Acts of Love (22 page)

‘Not here? Where is she?’

‘Come in. Better that than let all the cold air in. Are you the bloke what was to call from France?’

‘Yes.’

As soon as Ida told him where Arianne was, he was on his way. No time for coffee or even a glass of orange juice, though
first he bound Ida not to tell Arianne he was on the way to her, should she call.

His disappointment at not finding Arianne at home was short-lived. He felt the stubble on his chin – back to his flat on Piccadilly to shave, bathe and change. Then he took the Porsche and headed for the M4 and Chessington Park.

An hour and twenty minutes later he used the key his uncle had left him to enter the house and hurried across the hall to ring the bell at Artemis’s flat.

Arianne opened the door. They fell into each other’s arms and sealed their reunion with a long, passionate kiss. And then they kissed again. ‘I got your cable.’ And they kissed yet once more. Finally he asked, ‘You are going to let me in?’

‘Yes, oh, yes. It’s wonderful you’re here. But how? I only sent the cable at five yesterday.’

Together, arms around each other, they walked into the sitting room. He was still kissing her face, her hands. ‘It’s good to have rich and crazy friends. One of the polo players had arrived in St Tropez in his four-seater jet. He flew me from the south of France at dawn this morning, dropped me off at Heathrow and is probably back at the Biblos by now, or close to it. Tell an Argentinean it’s an affair of the heart and he understands, is only too willing to play cupid.’

‘But your work?’

‘Finished that. And I gave my proxy vote to Jaime, the winged polo-player. So now here I am.’

Intense feelings of togetherness appeared to envelope them and dictate their actions. Such powerful emotions made them cautious with even half-intimate words. That oneness with each other they were experiencing was too sensational, a feeling that words would only diminish. So they spoke about other things: his polo schedule, and how he longed for her to be at the next match to see him play. How thrilled he was that she was interested in the game. The book she had discovered and what a sensational find it was.

By this time they were in the Porsche, driving towards Oxfordshire. They had decided to take a leisurely drive through the countryside and return to London after a lunch at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons – Ben’s favourite country
house hotel, Arianne’s favourite chef. The cold, crisp day was somehow too beautiful to miss. The sun radiated no warmth, but it made the day bright.

Arianne was waxing lyrical about books and collecting, telling him how it was her first rare-book purchase to trade with on her own behalf. She had had to use all her savings to buy it. But it had hardly been a calculated chance because she knew the value of the book the moment she held it open in her hands. She had been all enthusiasm in telling him about the book, and he was waiting to hear more, when Arianne went suddenly silent. He sensed something was wrong and turned his concentration from the road briefly to look at her. Their mutual gaze brought a smile to her lips. She leaned towards him and kissed him on the cheek, caressed his thigh with her hand and told him matter of factly:

‘It’s true, you know. That’s all the money I had in the world. I have the trappings of wealth and the good life. But they are just trappings. My clothes, all that was left once the receivers came in and settled our business debts after Jason’s death, the house in Three Kings Yard, my ruby ring and this book …’ She patted the large, soft-leather handbag resting in her lap, wherein lay the book. ‘All my assets. I have Ahmad to thank for the house and the ring. Christmas presents. One in November, when he discovered I was living in a bed-sit in Belsize Park, the other a few weeks ago. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Yes I do. I don’t want you to think I live an extravagant life and can’t afford it. I have friends who can finance for me the sort of forays into extravagant living that I was once able to make, when my husband was alive. I have gone from that to not a penny in my pocket, no roof over my head and being a salesgirl in Macy’s basement just to stay alive – something I’ll never do again. I feel better now I’ve told you. I don’t want ever to live beyond my means again. I had no idea that was the way it was when Jason was alive.’

She seemed to Ben to be calm, not at all pouring her heart out all over him, not at all revealing the pain she must have gone through in the past. Right from the first, Arianne inspired in Ben feelings of trust. He had recognised her enormous capacity for understanding. Now he could understand why: she had been through hell and yet she always radiated a feeling of happiness
and well-being. In that she was not unlike Ben himself. It was another thing they had in common. He would see that she never suffered again if he had anything to do with it.

Arianne had picked up where she had left off about the rare book she had discovered. He listened for no more than a minute before he pulled off the road into a dirt path, engaged the handbrake and, leaving the motor running, pulled her into his arms as best he could with the seat-belt holding her firm. He kissed her and told her:

‘You have nothing to worry about. I’m wealthy, and never live beyond my means. You and I, we’ll make it with money, we’ll have a wonderful time. But we would have made it without.’ He squeezed her hand and kissed her head and told her as he turned away from her, ‘Now tell me more about the Levant in the eighteenth century.’

They passed through the gates of the Manoir. Ben parked the car in an empty space in the courtyard. For some minutes they sat looking at the handsome stone manor house, the neatness of the garden, now a suffering beauty under the chill of a mid-winter day. If one needed a romantic setting, surely this would do. The ambience was perfect. There were many more beautiful places they could have gone to, but Le Manoir on the February day in England seemed the only place for them. The quiet, the scale of this particular country house hotel, the intimacy – all seemed just right. It was easy. It allowed their sensual delight in being together to come to the fore. Ben raised her skirt a few inches past her knee and lowered his head to place a kiss upon it. Arianne closed her eyes. It was a most erotic, passionate kiss. She trembled in anticipation.

Anyone who saw them walking across the courtyard and into the reception area of the hotel could not miss that lovers had come to dine. They had Kir Royales by an open fire in a small sitting room while they waited for their table to be made ready. They held hands, the electricity between them seemingly recharged all the time. Each used all the will power available to keep their passion under control. They were aware that what was happening was something bigger than both of them. Each revelled in knowing love on such a scale.

They agonized over the menu. So much to choose from. Such
wonderful gastronomic splendours to share. Several Kir Royales later they had made their choice, the Menu Gourmand, to give them a taste of many different dishes. Ben selected the wines. They were now at a table off in a corner of one of the dining rooms with a view of the garden. Each morsel was delicious.

When the last of the three tiny portions of pudding had been consumed and the table cleared, they remained seated. Alone now in the room, they lingered over coffee, savouring the unique well-being that follows a meal created by a master chef, accompanied by wines that the gods on Olympus might have deigned to sip. They were tipsy on wine and love.

‘I don’t see us driving to London this afternoon,’ he told her.

‘No.’ Her heart was racing with anticipation.

He went around to stand behind her chair. Before pulling it from the table, he kissed her head, caressed her shoulders. She covered with her own the hand that lingered on her shoulder.

The bedroom had a fireplace, with a pair of wing chairs on either side. The four-poster bed was hung with curtains, full-blown roses on a cream-coloured ground. It was a pretty, country-house hotel bedroom with several old pieces of oak furniture. They hardly took it in. They had eyes only for each other. Dusk cast a soft light into the room. Ben placed their coats on the chaise at the foot of the bed. Arianne was standing in the middle of the room watching him. He turned to face her.

She watched him remove his jacket, loosen his tie, unbutton the first two buttons of his shirt. He never took his eyes from hers. She was wearing a white silk blouse with long, full sleeves and a full, grey-flannel skirt that hung to just above her ankles. Round her waist was a wide belt of terracotta-coloured lizard. She lowered her eyes to concentrate on the buttons on her wrist as she undid them. The sexual tension was building, even as he walked from the fireplace to stand in front of her. The first button freed, then another and another. He stopped long enough to kiss her gently. Her lips trembled. He continued to undo her buttons. Arianne loosened his tie, slipped it from around his neck and dropped it on the floor. She pulled his shirt from his trousers, slipped her hands under it and caressed his flesh. He felt warm, so sensual in her hands. She reached around him and caressed his back, working her hands around to his chest, felt the silky hair
there, caressed his nipples and felt them go immediately erect.

While she was still undoing his shirt, her blouse slipped from his hands on to the floor. Unclasping her belt, he dropped that too to the floor, lowering his head to her breast to suck nipple and nimbus into his mouth.

They learned more about each other that afternoon through caressing hands and hungry mouths, tongues and lips on naked flesh than most people discover in a lifetime. How sweet for them the carnal love. How delicious the erotic tasted. How sublime, for both of them to submit, submit that little bit more, always that little bit more.

Theirs was a powerful lust, enjoyed in a long and languorous savouring of every caress, every kiss. Ben was an unselfishly magnificent lover, with an obvious sexual adoration of women. The way he kissed and sucked and licked Arianne’s cunt, took possession of it, played with it for her pleasure, not his alone, established that. To feel her outer and inner cunt lips in his mouth and his gentle, long, slow sucking of those soft, fleshy lips, was to kindle fire in her, and excite orgasms so exciting and repetitive that she imagined – or really felt – her moist, warm cunt throbbing gently with life for him, for his penis. And always beneath the surface of his lust for her lay deep caring for her, a desire to take her with him into a state of erotic bliss.

What stamina, control, love, he had for her, to delay, always delay, for long intervals of foreplay. The protestations of love by both reinvigorated their sexual lust. Each admitted in whispers thick with passion that the other was more thrilling as partner than either had imagined.

Ben slipped on top of Arianne. This time, between passionate kisses of her mouth and her breasts, he spread her legs wide. Taking her hand in his, he wrapped her fingers around his pulsating, erect penis, and directed her hand. It was Arianne who guided the large, handsome crown of his cock to between her moist cunt lips. She rubbed it back and forth across her slit several times before she parted those lips with it. Then together they plunged his needy penis in one long, hard thrust to take final possession of each other.

‘How wonderful, how beautiful you are,’ she told him. ‘Oh, yes, please,’ – as he slowly withdrew and entered her again and
again. How she loved being fucked. He adored her unashamed passion for sex. It made her an even greater joy to fuck. Arianne was surrendering herself to him with his every thrust. Loving him and their sex, with roving hands and busy kisses, her eyes closed, she whispered magnificently erotic things to him. It spurred him on to love her more, take her again. With no woman in his life had he been more close, more intimate, more at one. No woman had ever given herself up to him as Arianne was doing. He could hold back no longer. His rhythm changed. The beat of his fucking, like the beat of his heart, raced and carried Arianne with it, while he whispered beautiful things to her.

Arianne felt herself right there in the moment with Ben, this new, lovely and very sexy man. She was his, he hers. When he was about to come, he was not alone, she was there with him, ready to come herself in a crescendo of orgasm, and to sail out on oblivion with him. Suddenly words came flooding back from the recesses of her mind. ‘For the sake of love, a taste of eternity.’ Jason’s words, Jason’s voice. Vivid memories of them lying naked together in each other’s arms. Jason kissing her, fucking her, roughly taking possession of her with hands that caressed lovingly and bruised from excess of passion, and a hungry mouth that bit into her flesh.

‘In our love, in the shadow of our lives with many suns to warm our hearts, no shadows remain,’ he sang to her from a French love-song. He pulled her head back by her hair and devoured her lips, her mouth, with deep kisses.

It was all there for them once more, their life of all sun, warmth and strength that scorched and devoured them over and over again. They were together, as real as if he had never died, living their life of love and folly, trust and courage. Their desires, Jason’s, hers, the comeliness of their life, were still blooming.

He spoke to her again: ‘When sad days come, think of the sun, those many suns that have warmed our lives and an unaltered love over and over again. Passion and ecstasy, tenderness and pride, freedom – that’s our love, our life, and will be for eternity. I’ll never let it die, and nor will you. We’re for ever and for ever,’ Jason whispered in her ear. To feel him inside her was to be alive again. To sense the lust he had for her in his dark eyes under his long, thick lashes, the scent of him in her nostrils again, was the
essence of her life. His smile, and the joy mixed with unleashed passion on his face with every lunge of his penis, burned into her soul. She loved him so.

They were coming in a rush of the warmest, most lush of orgasms. She was unable to hold back her joy. She gasped, and then called out in thralls of ecstasy while those vivid visions of their last night of sexual intercourse began to fade. Arianne tried hard to hold them in the forefront of her mind, but they were drifting away, and taking Arianne with them.