Seven
The sensation is exquisite. On the horizon a climax glimmers.
‘Don’t stop… Please don’t stop,’ I cry.
My teeth start clenching, my head glides on the floor, then I am gone like a spinning top. I come back to the marble floor in waves.
‘I really, really like having you inside me.’
He raises his head and looks searchingly at me. Then he puts a hand out and gently brushes away a damp lock of hair. ‘And I really, really like being inside you,’ he says and inside me his cock twitches.
I giggle and wriggle and wrap my hands around his neck and pull him down. ‘Are we going to spend the whole night on the marble floor? I think it’s really beautiful but I kinda like pillows, duvets and mattresses.’
‘So do I, baby,’ he says, and with a single graceful movement bounds up and, pulling me up, puts his shoulder to my stomach and hauls me up and over his shoulder. He carries me nude, but for my shiny black boots.
‘You are such a caveman,’ I scold, shaking my ass suggestively.
‘Just claiming what is mine,’ he says cheerfully, and with a firm slap on my naked bottom, carries on up the stairs while I giggle like a crazy coot. I’ve never been carried up a staircase. It is a heavenly feeling. One I would have scoffed at and never thought I would enjoy.
Another singer I don’t recognize is crooning, Is this love? Jaron doesn’t look old but… His music.
‘How old are you?’ I ask his back while I watch the movement his pert ass makes as he climbs the stairs.
‘I’m a thousand years old, Billie.’
His mood has changed. For some reason I can’t imagine, he seems sad and unreachable. I try to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Are you a vampire or something?’
‘No, but I’m too old for you anyway.’
‘You don’t look a day over thirty.’
He laughs. It’s a bitter sound. ‘I’m thirty-two, but people like me, we’re like meteorites. We don’t last. We are bright, really bright, we can light up the sky with our fire, but we burn out and hurt the people around us. But I’m not going to harm you. I’m going to be gone long before I do that to you.’
I don’t like the sound of that. For a strange reason it frightens me. I remind myself that we’re just fucking. He has a girlfriend. I know nothing about him. I’m playing his mistress. And so far so good. I won’t let him spoil it by talking about things that are outside our reach.
‘What the fuck are you talking about, Jaron?’
It seems he’s had enough of this strange talk too. ‘No more talking, Billie love.’
The words Billie and love in the same sentence from his lips. So odd it is obviously a slip of the tongue.
‘No more talking, Billie Black,’ he corrects himself.
He takes me into a totally white bedroom. It is like a slice of heaven. There might be clouds under the bed. I know instantly that it is not his bedroom. He throws me on the white bed. The silk duvet is cold on my skin. I bounce and quickly raise myself on my elbows. He looks down at me with hooded eyes.
‘This is not your bedroom, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Is this where you take the girls you…like?’
‘No.’
‘Why have you brought me here then?’
‘Do you know you talk too much, Miss Black?’
‘Why does every fucking thing have to be such a secret? Why can’t you just be cool and tell me?’
‘I can’t have you and you can’t have me. Why pretend?’
I sit up and cross my arms over my midriff. ‘Just so we are clear, I don’t want to marry you or anything like that. I’m quite happy to just think of you as the most enormous erection I have ever had the good fortune to come across. So stop being so fucking secretive. It’s irritating.’
As if I had waved a magic wand the other Jaron, the smooth-talking operator, comes back. Un-fucking-believable. I stare at him in awe. What is he? A multiple personality. He looks me up and down so slowly my nipples tingle. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes when you’re irritated, babe,’ he says very, very softly.
He bends and kisses me, but his kiss betrays him. It is not sexy. It is long and lingering and almost desperate. It reminds me of the way my grandfather grasped my hand when he knew he was dying. Like a claw. Even after he died his hand was tightly clenched around mine. I was so shocked I did not move. My mother came and disentangled his thin hand away.
‘Where is he gone?’ I asked.
‘To heaven.’ My mother sniffed.
‘Is it a horrible place?’ I asked.
‘Of course not. It’s a wonderful place. You only get to go there if you are good.’
‘So why didn’t he want to go then?’
My mother had no satisfactory answer for me. Why do we fear dying if heaven is waiting?
Jaron is looking at me with a crazy expression on his face. My lips form a single shivery word: ‘Jaron?’
‘I want you to take all of me,’ he says roughly.
‘OK,’ I whisper. The idea is unfamiliar and exciting.