La Suite (20 page)

Gaëlle sat
back. That dress, along with much of her early erotic wardrobe, had
gone up in flames in the house fire just before they’d left
England. She’d been a couple of times more to see the captain, but
neither of them had referred back to the dress or to the events of
her final visit. Just before Jérôme and Gaëlle had returned to
France, she’d gone to visit the old man, but the house was empty
and a neighbour told her that the man’s family had shunted him off
to a nursing home.

Gaëlle sighed.
There had been so many little erotic outings in her life with
Jérôme. That one had slipped her mind entirely until Maya had
triggered the memory. However, she thought, it had been her own
decision to show to the captain and to have him pull her knickers
down. Unlike Emmanuelle, she didn’t need anyone to tell her what to
do. Jérôme had approved thoroughly. Gaëlle smiled to herself and
went to wash the coffee cups.

Chapter
Twenty-four

Gaëlle returned
to see Maurice a fortnight later. This time, she went alone,
feeling that it wasn’t fair to assume that Madeleine would want to
see the piercing taking place. She rang the bell and waited.
Maurice opened the door and inhaled deeply.

“Ah, it’s
Madeleine’s friend Gaëlle, isn’t it?” he said.

“Do I smell so
bad?” Gaëlle asked, as she sat down on the sofa where Maurice
indicated. He took an upright chair.

“Absolutely
not! But I recognized your eau de toilette from last time. It’s
Azzaro, isn’t it? Quite an old-style scent.”

“Yes, it is.
I’ve been using it for a good ten years.”

“It suits you.
Not too flowery, but definitely feminine, rather than girly.”

“Thank you.
That’s just as well, because that’s pretty much how I see myself.
Girly doesn’t sit too well with a forty-three year old body.”

“Forty-three? I
would have said more like thirty-three, from the texture of your
skin.”

Gaëlle laughed.
“I can see that I should come here more often,” she said. “It’s
always nice to be flattered.”

“It only counts
as flattery when it isn’t true,” Maurice told her. “I would have
put you as well-maintained mid-thirties, from your skin and muscle
tone.”

“Thank you
again, then. Now, I’ve thought about it carefully, and I’d like you
to do me a triangle piercing, Maurice. Do I have to make an
appointment?”

“I’m no longer
in the profession, so no appointment. Madeleine brought you and
that’s good enough for me.” Maurice waved his hand in the direction
of the massage table. “Shall we?”

Gaëlle had
dressed for the occasion in a short skirt. She took it off and laid
it aside, then pulled her knickers down and off. She climbed onto
the table and lay back as she had on the previous occasion, soles
of feet together and knees apart. Maurice had organized his needles
by then. He cleaned her sex carefully and eased her clitoris hood
out from the cleft of her sex.

“I said about
here, last time, didn’t I?” Maurice asked. He was touching exactly
the point he had marked the week before, in behind the shaft of
Gaëlle’s clitoris. She was surprised and pleased that he could be
so accurate about something he couldn’t see.

“Yes, if that’s
where you think it should be,” she answered.

“Try to stay
relaxed, then,” he instructed her. Gaëlle breathed out and loosened
her abdominal muscles. Even as she was doing so, a sharp stabbing
sensation told her that the deed was done. “Ouf!” she said. “That
was quick!”

“No point in
wasting time. I’ll put a temporary horseshoe through it for the
moment.”

“A
horseshoe?”

“The technical
term is circular barbell, but I’ve always thought of it as a
horseshoe, because that’s what its shape is most like. I imagine
that you already have some suitable jewellery at home. Leave this
in overnight, keep it clean and don’t forget to turn it.”

Gaëlle sat up
and bent over to examine her new piercing. She had to part her
inner labia to see it properly. Maurice’s horseshoe was hooked
through her clitoris hood, in behind the clitoris itself. The open
ends sat neatly on either side of her clitoris hood. When she
touched it, she could feel how the metal rubbed, stimulating her
gently. “That’s lovely,” she said. “I know how much it would cost
to have this done at a tattooing parlour, so I must pay you
properly.”

“Absolutely
not!” Maurice said. “I get my reward from doing a good job and
being allowed to keep my hand in at piercing. I don’t need your
money.”

“I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to offend you,” Gaëlle said. “If you won’t take it, is
there a charity that you’d like me to contribute to? I can’t just
leave it at that.”

They agreed
that Gaëlle would make a suitable gift to a charity for the blind,
appropriately enough. She said goodbye and left, thinking that
suitable in this case would mean significant. She could afford
it.

The following
few weeks were largely non-sexual for Gaëlle, as she waited
impatiently for the piercing to heal. She concentrated on the gym,
toning her body to make herself feel even more physically prepared.
Already, though, she was enjoying the new feeling. It took even
less stimulation now to give her a buzz. As soon as her clitoris
was woken up by something she saw, or even just a sexy thought, she
was aware of the piercing. Eventually she was able to take out the
horseshoe and see how she felt and looked with some of her own
rings. She quickly realised that most of them were not suitable.
They twisted sideways too easily, and that could be quite painful.
She would have to get some new decorations. First, though, she had
to see whether Jérôme’s little pin would work. One evening, unable
to wait any longer, she stripped off, sat on her bed and took the
pin out of its case. As usual, she would have to contort herself to
see what she was doing, even with the aid of the mirror, which she
had positioned and balanced carefully.

It would look
better when she was waxed, she thought. She’d last shaved her pubic
hair some weeks before and it was growing again. Looking at herself
in the mirror, she felt a little ashamed that she’d let Maurice see
her with hairs starting to peep through, but she’d been so keen to
get the piercing done that she hadn’t got round to shaving again.
Then she remembered he couldn’t see her anyway, but it didn’t make
her feel any better. She eased the horseshoe out of the piercing
and stretched her clitoris hood as much as she could. Fumbling
slightly, she picked up the thicker part of Jérôme’s gift and
worked it through the hole. Her fingers were soon slippery from her
juices and it wasn’t easy to see exactly where it should go, but
she persevered. The next part was even more finicky, as she screwed
the other half of the pin into the first part. Up to this point,
Gaëlle had kept the pin parallel with the axis of her sex. Now it
was in place, she was facing the moment of truth. She pulled on it
and turned it through ninety degrees, to lie across the cleft of
her sex. There! It was done! She examined herself in the little
mirror.

From the time
that Jérôme had first shaved her sex, Gaëlle had always been
pleased with its neat, bare outline. When she’d worn the pin
before, it had drawn her clitoris hood out just enough to make her
inner labia visible between the outer lips. With the new piercing,
however, it was the whole of the hood that was dragged outside the
cleft of her sex. As she’d anticipated, inserting the pin had
stimulated her clitoris, which was now peeping out from its hood.
It was becoming engorged now, and the pressure on the pin, which
was in behind it, was increasing too. That, in turn, excited Gaëlle
even more. She realized that she was holding her breath. It was
just as arousing but also just as physically challenging as she’d
anticipated. If she was honest, on this first trial, it was
painful. She could only hope that as the piercing healed, she would
be able to tolerate the discomfort.

Satisfied that
it would be just about possible to wear the pin under the right
circumstances, Gaëlle took it out. Where the pin had pressed into
the skin on either side of her labia, it left an indentation.
Gaëlle replaced the horseshoe. Now she could relax. She could still
feel the stimulation, but it was nowhere near as powerful nor as
excruciating as with Jérôme’s pin. She lay back and pondered. When
and where could she wear the pin? For how long could she tolerate
it, also? Could she arrange to let it be seen? She knew it didn’t
make her sex look prettier, quite the reverse, in fact. When she’d
worn a ring in her earlier piercing, it had drawn attention to her
depilated state, while still maintaining the neat contour of her
sex. Now, however, her clitoris hood and inner labia would be
trapped in position, dragged outside the cleft and held in place.
It spoiled the clean lines of her lower abdomen. She decided she
looked indecent or lewd, pretty much as she’d hoped.

Gaëlle had seen
many women who, in their natural state, looked as she appeared with
the pin in place. Magda, from her first ever trio with Jérôme, had
been like that. Gaëlle recalled sucking hard on Magda’s hanging
inner labia. Her mouth watered with the memory. The thought that
someone could now do the same for herself led her to have a quick,
finger-powered orgasm. She rolled off the bed, determined not to
let her new toy become an obsession. She cooked for herself and
went to bed with Fred Vargas, as she so often did when she wanted a
distraction from erotic thoughts.

Chapter
Twenty-five

Gaëlle had
accepted an invitation to spend the end of year holiday with
Jérôme’s parents just outside Annecy. In fact, she had chosen the
date for her piercing with Christmas in mind. She was fond of her
parents-in-law, who were an active pair, although well into their
seventies. Her stay at their *home would be a hiatus in her
resumption of erotic activity. Gaëlle was looking forward to that,
as well as to letting her piercing heal quietly. She drove down the
third week of December and was made very welcome. The house was
already decorated, since Jérôme’s brother Léon and his family were
also expected. Gaëlle spent the following week enjoying a family
Christmas. A few days later, she was reading in the sitting room
when the doorbell rang, and Léon led in Danièle and David, old
friends of Jérôme’s, and whom she also knew.

“Hello,
stranger,” Danièle said, kissing Gaëlle.

“What a
surprise!” Gaëlle said. “What on earth are you doing here? I
thought you lived in Belfort.”

“We moved back
six months ago,” David said. “And we’d no idea you were here,
either, until I bumped into Léon yesterday. And don’t complain that
we didn’t tell you we’d moved! If there’s a worse correspondent
than you in the whole world, I’ve yet to hear of them. Isn’t that
true, Dani?” His wife nodded.

“By the way,”
she said, “everyone here calls me Dani, so you must too.”

“Dani it is,
then.”

Gaëlle felt
guilty. She hadn’t contacted anybody at that awful time, except to
thank them formally for their expressions of sorrow on Jérôme’s
death. Faced with hiring something the size of Strasbourg
cathedral, since hundreds of people wanted to give Jérôme a good
send-off, she’d opted for just herself as a witness, wanting to be
alone one last time with him. She apologised profusely.

“Would you like
to come for supper on Saturday?” David asked her.

“Of course I’ll
come,” Gaëlle said. “Very willingly!”

On the
Saturday, Gaëlle dressed to go to David and Dani’s house. She
hadn’t been planning a wild social life in Annecy, so she had only
brought one black dress, which was almost knee-length. It was
angora wool, soft and warm. She’d shaved before leaving home, and
was still feeling the remarkable difference that always made to the
temperature of her lower abdomen. She’d been very conscious of the
cold reaching up under her skirt when she’d gone into the town to
complete her shopping a few days earlier. She allowed herself
thigh-high stockings, though—it was an article of faith that she
never wore tights. Snow was falling thickly, so knickers seemed a
sensible idea. Showing her bare bottom was a lovely sensation, she
reflected, but she preferred not to do so as the result of falling
flat on her back on an icy pavement. Not that it would have
mattered, though, as Danièle came to collect her in her large and
comfortable car.

“It must be ten
years since we last met, but you’d never know it to look at you.
Have David and I changed a lot?” Dani asked.

“David hasn’t
at all, and you’ve lost weight since the last time we met,” Gaëlle
said. “You look good.”

“I couldn’t go
on carrying all that fat once I’d seen you,” Dani confessed. “That
afternoon I swore to myself that I’d get back in shape.

“You’ve
succeeded very satisfactorily, very trim,” Gaëlle responded. “Have
you tried any more experiments, since then?”

“Not like that,
no.”

Gaëlle waited,
but it seemed Dani wasn’t going to say more, so Gaëlle left it at
that. They arrived at the house and hurried in out of the snow.
Inside, it was warm, and Gaëlle was pleased to shed her overcoat
and scarf. Dani took her into the sitting room, and brought coffee
and cakes.

“Gaël and
Amélie are away,” she said. “Gaël’s off skiing and Amélie is
staying with friends for the whole of the holiday. It’s the first
time we’ve had just the two of us for years. It’s lovely and
peaceful.”

“I’d have liked
to meet your children,” Gaëlle said. “Another time, I hope.”

There was a
loud battering on the front door, followed by equally loud and
cheerful voices in the hall. A small round man burst into the room
and hugged Gaëlle. He was followed by an equally round blonde
woman.