Intimacy

TWENTY FOUR

Hayden and Eleanor's honeymoon in the Canary Islands was not the disaster that might have been expected. In case you are wondering, Caroline didn't go along too; in fact, Eleanor had no communication with her throughout the two-week trip. They had sex every day (sometimes more than once) and went for walks along the stunning coast when the Atlantic breezes cooled the air in the late afternoons. The sea was plenty warm enough for Eleanor to swim in. Hayden enjoyed watching her from the beach as she plied her way seemingly effortlessly through the water, whatever swell there might be.

But the itch was still there. And this time it led to her downfall, or at least the beginning of the end for her marriage. Eleanor had been grateful (genuinely grateful) that she had met no one at the hotel where they were staying who she might be tempted by. No one that is until the day before they were due to check out of the hotel and fly back to Manchester. Her name was Koming and she was originally from Bali.

As soon as Eleanor saw her checking in at around noon in her long strapless brown dress with its thigh-high slit, she knew she must have her. She never did find out how old she was but she guessed she must have been in her early thirties. It seemed to be an age that appealed to her. Because time was very much of the essence, Eleanor knew that she must work fast. First she had to find out if she was travelling alone or expecting company and then she needed to introduce herself into her life. Even if she was expecting someone to join her, that would be not necessarily be an insurmountable obstacle to Eleanor in the mood in which she found herself that Saturday lunchtime.

The plan she hatched was a very simple one. First, of course, she had to make sure that Hayden was out of the way for a couple of hours at least. That had already been dealt with since he had left not fifteen minutes earlier to go into town on the hotel shuttle bus. He wanted to get a new screen protector for his mobile phone, as he had scuffed up the original one when he had dropped the phone in the bathroom that morning. As Eleanor had said to him, that should teach him for trying to multitask so early in the day!

Since he was going into town, he'd also pick up a few gifts for friends and work colleagues. At Eleanor's suggestion he was also planning to have lunch in town too (he had got a recommendation from the concierge), while she would have lunch in the hotel before going for what would be her last swim in the ocean.

So Eleanor reckoned she might have at least two hours with the stunning looking Asian if she played her cards right. A few minutes after the exotic woman with the long dark hair worn up in a beehive hairstyle with a sideswept bang, all held in place by a gold fan-shaped headband, had left reception with the bellhop who was carrying her bags, Eleanor was up there getting her room number. She made up some story about seeing an old friend wearing a strapless dress being taken to her room as she (Eleanor) was getting out of the pool, and wondered if they could kindly tell her the room number.

Her whole plan would have been scuppered if they had asked Eleanor her friend's name but they didn't, probably because she had been staying with them for a long time, and she was a woman and non-threatening. If only they had known! Instead, they gave her Koming's name themselves. Since she was riding a wave, she also asked them if Kenneth (as good a name as any for an imaginary husband, she thought) was travelling with her, and they said no, she was travelling on her own.

Eleanor went and checked herself over in the cloakroom off the lobby and set off for the chalet whose number she had been given. She was pleased that she had decided to wear something nice that morning, on a whim really: an orchid colour wrap dress with short puffed sleeves and a ruffled skirt that tied at the waist and fell just above the knee. She was also wearing a pair of off-white multistrap heeled sandals.

When she got to the chalet, she could see Koming moving around inside the sitting room, though she didn't think

she

had seen

her

. She took a deep breath and rang the old-style door bell. After a little longer than it would have taken for the woman to walk to the door in the ordinary course of events, the door was opened wide and she was face to face with this amazing creature. She was even more beautiful close up. For a second - just a second - Eleanor felt out of her league and wanted to turn and run as if she were a naughty schoolgirl playing a prank. But she stood her ground and introduced herself.

Rather than being taken aback, the Oriental woman, who was considerably shorter than Eleanor had remembered her being - she must have been wearing heels before, which she hadn't noticed - asked Eleanor in, speaking quite heavily accented English in a husky voice that Eleanor found very attractive. She also had a slight lisp, which Eleanor also found very attractive. At this point, she could have burped and Eleanor would have found it enchanting.

'I do not think I need to tell you my name,' Koming said enigmatically.

Not entirely sure how she should respond to this unexpected opening turn from the woman she wanted to bed, Eleanor replied that she was quite cool with that. When the exquisite Asian remained silent, Eleanor, who might in normal circumstances have panicked, walked past her into the room. She had half a thought to continue on into the bedroom but decided instead to park herself on the sofa, which had plenty of room for two - either vertically or horizontally.

The woman closed the door and walked - barefoot - over to Eleanor, not sitting but standing in front of her.

'You are here on your honeymoon, aren't you?' she said, her strong accent of a minute ago all but vanishing.

Eleanor was momentarily taken aback, then realised reception must have alerted her to her old friend's impending visit.

'Yes, indeed,' she replied, her voice remarkably well modulated given the way her heart was racing in her breast.

'Eleanor is a nice name. What does it mean?'

'No one really knows,' Eleanor replied. 'Some people say it means "shining light".'

'Do you wish to know what my name means?' asked the woman standing just feet in front of her, her fragrance (which Eleanor was to find out later was a blend of cinnamon, coconut and cloves with hints of jasmine and frangipani) starting to subsume her in its aura.

'Certainly,' answered Eleanor, growing in an awareness that she was progressively losing control of this encounter, and revelling in the knowledge.

'In Bali it simply means I am the third born in my family,' she replied. 'Quite unexciting, isn't it? Not very exotic at all.'

Without waiting for a reply or saying another word, Koming extended her hand to Eleanor and led her to the bedroom. A welcoming bouquet of flowers and a card from the management was still on the bed, while Koming's luggage stood in the corner of the room near the wardrobe. Eleanor stood there as if spellbound while the Balinese woman removed the paraphernalia and turned the bedcover down. She didn't bother to draw the curtains, but then there was no need, as her chalet was at the far end of the hotel complex with only scrubby woodland beyond it.

Koming walked round to wear Eleanor was standing and took her hand once more. This time Eleanor felt her fingernails dig into the soft skin above her wrist and looking at Koming's other hand saw what she hadn't noticed before, that her nails were shaped like almonds. She couldn't be sure but she thought they were natural. They were painted in an understated but alluring shade: light purple, or maybe lilac. Eleanor felt a frisson run right through her body when she thought of the damage those nails could do to her during the next two hours.

When they arrived at the head of the bed, Koming undid the bow on Eleanor's dress and deftly fed the string back through the hole it had been pulled through until the dress parted to reveal Eleanor's blue bra and panty set.

'Very nice,' she said. 'Something borrowed, something blue.'

And then, moving her hands around Eleanor's broad and muscular back, she said simply, 'May I?' - as if Eleanor was going to say no. She let the bra fall to the floor and then (consistent with the unhurried pace she was adopting) rather than remove the panties, asked the younger woman if she would like to get on the bed. It was the very quintessence of a rhetorical question.

Rather than join her on the bed, Koming removed the headband from her hair, together with various other pins and clips, and let her glossy raven hair cascade over her shoulders and part of the way down her back. Then, denying Eleanor a pleasure she had looked forward to since she first set eyes on her, she slowly pulled down the zip on the back of the long figure-hugging brown dress with the orange and silver sequin details in the form of flowers atop the chiffon fabric. Presently, the sumptuousness hinted at by the long slit was revealed in all its glory.

Still wearing her pink lace thong panties, the Balinese beauty joined Eleanor on the bed. Making every movement like a leopard, she lay the young bride down diagonally across the bed ('Maybe because she thinks I am too tall to fit normally,' Eleanor thought) and climbed on top of her. Eleanor imagined herself being dragged across the savannah and up a tree by this lithe creature so that she might have her fill of her.

Koming placed herself on the taller woman's body so that their panty-covered pussies were aligned and began, slowly at first, to rub against her. Eleanor desperately wanted to kiss her and taste her but, first, she couldn't access her, and, second, this wasn't part of Koming's plan - for the present, at any rate. Koming got Eleanor to shift her legs so that one was higher than the other and, returning the compliment, resumed rubbing her, now with more urgency.

Eleanor let out a low moan as she felt her pussy lips being kissed by Koming's through the flimsy fabric, which, she thought, with a thrill of anticipation, might be torn apart at any moment. Koming began to grind against Eleanor with serious intent, causing the Englishwoman to meet her half way. Even though the room wasn't warm, Eleanor could feel the perspiration that was lubricating both their bodies, as stomachs and thighs moved against each other with a smooth, easy motion.

Suddenly, Koming's hard work and persistence paid off, as Eleanor's labia were peeled back by the constant pounding they had been receiving. When she heard the tall woman cry out in ecstasy, she took it as her cue (not, as she had been planning, to continue the scissoring movement sans panties), but to go straight for the jugular and eat her to orgasm.

She whipped off the blue panties without bothering to inspect the delicate floral detail or the scalloped edges, and got straight down to business, applying her small but lithe tongue to the labia which had received such a buffeting. Parting the large fleshy lips with her fingers, she propelled her tongue into the girl's core, being careful to keep an ear open for any sound of arousal.

She might have been profoundly deaf and she wouldn't have needed telling the effect that her amatory skills was having on the honeymooner, as Eleanor found temporary release of her sexual tensions via her vocal chords. Before a further minute was up, full release had been achieved.

Eleanor couldn't wait to sample the Balinese woman's delights, but, even though she knew the eternal enemy - time - was ticking by, she wanted to savour the lovemaking rather than rush it. So she kissed Koming, tasting herself on her tongue and on her lips in the process. She plied the older woman with smothering kisses, making liberal use of her tongue, enjoying the feel of teeth mashing against teeth. She moved away what seemed like thousands of strands of ebony hair in order to access her beautiful ears, which were shaped like miniature cup handles.

After paying due homage to these with her lips and her tongue, Eleanor was drawn to the woman's sculpted eyebrows, which were shaped like longbows and thicker near the bridge of the nose, where they began, than half way to the ear, where they ended. Having kissed her here too, she ran her tongue down her aquiline nose before driving it inside her mouth again and moving her hands to the woman's petite breasts, which were shaped like green mangos.

The woman's relatively light skin tone, as well as her straight nose and high cheek bones, hinted at European heritage, but the nipples were proudly Asian - dark and full. Eleanor was soon feasting on them, while her hand ran over Koming's stomach and on through her satiny down until it reached her pussy. There, it waited its turn patiently while the breasts received their due attention, and only after Eleanor had detached herself from them did it slide down onto her vulva.

In a matter of seconds, a finger had entered penetrated Koming's vagina, bringing a gasp of pleasure to her lips. When Eleanor removed her finger with a loud plop she knew it was time to go down on the gloriously wet pussy, and she began eating her out with enthusiasm that gave way to something more like abandon as her partner neared orgasm. It was just at the moment when Eleanor was coming off the climaxing Oriental that she chanced to look out of the window. There, with his nose pressed against the glass, so that he could get a view unimpeded by the light that was reflecting back at him, was Hayden, with a look that combined excitement, confusion and rage in equal measures.

Eleanor stopped dead in her tracks - an action so unexpected that it caused Koming to look up and, following Eleanor's gaze, pick out the figure she took to be a peeping Tom.

'It's my husband,' Eleanor said simply, getting off the bed and quickly getting dressed.

'I must go to him', she added as she left the room. 'It was fun.'

TWENTY FIVE

It was probably a blessing in disguise, Eleanor thought, as she reflected on the events of that momentous day after Kiera had left her to go back (at least for now) to her husband and her family. She couldn't believe that it was almost nine years ago. So much had happened in the interim. She had changed jobs twice, securing a quick promotion at her current company which gossips had attributed to her sleeping with the boss - the male boss!

'Could a woman never achieve anything purely on her own merits?' she asked herself.

After her divorce from Hayden - the marriage had meandered along for three years before they bowed to the inevitable - she had dated a number of women, mostly older than her. However, as she became more mature and more successful, she also became more demanding. When she was called a bitch by a spurned lover, she wore it as a kind of badge of honour. Okay, so she was intolerant, but only of lazy and reductionist thinking. Or so she liked to rationalise things.

She still preferred the company of men, so long as they weren't assholes (which

did

rule most of them out). She had met very few women who could match the best of that sex for wit and the ability (and the desire) to generalise. With few exceptions, the women she knew were happy to jump on the latest bandwagon (whatever it might be) and start sloganising, and - even worse - to construct their worldview on their own experience and any anecdotal evidence they could muster to support their prejudices. She found it so boring and so unconducive to thinking. And the last thing the world needed today was anything that encouraged the tendency to what she called 'the abolition of thinking'. There could never be just 'one right way'. Never!

Perhaps the oddest thing to come out of the whole business was that Hayden had never cottoned on to the fact that his sister and his wife had been lovers. Eleanor never quite understood how that should be. After all, she'd hardly been any more discreet with her than she had been with Koming. When she thought about it from Hayden's perspective, she reckoned that his own lifelong familiarity with her and the constraints of the domestic setting in which their relationship was grounded prevented him from seeing her as a sexual person. She remembered that early in their courtship he had described the sister she hadn't yet met as a career woman. That seemed to sum it up in a nutshell.

She'd continued to see her on and off while Hayden and she were still living together, but things were never the same after the wedding. Perhaps they just peaked too early, Eleanor joked with herself, using a favourite phrase of her ex swimming coach and first female lover, Linda. There had been no communication between the two of them since soon after Hayden's divorce became final, when they made one last effort to rekindle the fire. But Eleanor had moved on. Perhaps Caroline had moved on too, Eleanor mused, although in her heart she felt that woman was becoming increasingly embittered and was in danger of ending up a sad and lonely figure. It was a fate, she realised, which no one was guaranteed to avoid, including herself.

Around the time she turned thirty, she had her first affair with a straight married woman - one with three children, no less. It gave her such a thrill, and such a sense of power, that from that day on she was on the lookout for opportunities to break in straight women, preferably married ones. Kiera had been the first one who was already a friend, which gave it such added spice that she actually made a list of all her married friends and identified a couple who might succumb to her charms. The fact that she wasn't beautiful in the conventional sense made it even more thrilling for her, as she knew she had to rely chiefly on her intellect and her wiles, and sex for her was ultimately more about the mind than the body.

Shortly before she had bedded Kiera (who she was still seeing), she had had a fling with an intern at work (after she had left the company) and this experience both reminded her of herself at that age (the girl was 21) and also gave her a taste for what many lesbians of her acquaintance called 'fresh meat'. This particular girl had had some experience with other women, but Eleanor had an as yet unfulfilled yearning for virgins as far as lesbian love was concerned.

She had also just received an email of all things from Koming, who had been holding on to her email address for all the time since they had met, having obtained it from the hotel on the pretext of Eleanor having dropped an earring in her room, which she wanted to return. The Balinese woman (who would be around 40 now, Eleanor estimated) was visiting England for the first time in a couple of months and wondered if Eleanor would like to meet up.

'Would an alcoholic like another drink?' Eleanor thought when he read that.

At 32, Eleanor felt that the best years of her life lay ahead of her. She had made her big mistakes already, she liked to tell herself, although she knew that with her low threshold for boredom and her penchant for living life in the fast lane, she was going to face plenty more bumps in the road. But now, at least, she felt she had the tools and the experience to negotiate them.

THE END (for now)