Romance: The Art of my Love: a story of betrayal, desire, love, and marriage (10 page)

I stumble after him into the house, and he closes the door and turns on the light. Then he walks up to me, intimately close. I press myself to him. I am in desperate need of some human warmth. He lifts my chin so I’m looking up at him, wipes away the tears that seem to be streaming from my eyes, and starts kissing me. First they are gentle kisses on my cheek, nose, and forehead, as if he’s trying to comfort me. Then he presses his lips to mine, kisses me hard, and starts to suck on my lower lip. His tongue enters my mouth. My fingers are digging hard into his shoulders. My head is spinning, and he feels like the only solid object in this inside-out, upside-down world. One of his hands slips lower and under my dress.

“See how much it turns you on?” He inserts one finger inside of me, then draws it out, and licks it. My body quivers from lust. Then he lifts me in his arms and carries me upstairs. I never even consider resisting. Fragments of a picture flash before my eyes. Paul, and Rachel. There is only one thought in my head. I’m about to forget everything, and my life will start anew, from the beginning.

John throws me down onto the bed. I can no longer move, because he’s pressing down on me from above. He continues to devour my mouth. He is no longer being gentle.

“If you do everything I say, I will give you amazing pleasure. Do you want pleasure?”

I can only whimper. More than anything else, I want to forget about the conversation we had today. 

John tosses my arms over my head, and starts to tie them to the head of the bed frame. I’m being pressed down by his body and can’t move anyway. I don’t even want to move. He can do as he likes, I think. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. John drags my dress upwards, but doesn’t take it off completely, and arranges the pleats of the skirt across my face. Now I’m blind. I can’t see a thing. I lie before him, tied up, almost completely naked, but I feel no shame. I feel nothing at all – just a dull pain in my chest, probably where my soul is. My soul hurts.

John is running a hand along one of my breasts, then along the other, gently, slowly, as if in serious thought. Then his finger comes to concentrate on one nipple, and he begins to rub it, pull at it. I feel a tingling in my breast and a growing, nagging ache somewhere below my stomach. But John has already replaced his finger with his lips. Now he is kissing and tugging at my nipple with his tongue and teeth. His other hand is at work on my other nipple. I start to moan. My head tosses from side to side. I need release. Now. Immediately. Why is he taking so long?

“Oh, no,” John admonishes me. “We are not going to rush this. Remember, Emmy. You have to learn to store up your pleasure, so it is many times greater later on. You’ll see.”

And he continues to play with my breasts. Inside me, everything is on fire, and I moan even louder. Finally his hand moves lower. He kisses and caresses my stomach. Lower, lower... My body arches, I’m so desperate for him to move down even farther.

“So impatient! I’ll have to torture you a little bit more. I warned you that you’d have to do as I say.”

He removes my panties. He runs one finger through me, between the folds. I scream.

“No, no, it’s not time yet.” John carefully separates those folds with his fingers, and licks my clitoris with his tongue. Immediately I arch upward. My pleasure is already so close, close enough to touch. But he moves away. And he
leaves.
I moan in desperation. John returns, and I can feel him parting my legs, and tying them, too, to the bed. Now I am completely tied up, spread eagle on the bed. I can’t see. I can only hear the rustling of clothing. John must be getting undressed. He returns to the bed and slowly, slowly, slides one finger into me. I am floating. I am dissolving, melting into a puddle. And my tormentor begins to move that finger while he sucks at my clit. I know I am about to explode. And then – he stops. I’m alone again. Once more, I moan. Then he starts to kiss my right leg. Slowly, in no hurry, he moves down, to my calf, and takes my calf in his hands and massages it. He takes my left calf in his hands and massages it. He starts to kiss my left leg, moving from the bottom up. He comes all the way to my clit and sucks it again. I scream out loud. I can’t hold back any longer. I need to come, and now.

“You want it so bad, Emmy? If you ask me nicely, you can have it,” John whispers.

“Please, please!” I beg, and scream.

“Please, what?” How can he be so cruel?

“Please let me come, don’t torture me anymore!”

“Fine, go ahead, come.” John inserts one finger into me quickly, then another, and he continues to suck. And I come hard, long, and very loudly.

That’s it – I am no more. My body has evaporated and disappeared. I am weightless.

John unties my legs, lifts my bottom off the bed and rams into me, full force. I practically jump in surprise. My eyes are still hidden beneath my dress. He fills me completely. I can feel him deep inside me, and there the tension starts to build again. He holds me tight, and moves fast, rhythmically. Then I hear his husky moaning, and one finger starts to massage my clit. We reach our finale together.

Once he catches his breath and comes back down to earth, John unties my hands, and I finally take off my dress. For a while, we just lie there next to each other. I look at the ceiling. My drunken fog is slowly receding. It starts to dawn on me what just happened here. It’s nobody’s fault but my own. Yes, if John hadn’t told me about Paul and Rachel, I wouldn’t have felt so helpless and malleable. Or so aroused, more importantly. Still, he hadn’t actually forced me to do anything. John was right. I was a full-fledged participant in this process. He had given me a choice, and I had made it. And I had experienced immense pleasure. Just as promised! Oh, that bastard. He really knows what he’s doing. It was as if some spring had been wound tight in my body, and now it has sprung, filling me with this insatiable sexual ardor. Right at this moment, though, I feel completely satisfied. So just like that, both satisfied and unhappy, I fall asleep.

In the morning, I wake up alone. My dress hangs neatly across the back of the chair. There is light outside the window, but it still seems to be fairly early. I feel tired, as if I have been exercising hard. It is difficult to move. And where has John gotten to? I get up and go into the bathroom. My body is sore and aching from new, unfamiliar sensations. At the same time, I feel some sort of perverse satisfaction that I have had a night like that in my life. Something that I might never have discovered, has been laid open before me.

Only what will happen with
us
, now, with me and Paul?

I get dressed and go downstairs to the kitchen to have some coffee. John’s car is gone, which means he’s already left. But when? Hadn’t that night left him exhausted, too? Or had he just wanted to avoid meeting Paul, no matter what? And what about Paul? When was he coming? When would he finish with Rachel? I wonder if he’ll tell me how he and she did it? And what about me? Will I be able to tell him that I spent the night with John?

No, I don’t think I’ll be able to tell Paul all the details. I’ll be too embarrassed. Usually we don’t talk about things like that. And again, what’s the point of him knowing how exactly, and in what positions, John had had me? Or I had had John? The main thing was that it had happened. I had a lover. Other than my husband. And it had been inimitably good with him. How had it been for him, with Rachel? Not bad, probably, if he did it with her more than once. I shake my head. Any minute now I’ll wake up, and this will turn out to be a bad dream. This doesn’t happen in real life! No… I woke up long ago, and I’ve even had my coffee, and all of this really happened.

I’m sitting there at the table with my empty coffee cup, still thinking, when Paul walks into the kitchen.

“Hi. Are you alone?”

So, he’s been told, too. Thumbs up, John and Rachel, you score! Good team work.

“Yes, I am. John already left. Did you come here straight from Rachel’s?” I had to let him know that I knew everything, too. Surprisingly enough, my voice sounds calm, almost normal.

“No, I stopped at home first, took a shower, changed my clothes.” Paul sits down across from me at the table and looks me in the eyes. This time, he looks much more self-possessed and collected. Only his eyes are as sad as before. “You know, I wouldn’t have gone for it the second time, but she told me you were with John, and I imagined the two of you together...”

“Yeah, me too.”

“What?”

“I imagined
you
two together. Because John told me that you and Rachel were having sex at that very moment... Such a simple trick, but it works, I guess.” I look up at Paul and laugh sadly. “They manipulated us so well.”

“Did you like it, having sex with John?”

“Why do you ask? What about you, was it good with her?” He doesn’t answer and I go on. “Yeah, it was good for me. Better than it’s ever been before. Happy now?” I’m scared, my voice trembles, and I jump up and move to the far corner of the room, farther away from Paul. Paul sits there where he is. He runs both his hands through his hair. Then he passes them once over his face, as if he’s trying to wipe something off of it.

“It was good for me, too. Better than ever before.” Putting his hands on the table he looks me in the eyes. “Emmy, don’t rush to judgment, please. Think for a minute. It’s all my fault that it turned out this way.”

“How is it your fault? Did you and John have some sort of agreement?”

“No, don’t be silly. You know perfectly well that I didn’t agree to this at all. I only learned what was going on yesterday, just like you.” Paul stands up, shoves his hands into his jeans pockets, and starts pacing back and forth. A furrow appears down the middle of his forehead. “I was thinking about it all the way here. It is clear to me now that if I had behaved differently with you from the very start, this would never have happened.”

“Explain.” My back is pressed against the wall so hard I might be trying to disappear.

“When you and I met, you knew almost nothing about sex, and, most importantly, you didn’t want to know. You had only one boyfriend before me, and that guy was no expert, from what you told me.” Paul takes his hands out of his pockets and runs them through his hair again nervously. He is clearly having trouble pronouncing each word, each phrase.

“Who said I didn’t want to know anything?” He is completely right. Nobody would have called me a luminary when it came to sex. But I wouldn’t have minded learning more. It just felt uncomfortable talking about it.

“Did you want to?” Paul looks at me closely.

“Sure. I’m a woman like any other woman.” A fact of which I am now convinced, as of last night. But that part I don’t say out loud.

“Then why didn’t you ever say so?” Paul starts walking around the table, hands back in his pockets. “You kept your lips sealed, like you were being interrogated. I never knew what you liked most or what you wanted. You never even seemed to care about sex at all. If I asked for it, sure, you’d do it, but without any enthusiasm, like it was just a duty to perform. And if I didn’t ask, you didn’t care.”

I say nothing. I don’t have any rebuttal. He’s right. That is exactly how I always behaved. I have no idea why I was convinced that was the right way to act.

“And I didn’t say anything to you. I didn’t tell you I wanted more, and I didn’t tell you how it could be different. I never asked you to try new things or experiment with me. So I’m the idiot. I thought about it the whole way here, and I decided that if John hadn’t turned up, somebody else would have, sooner or later.”

“But why? Why didn’t you teach me anything, or insist on more? I thought you were fine with me just the way I was.” An undignified pleading tone is creeping into my voice. I want him to tell me he liked having sex with me.

“That’s just the point. Things with you were fine for me like that.” Paul says just what I need to hear. I can always rely on him for that. He starts pacing nervously back and forth again. “And I honestly adored you. You were this untouchable, squeamish princess, and all those sex games were sort of filthy perversion to you. I wanted you to stay that way. Untouched, pure, innocent... essentially, just the way you were when I first met you.” Paul stops and looks at me for a long time, clearly trying to think of what he is going to say next. “Before I had you, all the women I dated needed something from me. I had to kiss them in a certain way in a certain place, or caress them this way and not that way, say this but not that, give them presents, or call at a certain time. Basically, in order to sleep with a woman, I had to act out a role she had already written for me. No, that’s not quite it. I felt more like a trained monkey in a circus. If I did everything just right, I’d get a reward, and if I didn’t, I’d get punished. But with you, I was able to stay myself, to say and do what I wanted. You can’t imagine what that meant to me. Somebody needed me –
me
, not my words or my body, just me. I made somebody happy.”

“But if we had had good sex, too, you would have made me – and yourself – twice as happy,” I say, trying to fill in the blanks. He’s right, of course he’s right, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“Three times happier,” smiles Paul, wistfully. “Because then I wouldn’t be standing here now and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“We’ve never once talked about this. Why?” It’s so easy and tempting to blame it all on him. He started it. I’m the idiot, it’s all my fault, he said. But I hadn’t been in a coma all that time. Where had I been?