Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (54 page)

You are thinking of someone else. Other men. He is the trigger; he is only the start. It is all in your head, the movie running concurrently with the physical action, it needs momentum, it does not need his talk crashing into it.

‘Men,’ you whisper, ‘a lot, looking at me, all around me, running their hands over me, dipping their fingers in. A dog, brought in on a leash. They are all watching, my pleasure, someone … someone parts my cheeks. They all fuck me, one after the other, again and again. I am favoured, caged, bound, handcuffed, displayed – the object they all want.’

You are deeply red, deeply shamed, at the end of it. Your face is flaming. You are quiet, cannot look at him, cannot say anything more. Can’t believe you have allowed this.

He turns you around. With great certainty, with gravity. In silence.

‘Thank you for trusting me. I’m your helper, your facilitator. I will never hurt you, I will never exploit you. Let’s see how far we can take this. But only if you want to …’

His tongue flicks into you, as deft and cool as a snake.

You clench on it, groan.

His answer.

Later, in the kitchen, cradling a mug of tea.

‘But how can you love me yet even think of doing … everything … that I said?’ The blush is deep; what you have revealed, oh my God. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘I love what you have given me. What we are doing here. You will never forget it and neither will I. We have released you, and so few women get that chance. We are doing this together. You’re a work-in-progress, but then so am I.’

He comes right up close, his face tells you he is confident that no one, ever, can take his place, no matter who comes next; he is inked through your heart, through your blood, until the day you die he is there and he knows it. His smile tells you your pleasure is his, that he knows he will have succeeded if he sees you gaining ultimate pleasure, beyond him, beyond anything he can do; it will be his greatest gift.

‘But
how
?’ You furrow your eyebrows, frown, still don’t get it. He tells you he is doing all this because he is a student of women and he needs to learn, as do you, it is the writer’s
curiosity – he is a student of life, of living to the limit in pursuit of love, connection, soul-sharing, radiance.

He loves you, never forget that. No matter what comes next.

‘I want to unlock you completely and fully and absolutely. Give you the tools of womanhood, the most splendid of experiences. My ultimate lesson. I want you to know the choices you will have – the breadth of the experience – and believe me, many women, most women, don’t. Consider it an act of generosity, if you like.’

‘But what’s in it for you?’

‘It’s exciting. I want to watch. I want to see your pleasure and know that I, ultimately, am responsible for it. I want to give you an experience that will be with you for the rest of your life.’

He asks you to shut your eyes.

He leaves the room and returns; buckles the collar around your neck. You are free to look but don’t, in perfect obeyance.

No more words, as his rigid cock presses firm into your flesh.

He takes the collar off.

The breath of a kiss, on the nape of your neck.

‘Friday. We’ll be ready.’

Before you can ask him what he means, again, he is gone, he has shut the door on you, the study door that is always locked now; his secret refuge you are not allowed to trespass across anymore. You walk out of Woondala. The afternoon has turned, is now grey, sullen, waiting. You retrieve your bike. You don’t have to return. You don’t have to ever see this house again.

‘It’s your choice.’ The yell from the verandah to your departing back. ‘It’s always your choice.’

You do not turn around.

Running to him two days later, in your overalls, the shirt flung from underneath them as soon as you have slipped through his gate and tossed your bike aside. Running to him, for him – you can’t help it, he has you snared, trapped. He loves you earthy, sweaty, loves you brimming with vividness, his child of nature, that girl he first knew, and so you are running and running in your Blunnies, through deep fern gullies and over rocks and through his creek; thudding away spiders and cobwebs and snakes; grimy with sweat and exhilaration and the slap of his bush; grimy with its life. There’s the crispness of an approaching storm in the air, an exhilarating readiness and you feel alive, on edge, shivery on the precipice of a something – God knows what – and you are poised to leap off and you are so ready, trembly wet, laughter shooting out. Ready to act volcanically however he wants, your heart pumping with greed and hunger and dread and desire; you are pure emotion now, shameless, unmediated by discretion or convention or decorum. You have entered a new world. You are someone else.

No name, no age. No future, no past.

Just this, the varnished present. Pure, lovely, ravenous want.

He walks out to greet you.

As if he knew it would always come to this.

The curve of his cock, erect, through his trousers.

He is holding a black silk blindfold and a pair of black opaque stockings and a suspender belt in one hand, and in the other, some beautiful Manolo Blahnik stilettos, of spindly black velvet, exactly your size of course. He places everything down, methodically, he has thought carefully about all this. He unclips your braces, pulls them down. You are wearing nothing underneath and you are shaved, in readiness. He shuts his eyes, briefly, as if he can’t bear to see it. He asks you to put on the stockings and the shoes. You have never worn anything like this in your life.

Trembling, you obey him, breathing deep.

He turns you around. He covers your eyes.

Blindfolded by the softest of black silk. Two tiny metal weights on the ends. They slither, icy, against the skin of your lower back, a thrill of cold. Your flesh springs into goosebumps. He buckles the heavy collar around your neck.

All sensation now. Nothing else.

He dribbles the lead of the collar down your stomach then threads it between your legs. He pulls it up sharp. Between your lips. Forcing them apart. Exposed. You wince, with exquisite hurt.

‘Steady, my beauty, I’m with you,’ he whispers, a calming
hand on your back, murmuring as if you are a wild brumby he has to lead into a horse float for the very first time, guiding you gently, all the way, every step.

‘Remember, confidence.’

He leads you into the cool dark house you know so well, every crevice, wall, crack. He leads you into the main room, his hand still holding the chain taut at your back. You grip his arm tight, blinded, breathing deep. The chain cuts through you. Flipping open a lip. You are ready. Your nipples ache with anticipation. All your senses on alert.

He stops you.

Works the chain up higher, higher, so you have to spread your legs, open yourself wider, groan. You hold your voice, leaning your back against his stomach with his fingers in your bare cunt, splayed; as if on display.

All is still, all is quiet.

Just the tin roof above you, cracking and ticking in its heat.

The roof you know so well.

The only thing you know, now, in all of this.

Gently, so gently but with firm authority, like a doctor before an operation, he lies you, belly down, on the couch. Your buttocks are placed over the roll of its arm. He trills his fingers up and down your back, then your thighs, dipping inside, further and further, soft, so soft and you lift up your arse, out, up – have to. His hands help you, his knowing hands, you open yourself out, groan, it’s unbearable, you want him, here, now, so much. You are left alone. Your body keeps pulsing, opening out. Then you hear another noise, the sound of a belt being taken off, trousers unzipped.

In the room.

With you.

Who? You don’t know, who else, how many.

Yes, no, you can’t make it out.

‘Only do what you want to do.’ Tol is back, beside you, whispers his soothing words, ‘I’m here, I’m with you, everything’s your choice, it’s what you want.’ Then he leans close and his fingers continue murmuring over the back of your thighs, loving, so tender – it moves you to tears, it’s unbearable, you spread your legs wider, you want it, want everything, all your clothes gone, on show for anyone here in this place, men,
women, whoever is here, everything, trying to scrabble off the Manolo Blahniks, the belt.

‘Yes,’ you whisper, ‘yes.’

‘Good girl,’ he whispers, slipping down your stockings, unclipping your belt, parting your cheeks, for them, for the room, for whoever it is. You hear a gasp. His, someone else’s, you don’t know, don’t recognise anything anymore. It’s your cue. You lift yourself higher, higher, giving yourself to the air, rocking with it, displaying your arse, for God knows who, what.

‘Come on, come on,’ you whisper under your breath, urging it. Ready for him, his mates, his possession. His creation, ready for whatever he wants.

‘This is only the start,’ it is whispered.

Gently you are turned over. Instinctively you spread wide. Your hands are taken. A belt you don’t recognise – you can feel its difference, its heaviness – someone is binding you with this stranger’s belt. A knee is holding you down. You submit, you trust, the knee is removed, you curve your back, splaying your wetness, your readiness. Strain to hear – you can’t make it out, another presence … or several … movement. Something else in this room, breath.

‘Well … well,’ in appreciation, as hands are directing you to the ground, some kind of platform. Hands, you don’t know whose, gently someone blows upon you and you bow your back, you arch your buttocks out, ready, so ready for this – trembling, wet, you feel as if your insides are tumbling in slow motion, with all of it. It is fear, excitement, anticipation; power, surrender, want.

A finger, you don’t know whose, touches your cunt. Softly, brushing the underside of it, parting your lips. Inspecting.

‘Sssssh,’ Tol whispers, reassuring, in your ear. ‘Sssh.’ He angles you head down, so you are opened wide, wider, dangling the collar’s chain – its cold, brutal metal – across your wanton cunt.