Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (46 page)

‘Where were we again?’ he teases next time, first thing. ‘I need reminding.’

Without a word you hook your hand around his neck and draw him in strong, a shepherd with their steady crook.

The moth’s first kiss.

You have mastered it.

Wiping away anyone else.

‘A fabulous kiss can be as evocative as smell, I think,’ he smiles afterwards, in appreciation. ‘One whiff – or one kiss like it again – and whoosh, it can plunge you back to another time, another place. A brighter phase of love. There can be something so … restoring … about it.’

You wipe your lip and stop. He suddenly feels past tense whereas you – achingly, enormously – are present.

‘A passionate kiss can arrest a relationship’s slow, glacial slide towards indifference,’ he’s murmuring on, pottering about, forever thinking, teaching, musing. ‘Can wake a couple up – remind them of what they were.’ He turns back to you. ‘Thank you for that.’ Gravely, as if he’s tucking it into his heart.

You frown, wonder what he’s referring to. He has a whole
other life in Sydney, you must never forget that, you barely know who he is. His former life, his
current
life. Beyond this hidden place, this secret summer. And he never tells you too much – he has a flat in Rushcutters Bay and a mother he never sees enough and a girlfriend who’s ex. You think.

Your hand is arrested at your mouth. He reads the confusion, the dawning. Retrieves your book and hands it across, instructing you to look at his page at the back – not now, but tonight.

Later, you read:

In an instant, you are veered back. All complication wiped.

Your gratitude, your guilt. That it’s starting to feel selfish. From your side, too much. That he’s giving giving giving and you’re taking and now you need to give something back. Isn’t that how the world works?

‘But my pleasure is watching your pleasure. That I can do this to someone. Unlock them, open them up. To joy.’ He smiles a dirty smile. ‘And lead you into another, better place.’

‘But what can I do for
you
? Tell me one thing you love.’

He pauses. Rolls in his lips. ‘There
is
something. But a lot of women … don’t like it. I haven’t suggested it before because I didn’t want to turn you off. I never want to do that. Some women are revolted.’

‘Try me.’

He traces the outline of your mouth with a fingertip. ‘You have blow-job lips,’ he says soft.

‘Urgh. Lune says blow jobs are just for prostitutes.’

He laughs. ‘I’d like to meet this girl some day. Have you ever given one?’

‘Nup.’

‘Do you want to?’

You think of give and take, generosity and selfishness,
dispensing pleasure as well as receiving it. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just … try. A little.’

Kneeling. Naked. He standing before you, holding his penis.

‘Now close your eyes, and lick,’ he instructs. ‘Like you’re licking an ice cream. Imagine a flavour you’re unsure of, that you find, actually, you love. Can’t get enough of. Imagine.’

You giggle, hesitate.

‘Sssh, it’ll help.’ He firms your head, you lick the tip of his penis. A bead of clear liquid emerges, a single drop, you tremble it up with your tongue tip.

‘Now suck,’ he whispers, pushing the back of your head onto him, deep into your mouth, further, until you are gagging and he pulls back and you suck soft and then lick in sweeps and he groans and comes, too quick, in a great jerking spurt, it spills down your throat and over your mouth and breasts and you gag and cough the sourness up.

He loved it. You can tell.

You did not.

He catches your expression. ‘I’ll never get you to do that again. But thank you, thank you for trying it.’

‘But there was absolutely nothing in it for me!’ you muse in the quiet of afterwards, spooning side by side on his mattress.

‘You think too much, my lovely. You have to, don’t you,’ he teases. ‘Dissecting everything.’

‘It just felt so mechanical. Bleak. I could have been anyone, it wouldn’t have mattered. No eye contact, nothing. Yuck.’

‘Well aren’t you lucky I enjoy giving so much, then?’

‘Yes.’ You wrap his arms tighter around you. ‘I know, I know.’ The guilt, but you have to be blunt.

‘Some women find it incredibly empowering to be giving their man so much pleasure. They love calling all the shots, so to speak.’

‘But it just felt so selfish to me. On
your
part.’ You turn and poke him playfully in the stomach. ‘I’m sorry.’ You blush. ‘It’s not fair, I know.’

He chuckles. Point taken. ‘Well, you might just be on to something there. There’s this government campaign right now to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate by encouraging oral sex. Fascinating, isn’t it?’

‘Yep, and I bet it’s always meant to be girls doing it to boys, never the other way around. And I bet a roomful of blokes was behind it.’

He looks at you solemnly. ‘I’ll never force you into anything you don’t like. It’s never my intention. Everything has to come willingly from you. OK? With whatever happens beyond this.’

‘What do you mean? What’s beyond this?’

You’re teasing, he’s serious.

‘The best sex is all about equality. Listening. You’re never going to get a great experience by demanding or insisting or bullying – because the other person will only shut down. And we mustn’t have that.’ A kiss lingers on the top of your forehead. ‘I know there’s a lot going on in that pretty little head of yours. I just want to find out what. Play. But I will always give you the chance to opt out.’

‘Of what?
Tell me
.’

‘Wait.’ His finger on your lips. ‘Be patient. You, my love, have to lead me – as much as I lead you.’

‘But I don’t
know
what I want!’

‘Oh you do,’ he breathes deep, once, shutting his eyes, ‘you’re just not telling me.’ He abruptly stands. ‘I’ll see you in two days. I’ve got work to do.’

Maddened. By all of it. An electric fence he has switched on – ever alert, waiting, poised; ever ready to crackle and fizz and jump.

For whatever he wants.

That night, late, you write in your notebook something Tol said to you once, about his previous partner. ‘Sex with a girlfriend always becomes routine.
Always
. No matter how much you love them. The trick is to arrest the sense of sameness – if you can. If she lets you. And you hope she does. I do, at least.’

Addled, by whatever is next. By how the lessons will be ratcheted up. How to detonate ennui with difference of some sort. The grand experiment. For both of you.

You suspect it has everything to do with honesty.

That’s all he wants.

What’s in your head, your deepest, hidden thoughts.

‘I want to read. Learn. In the days in between. When you’re working. Give me some books.’

‘Hmm, let me think. Neruda, of course. And Sappho, lovely, sexy, stroppy Sappho. Nin.
The Story of O
. Oh yes.’

‘But how do I get them? I can’t just walk into a bookshop. Ask my father. Or stepmother.’

He laughs. ‘Lie down on the couch, and wait.’

Slivers your big toe into the curl of his tongue. Pushes your index finger into your cleft. ‘You have to learn to do all this for yourself, young lady. For those times when I’m not around.’

Your heart skips a beat. He reads it.

‘Like when I’m in the next room, that’s all.
You
. Stop thinking too much. Like when I’m choosing your latest textbook. That will give your stepmother a coronary, alright?’

‘Oh!’ A relieved laugh.

Lying on the couch, waiting, as languid as an abandoned scarf.

A battered paperback.

‘Read it,’ he instructs.

You do. Introducing yourself to a woman called O. A tingling washing through you as you are lost within her story, devouring her vulnerability, her need, her honesty, her appetite, forgetting he is watching until he is suddenly pulling away your panties – assisting, urgently – and you are pushing your fingers in further, then further, tickling, swirling, groaning; until he is taking over, with a rush dipping in with his tongue and his fingers and his lips and slurping you up until you slam the book down and arch your back and come and come, in great briny gushes, lost in the loveliness.

‘Turn over,’ he whispers.

‘I can’t,’ you murmur. ‘I have to be alone –’ as the waves of lovely pulsing pain glare on, and on, and on.

‘Trust me,’ he whispers. And when you are still, when you are quiet, you do what he asks. Because you do.

Gently, so gently, he raises you on your haunches, on all fours. Tenderly he parts your cheeks. You feel the shiver of a shock of his tongue on your arse, around it; you gasp in surprise and after the initial clench you let go, you surrender and you are suddenly thrusting your buttocks out to him – needing it wanting it your back a straining saddle and then you come again, too quick. Lying curled on your side. Spent. Away from him. Away from the world.

Wondrous.

That your body is capable of so much. So much
pleasure
. Cracking you open, into someone else. Someone intensely alive, fully human; to the absolute limit of who you are. You lie back and laugh in astonishment.

He gathers you up, cocooning you in his arms like a caterpillar in a leaf.

‘This is just the start, my love. And now you know the secret: that great sex can only happen when we completely, totally, let go. All our masks, all our inhibitions, gone. And if we surrender completely, like that good, brave O, then we show someone else our true selves, our very core. And that can be … extraordinary. To do, and to witness.’ He’s quiet. ‘Rare,’ he whispers. ‘Thank you for that.’ A butterfly of breath flits by your ear.

You smile. At the power you have just wielded.

For he is speaking as if he has never before seen it.

Who is snaring who?

You find it that night, in the back of your notebook.