La Suite (14 page)

“I recognize
that,” Gaëlle commented. “It was why Jérôme and I so rarely took
risks near home. Most of our adventures happened on holiday.”

“Yes, let’s get
back to you and your adventures,” Maya said, her voice revealing
her relief.

“But we haven’t
resolved the question of Eric. Do we have him here or not?”

“I’d be too
inhibited if Eric were here listening to us. Besides, we can’t
afford a babysitter for every Monday night,” Maya said. They sat
for a moment, both deep in thought.

“Here’s a
suggestion,” Gaëlle said. “How about if, when we have these
discussions, we call Eric on the phone and leave the loudspeaker
on. He’ll be able to hear everything that’s said, and I’m fairly
sure that we’ll quickly forget that he’s listening. Provided he
doesn’t chip in, of course.”

“He’d have to
take a vow of silence as part of the deal,” Maya agreed, after a
few moments’ consideration. “It’s a compromise I can live with, if
you can. It’s not my sex life we’re discussing, after all. I can’t
be much use to you unless we talk and I can’t guarantee that my
sleep-talking won’t reveal it all, anyway. You realize that he’s
going to want to go over it with me when I get home, don’t
you?”

“Your
decision,” Gaëlle said, happy to be echoing Jérôme’s mantra. “Do
you want to call him now? Or is it too early? Will the girls still
be up?”

“Let’s get it
over with. I won’t be able to relax until it’s done.”

Gaëlle rang
Maya’s home number. When it rang, she switched on the speaker.

“Hello?” Eric’s
voice echoed, as if he was in a hallway.

“You’re busy?”
Gaëlle asked.

“Gaëlle? Is
everything all right?” Eric sounded anxious.

“Are the girls
in bed?” Maya said loudly.

“Fed, bathed,
in pyjamas and, I hope, asleep,” Eric reported with audible
pride.

“Then go and
sit down somewhere comfortable,” Maya ordered. Gaëlle smiled. There
was no doubt who was in charge chez Maya!

There was a
pause. The next time Eric spoke, the echo had disappeared.

“I’m sitting
comfortably,” he reported. “In the living room, if you want to
know. What next?”

“There’s a
button on the phone marked Secret. Press it.”

“But then I
can’t talk to you! What’s this all about, Maya?”

“Since you’ve
been earwigging on my secrets when I’m asleep, Gaëlle and I have
decided you can listen to us chatting. You aren’t going to be doing
any joining in, but you’re allowed to listen, if you behave
yourself,” Maya told him.

“Like a fly on
the wall? I’m honoured. Okay, I’m going off air.” There was a
click, then silence. A few moments later Eric spoke again. “I just
recited a Baudelaire poem. Did you hear it?”

“Not a
word.”

“Good. It
works. I’m listening. You two go ahead.” A click, then nothing.

There was a
pause. Maya kept looking across at the phone. Eventually, Gaëlle
broke the silence. “Just to put you in the picture, Eric,” she
said, “we’d just discussed your wedding anniversary evening. I’ve
told Maya that I can understand your urge to see her in public
looking sexy. It’s something I know a lot about, because I used to
do it with Jérôme. I’ve been very exposed in public, and I was
asking Maya whether she thought I still had a body that people
would enjoy seeing naked.”

“Eric,” Maya
said sharply. “Don’t even think of touching that button. You are
strictly a listener! And I just told Gaëlle that I was sure she’d
find admirers if she chose to let them see parts of her that are
usually hidden.”

“We’re going to
have to be more explicit,” Gaëlle said. “What Maya is referring to
is simple. It’s a big turn on for me to show my bare breasts, my
bare bottom and my bare sex in public. There, it’s clear now, I
hope.”

“It hadn’t sunk
in that you’d gone quite so far,” Maya admitted. “I assumed breasts
and bum, but I hadn’t realized you meant the rest, too.”

“That was the
main purpose of being depilated and having my clitoris hood
pierced, to bring people’s attention to my sex when I allowed them
to see it,” Gaëlle clarified, feeling a secret thrill that by
telling Maya, she was also letting Eric in on her secrets.

“But if you’re
going to try that again, will you be showing your…pussy?” Maya
asked. “And if you are, does that mean you’ll be shaving off all
your pubic hair again?”

“When I do,
I’ll certainly either shave, or go to be waxed,” Gaëlle told her,
choosing not to reveal that she’d already made a start on that.
Maya seemed to have quite forgotten that Eric was listening in her
surprise at quite how exposed Gaëlle was planning to be. “And I’m
considering having a piercing again. I loved how it looked and
felt.”

“Are you sure?
Isn’t that going a bit far?” Maya asked. “And doesn’t it hurt?”

“I’m not quite
sure about the piercing yet, but it’s probable,” Gaëlle said, after
a moment’s reflection. “Is it too far? No, because what excites me
most is to explore sexy things that are beyond what people call
normal. And yes, piercing can hurt when it’s being done, but that’s
part of the price. A price I’m prepared to pay.”

Maya looked at
her in astonishment. “I’d never have guessed all this,” she almost
whispered. “It’s making me feel very staid and boring. A bit
wobbly, too. Do you mind if we leave it there for tonight? I need
to go home and think, if that’s all right?”

“Of course it
is. I don’t want to put you off,” Gaëlle said. “Just the two chats
we’ve had so far have been very instructive for me and I hope
you’ll be prepared to hear some more. I’d appreciate it a lot.”

“Oh, don’t
worry. I’ll be back. But it’s all very new and there’s only so much
I can absorb at one time.” Maya turned towards the phone and
called, “Eric? I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Coffee would be
good! Now put the phone down.”

They kissed
goodnight and Gaëlle was on her own. She hung up the phone and went
to curl up on the sofa. She wasn’t able to settle, though. She got
up, went over to the computer and turned it on. Telling Maya—and
Eric, at a distance—that she might be getting a piercing had
stimulated her. She felt the urge to investigate possible piercings
and jewellery before she went to bed. She typed
female
piercing
into the search bar and waited. Five minutes later,
she realized that most of it was about nipples, so she put in
genital piercing
instead. One of the first results pages
gave the names of half a dozen types of piercing that she’d never
heard of. She clicked to find out more. She quickly discounted
several possibilities as too weird for her. She was just concluding
that she’d go with what she knew, when the words
prominent
clitoris
at the bottom of the page caught her eye. She scrolled
down to the article. It was about something called a deep hood
piercing, and the article explained how to check whether it was
possible for a given woman.

Gaëlle dropped
her casual trousers to the floor, pulled down her knickers, put one
foot up on the sofa and examined herself. She wasn’t turned on, but
she was well aware it didn’t take much for her clitoris to become
visible between her outer labia. Jérôme had loved that. Following
the instructions from the page, Gaëlle eased her clitoris hood away
from her body. Did she have a point where there was only skin, in
behind the clitoris itself? She rolled the skin between finger and
thumb, squeaking as she inadvertently trapped some of the nerve
endings in there, the ones that fired her orgasms.

“Yes!” she
almost shouted, when she felt what she was looking for. She felt
elated. She could be pierced in a way that was impossible for most
women. She spent an hour looking at photos of women who’d had it
done and reading their accounts of the sensations it produced. That
convinced her. She would have a deep hood piercing. Her
manipulations had woken up her clitoris thoroughly, and she needed
a manual orgasm before she could sleep.

Chapter
Eighteen

Maya came round
at the same time the following Monday. Gaëlle had set out two
glasses and a bottle of her best Gewürztraminer. She thought a
little alcoholic lubrication might help Maya to relax, given what
Gaëlle intended to tell her.

Maya accepted a
glass of wine and sipped appreciatively. “You know, after a day
dealing with students, and staff, just to sit with you and chat
helps me to calm down. Even if the subject matter doesn’t. Shall we
phone Eric?”

“In a minute,”
Gaëlle said. “First I’d like a report on how things were between
you two after last week’s session, if you don’t mind. I don’t want
to create problems for you.”

“It hasn’t
created any problems that I wasn’t expecting,” Maya said. “If you
can call being leapt upon and ravished almost nightly a
problem.”

“Wow! Is that a
major change?” Gaëlle asked.

“Excuse me,
we’re here to talk about you,” Maya reminded her firmly. “Where
were we?”

Faced with Maya
doing her school Directrice act, Gaëlle gave in. She picked up the
phone, dialled and put the speaker on. Eric responded.

“That’s the
last I want to hear from you until I get home,” Maya called from
her armchair. “I’m assuming you’ve done your duties as a
babysitter. Let me hear that click.” She deliberately turned so
that she couldn’t see the phone’s winking red light and raised an
eyebrow at Gaëlle, who refilled their glasses.

“Well,” Gaëlle
began. You remember I was talking about getting a piercing? I’ve
decided I’m going ahead with it. It’s a special one that you can
only have if you’re the right shape.”

“And you are?”
Maya asked.

“I am. I won’t
be having it just yet, because it has to be done by an expert in
piercing and I haven’t found one so far. You can have no idea of
some of the places I’ve visited in the past week. If you think some
of the things I’ve told you about are weird, just try meeting a
tattooist who’s covered with his own art, face and all, and has a
red, green and gold Mohican that must double the height of his
head.”

“Sounds like
one of my students,” Maya commented. “Some of them must have more
perforations than a teabag.”

Gaëlle laughed.
“You sound just like Jérôme. Anyway, I’m prepared to wait until I
find the right person. I’m quite sure that all a couple of them
wanted was to get me in their back room with my knickers off. I’m
not ready for that, not with just anyone, at least,” she added.

“Okay, so you
have a piercing planned,” Maya said, bringing Gaëlle back to the
subject. “What else?”

Gaëlle spent
half an hour, first explaining about pumping and how it felt, then
fielding Maya’s incredulous questions about the attractions of the
practice. By the time Gaëlle had done her best to explain the
attraction of it, the bottle was empty and Maya had drunk most of
its contents. Gaëlle gave up.

“I can see I
won’t convince you. Let’s leave that one there. I want to talk some
more about exhib. I haven’t actually shown to anyone specific so
far, but last Wednesday afternoon, I did go for a walk in the park
without knickers.”

“Any special
reason why Wednesday?” Maya asked.

“It was a windy
day.”

“Oh, I
see.”

“Yes. Do you
want to see what I was wearing?”

“I can tell you
want to show me it, so yes, of course,” Maya teased her. “But what
do we do about Eric?”

“I can lend it
to you to show him,” Gaëlle suggested, with a smile.

“No way.”

“You’ll just
have to describe it when you get home, then,” Gaëlle said, leading
Maya into the spare bedroom, and dragging the phone base across the
room. “There, if we speak up, Eric will hear most of what we say.”
She flung open the doors of the big wardrobe, revealing the rack of
her erotic dresses and costumes.

“Oh my word!”
Maya’s amazement was undisguised. “You’ve worn all these?”

“Some of them
only once.” Gaëlle decided to tease Maya. “Rather like your pink
dress.”

“My pink dress
would look totally respectable in among these clothes…If you can
call some of them clothes,” Maya exclaimed. “Go on, then. What did
you wear on Wednesday in the park?”

Gaëlle pulled
out a dress and held it against herself. “This one,” she said. It
was pale green and reached mid-thigh on Gaëlle. She held it away
from her and swished it about, as if the wind was blowing.

“You may not
have shown to anyone in particular,” Maya commented. “But some
people may have got a view of your bum.”

“Do you think
so? Oh, I do hope so!” Gaëlle almost sang. “It was so nice! Just
feel the material, Maya.”

“It’s very
soft. It has a nice texture to it,” Maya said, almost as if doing a
commentary for Eric. “I can sense how it might tempt you into doing
something sexy.”

“Do you know
what, Maya? I’d love to see someone else wearing it, so I get an
idea of how I looked. Seeing it on me at home in the mirror isn’t
the same at all. Will you indulge me? Please?” Gaëlle thrust the
dress into Maya’s hands. Maya sighed.

“The things I
do for my friends,” she said. “Look, Gaëlle, just bugger off into
the sitting room for a minute. You can tell Eric what’s going on,
if you like. I’ve had a hard day at work and I don’t feel up to
doing a striptease for you just now.”

“You’re a
darling,” Gaëlle said, and hugged Maya. She flew out of the bedroom
and closed the door behind her. Sitting close to the speaker of the
phone, she whispered to Eric, telling him what she had persuaded
Maya to do. She imagined he must be exercising quite a lot of
self-control not to ask questions. The bedroom door opened and Maya
emerged.

“Wow! I hope I
looked half as good in that dress as you do,” Gaëlle exclaimed.
“Will you do me a twirl?” Maya spun round and Gaëlle pulled a
face.