The Pleasure Quartet (22 page)

Astrid had returned from the backstage area and suggested I join her outside. Joao nodded his approval.

The night air was humid. Small groups milled on the edge of the campus green, picked out by the pale moonlight, wrapped in furtive conversations, smoking and sipping drinks. Astrid pulled a cigarette from her pocket, cast a glance around to see if anyone close could help her light it. A classmate obliged.

‘I didn’t know you smoked . . .’

‘Don’t tell my father’ she begged me, taking a rapid puff.

I felt I should say something to her, but also knew I had no wish to censure her, even though in tonight’s environment it was obvious among her school friends that she stood out like a sore thumb, her personal loneliness visibly an open wound. It was no wonder she had attached herself to me after our initial encounter on the beach. It made me feel uneasy, as if Joao was passively manipulating me throughout the situation, like a puppeteer, just so I could befriend his daughter.

We left early. Joao had booked a large table at L’Etoile, an expensive French restaurant on the top floor of the Sheraton with a splendid view of the beach below and its fairy lights that shimmered in the darkness from the distance of the twenty-sixth floor. It had been Astrid’s choice, but he had also invited a bunch of business colleagues including the unlikeable Matheus who, tonight, was accompanied by a floozy with more bare flesh on display than grey cells.

I switched off. Astrid was at the other end of the table and I sat wedged between Joao and an industrialist from the interior who spoke no English and occasionally looked over at me with an air of superiority, as if despising my presence and my person, judging me the lowest of the low, not just a younger escort but a foreign one at that. I half hoped he would put a hand on my knee under the table, make a pass or something, so I could protest loudly and make a scene and embarrass him in front of his dowdy wife and the rest of the guests, but he didn’t even have the courage to do so. Throughout the meal, Joao ignored me totally, as if my decorative presence was all that was required of me.

As we were being driven home later, Astrid slumped on the back seat by my side, Joao sensed my unease.

‘Did the evening bore you, my dear?’ he asked.

‘Somewhat,’ I told him.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Next time we have to go out in public, I would rather choose what to wear myself. I felt like a dress-up doll, Joao.’

I was about to suggest that I would prefer being dropped off at my apartment rather than spend the night with him at the villa, but he must have read my mind.

‘Come back with us,’ he said. ‘Let me make it up to you.’ His eyes were full of pleading. I gave in.

The driver carried a sleeping Astrid in past the front door, where a maid took over and supported her all the way to her own bedroom at the back of the house and she was quickly tucked in. The driver turned on his heels and the servants disappeared, leaving Joao and me alone in the echoing vastness of the high-ceilinged rooms.

He wasted no time in leading me to the master bedroom, where he lifted my skirt, pulled down my knickers and buried his face in my pussy. It was the first time in our relationship so far that he had actually gone down on me with any degree of focused enthusiasm, though god knows I had given him blow jobs a-plenty. Usually he returned the favour with a few obligatory laps of my slit, in part to ensure that I was well lubricated before he pulled himself up over my body and entered me, obviously eager to fuck.

His tongue felt good, but I could not quell the suspicion that his attentive worshipping at my clit was simply Joao throwing out all the stops by way of a sales pitch rather than any real dedication to my gratification. I took great pleasure from grabbing hold of his hair and grinding his face against me until I came, hoping that the residual ache in his jaw would serve as some slight reminder that I was not entirely satisfied with the arrangement he had roped me into.

I could barely sleep. At my side, Joao snored softly, his face buried into the deep pillow, his broad, hirsute shoulders emerging from the whiteness of the sheets, his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair trimmed with uncanny precision. The random sounds of the house washed over me, a wall of deathly silence interrupted by slivers of creaks, a rustle here, an audible shiver there, as the building conducted its secret life, its materials shedding the heat of the day, relaxing into place, settling. I listened, seeking a pattern, the communication of a rhythm, but it was all a chaos of nothingness, my mind being teased.

I got out of bed. Walked nude and barefoot over the stone floors to the kitchen on the lower level and took a carton of milk from the massive Whirlpool side-by-side fridge and poured myself a glass. Through the open window, the hill was a pool of thick darkness and the scent of the nearby gardens wafted along the gentle breeze.

I wandered aimlessly through the silent villa. Was even briefly tempted to brazenly call up for a taxi or one of Joao’s drivers and be dropped off at the nearest expanse of beach and sand, although I knew it wasn’t a good idea and a sure recipe for disaster. I wanted to feel the night air swirl across my bare skin, dip my inflamed flesh into the halting waves of the Atlantic.

My cunt throbbed. Unsatisfied, my clit still painful from Joao’s attentive ministrations. I stood by the window, touching myself, daydreaming, craving I knew not what. I finally tiptoed back to the bedroom where Joao still lay, his position unchanged. I had somehow hoped he might have wakened and offered a cure for my restlessness, fucked me hard, harder than he usually did. But he failed to move even when I slipped between the sheets and barricaded myself next to him, hunting down the heat radiating from his body.

It took ages, but inevitably sleep finally overtook me.

It was already mid-morning when I shook myself awake. Joao had left for work and Astrid was nowhere to be seen. Probably at the beach. I took breakfast on the balcony, swam a few lengths in the pool under the unfazed gaze of the two maids who were busying themselves around the villa, cleaning and tidying up, professionally trained to ignore my nudity, no doubt judging me as just one more of Joao’s walkway of conquests, soon to be replaced by a younger, more exotic model.

Finally I dressed. Willingly leaving the floral print dress I had worn for the school gala behind, reintegrating my uniform of short skirt, pastel-hued T-shirt and strappy sandals.

Back at my flat, I heard my mobile ringing as I turned the key in the lock but it had stopped by the time I had reached the desk on which I had set it down. I had entirely forgotten having left the phone behind. So few people knew my number. There were a score of missed calls listed. All from the same local number. I switched to the messages. Raoul sounded frantic. Insisting repeatedly I should call him back immediately. In turns angry, resigned and then angry again. I put the phone down, kicked my shoes off and ignored his demands.

Men.

Later that night there was a thunderous knock at my door. Initially I ignored the sound, thinking it must be some kind of mistake – I wasn’t expecting anyone and the buzzer for the main security door hadn’t gone off. I was luxuriously soaking in my apartment’s small bathtub, shoulder-deep in hot water that I had perfumed with a whole packet of lavender bath salts, my legs stretched out and feet resting on the lip of the tub, drinking a glass of red wine and mulling over what to do next.

My limbs were utterly relaxed and the alcohol in combination with the water’s warmth had made me quite drowsy. Music played through my laptop’s tinny speakers. Hozier’s ‘Take Me to Church’, a tune that I related to on multiple levels, having always sought redemption from sources more closely aligned to my personal brand of raw sexuality than any form of organised religion. I lay there letting the lyrics wash over me and surveying the events of the past few months with an almost hypnotic and objective gaze, half unconscious in my buzzed-out heat haze.

It had not escaped my attention that my departure from Aurelia’s employ and abandoning my musical career in a laughable attempt to ‘find myself’ away from the world of sex had resulted in a life populated only by troubles with men. I had ended up achieving a situation the exact opposite of what I had been aiming for.

What a joke. I should have joined a convent instead.

I toyed with the idea of breaking up with them both and finding a proper job, or taking up formal Portuguese language lessons, perhaps enrolling in online university study and furthering my education. Even cookery lessons or signing up for a library card would do more for my self-development than spending every minute thinking about my love life.

The bathroom was fogged with steam. It clogged my lungs in a way that felt simultaneously cleansing and suffocating. And reminded me briefly of that night I had spent in the Kentish Town sauna with the bearded brute of a man who had found me playing the Bailly on Hampstead Heath in the altogether and led me there – whom I had knowingly followed – and the group of men he had assembled who delighted in taking every advantage of my willing degradation. No matter how complicated the tangled mess I was in now, at least I had managed to crawl out of that dark place, although the memories of it remained a familiar shadow I doubted I would ever be free from.

I dunked my head under the water, hoping to wash the unwelcome images from my mind.

There it was again, someone banging so loudly that I feared they would knock straight through the thin wood veneer and then let themselves in whether I wanted it or not.

I paused the music and eased myself out of the tub, head swimming as my over-heated body straightened to standing. The luxurious, thick white towelling robe that I often lazed around in after swimming in the pool of the Jardim Botânico villa, was not mine at all, but one of a pair that Joao owned, I realised, as I searched for something to cover myself with and finally snatched up a pair of relatively modest pink cotton panties and an old Holy Criminals T-shirt and pulled both on before peering through the door’s security viewer. The violent hammering had reduced to a series of sharp raps punctuated by long pauses, as if the person on the other side had just about given up and decided that maybe I really wasn’t in.

It was Raoul. His square jaw looming larger than usual through the artificial angle of the fishbowl-shaped peephole. He was holding his motorcycle helmet in one hand and a large bunch of roses in the other, blood-coloured blooms wrapped in clear cellophane bound tight with a black bow, the sort of bouquet that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a vampire’s lair.

I was sorely tempted to tell him to go to hell. And then get myself back into the now tepid bath.

But though he had been unbearably possessive of late, since I was sleeping with another man without his knowledge or permission I had to admit there was logic to his behaviour and the least I owed him was an explanation. We’d been dating each other long enough that I couldn’t pretend even to myself I hadn’t thought we were yet ‘exclusive’, or any other such cop-out. It was time to face the music.

I gritted my teeth and opened the door.

‘Summer,’ he said, his voice tinged with obvious relief.

‘Raoul, I . . . I’m seeing someone else. Another man,’ I told him, as soon as he stepped inside.

Better to just get it over with, I reasoned, before I changed my mind.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘You do?’

‘I’m not a complete fucking idiot, you know.’

‘Oh.’

He waltzed past me to the breakfast counter, set the flowers down and began opening cupboards, pulling out kitchen equipment I didn’t even realise I had. What on earth would I do with a rolling pin? I remained where I was and stared at him.

‘Do you have a vase?’ he asked. ‘Something to put these in?’

His words spurred me to action. I was grateful for a reason to change the subject, though uncertain under the circumstances why he thought the occasion of my infidelity warranted a gesture of romance.

I fetched a plastic bucket from the shelf alongside the washing machine in my flat’s wardrobe-sized laundry room and carried it towards him, stepping over discarded trainers and magazines on the way that still lay precisely where I had dropped them. A black lace bra and knicker set hung conspicuously from my bedroom door, across from the open-plan living area and visible from where Raoul stood, as if advertising my wanton nature. Tidiness wasn’t one of my virtues.

There was a very definite gleam in Raoul’s eyes. A look I recognised but couldn’t quite identify right then. He stood too close to me as I turned on the tap and filled the bucket halfway, then extracted a pair of scissors from the cutlery drawer, removed the bow and protective film from the wrapped bunch of flowers and arranged the roses in the water.

‘I used to be a florist, you know. A long time ago, just a casual job as a teenager . . .’ I nattered on, filling the ominous silence that hovered between us.

Raoul just kept grinning at me manically with that look in his eyes, half lust and half malevolence. I looked away from him, tore a few more stray green leaves from the pointed stems, assiduously avoiding the sharp thorns. It occurred to me that I was afraid of him. Unlike Joao, Raoul was unpredictable. Always on edge. I wasn’t yet sure that I could trust him.

He put his hands on my hips. Pulled me against him. His erection was prominent, bulging beneath the thin covering of his shorts and pressing against the small of my back. His fingers slipped inside the seam of my underwear and pressed against my slit.

‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘not wet yet. Unlike you.’

I didn’t know what to say in response so stayed mute.

‘Nice and smooth though. I like that.’

I had shaved in the bath.

‘Who are you keeping yourself smooth for?’ he continued. ‘Me or him?’

It evidently hadn’t occurred to Raoul that my choices in matters of grooming were in fact personal and not related to the preferences of the men I dated, but it didn’t seem like the time to give him a lecture on feminism.

He pushed me forward gently with one hand pressed between my shoulder blades. The fingers on his other hand maintained their pressure against my labia, now rubbing through the fabric of my knickers instead of against my bare skin.