The Blue Guide (26 page)

I trot back into the dressing room, stand listening at the door. I can hear low voices, and then I hear a knock on the door. It's the butler, it transpires, bringing in room service. My tummy growls. I wish I had eaten more before beginning my vigil.

The front door closes again, and feeling brave now I know they are probably sitting eating at the table, I move back out into the bedroom and towards the doorway to the hall. From there I can hear that they are watching a movie in Spanish in the drawing room. I sit down on the chair on which Paco fucked me that first night, that night when it all started. Part of me wishes I could go back and decline his invitation to come back to his suite, but there's another part of me that wouldn't change a thing, in spite of all the hurt and confusion. I've learnt so much about myself this last week. Some bad things, maybe, but some precious things too.

The film goes on, and I hear nothing from Paco and Carlotta. I start to get bored. Why am I not at home, booking a last-minute flight, packing my case? I pick at my nails, let my mind wander. Eric plays through my thoughts. Again, I think, I wouldn't change a thing. Whatever happens in my life, I will always have that first time with him to think about.

My meandering thoughts are interrupted by a moan. It's Paco. I sit up straight, strain an ear towards the door. I hear several more moans, even longer and deeper than the last, but nothing from Carlotta, which
leads me to think she must be going down on him. I'm just sneaking through the bedroom doorway to risk a glance when I hear Carlotta's voice and some general movement. I hotfoot it back to the dressing room, leaving a gap in the door through which to peep.

I was right in thinking they were heading for the bedroom; through the slot I see them cross the room towards the bed. Paco is already naked, his cock proud and erect, wobbling in front of him as he walks. Carlotta follows, still fully dressed. As her husband climbs onto the bed, she walks around to one side of it, loosens the tie on the silk curtain and draws it. Then she crosses to the other side and does the same. At the end of the bed, she sits down on the footstool and kicks off her shoes, rolls down her hold-up stockings with their lacy tops and then pulls her dress up over her head. She was wearing no underwear I see, and her breasts bounce forth gleefully. I feel a stab of pleasure in my groin.

She turns around, on her knees on the stool now, and nuzzling her head through the curtains crawls into the little den she has created, like a lioness going in search of her prey. I hear Paco let out another low drawn-out moan, then for a few minutes I hear them purring at one another in rapid Spanish. After a minute I hear a little knock, and I wonder if one of them has bashed an ankle or wrist against one of the bedposts.

It's only after a while that I start to imagine I'm hearing my own name crop up every so often. I listen more attentively, and I'm right. ‘Alicia', I keep hearing, uttered by each of them at various points.

‘
Oh Paco . . . mi amore . . . si, 'Licia . . . si, es bueno . . . Si, si . . . 'Licia . . .
' The words tumble forth, but as things heat up in their love nest they all start to blur into one sound and I can understand less and less. The sound rises in pitch, little by little, until all I can hear is one
scream as they share a climax. Then, for a moment, it goes deathly quiet. I lean back against the wall, heart racing with a mixture of fear and longing.

After a few minutes I hear one of them pull back the curtain and pad over towards the bathroom. The sound of rushing water tells me he or she is running a bath. I wait, holding my breath, spying out, and when I see Carlotta, hair bedraggled, appear from behind the curtain and cross the room, I give it five minutes and then I tiptoe out. I make one wide soundless step towards the bathroom door and glance around. Paco is in the bath, leaning back, eyes closed. Carlotta is standing over him, bringing her pussy towards his face.

I'd like to watch him apply his mouth to her, investigate the treasure chest of her cunt, her infinite riches, but I can't waste a moment. I dash over to the bed, pull back one of the curtains, and stare inside. What I see makes my heart leap up in my throat.

There, on the mussed-up sheets, are the nude pictures that Carlotta took of me on the heath and that I found in her bedside drawer. Everything I suspected is true. Paco and Carlotta have been using me, getting off on the fact that each of them was sleeping with me without my knowledge, using me as some kind of sex toy, or marital aid. God help them, I think, if they need pictures of me to spark the flames.

My first instinct is to tear the photos into little pieces, run away. Then something deeper, murkier, takes hold. I pick up the snapshots, shuffle them together and slip them into my pocket. Then, slowly, I take off my clothes.

When Paco pulls back the curtain and sees me lying there butt-naked on his and Carlotta's bed, he looks so exquisitely taken aback, I regret not having a camera to hand.

‘Hi Paco,' I say sultrily, and I hear Carlotta squawk in surprise before she comes running out of the bathroom.

‘ 'Licia!' she exclaims. ‘What you doing?'

‘The maid let me in,' I say. ‘I'm going away tomorrow. I wanted to give you both a parting gift.'

Paco is still frozen still in the centre of the room, but Carlotta moves forwards towards me. Her lush body still shines with water from her bath. She smiles, a smile full of lust. As she steps onto the footstool and then starts to come to me over the bed, Paco seems to awaken as if from a dream and follows her. Carlotta glances back at him, eyes flashing some secret message that I'm not equipped to decipher. I might have fallen for her, fallen hard, but I know her so little. It takes a mind as devious and conniving as hers, I realise, to understand her. Maybe that's why she and Paco are so drawn to one another. They are like twins, dark conspirators.

Though it is me who, ostensibly, has bidden them, it is Carlotta – unsurprisingly – who takes charge. I decide to let her. My sense of betrayal is dissolving like vapour trails across the sky, and I'm interested to see where she wants to take me, where she wants to take us. As I said before, I knew when I returned from France that my erotic life was only going to be limited by my imagination, and what has happened between Carlotta and me has extended my boundaries like nothing before.

For a moment there I wanted revenge; for a moment my mind even turned to the cufflinks, and to more photographs – only photographs taken by me this time. But then I thought I might as well milk this for all it's worth, while I still can.

Flinging one leg out to the side and over me, Carlotta pins me down with her pussy, presses it into my own mound. Then she leans forwards, takes a mouthful of
soft, doughy tit and munches down hard on it. I stick my head out to one side and see that she has Paco's cock in one hand, is directing it towards her displayed rump. Paco's forehead is beaded with sweat; no doubt he can't believe his luck. Part of me would have liked to have refused them what they have wanted all along but probably never really believed they would get. But my confounded appetite won't let me – the two of them apart were magnificent enough. Together, they are going to take me into the stratosphere.

Paco's inside Carlotta now, and I can feel the rhythm of him in her body against mine. Then she kneels up on all fours, all the while looking down at me, laughter in her eyes. It's infectious, the pleasure she's taking in all of this, the way she's getting off on it. It must be something she's been hoping for for a long time. Perhaps that's even triumph in her eyes, along with the joy.

My head is up now; I'm sucking on her tits, encircling her dark areola with my tongue. I edge myself down so I'm lying directly beneath her, legs wide apart, pussy gaping, sodden with the desire for someone to enter me. Over her right shoulder I can see Paco's hair; he's burying his face into her brown flesh as he bounces in and out of her, groaning with the effort to stop himself coming too soon. Carlotta is quick to see that I've opened like a flower for her and penetrates me deeply with four fingers of one hand, keeping her thumb pressed firmly on my clit. New juices flow forth from me.

‘Make me come,' I beg, helpless, even though I know it's too soon. I don't want the spell to break, but my body has its own dictates, its imperious demands.

‘My turn,' moans Paco, and I see him back up and away from Carlotta.

‘No,' she whispers, ‘Paco,
por favor
.'

But it's too late; already he's dipped below her and, pulling her hand from between my legs, enters me. Carlotta moves her fingers quickly to my clit, but I brush them away. I'm on the edge of madness again, but if I give in to the orgasm that's about to explode inside me, I won't be able to carry on.

‘The vibrator,' I gasp hoarsely, and Carlotta smiles.

‘You a woman after my own heart,' she says, arching her sublime torso over to one side, reaching for the bedside drawer. Taking out the dildo, she separates it from the harness, which she then threads around my hips. When it's fastened, she slots the dildo back in through the aperture. She looks back over her shoulder at Paco; he nods silently, puts his hand under my knees and pulls me down the bed without taking his cock out of me, lowering himself to his knees. My hips are on the edge of the bed, so that he can continue fucking me from his new position.

For a moment Carlotta is still, surveying the scene then she smiles again, that charming, almost childlike little smile of hers, and she climbs aboard, impaling herself on me. And there I am, being fucked by Paco as he kneels with his arms around his wife right in front of him, her breasts clamped tight in his hands. His wife, in turn, is circling her hips, on top of mine, looking for all the world like she's going to pass out as I massage that fat, insatiable clit of hers. Returning the favour, she is kneading mine with the pads of her fingers.

It would be too much to hope for that we all come together, but Carlotta and I do, at least, gazing into each other's eyes as our faces contort in both ecstasy and shock – shock, I think, that anything could ever be this good. And as her husband pulls out of me with a roar,
we're still staring into each other's eyes, almost utterly oblivious to him.

They're both still sleeping when I awake. Taking the photographs out of my pocket, I shred them and, in one last self-consciously dramatic gesture that I don't feel embarrassed by in this setting or in these circumstances, I sprinkle the bright confetti over the lovers before turning on my heel. I stop only to open the bedside drawer and take two last items. I stop myself looking at Carlotta on the way out; if I do, I know that I'll cry, and I'm determined not to do that.

In the taxi I put the CD of photos in my bag and then I look at the drawing of myself. It's great; there's no doubt in my mind that Carlotta is a true artist who, for various reasons, has lost her way. I hope she will stop playing games with people, including herself, and return to something she is good at, something meaningful, something with the power to change the world. As we pull up outside my apartment block, I'm thinking I might write her a letter to say as much. Not now, but one day.

Jess is waiting for me at the flat, dying to know what happened. I fill her in, over a few drinks, and as we talk all the hurt dissolves like smoke and we laugh about Paco and Carlotta, decide that I should put it all down to experience.

Afterwards, I tell her about my email exchange with Daniel Lubowski, about my rude message and how much I regretted having been so hard on him.

She smiles at me a bit tipsily. We've had a couple too many by now.

‘Just get back online and tell him you've had a cancellation,' she says. ‘If what happened really means that much to you, you should give it one last shot.'

DANIEL AND I
find each other again – where else? – in the Dome Suite, from which we barely emerge for a week. He's not changed since we last met, or not to my eyes. I wonder if I have to his. It's surely not possible that I can have emerged unscathed from all I've been through.

I'm so nervous when I arrive the first day, after getting the message that he's on his way from the airport and that I'm to check in before him if I'm not busy. The suite, of course, is the same; kicking off my shoes, I collapse back onto the sofa and enjoy a glass of champagne, staring through the double doors into the dome room itself, with its large round mahogany table. And all of a sudden it's as if no time has passed, as if the intervening months – with Kip, and Paco and Carlotta – have been some kind of weird dream from which I have finally awoken into real life. I am being transported back in time, given a second chance.

The door opens; I can hardly bear to turn my head, my heart is thudding so loudly inside me, like a captive bird.

‘Alicia,' says a familiar voice.

I stand up, hand at my throat. ‘Daniel,' I reply.

He advances, unsurely, even now I'm here, even though he's flown all this way, taken time out of his loaded schedule, to be with me.

I smile what I hope to be a reassuring smile, realising he's as nervous as me. He takes my hand.

‘Let's go to bed,' we say at the same time, and the ice is broken, laughter tinkling in our throats like crystal.

I live in Hollywood these days, walking my dog in the hills, swimming in my pool as dusk settles over the city like a cloak, although the so-called glamour of showbiz life no longer fascinates me now that I've seen its dark face. I still have my little flat in London, to which I return a couple of times a year to do research. I've written a series of guidebooks to the city:
Erotic London, Romantic London, London for Lovers
. All of them are bestsellers.

I never did get to the Caribbean, but I bought a ticket for my mum instead, and was thrilled when I got a postcard telling me that she had met someone she liked. His name is Freddie, and he runs a beach bar near the hotel where she was staying. Two years and four visits later, she's considering moving out there and marrying him. As for Jess, she still lives in London, but she comes and stays often, and Dan and I chuckle together when we hear her and her barman, Luke, bumping and grinding the morning away in the spare bedroom. We laugh, too, about the drawing of me that hangs above our bed. Dan and I have no secrets from one another.