Her Hungry Heart (42 page)

‘I want you too much. I’ve always wanted you too much. I love you, Mimi,’ he told her, need thickening his voice.

Releasing her hands, he opened the first button of her dress. She closed her eyes, feeling the slight fluttering of her lashes, so tense was she, so filled with desire to please him. Mimi wanted to live up to his expectations, to his love and his passion for her. She wanted to be all things to him sexually, to be all the loves he had ever had in his life or would ever want. She willed him to love her body as he loved her. She was in awe of him, holding her breath not out of anxiety but sheer determination that she should be everything she wanted to be.

He was undoing the last small mother-of-pearl button near the hem of her dress. He was tantalizing himself and Mimi as well for he had not stolen even a glimpse of her naked flesh under the dress. Now, slowly, he parted the white linen and she stood naked before his eyes. She thought she had never felt such stillness. It was as if the world stood still and all sound ceased; all life but theirs seemed frozen in time. They were more alive than they had ever been before. He raised her hand, loosed the buttons on her cuffs and slipped her dress off her shoulders, watching the white linen fall as if in slow motion to the floor. Alexander stood back and gazed at his love. He was choked with emotion. She was his. This beautiful, complex, exciting woman was his. In her stillness, naked in front of him, she was giving herself freely. A thousand times he had remembered her breasts, how they felt in his hands, the joy of sucking her nipples into his mouth. But memory had failed him. Her breasts were far more voluptuous, beautiful, succulent, with nipples more provocative, that he now sensed yearned for his lips, his mouth to suck on them, to excite her.

He caressed her long slender neck, her sensuous
shoulders, traced with his fingers a line across her chest and cupped a breast in each hand, felt their weight and roundness. He lowered his head to kiss her breasts, leaving no part of them untouched by his eager mouth. He dropped slowly to his knees trailing kisses down her body to her navel, and licked her there, before burying his face in her pubic mound. It was more than he could bear. Animal passion took over. He opened his mouth, bit her, sucked her mound into it. She moved her legs further apart. He kissed the inside of her thighs. She moaned with pleasure and came.

He stood up and she watched him undress. There was an extraordinary raunchiness about his body: the chunky torso, the hairy chest, the strong arms, narrow hips, muscular thighs. Her heart raced at the sight of the long, thick, now erect penis, its dramatically large, circumcised knob. A strong, succulent-looking penis. Underneath, the scrotum: fiercely erotic in size and shape, the luscious sac filled with virility. To a woman like Mimi, who loved genitalia, it was perfect, exciting to make love to. Each held back their violent passion for sex in order to discover each other’s bodies again. Like adolescents they took their time with their caresses, their fondling, until they knew once more every inch of their bodies and how they were reacting to each other.

He lay down on the pig skins and she knelt between his legs. He watched her take him wholly in her mouth and make love to him. This was not one of his dreams, his fantasies, his hopes or desires. It was real, it was magnificent. Excitement beyond anything he fantasized. The way she handled his balls, made love to his cock, revealed the fire and passion, the boundless sexual desire Mimi possessed. Lying in each other’s arms, holding back their final climax, reluctant to curtail foreplay because it was so teasingly exciting, led them on to probe the very depths of their erotic souls. And there they glimpsed their
own sexualised animal instincts. What bliss Alexander felt in the knowledge that he could please her erotic nature, that he would be able to transport her to a land whose divinity was Eros. He was filled with joy that Mimi had come as copiously and as often as she had by their mere discovering of each other. Each felt an overwhelming of self in the hunger they had for each other. The way they played with each other’s bodies, the way they made love. No words were needed to declare this was only the beginning.

They eased themselves by slow degrees from the pitch they had driven themselves to. They were hardly composed or under control, but they did dress to make ready for dining. ‘This is not easy,’ he told her.

‘I know,’ she answered, a smile on her lips. ‘Nor for me.’

‘Then why are we doing it?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered him. Gazing into his eyes, she unclasped the silver belt she had just done up.

He took the buckle from her hands and closed the clasp again, patting it as if to say ‘That’s final’, and then told her, ‘I do. Because we are two masochists in love.’ They laughed at themselves. With his arm enfolding Mimi’s waist, they walked from the room, Alexander telling her, ‘And I am quite famished for food too.’

In the kitchen they dined, Sophia serving. It was a happy meal. The three chatted amicably. It had taken just one look at them to tell Sophia they had a future together.

‘I’ve known her since a child,’ she announced to Alexander, as if eager to vouch for Mimi’s whole life.

‘I wish I had known her then,’ he answered.

‘She’s more like that child today than she ever has been since I met her. You’ll be taking her home?’

‘Yes,’ he told her, looking across the table at Mimi. Both women were stunned as he turned to Sophia and said, ‘Not just Mimi. You, too. I hope you’ll come with us.’

‘To Prague?’

‘To Prague,’ he said, and raised his glass of wine. The
tears in Mimi’s eyes told everything. Sophia filled her own glass again and she and Mimi gently rang in the new years of life ahead for them, touching their glasses against Alexander’s.

Sophia placed the pudding on the table for Mimi to serve. She went to her room and returned dressed in hat and coat to say she would be back in three days’ time. It was quite extraordinary. The old woman came to Mimi, kissed her on the top of her head, and then went to Alexander. She stroked his hair, raised his hand, kissed it and said, ‘I think we’ve been waiting for you all our lives.’ Then she left.

Mimi and Alexander lingered over coffee, and then arm in arm mounted the stairs from the kitchen to the great hall. Together they climbed the grand staircase of the house to the first floor.

‘We’ll have a wonderful life,’ he told her, ‘but it may not be easy.’

‘What makes you think I’ve always had it easy?’

‘I’ll have my work, and you’ll have the restoration of your estates, and we’ll have each other. That’s a full life, rich and exciting. And we’ll have our country and our freedom. We’ll be very happy.’

‘And we’ll have love?’

‘Yes, we’ll have love.’

In the bedroom they undressed and bathed. Sexual tension was sparking between them again. Nervously she stood by the window, looking out into a garden dark except for a three-quarter moon that cast its silvery-white light over the leaves of the trees and shrubs. Naked, he walked up behind her and placed his arms around her waist, kissing her bare shoulder and then her back. She shivered. His mere touch set her aflame. ‘Can any man be happier than I am tonight? More grateful, more in love? Surely, not,’ he told her. ‘Come to bed. We’ll go together on a joy-ride into sexual oblivion, down paths we took once before. We’ll exchange this world for another, a place where lust takes
over. There we’ll die the little death, again and again, until we fall into a dreamless sleep enfolded in each other’s arms.’

He turned her slowly round to face him. Moonlight spilled through the window into the darkened room. The tips of her blonde hair picked up the light. It shone on her face and fell across her black satin night-gown which clung like a second skin to her body, making her look luscious, ripe and seductive. He snapped the shoestring satin straps on her shoulders and they broke. She eased the sensuous material off her breasts and caressed them and then his face. He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed.

In a husky, quiet voice, she told him, ‘I feel the Mimi I have never known has found her life. Can you understand that?’ Still in his arms, he answered her with a deep passionate kiss. They listened in the dark to the provocative sound of tearing satin as she ripped her night-gown open.

It was late morning, possibly afternoon, when she woke; she could tell by the quality of the light and the angle at which it shone into the room. She was still clasped loosely in Alexander’s arms. For a long time she lay studying his features as he slept. He had been a magnificent lover who had seduced her with uncontrollable lust. They had been a perfect erotic match. A sense of deep love had guided them through adventures of abandonment to sexual ecstasy. She felt the warmth of his body against hers, its strength. He stirred. She could sense him emerging from his dreams. In a half-sleep, he pulled her closer to him, then opened his eyes. Lazily he pulled himself up against the bed pillows, and her with him. ‘Good morning,’ he said. No more. He seemed mesmerized by her.

‘You’re very quiet,’ she said.

He released her from his arms and slipped from the bed. Turning to look at her once more, he bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. She thought she sensed a tremor in his. When he returned to her, it was with a book in his hand. He slid once more between the sheets and took up the
same position: her head resting in the crook of his neck, an arm placed around her. He pulled her tight up against him. He caressed her breast, lifted her hand and kissed the palm. Then, placing her arm across him, he opened the book and read:

“‘I saw her, this beautiful goddess, a sad child, a sensuous woman, this lady with the hungry heart. And I fell instantly in love, and knew it was for ever. And now she is my life”.’

He looked at her and handed her the open book. The white page was blank except for those words neatly printed in black lower-case letters. Beneath:

For Mimi.