Black Lipstick Kisses (10 page)

It was ironic, really, as he could have gained so much by breaking free of the armour he had built around himself over the years. Yet he didn't even realise that he was repressed, that there was more to personal liberation than a dirty mind and a bit of care and attention to his partner's needs. I had met men before who wanted to release themselves fully but couldn't, clawing at the temple door, as I had once done, but no more than that. Stephen didn't even know the temple was there.

Michael did, only his scepticism keeping him out. I wanted him, and again I considered giving up on Stephen if he didn't get in touch, only for him to turn up on the Thursday evening. We went out, to dinner at a restaurant well off the beaten track and then back to his flat for sex Stephen style, slow and attentive with lots of tongue applied to my pussy.

Friday was little different, except that he cooked for me again, and that after a while on top I let him put me on my knees. He licked me like that, which was wonderful, and left me floating all the way back home. It was so easy to accept his attention, and as I knelt quietly in front of Isaac Foyle's tomb on the Saturday morning I realised that atonement or no atonement, I was Stephen Byrne's lover.

Both nights I made a point of going around the cemetery with Lilitu and a torch, but there were no new pieces or dubs, not so much as a marker pen tag. It had been a while since I'd found any needles or cans either, and I began to hope that the whole tribe of them might finally have decided it was easier to take themselves elsewhere.

When I'd first come to All Angels the cemetery had been a warren of little paths leading to dens, while the walls and a good half of the tombs and stones had been hit with everything from crude scribbles to head-high pieces. Now, for the first time, there was nothing. As I climbed to the roof after my brief atonement I felt that I belonged in a way I had really never done before, that All Angels was mine. There was also the relief that it wasn't about to be torn to pieces by do-gooding local government busybodies.

I stayed for a good hour, just padding over the warm lead of the gutters or peering down at the graveyard
beneath me. It was empty, Snaz's hoodie the only evidence of anyone other than me, Lilitu and the dead. I remembered how I'd first seen Michael and my thoughts turned to our relationship. He was due back late that night, and I was to go over in the morning, to model, to talk, to fuck.

It had to happen, or I was going to go nuts. He wanted me, I knew, and if there were sure to be complications with Stephen, that was easy to push from my mind. Stephen was back in Suffolk anyway, with his cold wife, the ‘Designer Mannequin' as he called her. Michael and I would be together, alone. Once we'd taken out our passion on each other we would talk, maybe even as he drew me. I would explain my experience, and perhaps he would help me to understand.

I certainly didn't, and ever since had been wondering how much had been in my mind and how much external. Had I had the same experience at the tombs of notable left-hand path devotees, Sir Francis Dash-wood, Aleister Crowley or Samuel Mathers, there would have been no doubt at all, but the man who had possessed me was no Satanist, anything but. He was Sir Barnaby Stamforth, a local worthy and landlord whose tomb had never before given me any sensation beyond pomposity and disapproval.

His tomb was the largest of those inside, blocking the side aisle and helping shield the arch to Isaac Foyle's chapel where I liked to kneel. It was a huge thing of smooth grey-black marble with the front face showing a magnificent coat of arms, 64 quarters each picked out in minute details, griffins as supporters, helm and more. Elaborate mantling covered most of the remaining three sides except for the lengthy scrollwork inscription and
the lid. On this lay a life-size statue of an improbably well-built man in full armour, his hands clasped to his chest in prayer, his stone face set in blissful repose.

It wasn't real, or at least, it wasn't medieval. Sir Barnaby had been knighted for his services to commerce, and if he had ever worn armour it had not been for any practical purpose. He hadn't been well built either, at least not when he had died in 1874, and probably never. As with all of those burials with which I felt empathy, I had done some research, and in his case there had been plenty to go on. I'd seen several photos in old newspapers, books recording the history of the area and a chapter of biography. The pictures showed a man of less than average height with a whiskery face peering out from under the brim of a stovepipe hat and an impressive belly stretching the front of his waistcoat. He had been in shipping, making a fortune in spice and tea and coffee, and had gained a reputation for self-aggrandisement. That went with the beautiful knight, but his tomb had radiated pompous self-certainty long before I'd known it was his true character. For religion, he seemed to have been a solid member of the congregation and a major benefactor of the church, and I had seen not the slightest hint of depravity, religious or otherwise.

His character had led me to tease him a few times, but I had never sensed anything sexual in response, only angry disapproval. The idea of doing so again was both amusing and arousing, and I climbed back down intent on making the experiment. Reading the lines of the potted life history I'd found in the library, he seemed to have been a bit of a pig with women, intolerant and demanding. Possibly he had been dirty when it suited him; possibly he really had deflowered
girls on a Satanic altar, and simply got away with it. If so, his tomb would surely now evoke at least something of what I'd experienced in the rapture of my trance.

I peeled off my dress in the vestry and adjusted my make-up to create a more sultry look. In his day women would have been in long dresses, everything concealed for all the exaggeration of busts and waists and bottoms. To see me in my knickers and boots would fill him with outrage, and hopefully lust, the need to have me and to put me in my place at the same time. I hesitated over a black candle and decided against it. My mind needed to be sharp.

To make it work I needed to see Sir Barnaby in a new light, not as I'd felt him, a crazed Satanist, but neutral, without my preconceptions. He'd died old, wealthy, overweight, respected. Surely he had to have yearned for sexual contact at the least, watching the young women, maybe paying, maybe using his authority to get what he wanted. However it had been, now he would be unable to force me to his will, his power gone, his prestige and his money worthless. He could only take what I gave freely.

I thought of him viewing me as I walked out into the church, his little piggy eyes fixed on my body, his lust rising with his frustration, his impalpable fingers straining to sense my flesh as I came close to his tomb. His sense of outrage rose up as I touched the smooth marble mantling, and I realised that perhaps it was not the reaction of a prig to sexual display, but of a patriarch. Could he be angry that a woman should be free to go naked at her own choice, to pick her lovers, or reject?

My mind turned to how I could do as I pleased, show
off in front of him, maybe have sex in front of him with Michael or Stephen, or not. I could enjoy myself with the beautiful knight he had carved, rejecting him but taking pleasure in the image of himself he had desired. The sense of outrage grew abruptly stronger and I laughed. It was tempting, too tempting, and I reached out to stroke the statue's face. The marble was cool, wonderfully smooth to my touch, and as I explored the contours of the cold, handsome face and thought of what I could do his aura grew stronger still.

The air in the church was deathly still, but my skin was prickling as if to a breeze on my belly and breasts. He was touching me, he had to be, ghostly fingers on my flesh, struggling to force me to comply, perhaps the way he had obliged his wife, his maids, girls from the street, skirts high, drawers spread for access to their pussies, perhaps even to their bottom holes. I wasn't going to. I was going to take my pleasure on the beautiful knight, leaving him to watch and fumble ineffectually at my naked flesh.

I climbed up, straddling the statue's legs, my thighs wide across the cool marble. The codpiece of his armour rose as a smooth, inviting bulge, ideal to rub myself on, which was exactly what I planned to do. I moved forward, mounting up to place the hard lump beneath me, pressed to my sex and bottom through my knickers. The air was musky with attar of roses mingled with pussy. I wondered if he could smell it too, adding to his outraged lust as I began to wriggle myself gently on the knight's crotch.

It felt good, my sensitive flesh and bottom cheeks spreading onto the hard bulge, the marble momentarily cool on my sex lips and bottom hole but quickly warming. I lifted my hands, arching my back to push
my breasts out as I took them in hand, feeling my stiff nipples beneath my fingers and stroking away a bead of sweat as it trickled down my skin. Stretching high, I began to wriggle more firmly, revelling in the sheer joy of life and sex as my pleasure rose, purely physical for a brief moment before I turned my thoughts back to Sir Barnaby.

I pictured him paying girls for favours, to strip or suck or fuck, and taking more pleasure the less they liked it. Now in death, he could do nothing, only writhe in an agony of lust as I squirmed on his statue, taunting him with my vitality. I laughed out loud, and suddenly his hands were clawing at me, my skin prickling at legs and buttocks, belly and chest. I closed my eyes, revelling in the sensation, willing him to take me as he had before, to control my body and make me do obscene things to myself, my ecstasy dedicated to Satan as I was drawn in to him . . .

What came was my orgasm, rising up in my head as my sex tightened. I gave in, not as before, but to my own need. Sir Barnaby was denied, I was proud and naked and feminine, full of joy in what I was doing as I came on the knight's crotch, clutching at my breasts as I cried out and my body arched in ecstasy.

It had been fast, unexpectedly fast, my orgasm welling up from nowhere. I was grinning as I came down, panting, my whole body sweaty once more, the marble of the knight's crotch now smeared with my juice. Fury radiated from the tomb, stronger even than Eliza Dobson's, but different. I patted the statue on the head and turned my back, walking away with a deliberate wiggle.

As an experiment it was inconclusive. I had tried to give myself to him, laid myself completely open in the
hope of having my body taken over as before. It hadn't happened, but that didn't necessarily prove anything. Possibly I had not been susceptible enough, or my innate defiance of male control too strong to let him in. I'd felt him, I knew that, but as more or less I would have expected beforehand. Obviously I would have to try again with my head full of incense, and maybe a couple of skunk spliffs – a prospect that brought me both pleasure and apprehension.

As an experience it had been fine. I was absolutely buzzing as I washed and dressed, and the urge to talk about it all was stronger than ever. I took Lilitu for a walk to try and take my mind off it, deliberately staying within sight of the tower of All Angels in the half-hope that Snaz would attempt to retrieve his hooded top. He didn't, and it didn't take my mind off possession and Satanic ritual either, so that by the time I got back I knew that I was going to have to go and see Michael that evening.

It would make me seem over-eager, I knew, but I didn't want to play games and I was hoping that after our last meeting he wouldn't either. So I dressed carefully, and my best: black silk pants, fine mesh hold-ups, heeled boots and my longest, tightest dress. Almost an hour spent making up and I was ready. I set off, despite being sure to arrive long before he did.

Sure enough, I was down by the dock before the light had altogether faded from the sky. I found a place from which I could see the window of his flat, but there was no light. There was a trace of wry amusement at my own enthusiasm as I bought myself a takeaway – coffee and doughnuts – and went to sit at the base of one of the great black cranes across from him. It was a perfect scene, the evening a touch cool, the
water absolutely still, the mass of the cranes etched black against an ultramarine sky shading to deep blue between copper-gold clouds in the west.

I could see Michael's building in perfect reflection in the dock, and watched for the lights to flick on as I sipped my coffee, feeling at once foolish and excited. When it did come it was a surprise, sending a little shock of apprehension through me. I felt aroused, yet also vulnerable, my head clear, the thought of what I wanted from him sending little shivers through my body. This time it had to happen.

A dozen doubts ran through my head as I walked around the dock. He wasn't there at all, but only Chris. Chris would be there too. He would be there, but with another girl. Somehow he would have changed his mind. Anything to destroy the anticipation I seemed to have been building up for ever.

He was in, his voice alone setting me trembling, so badly I fumbled at the buttons in the lift, pushing twice before the doors closed. It seemed to rise forever, and my stomach was tight as I pushed open his door. He was there, standing right in front of me, in black jeans and a black sweatshirt, an open hold-all beside him, smiling.

I pushed the door to behind me. My fingers went to the straps of my dress, pushing one aside, and the other. It fell away, down over my chest and lower. A push and it was off my hips. I was stepping forward, Michael looking surprised and delighted, his eyes flicking over my naked chest, and down, to my legs and the V between them. My mouth came wide, my lips pressed to his and we were kissing, deep and passionate, tongues entwined, my arms around his neck.

He took hold of me, stroking my hair, my back, my
bottom, lifting me. My legs came around him, up on his hips, the bulge of his cock pressing to my mound, my breasts to his chest. His fingers came under me, pulling my knickers aside, holding my bottom wide, brushing my sex, and I didn't mind, eager and ready as he struggled to free his cock.