Now, when I look back upon my time with him, I cannot help but touch myself. Here, between these damp, pulsing lips which used to part so obligingly for him. My fingers do not move roughly in the way that he would manhandle me in the frenzy of our fucking, but deftly, in long, languid strokes, as he might caress me afterwards. It was then, when the storm of need had been quelled for a short while, that he would tell me I was beautiful (which I am not), his princess and, of course, his chosen one.
You see, there were two sides to him, as there were to me. Opposites. Poles of a magnet, drawing me to him inexorably. A moth to a flame. Choose your own metaphor. But this was how it was during that time when he held me hostage to desire and freed me from the slavery of choice.
I do not know how I was chosen or why. But I do realize, with hindsight, that during those preceding months, as late Spring mellowed into early Summer, he was marking me out from all those other sad women who were waiting for a man such as him to enter their lives. Was I so pathetic? I wouldn't have said so. Not then. But, with the benefit of hindsight, I suppose that I was waiting too. Just biding my time until he would come for me and, by seizing me, release me from the mere existence that my life had become.
By then I had been living in Robert's flat for almost a year. He was, I suppose, my first serious boyfriend. There had been other lovers but no more than might be thought normal for a healthy and reasonably attractive 23 year old woman. To the outside world, I guess, we were a picture of contentment. We had friends, jobs, money -- as much as many couples would ever want. But there was something missing. A void. Yes, a deepening emptiness where my sex life should have been. For although Robert had always been a thoughtful, diligent lover, he was too careful and too caring to satisfy me. In short, I had come to feel that the lovemaking we shared was not my own. It was as if I had borrowed another woman's clothes and become trapped in them. What did I want instead? At that time I had no idea. But there was someone who did.
During the last three months of our life together Robert's interest in sex had waned and I might as well have been a widow. If we had made love a dozen times during those long, cold months, it was certainly no more than that, and always at my initiative. And as a cactus will flourish in a desert, so fantasies grew and prospered in the wilderness that was my love life. I would find myself at work becoming aroused by day-dreams in which the most unlikely men would force me to commit unspeakable acts. And, in those reveries, I felt more turned on than I had ever been by Robert or any earlier lover.
So this how things were before he rescued me from that life.
It was lunchtime one Saturday in late May. Hardly a common event because Robert and I had just enjoyed morning sex: sleepy, waking-up sex that began with drowsy caresses and soon became a hurried, frantic coupling, and -- rarer still -- he had managed to bring me to an orgasm that, though somewhat perfunctory, had renewed all those tender feelings I once harboured for him.
Without showering and barely brushing my hair, I pulled on a summer dress -- no bra, nor panties -- and we stumbled out into the sunshine and along to the coffee house around the corner from his flat. We cuddled up on the settee and devoured steaming cups of scolding cappuccino with almond croissants. It was as though we had just met and were in the first heady weeks of mutual discovery. Except that Robert then announced that he had to leave to meet his friends in a local pub for some televised football match.
So there I sat, deserted. Absent mindedly I was spoon-feeding myself cold, milky froth when a man walked into the coffee house. At first I didn't really notice him but his presence seemed to charge the atmosphere with an alien energy. I looked up and he was standing before me, still and silent but demanding my attention. He was vaguely familiar: a man I might have passed in the street, or queued beside him in a shop. Tallish, maybe forty or so, he was wearing a grey linen suit, a deep blue open-necked shirt and expensive-looking shoes. His hair was steel grey. He wasn't handsome, in fact he was almost ugly, but nevertheless attractive. To me, at least.
All that happened thereafter now seems pre-ordained, as if I had conjured this stranger from my fantasies. Perhaps I had. It is certainly true that as events unfolded I could almost sense their happening before they occurred, as if I was acting out a role in a play I had already rehearsed.
The mystery man addressed me unsmilingly. 'Come on,' he said. His voice was quiet, but brooked no dissent. 'Let's go.'
He held out his hand, beckoning me.
I didn't ask who he was or where we were going. It simply didn't occur to me to do so. I merely rose from the settee, moved as if by a force of nature. The waitress looked intrigued by this little drama and watched to see what happened. I shrugged resignedly, like a doctor on call, summoned to an emergency. I didn't feel pity or regret, merely reluctant obedience.
The man opened the door and I followed. Outside the weather had turned and we felt the first spits of a shower falling from dark, thunderous clouds. The air was suffocatingly thick. He hardly noticed but, seizing me by the wrist, marched me down the road. I had to half-run, half-shuffle to keep pace, like a naughty little girl being dragged home by a strict parent. Puzzled shoppers, huddling in doorways, watched as we passed by but, as I caught their eyes, each looked away shamefacedly, pretending not to notice us.
What was I feeling? Fear certainly, and bewilderment, but excitement too. A sexual thrill I had never known before, not even in my fantasies. My senses .... Because this was real. There would be no waking up, no stopping at that crucial moment. This man, I knew, would take me all the way to those places I had yearned for and dreaded.
A hundred yards down the road, we turned into Buckingham Street and left the hustle and bustle of the shops behind. By now the rain was falling heavily, drenching us with a tropical force. We gathered pace so that I could barely keep up. Two more turns and we entered a mews that I had never noticed. A few entrances along, he stopped and unlocked a blue door in a sadly neglected tenement. As he did so, soaked and breathless, I leant against the wall and studied him. His face was tanned in a weather-beaten way and clean-shaven, his nose was slightly bent. He was muscular but not burly. About him there was an air of proprietoral confidence.
Once the door was open, he pulled me up a flight of rickety, uncarpeted stairs. I stumbled but he didn't stop for me, merely pulled me to my feet, and strode onwards. At the top of the stairs there was another door. He slotted a key into the lock. Despite all apprehension (or maybe because of it), I could sense myself becoming yet more aroused by his stern aloofness, by the memory of my lovemaking with Robert only an hour or so before, and by my utter helplessness. I heard myself panting and smelled the pungent stink of sex, sweat and rain rising steamily from my pores.
Beyond the door was a small flat. From the hallway I could see into a bedroom and sitting room. Each was only scantily furnished. My mystery man still didn't speak but stooped to pick up some mail and, climbing to his feet, steadied himself by gripping the back of my bare thigh. He pulled against me and his fingers dug into my skin. As he rose, his hand felt its way up under my dress, over my hip to my belly. For a moment I stood passively as his fingers explored between my legs which parted meekly for him. My breath was catching in my throat but nevertheless I gave out a little yelp. He removed his hand and stroked my face with his damp fingers.
My heart was in my mouth as he motioned me into the bedroom. The room was dominated by a wide cast-iron bed. Otherwise, there were only a couple of old chairs, bedside tables and a large rug hanging on the whitewashed wall. The wooden floor had been stripped and was carpetless. I doubted that he lived there. Perhaps, I thought, he just kept the flat for bringing women like me. 'What do you want?' I said, although I was already certain of the answer.
'You, of course,' is all he replied.
'Why?' I asked, the word dying on my lips even as I uttered it.
'Because I can see what he can't see, what even you haven't seen until now.' His eyes were dark and coldly insistent.
He pulled me to him and kissed me roughly. He tasted of tobacco, money and desire. I suppose that I could have offered resistance, but I didn't want to and anyway I had forfeited that privilege when I left the coffee house.
When we broke off our embrace, he said, 'You can go if you want.' But I didn't move. Then we kissed again. His tongue was in my mouth, swiping across my teeth, and his hand was in my lank hair, tugging my head back. I wound my leg around his thigh and he grabbed it with his hand and lifted it to his hip.
'You smell of his sweat,' he said.
'I'm sorry,' I mumbled.
