Her Hungry Heart (5 page)

He whispered first beautiful things to her while he fucked her, and then, as his rhythm and thrusts quickened, he became more base, more obscene, before losing his English and assaulting her with sexual instructions in a confusion of languages. She obeyed his every impulse. They mastered
each other, lost themselves in their lust, became violent. She inflicted great weals across his back with her fingernails, bit him. They were locked together, and her pelvic movements matched his. They were in a sexual frenzy. Finally he had the stamina to master her, to bring her to a point of no return. The sensations kept invading her, no matter how much she begged him to stop. She fought against losing consciousness during a stream of orgasms she experienced when he fucked her in turn from one orifice to another. They were both lost in the wilderness of sensation, and it was then – when instinct alone told them that they were giving each other more than they had ever given another human being; when at last they sensed there was no separateness between them – that they came together in a crescendo of utter bliss. It was a long and luscious orgasm that seemed to go on forever and to sweep them away with it.

Barbara lay in his arms drifting somewhere between the conscious world and some ethereal place. She sensed in herself a femaleness, not just her own but that of all her sisters under the skin. She wished for them all, at sometime in their lives, to find themselves at that place where she had been with Karel Stefanik, where she was now. She understood her search, their search, for the right man, now as she had never understood it before. That need to find the man who inspires complete trust, who has in him both lust and love for women. How easy, when you find such a man, to give yourself up to him, to die to the world, to live for nothing but those moments of sexual ecstasy with him, as she was doing at that very moment.

But how many do find the Karel Stefaniks of this world, so they can lose themselves in them and sex? Feel safe enough, secure enough, to relinquish their hold on life and vanish into orgasm? she wondered. How many women, especially intelligent women such as herself, with fierce pride, in control of their love and their life, do find the man
who wants to make real their sexual desires, fantasies even, as Karel did? How often, if ever, did they, as she did now, love a man enough to want to bathe in her lover’s come, to have quenched her thirst with it, to hold within her that special elixir and enjoy sexual enslavement?

Lying entwined in each other’s arms, the firelight playing over their bodies, she watched him dozing and thought about those things. Her heart was as full of him as her body. She revelled in the miracle of finding and experiencing such a man, a stranger. She dozed off and even in their sleep they did not lose the tight grip they had on each other. Twice more he came and she climaxed with him before they fell into a deep sleep.

The room was bathed in bright sunlight, the fire no more than a mound of white ash when they awoke. Even that they did together.

‘Good morning,’ he wished her.

She touched his face with the tips of her fingers. Ran one of them over his lips. He opened his mouth, and, sucking the finger gently between his teeth, gave her a love-bite. There was about him a new tenderness she had not seen before: it touched her deeply. She shivered. He assumed she was chilled and reached to draw the white, fox-trimmed cashmere blanket over them. He was wrong, she was not the least chilled lying in his arms.

‘You’re a wonderful dancer. Thank you for last night. And, yes, it is a good morning. Good morning. Good morning, to you.’ And she smiled and kissed him lightly several times on his lips and face. Barbara felt very happy.

Cosy, a strange word to use with him, but that was exactly how she felt, still entwined in his embrace, their nakedness now covered by the luxuriously soft blanket. They remained like that for some time while they struggled from their sleep into real waking. Finally, taking her in his arms, he carried her through her bedroom and into her bathroom.

They sat facing each other in the green marble sunken bath that steamed with the scent of almond and apple oils. The water was slippery smooth and caressed their skin sensuously. They bathed themselves and each other and allowed the luxury of their bath to take them over and deliver them into yet another kind of oblivion. Liquid notes from Bizet’s
Pearl Fishers
filled the room from next door.

He raised the sponge and squeezed. Rivulets of the steamy, scented water ran over her breasts. Again and again he repeated the exercise. He seemed mesmerized by the action. When he came to himself, he wrung the water from the sponge and very carefully washed away the remnants of her make-up from the night before. The tips of her long blonde hair trailed in the water. He played with them lazily. He asked her, ‘Happy?’

‘Very. I feel I want to sing. All of me wants to sing. My heart, my toes, my nose.’ He began to laugh at her. ‘And you? I want so much for you to be happy too.’

‘I had forgotten what real pleasure could be like. What extraordinary sex could do to me. That there are still in this horrible world beautiful, luxurious women such as you, who can give me pleasure. Am I happy? Am I glad? I feel like springtime. Young and new, fresh and full of blossom.’

With that, in one swift action, he pulled her roughly towards him, spreading her legs around his body. He thrust his erect penis, still immersed in the deep bath water, into her and pulled her down on top of him, careful to arrange her legs so they did not disengage. There they lay, covered to their necks in the satin-smooth hot water. Kissing, making love, this time with words of affection while they explored each other, they searched for new sexual sensations together and found them.

They made love all day and the following night. They remained by choice in the grip of Eros, and laughed and played with their appetite for sexual excesses. And the more sex they had, the more secure they were in taking that next
step further. Nothing fazed them: no sexual fantasy that was expressed, no sexual request. And now it was her turn, and he became
her
sexual slave. She tied him to the bedposts. He was to be the passive partner, teased and tortured sexually by her. She was to be in control of their lovemaking, and that was what their sexual excesses had become. How clever and imaginative she was in this new role she played with him. It was a new kind of excitement for him. So he gave himself to her in sex no less than she had given herself to him. He had no need for bondage to give her what she wanted. So he slipped the knots easily, and she watched him submit to her voluntarily, and that passionate act on his part became for them yet another form of arousal.

Passion, desire, took them over yet again as it had so many times during their days and nights of wild, unbridled indulgence. When he had played the passive role long enough, it was with a degree of violence that he took command of her and control over their sexual liaison. And they entered that world of sexual abandon that they were so happy in. For one last time they stilled their hungry hearts.

They lay exhausted on the silk sheets and among lace-trimmed pillows, each in a personal silence trying to ease back into a world other than the one each had created. A world where they would have to deal with themselves as responsible individuals, confronting people and places and time. It was he who broke the silence, the spell they had woven around themselves. ‘Out of necessity, not out of choice – may I use the telephone?’

When he replaced the receiver, he turned on his side to face her. He smiled. She knew that sort of smile. She had after all seen it on other men’s faces, had used it herself. It was a smile that was meant to be a compliment. One used in place of words that might cause embarrassment, or even worse suggest love and commitment now that the sexual tryst was over. Karel’s smile may have told her that but his
violet eyes told her something else too. He was no less hungry for her than when they first met. He did indeed have a hungry heart. He placed his arm around her shoulders and drew her close to him. Though she was in her lover’s arms, feeling warmth and affection, adoration even, she could also feel him drifting away from her. Neither of them made any attempt to stop him. She turned to face him. With crooked finger she rubbed lightly the stubble shadowing his face.

‘How long do we have?’

‘I fly out sometime this evening.’

‘I think you’ll want to do something about this.’ And she rubbed her chin against the roughness of his, and placed an affectionate kiss on its cleft.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I can do something about it. My brother keeps a room here in my flat. You can use his shaving things. Wait here, I’ll bring you one of his robes.’

The banality of life was moving in on them, planes, shaving, a robe, separating them. She should have felt some anxiety about that, but she didn’t. She felt closer to him for it. Was that perverse on her part? she wondered. A trick of the emotions to compensate for his leaving her? Somehow she thought not. He had warned her: only a beginning, no middle, no end. And in the few days they had been together they had lived a whole lifetime more intimately than many couples who have years. What need she be anxious about?

Karel watched her walk from the bed. He wanted to remember every inch of her naked body, a voluptuous body he had loved so well, one that had given him a taste of life, a will to love again. There was something in the way she moved, a certain power that only women have and that he adored. Every step she took was self-assured and provocative, exclaiming, ‘Look at me. Love me.’ She turned, as if she were hearing his thoughts. He could see in her face how close they really were. She loved him. He
experienced a tremor of delight. He liked being loved by such a remarkable woman.

She turned back to the cupboard to pluck from her wardrobe a dressing-gown, and felt his eyes still eating into her flesh. But not just her flesh this time: her soul as well. She closed her eyes and allowed herself for a moment to feel the pain of losing him. And then the pain passed, and she turned around as she slipped her arms into the honey-coloured cashmere dressing-gown with turned back cuffs and a hem of rich sable. She walked back to the bed and her lover.

‘How grand, how splendid a robe. It looks so Russian. Yes, you look like a Tzarina. Leave it open,’ he commanded. ‘Just a little while longer. Instead of my own Naked Maja, I have my naked Tsarina, my barefoot Contessa. If only I still had a palace staircase for you, a great painter at hand …’

‘And where would you exhibit me?’

‘Where everyone could see you. The dining room. Yes, I would hang you over the gilded console there, and the men would all want you, and envy me. The women would simply be jealous of you and your place of honour.’

She sat down next to him on the bed, and ran her fingers through his hair several times. He kissed her hands and her breasts. She closed her eyes and he kissed them and licked her lashes. When she opened them she saw and felt even closer to him. Neither needed to say the word: happiness. It was theirs, and it was as simple as that.

‘And who would you choose to paint me?’ she asked, enjoying his little fantasy as much as he did.

‘I don’t have to think twice about that. Henri Matisse. He would adore you, your sensuality. He would find you very beautiful. Yes, Matisse could paint you so. Then every man who saw his portrait of you would want to lick you, the very paint of you, off the canvas.’

They both laughed. ‘How amusing. You have a delirious imagination.’

‘You seem surprised?’ He gave her that charming, hurt, somewhat innocent look she had seen before.

‘No, not surprised. I have after all experienced several imaginative moments with you.’

That appeared to please him. It also silenced them both. He raised her hands to his lips and closed his eyes while he kissed one hand and then the other. He was hiding his emotions, and she was thankful that he could not see hers. When he opened his eyes, he reached out and began hooking up her still open robe.

‘Ching Lee is back today.’ She reached for the telephone and arranged for their breakfast. Then she showed him to her brother’s room and bath. When she turned to leave he asked, ‘Must you go?’

She watched him while he shaved and bathed and dressed in the uniform that had been found scattered around the living room: the shirt laundered, the jacket and trousers pressed by Ching Lee. He wore his Royal Air Force uniform with great style. It nearly prompted her to ask how a Czech happened to be an English officer, but she thought better of it. Of asking him anything. Questions were not part of their affair. Was that not evident, he having not asked her a single personal thing about herself?

When he was dressed they walked arm-in-arm into another room, the library, a handsome place furnished in rich dark mahogany. An English partner’s desk set in the middle of the room had on it a silver tray and a pitcher of Bloody Marys, a plate of curled prosciutto and warm squares of buttered toast. He seemed delighted with the room. He went directly to the shelves and began examining the books. She filled two cut crystal goblets for them, and stuck a stick of celery in each, presenting him with his after kissing him on the back of his neck.

He took the goblet from her and asked, ‘What other surprises lie in this flat? This is a wonderful library.’ He touched the rim of his glass to hers. They drank.

‘Not too much prosciutto. That American breakfast you asked for is in the making. I’m going to dress while you browse. After breakfast I’ll surprise you and open another door.’ And she was gone.

When she returned to the library, she lingered at the entrance and watched him for a few minutes. He was standing at the window looking pensive. He appeared to be a million miles away. It was several minutes before he realized that she was in the room and turned to face her. For the first time she saw incredible pain in his eyes, a sadness of extraordinary depth. She marvelled that, at the sight of her, the despair she had seen in him simply slipped away, was replaced by a smile in the eyes, that seductive charisma he possessed in such abundance. Neither spoke. The magic of attraction that can happen to two people spoke for them. They walked towards each other and kissed. With his arm through hers, they left the library.