of day with whoever else was in the shop and catch up with the latest news coming in from the boat people who arrived daily with the deliveries.

If there was a catch there was fish for sale off the boats, and bread and cakes from the baker who also, for fifty pence, would put your roast in his oven. That was another morning sight in the village: large roasting tins filled with lumps of lamb surround by what seemed like a peck of potatoes, or huge round tins of stuffed peppers,
moussaka, a pastichio, or anything else that needed an oven, being run down the steep steps from all over the village by little boys, mothers or grandmothers to the baker’s oven to be cooked in time for the midday meal.

There was another grocer’s shop, smaller, which carried the foodstuffs Mr Katzakis did not; they had an understanding. A barber’s shop boasted one chair for cutting, three for waiting, and sold newspapers and Aspirin, shampoo and hair gel and spray, male and female unmentionables, and had the only pay telephone in the village. The barber was also the mayor. His was a minute shop squashed between one of the two best tavernas in the village, the Kavouria, and the carpenter and local boat builder’s shop. Next to that was the greengrocer who only opened when he had something to sell, and above him was the police station run by Manoussos Stavrolakis and his assistant. The other restaurant was not on the port but just off it in a tiered garden overlooking the sea. Three small coffee shops where nothing but coffee, ouzo or Retsina was served and backgammon and dominoes were played on wobbly old wooden tables completed the commercial life of the old port. You drank wine in the tavernas and brought your own bottle of spirits with you if that was your tipple.

The largest of the three churches in the village was several houses behind Mr Katzakis’s and boasted a very pretty bell tower containing six bells that rang all at the same time. A stone and white-washed plaster palace for God and the village and all the surrounding villages too poor to have a church of their own, it boasted magnificent icons that drew connoisseurs from all over the world, gold
and silver altar pieces, as well as a great many silver votives and candlesticks of considerable weight and size to hold the tall fat beeswax candles. There was also a priest, a powerfully influential man in the community and on the island, big and black-robed and heavily bearded. Everyone respected him, including two visiting monks from Mount Athos who appeared to be studying with him on a rather indefinite basis. They floated in their flowing black robes and crosses through the village, sat in the port at the coffee houses – inside in bad weather, out in good – dined in the tavernas on occasion and enjoyed the company of the foreigners in residence, altogether very much a part of the life of Livakia.

The other two churches were small, modest and white, typical Greek Island churches with domed roofs. Twenty people would have packed them. They were dots on the landscape, hanging in precarious places high up on the cliffs above Livakia. There were breathtaking climbs to them, spectacular views from them. Someone made those climbs every sunrise and every sunset to ring each church’s single bell, and at different times of the day if the church had been opened by a believer there to pray, or mourn for a lost one, or merely to look at the frescoes and place fresh flowers below the painted and gilded portrait of a saint. The Cretans loved their saints. Thousands of such small churches, some very poor, others mini-Byzantine museums, studded the island. Byzantium had flourished there and was respected still, if not by all. Much too often thieves robbed such remote churches for Western dealers and art collectors.