The Coming of Bright (16 page)

Yet he kept his body as finely honed as his mind. He had a room in the back of his townhouse where he had learned and practiced, thousands upon thousands of times, the exercises of ancient Greek athletes. Olympians beneath the gaze of Olympus. Filtered through the vision of Joseph Hubertus Pilates. He called the room his Pilatesium. He had every piece of equipment that Pilates had dreamed up, most of which resembled the gymnastic offspring of medieval torture devices. And they could probably be used for exactly that—if any of his guests overstayed their welcome, or if his ex-wife showed up.

But Zora could hope to enjoy the fruits of his Pilatesium, of his labors there among its medieval machines. The two of them could add to the repertoire of Professor Pilates by sinfully transforming, delightfully debasing, a few of the exercises. Infusing Pilates with Eros. Take that Pilates! Rest in peace no more.

Victor turned himself back over, facing up again. Zora imagined it must have been uncomfortable for him to have lain prostrate with such a protrusion in the middle of his body. Luckily the couch was generously padded beneath its sandpaper skin, had absorbed some of the rigidity. All it would take now to prepare him for the heat of her inner hips would be a woman’s touch, the touch of her lips.

Zora wetted her phallic brush and generously applied the concoction around the shaft of Victor’s penis. Every texture and surface of her mouth, of skin and muscle and teeth, she focused on stimulating him. Yes, teeth, the most important part of the process. He was well enough endowed to tickle her uvula, and would soon be tantalizing her vulva—the rhythm of the words themselves would be every bit as playful as the rhythm of their lovemaking.

Each time she took him into her mouth he glistened more and more. And each time she applied a new sheen of the elixir before leaving her saliva in its stead. Each time she took him in, molding her flexible palate to his penis, his face underwent a series of contortions of its own, from abject contentment (lips) to betrayed wonder (tongue) to perfect torment (teeth). Victor was shocked dumb at the oral thrashing she performed. She showed a devilish grasp of male arousal for a woman whose experience in that area, both literally and metaphorically, had been minimal to say the least.

When she had reached his brink, when the action of her mouth alone had been enough to bring him to consummation, he pulled her forward and rolled over on top of her. She fumbled to put the ivory penis back in its proper place—in her distraction and haste, she missed the bowl and ended up dropping it on the floor, where it rolled a few times and came to rest next to the
Dancer of Palmyra
.

Victor himself began to fumble—with the linen covering the cart. He managed to retrieve something from the cart’s lower shelf. The strangest condom she had ever seen.

Bunched up, it looked like a pale red sea anemone, covered in knobby little spikes. Silicone. Victor handed it to her. She rubbed her hand over the spikes. They had a cool, easy rubbery feel and bounced back erect into place as soon as her hand had passed over them.

“Ever heard of a French tickler?”

Zora scrunched her eyes and vibrated her head side to side, trying as hard as she could not to laugh. She loved his brand of eroticism, tinged to its core with base humor. He wanted her to put that red knobby anemone on his penis. She knew full well that he had a stronger reason than humor for doing so—his sculpting of her erogenous zones, as if marble had melted into flesh. How could he have known she was made of such artistic stuff, both inside and out?

Without another word she obliged him. He elevated his body above hers, enough for her to reach down and slide the French tickler onto his penis. Perfect fit, if anything on the tight side.

“Need to grab one more thing.”

He reached behind the linen one more time—who did he think he was, a fucking magician, a thaumaturge of sex, pulling so many tricks from behind the cloth?—and pulled out a wedge-shaped pillow.

“The Liberator.”

“Victor, I know you think highly of your virile powers, but I’m hardly a slave to your charms.”

“No, you firebrand you, the pillow is called ‘The Liberator.’ Let me show you how it works.”

He pried his hand under her buttocks, a liberating sensation in and of itself, slid the pillow under them. The Liberator gave her hips a sinuous curve up into the air, and to make herself more comfortable, she rested her right leg on the top of the couch. He positioned himself over her, ascending with his legs so that he could enter her effortlessly, fluidly, with her hips in their liberated pose.

She immediately saw the point of the Liberator—with the natural curvature of his penis, and the supple upward angle of her vagina, he would be able to liberate her G-spot without even trying. A marriage of the wonders of the human imagination and the majesties of the human body.

She guided him into her, feeling the little silicone spikes play against the skin of her hand as he pushed himself inside. A fraction of the sensation a few inches away, the spot she had guided him into, a place waiting for him, layered in moisture and expectation. An eager chaos of nerves and veins, of hidden skin and open space. Lusher and lusher, more and more sensitive, by the second. There was no need for lubricant from outside her body, from a bottle.

As the tickler moved into her vagina, with the momentum that Victor gave it with the pivot of his hips and the bend of his legs, his penis found her spot. Victor made a point of letting the tickler massage her spot with extra friction from the thrust. She arched her head back as far as it would go into the pillow, sucking in air. Dear breath, hot breath. Breath of death, breath of life.

At the moment the arch of her neck reached its pinnacle, Victor kissed the skin next to her Adam’s apple. A kiss as tender as he was firm. She felt as if she would vanish into a burst of sparks cascading on air, die on a pyre of flames, her brain not able to process the surging electricity of her body.

He quickly found the rhythm that would delay his gratification long enough to fulfill hers to its natural limits. The elastic boundary of sensual feeling that evolution had bestowed upon the human frame. Evolution’s most precious gift. Her gratification ebbed and flowed, flowed and ebbed, with every oscillation of his body against hers, inside hers. She opened herself, on every level of her being, to the undulations of his hips, the most earthly expression of loving being. Free of the weight of mind, their selves began to flow together in unison through their bodies, her hips retracting of their own accord as he moved out of her, surging forward as he moved down and deep.

Whoever had invented the French tickler was a godforsaken saint of female arousal, as holy a lover of feminine pleasure as the inventor of The Liberator. Her fingernails were making carnage of his back. And despite the synergy of their hips, she gave his buttocks a violent squeeze at the deepest moment of each of his thrusts. For good measure. Making the force of his body against hers more palpable, more physical than it already was. A manifestation of love of lust and lust for love. Shit, who are we fooling—she simply loved grasping his toned ass. Just as he couldn’t help caressing and kissing her breasts every so often—so very often.

Victor had planned out in great detail their first foray into lovemaking, had devised a way to stimulate both epicenters of her pleasure at the same time. Now don’t get the wrong impression—the missionary position was working wonders on Zora’s libido, giving her vocal chords a healthy workout. To really overwhelm her, though, Victor needed access to her clitoris. He needed his hand to become the real liberator.

And so after both of their heartrates started getting close to the limits of medical propriety—sexual propriety was another matter entirely—he pulled the pillow out from under her, tossed it away. They rolled over so that she was on top.

Both his hands firmly on her hips, he pulled her forward, pulled himself out of her temporarily. He pivoted her body over. Now her back was pressed against his chest and their legs were pressed against each other. With his right hand, he guided himself back inside of her, and their bodies began anew their sinuous dance, moving with the power of his hips and the force of her hands pressing against the sides of the couch. Her body was stacked on top of his, a perfectly straight line, the simplest erotic geometry, the most profound. The tightness of her legs pressed together made his pleasure as ethereal as hers.

As he had planned, his right hand sank into her vulva, practically dissolving in her wetness and warmth, while their bodies crescendoed. His fingers played and vibrated and pulsed against her clitoris. With her on top, her vagina in a downward curve like the path of a waterfall, his penis didn’t need any pillow to reach her spot. In that flawless configuration, he was able to stroke her spot with the same intensity his fingertips lavished on her clitoris. He gave both parts of her the attention they so richly deserved. Dual liberators. Duly liberated.

He held out as long as he could, and she held on as long as she could, but eventually his body reached its limit, and her strength was sapped. A moment of mutual release. He ejaculated while thrusting into her spot, alongside the last flurry of his fingers upon her clitoris. He cried out, an animal cry, and she sighed, a heavenly sigh. The movements of their bodies ceased, they sagged onto the couch. Her head tipped back to kiss him.

They remained like that for a while, a long while, kissing one moment and collecting their breaths the next. Their legs were wrapped around each other, their arms embraced the other bodily soul in front of them. Their heads faced one another. Physically and psychologically, spiritually and sexually, enveloped in one another, as lovers should be.

Finally Victor reached over, poured the remaining elixir from the ivory bowl back into the carafe, brought the carafe to her lips. Thirsty from desiring devotion, enthralled by the taste of the concoction, she took several gulps. Liquid spilled around her lips onto the couch. Victor drank; the fluid was gone. Both felt the sting of intoxication, the tequila merely the catalyst.

But Victor had hardly forgotten the final reason for their passion that night. The password of the Juris Club. The final clue that Zora would need to enter into the hallowed meetings of those shadowy figures who plotted a brave new world of brave new laws. A sanctuary of conspiracy where they were watched over by the ghost of Voltaire. Or more likely, by his demon.

“A pretty peso.”

He gestured to the empty carafe, set back upon the tray. Zora was offended.

“Money at a time like this? I should tape your mouth shut. So you won’t spoil the mood by opening it.”

“Not a bad idea.”

The thought crossed his mind to bring up yet another use for tape, more diabolical than a taping-shut of the mouth. A use the Marquis de Sade would have approved of. Victor didn’t give voice to his sticky little rumination. It could wait. Another day, another adventure. He still needed a retort.

“Untape your ears. I’m trying to give you a clue. The password, remember?”

Yes, she did remember—her memory had not been completely wiped clean by that pale red thing lying on the shag in front of the couch. The French tickler. She dared not look inside it now.

“How could I forget? And the clue?”

“The tequila. Cost me a pretty
peso
.”

Victor put enough extra stress on the final word that Zora got the hint.

“An anagram for the password. Using the language of law.”

That was easy enough—the language of law was Latin. But an anagram in Latin of
peso
? Her two semesters in college on the foundations of Latin, junior year, were not helping. Nor was that senior seminar on Virgil, thank you very much. Seemed like eons ago, in fact.
Aeternitatem
. Virtually dead to her. She’d have to hurry back to her room, bury herself in some conjugations and declensions.

“Victor, I get the point, but I really need to leave. It’s getting late and I have class tomorrow, remember?”

He looked instantly crestfallen. As though his performance on the couch had turned the energy of attraction into the energy of repulsion. Far from it. But now was not the time to reassure him, to inflate his ego with praise of his libido. She truly was buried under work—her devotion to their relationship was having an inverse relationship to her devotion to law.

There was more to it than that. She didn’t want to sacrifice all of her coquettish slings and arrows just yet either. Sweet delay. His was the power of consummation of her body, the consumption of her self—hers was the power of deferral. The greater power of the two.

“Now who’s trying to spoil the mood?”

“Mea culpa.”

A sly Latin grin from Zora. She had an idea for absolution. For cleansing.

“Before I leave, I really wouldn’t mind another bath.”

On their way into the bathroom, her nude body slung in his arms, her arm draped around his neck, his voice against her ear:

“Remind me to give you something on the way out. A note. It’ll prepare you for the meeting on Sunday.”

He knew she would read it as soon as she got home.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The note was written on the same off-white paper that Victor had used to prick her fancy in class. The stationery of the
billet-doux
, the love letter that had ushered her into a world of wormwood and chocolate and spice. And a very special pestle.