Seduce Me Page 19

  His eyes upon your face.

  I twine myself around the pole and, with the same sinuous movements a snake makes, slip and slide down the pole until I sink to my knees with the pole against my back.

  His lips caress your skin.

  I stand and, holding onto the pole seductively, with pointed toe, high step around it. Just when he thinks I am going to push my ass up into the air and sway seductively, I flip my body over and touch the floor before grasping the metal tightly with both hands and lifting my legs clean off the ground. My body is now in a spread-eagled position perpendicular to the pole. Held purely by the strength of my hands I start spinning slowly around the pole, my legs held as far apart as the hands.

  It’s more than I can stand.

  As the music builds and picks up speed I increase my speed, the air rushing into my face, my legs scissoring the air, the knees bending, the legs moving upwards, all the while spinning faster and faster and suddenly I am upside down and still spinning like a top.

  Why does my heart cry?

  A whole orchestra of violins and cellos goes crazy in the most dramatic and sweeping ballad of the entire piece. I execute a turn with a bent knee and maneuvering myself upright on the pole begin the journey up the pole, the same deliberate dip and rise.

  Just don’t deceive me.

  At the top I prepare for the finale. I split my legs wide. Hold that spread position, with only the tiny strip of wet red net fabric to cover my opening, and wait for the perfect movement. When it comes I loosen my grip and begin my free fall head first. It is like the death drop. Even over the music I hear him gasp.

  And please believe me when I say I love.

  Two feet from the floor I squeeze my thighs on the pole and halt my drop. I am face down and perpendicular to the floor, held by my strong thigh muscles and the strength of one hand, the other outstretched over my head. At the sudden clash of cymbals I release my hold on the pole and fall flat on my face to the ground. Silence. Then. Guitar. Violin.

  Slowly, I begin to roll towards him, pausing every time I am on my side. Like Cleopatra rolling out of a carpet towards Mark Anthony. The music grows and grows. Every movement I make is deliberately submissive, designed to captivate, like the animal that offers its throat to its mate. I reach the foot of the bed.

  The timing is perfect. Many voices mingle to form the crescendo.

  Roxannnne, Roxaannnne…

  I am panting. Not just with exertion, but with need and desire. He appears at the edge of the bed and wrapping his large artist’s hands around my ribcage pulls me up, very much as one would do a mermaid from the ocean, onto the bed.

  ‘I need to get my mouth on that wet, unbelievably delicious pussy of yours.’

  ‘How do you know I’m wet?’ I pant, on my back.

  ‘Because, my little puss in boots,’ he says very softly, sliding my knickers down my legs and dangling the little red thing, ‘I saw this…’ And clearly I see the wet patch in the gusset. A small shiver goes through me. ‘And became very hungry for pussy butter.’ He goes to put his mouth between my thighs, but I palm his throat, as he had done to me on our first night.

  ‘No, this one’s on me,’ I say, and lifting myself up change positions. I straddle him; sit on his chest, on his good shirt. It is not sex, it is attention, it is flattery—that is what no living man can get enough of.

  I shift down and unbutton his trousers. He is wearing white briefs.

  ‘White underpants? You know I can’t resist you in white underpants,’ I breathe.

  A lone pulse beats in his temple. God, how could I have been so stupid? All the while my real feelings for him were staring at me. All the while I was falling deeper and deeper and my own stubborn stupidity kept me focused on Jack.

  I bend forward and take him into the hot wet cave of my mouth, and suck the shaft in so deep there is nowhere else for him to go. What could he do but buckle and explode deep in my throat? Slowly I begin to unbutton his shirt. Expose the warm skin.

  ‘You blew my mind…’ he says, and expertly unclasps my bra. Sweat has glued it to my skin. He peels it off and my breasts pop out. He rolls the nipples between his fingers. ‘But I still need to get my mouth on those voluptuous pussy lips.’

  I rise to my knees, straddle his chest, and push my crotch towards him. My pussy is so tantalizingly close to his chin he can surely smell my arousal. I look down at him. ‘What? These old, swollen things?’

  He eyes my crotch greedily. Inside my boots, my toes curl with anticipation.

  ‘They do look a little…erm…used.’

  ‘Used and bitten and ravished. Three times a week.’

  ‘Come and sit on my face.’

  I walk on my knees up to his mouth and suspend my sex over his mouth, the inner folds exposed, throbbing, and silently screaming for release. I am buzzing inside. Secretions of lust leak from me as if I am a faulty tap.

  ‘Don’t be gentle with her,’ I command.

  He flicks his tongue out and I raise my hips out of reach. He grabs my hips and pulls me down onto his mouth.

  ‘Ohhh...’ My head falls back. The silky warmth of that dexterous mouth. The suction. The suction. It is killing me. I begin to sizzle inside. My fingers grip the headboard as if my life depends on it.

  ‘Oh God. Oh Vann…’ And I can no longer hold on. I grind into his teeth as the orgasm overwhelms me, my skin tingling, my mind a white flare.

  ‘Too soon,’ he growls and tumbles me over. He sits up. ‘Onto all fours.’ I right myself and obey instantly, my inner slut mewling. I hear the sound of the foil.

  ‘Don’t.’

  He pauses.

  ‘I’m on the pill.’

  For a second I feel his naked head against my soaked opening and moan and then my cunt becomes a sheath for his cock, as he grabs my hips with both hands and ruts and rides us both home.

  Fucked, my cunt in a spasm, I fall forward and hear his ragged breath as he falls on top of me. Our bodies are slippery. I grip my muscles hard to keep his seed inside me but it trickles out helplessly.

  ‘God you’re beautiful.’

  ‘I don’t need to be wooed.’ My voice is hoarse, a stranger’s, my breathing viciously quick. ‘I need to be taken. Again and again.’

  And that is what he does. Again and again. Until the night sky becomes pale and we are both so exhausted we curl up against each other and sleep.

  Thirty-four

  First gather your facts, then distort them at your leisure.

  —Mark Twain

  I watch him sleeping.

  The lines that held his face so tightly last night are all relaxed. He looks so beautiful I want to weep. He opens his eyes. They are soft and slumberous and not yet attuned to the world. He whispers my name.

  ‘Julie.’

  A smile ghosts my lips.

  For an instant there is silent communication between us. An odd moment that we are both caught in it… A string of connection—like the first time our eyes met. When I was a bridesmaid and he the best man and he winked at me across a crowded church. Then he deliberately breaks the moment and, turning away, sits up. He pushes his hair away from his forehead. I squeeze my eyes shut. I won’t give up. I open my eyes and, reaching out a hand, touch his back. He stiffens.

  ‘Julie…’ he starts to say.

  I sit up, the sheet falling away from my body, and clamp my hand across his mouth. His eyes travel down to my bare breasts. ‘Before you say anything else I want to show you something.’

  He blinks and nods.

  ‘Thank you.’

  We get dressed, get into his car and drive to Kilburn. I ask him to stop outside my house. We go up the stairs and down the corridor without exchanging a single word. My stomach is in knots. I am so nervous I feel like throwing up. In front of my door I stop and put my key into it. As soon as I open the door the stale smell rushes out, engulfing us. I look up at Vann. His face tells me everything I need to know. Shock. Disgust.

  ‘This is my ho
use.’

  He swallows. I take him to the living room. My mother is too shocked to stand or speak.

  ‘Vann, this is my mother. Mum, meet Vann.’

  Vann moves forwards and takes her soft swollen hand in his.

  ‘Come,’ I say to Vann and take him upstairs to my room. I unlock the door. ‘This is my room.’

  He follows me into my scrupulously clean bedroom. I turn around and watch him close the door, lean with his back to it, and look around him. His face is carefully blank.

  I point towards the wall with the bits of Blue tack still sticking on it. ‘That wall there used to be full of photos of Jack, some even blown up to poster size, but I took them all down the day before yesterday. I wanted to tear them all into tiny pieces, throw them away and pretend I had never been so stupid, but when it came to it I didn’t have the heart. It would have meant that I wasted so many years of my life. They’re in that drawer.’

  I point to the lowest drawer of my dresser. His eyes follow my finger. He seems bemused.

  Here goes. Total honestly.

  ‘I kissed Jack on Friday.’

  That makes his eyes jump back to me. The cobra rears its head fiercely.

  ‘I called him up, went to his house and asked him to kiss me. And he’s a good kisser, I’ll give him that, but you know what? I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ I look pleadingly into his eyes. ‘Vann, you’re the one I think of all day, you’re the one I respond to even when I don’t want to. You’re the one I love. That crush I had on Jack was based on hot air. It was just a fantasy created by a lonely, terribly, terribly unhappy girl.’

  He opens his mouth to say something, but I hold my hand up.

  ‘There are other things you don’t know about me. I’m not a good friend to Lana. When you met me I was jealous of her and I hated her, or at least I thought I did, but the real truth is I hated myself. I hated everything about me.

  ‘Remember you once asked me about my dad and I didn’t want to talk about him? Well, my dad was a drunk. “You are nothing but an animal,” my mother would sneer as he walked through the door, and it would all kick off. He would hit my mother and my brother, but never me. He loved me. Sometimes when he was very drunk he would fall on the couch and lift one arm so I could climb in and the arm would come back down. It was warm and nice in there.

  ‘But one day after a particularly furious bust-up my mother packed a suitcase and we left home while he was still asleep. They temporarily housed us in a bed and breakfast on Cromwell Street. It’s gone now. They pulled it down and built something else, but then it was full of other broken people like us; prostitutes, asylum seekers, single mothers and their children.

  ‘We were having breakfast when my father walked through the door. He was swaying. His eyes were large, glassy and haunted, a drunk’s eyes. “I’ve come for Julie,” he said. My mother did a strange thing. She looked at me with cold, strange eyes and tight lips.

  “Let her choose. Do you want to stay with me or go with your father?” I looked at her. At how cold her eyes were and I said, “Stay with mummy.” My father turned around, stumbled and walked away. I think I regretted my decision before he was out of the door, but I didn’t do anything about it. I never saw him again, until I was fifteen and we heard he died in a ditch. I’ve never forgiven myself for that decision. I should have gone with him. He needed me. She didn’t. She had my brother. She would have gone on just fine without me.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Sugar. He was a grown man.’

  ‘And one more thing. Don’t think you’ll have changed my life by giving me that painting or that you can wash your hands of me that easily, because I’ll never sell that painting. It will be with me till the day I die. If you really want to change my life I suggest you take me with you wherever you go.’

  ‘Will you come with me to Paris?’

  I am so shocked my mouth falls open. ‘Say that again,’ I whisper.

  ‘Come with me to Paris.’

  ‘Really?’

  He smiles.

  ‘So you do care for me.’

  He puts out a hand, pulls me towards his hard body, and starts kissing my neck. ‘Care?’ he murmurs. ‘How blind can you be? I’m crazy about you, Sugar. I have been since that first night. It was a knife in my heart to know that all the time you were with me you wished you were with him.’

  ‘My poor darling. I’m sorry I was so cruel. Sometimes I would feel it, those invisible strings pulling me towards you, but I was so insanely obstinate, I’d break them by mentioning Jack. The truth is I was only reminding myself because I had forgotten him.’

  ‘I even started to hate the guy.’

  ‘Will you ever forgive me?’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. I love you.’

  It feels as if my heart is going to burst out of my chest. His lips trail delicious kisses along my neck. ‘I can be a bit slow on the uptake. So,’ I pull my neck away from him and look into his eyes. ‘I want to know everything. Tell me what you felt from the first moment we met.’

  ‘When I saw you for the first time in the church, I could hardly believe my eyes. I had spent years travelling the world looking for something that would fire my blood and bring my canvas to life, and there you were totally unaware of your beauty. I had already decided to ask you to dance when I got an even better opportunity thrown in my path.

  ‘It was like fate saying, ‘here have this.’ But when I came to find you to say goodbye, I heard you refer to me as the son of a servant, and I thought, maybe I had been wrong. I certainly never expected you to turn up, so when I heard your voice on my intercom it shocked me. I thought to myself, play this cool Vann. And I did until I gave you a forkful of my mash and saw the way you ate it, I knew then you were starving, for food, for attention, for love. From that moment on there was no more resisting you. That night I was not teaching you how to be Yehonala. I was Yehonala and you were the Emperor. I had one night with which to impress and captivate you.’

  ‘You sure did that. I was astonished. The things you made me feel. You made sex beautiful.’

  He chuckles. ‘The beautiful way you owned that pole last night?’

  I am suddenly shy. ‘That was a bit brazen, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Totally.’ He grins. ‘I’ll be wanting a repeat performance tonight, by the way.’

  ‘You have to deserve it,’ I say with mock severity.

  ‘Let me see. How about my agent told me last night that I’ve got a Getty Center commission for a series of paintings in the same vein?’

  ‘Oh! Wow! I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Sugar.’

  ‘Vann?’

  ‘Mnnnnn.’

  ‘Who is Monfort?’

  He sighs heavily.

  ‘You are afraid of him, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Only a fool with nothing to lose would not fear them. They know no boundaries.’

  ‘Why is Blake not scared of him then?’

  ‘Because Blake is one of them. In the strict hierarchy of the brotherhood Blake is far more powerful than Monfort, but because Blake is moving away from the agenda he is open to challenges. His love for Lana also means that he has become vulnerable. It is how they get everybody—find a weak spot, exploit it. But Blake walked away the winner last night.’

  ‘But you told Lana, it is her love for him that is saving him.’

  ‘With or without Blake the agenda will be implemented, but because of Lana and his love for her, he has discovered the humanity that he lost to the brotherhood.’

  ‘What is the agenda?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘It has to do with the deliberate poisoning of the earth and the extinction of mankind, hasn’t it?’

  For an instant he looks surprised. ‘Lana’s diary?’ he hazards.

  I nod. ‘Why? Don’t they, their children and their grandchildren have to live on this earth too?’r />
  ‘The answer is staring you in the face. They always hide everything in plain sight. Think. What is the one movement that is more inexorable and unstoppable than anything else? It pervades the entertainment industry, politics, military ‘breakthroughs’ and scientific circles. No matter who you are or where you are you will be exposed to it. You see it in commercials, music videos, movies, and hear about it being discussed at the highest levels.’

  I frown. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You watch music videos all the time, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Lady Gaga, Will I Am, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rihanna… What do all their slick videos have in common? What do they glamorize?’

  In my old life I would have said, awesome designer clothes, catchy tunes, fantastic dance moves, and brilliant choreography. The new Sugar knows: it is not those things.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Don’t give up so easily, Sugar. This is a little test to see how successful the controllers have been.’

  The clue must lie in the names he has given me. I try to think with the destruction of the planet in mind. Lady Gaga coming out of an egg, Beyonce wearing riot police gear, Will I Am with his robot themed videos and Rhianna flashing the one eye symbol—come to think of it all of them flash that.

  ‘The coming police state and robots?’

  ‘Bravo to the brotherhood.’ There is no joy in his face. ‘The coming superhuman is disguised as a courageous and exciting project, but its true implications are vast and horrifying. Just like splitting the atom can go both ways. There is no desire or quest to ‘evolve’ all humankind. If there was then the one percent of the population wouldn’t own more than half of the world’s wealth.

  ‘The true aim is to alter the human genome to survive under a toxic sky, as two species; the new homo-superiors, in reality, the homo-predators and what is left of a successful depopulation strategy—the genetically engineered and chipped slaves. The agenda in a nutshell is the quest for godhood, to live for hundreds of years and rule with unchallenged domination.’

  ‘Do we do nothing at all about it, then?’

  ‘What do you want to do, Sugar? Tell everyone? They would only brand you a fruitcake or a conspiracy nut. It is as I told Lana: what you fight you become. Are the Inquisitors better than the witches they burnt? The real battle is inside you. If every single person on earth refused to lift a gun, propel a drone, hurt another human being in the name of democracy, or ‘freedom’, or whatever shit they call their murderous ways, this world would be a paradise.’