Love Rules (24 page)

Underfoot, the limestone had been long since ground into a silt-soft powder as fine as flour, as light as goose down, as deep as a beach. Instinctively, many of the group took off their shoes and shrugged off preconceptions and inhibitions. Alice included. All around, images of Africa burst out against the bare rock face, whilst African music both melodic and intensely rhythmic drowned any other sound or the need to talk. The effect was mesmeric, hallucinatory almost. If the purpose of a cathedral is to suck a visitor deep into its very message, then this disused, re-cycled quarry was a cathedral indeed. Where was Alice? In Africa? In France? Was she hearing with her eyes and seeing with her ears? Why hadn't she been anywhere like this in her thirty-three years? Her body began to sway to the hypnotic drum-heavy soundtrack and she sashayed her way, trancelike, through the halls. Sometimes, she was completely alone, images drenching her. Sometimes, she found herself amongst people – her colleagues, strangers, all sharing the space and the experience and moving to the rhythms instinctively. Savannah and fabric and faces and dried river beds and wildlife and blood-red skies enveloped her. She caught sight of Rochelle, dancing quite bizarrely all by herself, but Alice had no inclination to laugh or cringe. Paul was right. This was a cathedral in so much as it was an awe-inspiring space where all who entered experienced
an intense and spiritual headiness. Paul was right. Where was he?

He's behind me, he's to my side, he's in front of me. An image of a huge tribal chief swathed in robes the colour of sunburst is superimposed over him. Paul's face is red and yellow. Now there's a flame tree all over him. And now he's up close against me. His lips are hovering near mine. Touch down. Tongue. I'm kissing Paul. And his hands are all over my body, they're squeezing my boobs and fondling my bum and travelling up and down my back. And mine are grappling and groping him. God, his biceps, his six-pack, his tight bum. We're swaying and pulsing to the music, which is deafening and divine. Christ, I'm turned on, not just by his lip–tongue talent, nor the tantalizing bulge of his hard-on or the fact that he's pinching my nipples and nuzzling my neck. It's more. It's the energy of this place. It's the strange contradiction of stone that is soft, powdering its way between my toes. It's the thrumming tribal beat. It's the sultry, rich, ever-changing colours. It's like being stoned. I suppose, in this derelict quarry, we are stoned in a sense. Actually, it's better than being stoned. It's more real. My senses are in overdrive. I'm gorging on Paul's mouth like I've been half starved. I have no idea if people can see us. I don't care if they can. I want to stay in this moment. I want to be in this place.

The wink wink nudge nudging started on the coach. It was as if the unbridled unity the group attained inside the Cathédrale was decimated by the startling sunlight and sudden heat which confronted them on leaving. As if, by shielding their eyes from the sun, they hid from the unexpected spirituality they'd just encountered. As if it was suddenly unseemly for publishing and editorial directors to be
seen barefoot and blissed out when they were normally known for their professional poise and thrust. No matter how at ease they had felt within the Cathédrale d'Images, it was a comfort zone they could no longer access once the reality of the day outside had hit them. And so the whispers started. Alice was dismayed. How could something that had tasted so good and felt so right have negative ramifications so quickly? Even Anita seemed to be having a good old gossip with Rochelle as they stood in line to board the coach.

‘And what do you have to say on the matter?’ Jeanette whispered, slithering into the seat next to Alice, raising an eyebrow while elbowing her in the ribs.

‘Yes,’ Jacquie said, popping up from the seat in front, ‘what's your take, Alice?’

Fuck. Is that it then? Is that where a trance-like snog in some spaced-out quarry gets me? Does my perceived crime really warrant my reputation being compromised? Christ, it was only necking and a bit of a grope – it's not as if we got down and shagged. God, if only we'd've fucked at least it would have made this bit slightly more worthwhile. Hell's Valley indeed.

‘Consenting adults,’ Alice declared in an uninterested voice. ‘People shouldn't judge so sweepingly nor condemn so quickly. Perhaps the behind-the-scenes situation justifies the visual dramatics – you know?’

‘Blimey, Alice!’ Jacquie said. ‘You do surprise me.’

‘Me too,’ Jeanette agreed. ‘After all, she's your main rival at work – and you need him on your side. We all do.’

‘God knows I do,’ Jacquie sighed, ‘but not enough to perform
that
on!’

Alice stared from one woman to the other and as the pennies began to drop like a one-armed bandit spewing the jackpot, she wondered how best to backtrack.

‘Isn't she married?’ Alice hedged her bets, trying to come
across as knowing exactly who – never mind what – they were on about.

‘Clare?’ Jacquie exclaimed in a whisper. ‘Didn't you hear Clare called off her engagement? Even though the Vera Wang was already on order.’

Clare! They're talking about Clare Cabot. Christ alive!

‘He's married too, isn't he?’ Alice went for broke, now keen to know just who it was that Clare had done what with in the depths of the quarry.

‘Geoff is more than married, Alice – Christ, his baby can be only a few months old. A few weeks even.’

Geoff – they're talking about Geoff. Bloody hell, Clare and Geoff. Who could've seen
that
coming?

‘I like Geoff,’ Alice mused, gazing out of the window as the coach ambled off. She wondered whether she'd ever return to Les Baux. Perhaps the experience should be left as a one-off so as not to dilute the impact.

‘Everyone likes Geoff,’ Jeanette whispered.

‘That's the point,’ Jacquie agreed.

‘What on earth possessed him to go for
her
?’ Alice joined in, for safety's sake.

Yet I do know what possessed them. I empathize. La Cathédrale d'Images possessed them. As it did me. But Clare was caught and I wasn't.

Now that it transpired Alice hadn't been seen, but so easily might have been, her desire for Paul increased tenfold and the danger of being caught made the notion of sex with this man all the more irresistible. It was all she could think about. However, the afternoon was timetabled relentlessly with the Belgian's motivational workshops and role-playing exercises; the evening was centred around the team dinner; their plane was leaving first thing the next morning.

Well, no doubt Beard Man from Bruges will be harping
on about believing in the Power of Me. So why don't I just practise what he'll be preaching – I ought to account for my actions and Access the Impact I have on others. Right then. If the point of this trip is to inspire me, I can think of something far more motivational than one of Fritz's daft exercises. I'll be role-playing all right, just not in Conference Room B. If there's one thing that's guaranteed to make me feel good about myself, that will make me think this trip has been worthwhile, that it's given me something positive and memorable to take home, it'll be rampant sex with Paul Brusseque. Surely all managers of my calibre should be encouraged to take matters into their own hands as we see fit? And what matters to me is getting hold of Paul's throbbing cock. See how we fit.

Alice told Anita and Rochelle that the experience of Les Baux had given her a migraine for which the only cure was to lie down, undisturbed, in a darkened room. She told Jeanette and Jacquie she was faking a headache to skive off the after-noon's sessions and she'd meet them in the bar at six. She told Paul she was playing hooky from the afternoon's work-shops and to meet her in her room in ten. She told herself that all of this was a very good idea. So she set about tweezering renegade hairs from her bikini line, applying a little perfume in strategic places and putting on fresh underwear, a swipe of mascara and a dirty, dirty smile.

Paul takes off his watch and puts it in his bedside drawer. He washes his hair, showering the limestone from his legs and feet. He must have made over fifty visits to Les Baux over the past three seasons, but still the place captivates him, simultaneously charging and challenging him physically and emotionally. This year's theme of Africa is the best yet, he feels. Last year it was the Seven Wonders of the World. The
year before, Ancient Greece. But there is something about this year's display, the entrancing clash of the primitive and the opulent in sound and vision alike. Just as there is something so compelling about Alice – last year he'd had a couple of clients who'd done all the pursuing. Sex had been easy and both women had automatically tipped him handsomely which alone was an unexpected and rather welcome bonus. Getting paid to come when the women were gagging for it anyway – it was as close to being a porn star as he'd ever get. The year before that, his first over here, he'd bedded that older woman – and had then had those pointless few months supposedly dating Nathalie from the tennis club.

Paul dresses. He wonders what state of undress he'll find Alice in. He grins at the thought of her, spread-eagled on a bed, perhaps. He considers how she has everything he rates – looks, intellect, success and spirit. But she's off back to England tomorrow. Paul is horny as hell, as he has been for the last four days. He puts on new boxer shorts and a fresh T-shirt. Hand relief has provided him temporary respite the last few nights but the sight of Alice each morning has tipped him into a dither of desire all over again. And now he's been summonsed. The imminence of sex, after a couple of celibate months, is stirring his cock already. He checks his reflection and he's looking good.

He knocks and waits for an answer, as if unsure whether anyone is home.

‘You're polite,’ Alice teases, because she was half looking forward to him bursting in and ravishing her without so much as a greeting. She is in a white T-shirt and jeans. Barefoot and braless. Her nipples are precociously erect and her arse is tantalizingly pert. She smells good and looks great. And his cock is hardening by the minute. Yes, they have all afternoon, but what he actually wants is to fuck her right
now and empty the throbbing sack-load of expectant sperm amassed since that morning.

‘You're happy to see me,’ Alice remarks, eyeing the bulge in his shorts.

‘Nah, it's a gun in my pocket,’ he quips back.

‘Well, take off your holster, cowboy,’ says Alice, ‘and let's fuck.’

If Alice was to document it all, she'd reprimand herself for a glut of clichés. But actually how else can she describe being wetter than she's ever been? That her sex is throbbing for him? That her lips are engorged with the anticipation of being kissed and her heart is racing from the fire of his intense gaze? Similarly, the simple fact is that his straining cock
is
rock hard, his butt
is
firm and his abs
are
rippling. Her breasts are indisputably heaving and her sex is oozing with the honey he can't lap enough of. They are devouring each other as if their hunger is insatiable.

God, this is kinky. Mark stays a decorous and hygienic distance from my bum on the occasions he does go down on me. It's fantastic that my breasts are tits again, to be man-handled greedily. I can't even recall Mark's term for my genitalia but Paul has just said ‘Christ, you have a cute cunt.’ I need this – I've missed this. How refreshing to be fucked senseless rather than being made love to conscientiously.

‘God, you're a horny bitch,’ Paul pants, tonguing her ear lobe and sucking his way down her neck, up her chin and deep into her mouth.

‘You're a pretty good fuck yourself,’ Alice reciprocates, licking the salty dampness from his torso as she slithers down-wards to feast on his cock. His balls are shaven. She is surprised. She likes it. She wants to writhe, she wants to show off and she contorts herself this way and that, taking charge and initiating positions and the pace. Now she wants to be supine and subservient, revelling in this man driven wild with
his desire for her. He flips her onto her side and he plunges into her from behind. He hauls her top leg over his waist, her body stretched out to his touch. Craning her neck around, they suck at each other's mouths while he fondles her tits and slips his fingers between the lips of her sex, finding her clitoris and rubbing gently until she's on the brink of orgasm.

‘Don't come,’ he commands. He pulls out and his lips are feathering over her nipples infuriatingly lightly. Now he's not touching her at all – he's between her legs staring intently at her sex. Alice gives a playful buck of her hips and he takes his face down to her, dabbing his tongue tip gently over the outer lips of her sex. She writhes and spreads her legs, thrusting to glue his mouth to where she wants, but he resists.

‘Fuck me, you bastard,’ she hisses.

Suddenly, he's sucking her clitoris and plunging a finger deep inside her sex, another up her anus, and the mind-blowing orgasm she's been craving racks her body. While she continues to shudder with spasms of pleasure, he squats over her and she takes his cock in her mouth before he pulls out and pumps his come all over her stomach. Alice takes her fingers down to the sticky lake of his spunk and massages it over her belly. Then she sucks at each finger while remaining eye locked with him. She feels as though she's just starred in her own private porn performance. And she's loved every minute of it. What a great idea this trip was. Look what she has to take home with her!

It wasn't possible for Paul to grab any time with Alice the following morning. When she boarded the coach, he could only shake her hand and say ‘Well done.’ Just as he shook everyone's hand and congratulated them. He waved them off. He couldn't tell who waved back behind the tinted glass.

He reckoned he'd go down to the beach for the day, unwind and prepare for the arrival of the next group the following
day. The group had presented him with a cool pair of O'Neill shorts – he wanted to try them on. April was warming up by the hour and the delicate fragrance of spring was being usurped daily by the denser scent of summer. Waiting for him at reception was a note from Alice. He took it with him, unopened, to the beach.