Circus Excite (24 page)

‘I was shaking when I left, as horny as an animal. I could hardly walk.' Julia knew she was doing to herself what Robert had made her do that night, but this time she was the one in control. She stopped herself from looking at him, though she was dying to see his face and the expression of intense fascination and amusement that he had when he watched her. Struggling to stay present, she moved her fingers inside herself, twisting into the mouth of her pussy and tugging a little at her lips, letting the excruciating tenseness of the situation build. She wanted to involve him, this time, to elicit a response from him, good or bad. Nuzzling at the cushions with her head, she let her mouth fall open a little, a moan escape. Under her hand, her hips bucked and she knew Robert was watching as she fucked herself.

The early morning light lent a cold dream-like atmosphere to the scene as Julia slowly let her arousal build while Robert watched. She was half performing for him,
showing him her stiffened nipples and the glistening of the moisture that wet her thighs, knowing her face was twisted in concentration as she explored herself. As she moved around, splaying her thighs and writhing, grinding herself into the fabric of the chair and the soft cushions, she let herself drift in a state of such arousal that she was almost unconscious, every moment drawn out in a long blissful buzzing of tension, every flicker of her fingers sending crazy thrills through her whole body. The pressure of the very air on her nipples seemed enough to make them tingle, as though Robert's gaze, his rapt attention, was a physical sensation stroking over her, compelling her to prolong the act though she yearned to feel the shock of orgasm.

‘It's like since that night I've become someone else,' she said, her voice shaky with desire. ‘I found my pleasure, all the ways of exploring it.' Julia felt her pulse quicken, and held herself back in case she should come. All night she'd been hovering on the edge of orgasm, and the tension was becoming a deliciously drawn out torment. Her thoughts were spinning through her head as though she were on drugs.

‘You're the one who helped me find what I love.'

As she heard herself say the word love, Julia opened her eyes, looking directly at Robert with eyes that were suddenly bright with urgency. She'd almost said something she hadn't even imagined she felt, that she might feel for Robert something greater than lust and anger. She lay sprawled in her seat, undone with the intensity of the silent room, feeling as though she'd opened herself more fully to him than she ever had before.

He was sitting straight in the chair, as though poised to move, with a shine to his eyes that Julia recognised as his familiar engaged self. The two of them locked eyes, and a moment of understanding passed between them that was as close as Julia had ever come to being
at ease with him. A smile spread over her face, unbidden, and she realised her small intimate performance had shifted something within Robert.

‘I do love watching you, Julia,' he said, warmth and guile mixed in his voice. ‘You're truly fascinating. Enough to make me forget the world.'

He stood to leave the room, throwing a comment over his shoulder as he did so: ‘You know, I think it's time I showed you something too.'

Julia took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse and rearranged herself. She didn't cover her nakedness entirely – it hardly seemed worth affecting modesty with Robert any more. When he reappeared she was sitting with her corset casually pulled straight, her hair tangled and dishevelled. She felt strangely as if she'd spent the night with a new lover and was just waking up with him.

Robert knelt in front of the low table, his arms full of battered books, which he laid in front of them as though spreading out gifts for her.

‘This is how I fell in love with the circus, Julia.' He pulled a brown suede-bound album open and motioned for her to look. Inside was a small poster, written in Cyrillic script and unintelligible to her. The paper was yellowed, cheap and wrinkled, but the image that caught Julia's eye immediately was a delicate detailed drawing of a woman, frozen in a lewd arabesque. Her legs were scissored apart as though she was opening them for a lover, and her body leant backwards in a posture of abandon.

‘St Petersburg, in the winter of 1989. The woman is Elena Matrovka, the one who introduced me to sexual theatre. It was an underground show, by invite only.' Robert smiled as he leafed through the album, showing Julia brief glimpses of performers, naked and adorned with feathers, beads, body paint. The people were Slavic,
Indian, Eastern; exotic and intriguing. Julia felt a shiver of curious excitement as she perused the photographs, saw the expressions of mischievous daring and the lascivious poses of the performers. It was a gallery of theatrical erotica – faded photographs and drawings, pages cut from books in languages Julia didn't recognise, all Robert's history revealed in scraps of images. Robert showed her other books – Indian paintings of round-breasted women and men with huge erections, Chinese lithographs showing Emperors with their concubines, twisted, perverse images that were executed with beautiful skill and artistry. The two of them lost themselves in the books, moving further into the world of erotic visions and every so often stopping to look at a particularly arresting image.

Julia sat on the floor, half undressed and sharing Robert's fascination with the obsessively detailed pictures. Through all of the pictures she recognised a certain quality, an edge of dangerous and bold transgression that aroused her as much as the graphic depictions of sex acts. She realised slowly that the thing which she found exciting was the way the subjects displayed themselves or appreciated each other, the way a Victorian girl with shy eyes looked timidly from behind her hair at the photographer, her ghost-white body a soft blur of flesh, the dark hair of her pubis shrinking neatly to a point between her legs which she kept demurely pressed together. An Indian miniature, rendered in deep inky blues and complex gold leaf, showed a prince rapt with attention as a woman danced before him, tilting her hips to show him the delicate pink flower of her sex, her nipples dotted with henna, full breasts proudly displayed.

‘This is how I became a voyeur,' Robert said, smiling again, and it was then that Julia felt things settle into
place – the way he watched her, how he loved the theatrical, the visual feast of bodies and sex.

‘Is that all you are?' she asked, intrigued by this new perversion, wondering if Robert's mystique could be so easily explained.

But Robert only laughed, his old easy rough laugh, so that his eyes creased and he seemed once again self-possessed, coolly confident. When he looked at Julia she saw again the distance that stretched between them, her guileless naivety and his unexplained history: the confidence that has been earned through experience and effort and doesn't need to prove itself. She saw Robert's character reassert itself, and he became the languorous charming magician again.

Whatever they had shared in that quiet charged morning had dissipated and he was once again the ringmaster: wry; suggestive but untouchable. Julia realised that the moment of intimacy had passed and once again, she'd been left dissatisfied. Now, with her mind full of the lush images and vivid descriptions of his pornography, her body still aching from unfulfilled desire, she thought she had an idea of how to play his game. She knew he was aware of her barely concealed nakedness, and of how turned on she was. Before, she'd railed against his lack of physical touch, but this time she felt the shimmer of tension between them and relished the distance. Sitting beside him, so close she knew he could feel her breath on the side of his face, smell and feel the warmth of her eager young body. Without moving closer, she started to talk.

‘I like this pose,' she said, pointing to one of the photographs. A couple were intertwined, the man's tongue curled between the buttocks of the woman, her figure prone on a hotel bed. Looking steadily at Robert, she continued.

‘I'd like to feel you do that.'

‘You want to act it out?' Robert's voice was low and even.

‘I want to lie face down and hear you move around behind me. I want to feel your hands on me.'

Robert watched her closely, but made no move to touch her.

‘Imagine your tongue pushing into me. Imagine how I'd taste.' Julia's heart was thudding in her chest, the words spilling from her mouth shocking her even as they did so. She hadn't ever told Robert explicitly what she wanted, and although she'd shown him how much he aroused her she had never spoken so boldly before.

‘Is that all you want me to do?' he asked.

‘I want you to do everything in these pictures. I want you to touch me, and lick me and fuck me.' As she spoke, Julia felt herself growing more heated, wanting so badly for Robert to respond to her suggestions she thought the lack of his touch was almost painful.

Closing her eyes, she let the feeling grow inside her, imagining Robert reaching out for her, pushing her onto the floor and leaning the weight of his body over her.

‘I think I'm learning how it's beautiful not to touch. It's difficult, like walking a tightrope.' She smiled, opening her eyes again to look at him. ‘But I think I understand. I want you to watch me, and every time you see me, I want you to ache for me.'

Inside the caravan was still and silent, only the sounds of birdsong filtering in from trees surrounding them, the shaded hush of the Meadows outside. Julia felt the sensation of longing stretching within her and growing in the silence, as though it was altering her from the inside. It was a curious feeling, to want something and not act on it, but instead allow the wanting to course through her veins till it was a physical presence in itself. She felt her lips tingling with the desire to press them against
Robert's skin: her fingers itched as though the need for his flesh were an irritation. Inside she felt as though she were being pulled in several directions at once, as though the memories of the summer's erotic encounters were imprinted on her body and were replaying now, echoes of desire flickering across her skin.

‘You look so fucking good right now,' Robert murmured, bringing her back to the present with a jolt. ‘I love watching you get turned on.'

‘I want you to fuck me with your eyes.'

‘Oh, I am Julia, I am. Your nipples are getting stiff. Sticking out like it's cold.'

‘What else?' she murmured.

‘Your cheeks are flushed. You're biting your lip. You look like a woman looks when she's being fucked. As though I'm inside you right now.'

‘I'd like that.'

Robert laughed again, amused by Julia's entreaties.

‘Not yet, darling, not yet. For now, just enjoy showing yourself to me.'

‘And later?'

‘Who can tell?' Robert was still teasing her, even though Julia knew he was turned on. ‘Anything's possible.'

His voice was heavy with mystery, as playful as it had been the first time Julia had met him, when she'd auditioned for him. Only now she sensed more to it, a hint of promise that left her hanging on, waiting for more. She had the feeling she was edging ever closer to him, learning more about her own desires and simultaneously uncovering glimpses of Robert, suggestions of the games he liked to play, the games he wanted to play with her. If only she could find the secret, she thought, she could win the game and take Robert to her bed. The thought drifted through her mind like the lightest touch of a lover, stroking slowly, achingly slowly, over her.

‘SEXY PICTURE,' SAID
Sylvie, as Julia hung the framed photo above her narrow cot. ‘Who's the girl?'

Julia smiled as she looked at the joyous figure of Josephine Baker, cart-wheeling over the back of her dance partner.

‘The most inspirational dancer that ever lived.'

After her trip to the hill and the hours with Robert, Julia had slept for a deep dreamless twelve hours and woken with a sense that her world had changed irrevocably. As she lay in bed, feeling the aching muscles of her legs and the stiffness of her body after the long strange night, she imagined her body itself had undergone some transformation. It was as though the hours on the hill and her voyage of erotic history with Robert had taken her to a new place, where her sexual life had fused with the circus and turned her into a new creature. She felt as though her sensuality shimmered over her skin; the sensation of being watched and admired had polished her body till every movement she made was part of a sexual display. As she rose and stretched, she remembered the difficult pleasures she'd found at dance school, the joy there was in pushing herself to new and harder disciplines. Her body hadn't forgotten the sweet feeling there was from working through pain, and for the first time in months she felt the urge to practise.

In the empty tent, in the quiet space with daylight filtering softly through the canvas and turning the stage into a half-lit platform, Julia gripped a bar of the scaffold
and started stretching. Around her the roustabouts came and went. Julia barely nodded to them as she absorbed herself in a simple sequence of exercises, feeling with delight her body's remembered response to the movements. The old positions seemed infused now with a new sensuality, and even in a simple
plié
Julia felt her hips arching, her breasts swaying gently. It was a wonderful surprise to find her old routines fitting so beautifully with the sensuality of her body, as though she'd finally discovered the secret of how to dance her own way. She moved now with a new freedom, a mixture of the discipline of dance school and the daring of the circus, and as before she felt the silent rhythms pulse through her body, a beat that echoed the rocking motions of sex, the push and pull of forces moving through her. Slipping lithely over the stage, dropping suddenly to the floor, winding herself around the centre poles that surrounded the stage, Julia lost herself in the pure joy of sensual movement. The sweat beaded on her skin, and she tasted the salt of it as she worked, breathing hard and abandoning herself to her body's instinctive desire to move. As she danced, Julia felt herself still turned on, as though a switch had been flicked and she could no longer distinguish the act of dancing from the act of love. Every bump of her hips was like the thrust of a woman fucking, every time her hands trailed over her chest she felt the stiff points of her nipples, teased to an agonising hardness.