Fools for Lust (12 page)

She speaks. Impossibly as my cock is still buried deep inside her mouth, impaling her throat.

‘You had this thing about hotel rooms, didn't you?'

I nod silently in response.

‘You promised me rooms in the south of France, in Amsterdam, in New Orleans, in New York, in Seattle, in Vancouver, even in the Caribbean ...' the last with no measure of irony.

I did.

But all our fucks were within a hundred-mile radius of London at most. We were both married. We were both cheating. Promises come cheap.

I'm quite hard now as her chilled lips continue their mechanical ministrations. I open my eyes and pull my fingers from her tangled hair, move one hand to her shoulder. Her skin is wet, clammy, polar.

She draws back and allows my cock to dangle out of her previously welcoming mouth.

‘Fuck me,' she orders.

She lies down on the sand, arms outstretched, legs wide open. In the penumbra I can barely see her cunt, that opening I once knew so well, like a map of my infamy and her inner beauty.

I position myself above her. I'm already losing my erection. I hold myself in one fist and force myself inside her. The unbearable coldness of her innards hits me like a refrigerated hammer and I hopelessly deflate. I hold myself inside her and will my cock to live again. Again, eyes wide shut, I conjure my better memories of the other Kay, the way her pubic hair curled like a hundred whirlpools as I played with her, the shattering colour of her insides as I explored her systematically with eyes and tongue and fingers time and time again in all those rooms that were my memories.

‘Fuck me,' she shouts.

And I fuck the living Kay with all the tenderness in the world I can summon from the depths of my soul. The dead Kay does not respond to my vain thrusts. No expression of pleasure or pain illuminates her face. Her body is like a block of ice against which I am obscenely throwing myself.

‘Fuck me harder,' she insists, frantic.

I do. Again and again and again. My cock is so cold I can barely feel it any longer, as if it were no longer part of me. A distant part of my mind recalls articles about polar explorers who lost fingers, toes, ears. Can a penis freeze off, I wonder?

I remember the sweet, lovemaking sounds of Kay, the sighs, the endearing ‘Oh, Gods', the depth of longing in her eyes as we rutted like animals on office floors or in bathtubs. Dead Kay accepts my assault with indifference.

‘Like a slab of meat, huh?' she reads my mind.

My anger rises and fuels my desperate erection and fighting against the pain in my extremities I at last manage to call up some distant and forgotten synapse and a pitiful wavelet of lust and release courses through my weary bones and muscles and makes it snail like to the area of my near-impotent genitals.

‘Fuck me one last time,' she screams, a sound that could raise the dead, and then at lower pitch: ‘It's what you wanted, Conrad, a final fuck, a closure fuck, no?'

I come.

I'm surprised my ejaculate doesn't freeze at the moment of release. I feel it spread across my stomach. Viscous. Gooey. Guilty. Soon my balls are actually dipping into it as Kay fades away, little by little, feature by feature into the navy blue fabric of the tropical night.

‘You should never have killed me in your books, Conrad,' she whispers, almost gone, evaporating like the ghost she is. And, bathing in my own emissions, I realise with horror I never even had the opportunity to see her cunt close-up again, or the poignant small dunes of her breasts. But ghosts are creatures of the night, manifestations of darkness, and their purpose is surely to raise our yearning back from the dead and make us sinners suffer. On and on.

Kay is no longer there. I try and pretend I can still smell her, a familiar fragrance I once would buy for her at duty-free in airports, but I'd be lying to myself. There is only the lonely smell of the night about and that of the nearby sea.

Soon, morning comes. Cemetery blue makes place for lighter shades of blue. Soon, the moon disappears in one quarter of the sky and a shy sun makes a fleeting apparition behind a bank of clouds in the East.

It's just me, naked, with my shorts pulled down to my ankles, my cold cock all shrivelled and glistening with my come, and in the sand, proof again that this was no dream, the very shape of Kay's crucified, fucked body where the ice is slowly melting into the sand.

I accept the evidence blithely: I am now haunted.

And the only release from the nightmare will be my own death. That was her message. Pure and simple, no translation required. Could it ever have been otherwise?

I have a corner office. The view is nothing special though. The grime of the unfolding, nearby London rooftops and the grey, teeming streets of borderline Soho below are quite unremarkable. Although the company where I work occupies the third floor of the building, it also happens to be the top floor so the panorama I'm afforded is limited and tedious. No Thames or Hudson River unfurling below, no romantic or historical city milestones to contemplate when my mind goes on random walkabout away from the bulging files accumulating across my desk or the flickering screen of the see-through iMac I use.

And my mind certainly wanders a lot these days. Too much. Much too much. A good thing I'm management. Such absent-minded moods would not be cause for forgiveness if I were at a more junior level. But then I wouldn't occupy a corner office.

I usually keep my door open, so staff outside always have access to me. Good management I'm told, but it's actually more due to the fact I'd just feel so damn lonely, isolated in my cocoon of an office had I no contact with the outside, the swish of skirts out there, the sweet voices of women gossiping, the other telephones ringing when mine insists on remaining silent. Thinking is a lonely affair. And thinking is what they pay me for, I suppose.

But then I cheat. For every crassly remunerated thought of advertising campaigns and slogans and clever ways of convincing the punter out there to greedily consume more orange or chocolate or strawberry-flavoured ice creams or instant desserts with disconcerting tastes, I also indulge in private moments, secret thoughts that have little to do with my job. My world inside the world.

Veronica brings me a dossier she wishes me to check. She is pear shaped but always has such a wonderful smile. And a great arse. A backside that inspires me mightily. Outlined against the fabric of her skirt by her highly visible panty line. Some days, I know, she wears thongs and my imagination runs riot, delineating the undoubtedly pale and hard flesh of her joyful arse and guessing what shades of pink I could impose on its regal expanse smacking her there hard and sharp as she thrusts her backside towards me while prone in a doggy position, the puckered hole of her anus winking at me and the humid cut of her gash opening oh-so slightly. Not that I'm not that much into spanking, that taboo and indulgence of the Victorian upstairs-downstairs class struggle, but Veronica's backside is such a tempting invitation to mark with the fleeting print of my hand. Enough to make a fetish freak of me, by temperament such a vanilla sort of gentle pervert!

And then there's Suzanne, of the long dark blonde hair that unrolls all the way down to the small of her back and the shy, tentative interventions at our weekly creative meeting. She has thick, pulpy lips that beg for a terrible object to cradle obscenely in the midst of their geographical centre. A penis, maybe? Mine? On her knees in front of me, my gaze descending on the razor straight parting that separates her silky hair. Her tongue emerging quite hesitantly from between the scarlet flower of those lips before inevitably tasting the rough texture of my bulging, blood-engorged glans before she courageously ingests it all in one full, hungry movement and my cock lodges itself like an Amazon explorer down deep in the pit of her throat. Suzanne's face speaks of both innocence and knowing but I wouldn't be surprised if her cock-sucking skills were on a par with the welcome instances of lateral thinking she often displays in her job. At the meetings I am hypnotically drawn to her lips as the digestive biscuits she feasts on invariably breach her threshold. Her desk sits just to the right from the exit to my office. The window behind her chair enjoys the same view as I do. Limited and uninspiring. Maybe in her private world of office work, Suzanne also dreams of a world of blowjobs?

Polly calls me on the phone. Her own office is only at the other end of the corridor but she prefers to communicate this way. She is in charge of promotions. Her eyes are brown and slightly oriental. She is one quarter Malaysian on her mother's side, I know. Polly is always on the go, a hive of activity, thin like a rake, small perky breasts with nipples ever erect and visible, shape wise, through her T-shirts or cashmere sweaters. She is always brimming with confidence but I sense it's only a shell, a wafer thin display of assurance and that, deep down inside, she is an insecure little girl who privately begs for submission in one-to-one relationships. Wouldn't she just look perfect with a leather-studded dog collar or a Vivienne Westwood choker tightened around her neck? A docile slave I would pull with a lead into the room full of people and present as my slave for all to feast upon at their leisure. ‘Display yourself I would order and she would shed her coat and reveal her total nudity beneath the protective garment. Her nipples would be delicately pierced, thin gold rings standing to attention, her cunt would be shaven smooth and when another party guest would summarily order her to open her legs wide (and no need for a spreader bar, she is such an obedient lass), the diamond stud fixed to her clitoral hood would miraculously emerge from the gates of her labia, already coated with her fragrant inner juices. So what will our slave have to perform today, she wonders, both quite ashamed at her situation and predictably aroused and obediently submissive? All Polly wishes to know on the occasion of this phone call, however, is if I have yet agreed the budget for the soft drinks project whose pitch our team are working on, and to which accounting code the development expenses should be allocated to.

Jasmine, my deputy, walks in, her long legs sliding across the regulation carpet of the office and perches herself shamelessly across the corner of my desk, unveiling more square inches of thigh than an older executive would tolerate and painstakingly explains to me how the art department have once again misunderstood the specifications for a particular job and we are running late. As if I didn't already know this. But reassures me: she will stay on late today and keep an eye on Frank, our gay art director, and see that he doesn't leave until the boards are ready for the presentation. She wears old-fashioned glasses and speaks in clipped Oxbridge tones. I know she is seeing an Australian graphic designer she met in a bar some months back and that this is the first proper relationship she has had in well over a year. My eyes linger on the stockinged legs draped over my desk and, Superman like, explore beyond. She always wears white knickers, and I've often had a flash of them. Below the cotton or the silk, I imagine her pubic hair is dark and curly and her cunt is tight and dry. But when she is fucked, she comes loud and hysterically, her whole body vibrating to the rhythm of the thrusts of the cock frantically buried inside her and tears forming in the corner of her pale green eyes. Yes, I reckon Jasmine must be quite beautiful in the embrace of pleasure, relinquishing all her civilised and reserved façade and reverting to a blissful state of sluttishness under the mere touch of a man's hand exploring her skin and mapping its soft contours. I thank her most sincerely for her attention to detail and feel my cock growing insidiously inside my black trousers, under the shelter of the desk. Watching her lips move and catching a brief glimpse of her white brassiere I suddenly had a mental revelation that deep down inside her universe of secrets Jasmine actually liked having a cock up her arse when her passion grew out of passion. However, sometimes you just know these things, intuition and all that, it also came to me that Jasmine was also the sort of modern woman who disliked having to swallow come, whatever the circumstances or the relationship level she had reached with a particular man. Anal sex was an acceptable taboo. But not swallowing. Just not the right thing to do for educated women like Jasmine ...

She leaves the office, and I'm left with my computer screen.

If only they were aware of my disgusting thoughts, I wouldn't have any staff left or any respect afforded to me. The boss from hell. Just wouldn't do. But I have principles: I would never mix business with pleasure. Too complicated, despite the daily temptations. And we don't usually have a Christmas party anyway where we let our hair down. Not that I'm into drunken broom closet sex or hanky-panky across the photocopying machine. A rule I invariably stick to, despite the genuine opportunities. It's easier to satisfy my vices and compulsions away from home ground. Should one of them leave, I might hit on her later under pretext of renewing acquaintance and solicitously enquiring how they are getting on with their new job elsewhere. It's worked before, I dare say.

I walk to the door, shout out to the girls working there that I have a private call coming through and close the door to my office.

Back behind my desk, my cock is still part tumescent from memories of the spectacle of Jasmine with glasses on spreading her ass cheeks apart and readying her already moist aperture for the girth of my penis. I highlight my Favourites on the browser menu and select a website.

Interracial sex.

Incest.

Animals.

BDSM.

Extreme.

Dogging.

Pregnant.

I make a selection and, in the private cocoon of my office, I begin masturbating to the images lining up on the screen.

The girls are safe.

For now.

I'm sitting on a high stall in a bar called Phillies with my back to the nocturnal street. Across from me to my left, a man and a woman silently stare straight ahead at the white-capped, blonde clerk busy cleaning dishes. The fedora-wearing man negligently nurses a cigarette while the woman, red haired, in her late 30s I guess, peers at her well-manicured nails. There is no juke box, there is no noise except for the occasional gurgling of the twin coffee percolators on the nearby counter; it's a perfect three-in-the-morning silence, made for night hawks and lonely hearts. She is thin, even gaunt, the silky fabric of her red dress draped across her shoulders, opening up across a V of indifferent pale flesh. She sports scarlet lipstick, just like you imagined vamps did in black-and-white 40s noir movies. They haven't spoken to each other since I walked into the joint. But their body movement betrays the fact they are a couple. Only deep familiarity expresses itself, communicates in such a display of common silence.

Outside, it's been ages since even a car has driven by. We are enveloped in a sea of dead time, listening to the mute voice of the downtown Los Angeles night. Figueroa Boulevard is just a few blocks away, even more deserted at this time. There was no game tonight at the new stadium by the nearby convention centre, so no stragglers ambling by or zigzagging their way past the flaming radiance of this old-fashioned street corner bar in search of a car parked forgetfully around some hours earlier.

I'm sipping my second glass of coke. The ice has long melted and diluted the syrupy sugar fix of the drink. I keep on watching the couple, imagining their story, embroidering a whole scenario to justify their presence here, to explain the way they once met and the curious reasons that seemingly keep them together when they visibly have so little to say to each other. Surely, they have somewhere to go back to? I don't. In a few more hours I will call a cab and get him to drive me back to LA International for the first morning flight of the day to La Guardia and my apartment on Washington Square full of books and CDs, where I will while the days away until the next telephone call summons me for a job. No rush, I don't need the cash. But practice makes perfect, they say and I never say no when offered a hit. I have a reputation to protect.

I quietly wonder whether the other insomniacs keeping me company in Phillies also speculate about my own presence here? I don't think so. I am anonymous. No one remembers my face. My hat is grey felt and my two-piece suit a boring anthracite blue, my hair is cut short and my shape somewhat stocky. I guess I look like an insurance salesman. Good; it's a suitable appearance. Forgettable, indifferent. Safe. I should know, I was once a cop, a run-of-the-mill detective who happened to be too much of a loner to make the grade. Tradition dictates that cops should run in pairs, play the buddy game. Just wasn't my style and I quietly alienated all the partners I was assigned. Nothing spectacular, no fights or endless arguments, caused the obligatory rift, but eventually they all moved on of their own accord, leaving me with a bad reputation as distant and uncooperative. Which was fine with me, but not too good on my record. So, one day, I just took early retirement and moved across to the other side.

Once you've swum in one pool, it's easy to navigate in its counterpart. I knew what to do and what not to do. I'd never much been encumbered by rules and regulations, or morality anyway.

So, now I'm the man in the bar whose face you can never see or remember, watching the world go by. Your average, anonymous contract killer.

Killing off what is left of the night.

The woman glances my way, but she visibly doesn't note my presence, her gaze passing straight through me and likely alighting on some passerby walking outside, turning the corner on a slow journey to Chinatown just a mile or so away to the East. Her eyes are rimmed with too much kohl; doesn't suit her, makes her look older than she is. She looks away, her indifference returning. Her partner lights another cigarette while the attendant refills his cup of coffee.

I tried to recall the eyes of the other woman earlier this evening. The younger one. What colour were they? I couldn't. Much of what took place did so in darkness, an oppressive penumbra in which I had played the leading, murderous role. There had been a haunting quality in those eyes when she had pleaded for her life. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Damn!

‘My name is Sarah,' she had said, looking towards me with a sadness full of resignation, as if she already knew I could not be swayed. There are rules in this unholy game which must not be ignored. And even though Sarah was not a player, she was instinctively aware of the fact.

I had not responded immediately.

‘I will do anything you wish me to,' she had continued. ‘Or rather you can do anything to me you want. Anything.'

Maybe it was what she saw in my eyes that made her plead such things. I have heard it said they are grey, steely and unfeeling. When I shave and examine my features in the mirror, I see no such thing. Eyes are just eyes. They convey nothing.

The body of the man who had summoned her to this hotel room for use is sprawled just a few feet away on the carpeted floor, stone cold dead. One bullet had sufficed. It seldom takes more; don't believe what you see in the movies. Killing a man with a gun is simplicity itself if you know where to aim and have a steady hand and the advantage of surprise. I'd been given a few photos of him when I had accepted the assignment and had followed him from his office as a realtor in Beverly Hills (no doubt a cover, but that wasn't my concern) to this rococo hotel downtown with a fascinating over-the-top decor that blended equal doses of terracotta Mexican colours with Indian artefacts and monstrously sized potted plants throughout its dark lobby area. He'd parked his Chevy in a lot at the back of the hotel, which had given me time enough to move ahead and innocently share the elevator with him up to his floor. He hadn't even given me a look. I'd jumped him just as he was opening the door to his room. As the lock clicked I'd put the gun to his head and sharply shoved against his shoulders and forced him into the room.

It took me a second or so to take it all in. The young woman sitting on the bed adjusting her stockings, looking up at me and the man barging through the door. The way her mouth formed an O of surprise. He was just about to say something in protest when I pressed the trigger, and the muffled sound of the weapon's silencer interrupted the nature morte of the scene that was so quickly unfolding. He slumped to his knees, and then almost in slow motion to the hotel room floor, his limbs spreading incongruously across the target, his face three quarters burying itself into the lush softness of the carpet.

Her mouth returned to its normal thin-lipped shape and she froze on the spot, no doubt a million emotions, questions and fear spreading through her body.

The hit was clean. There wasn't even that much blood, yet.

I looked at her again.

Our eyes locked.

A torrent of communication surging through the darkened, pastel room in the utter stillness of the late afternoon. All things unsaid but sadly clear in both our minds.

Witnesses have no rights.

This was when she told me her name. In a forlorn bid to humanise herself. To make me rethink my resolve.

I didn't respond, just stood there, my legs now straddling the inert body of my designated victim.

‘You can have me,' she continued. ‘I won't say anything. Please.'

She didn't look like a whore. Not a cheap one at any rate. Maybe a girlfriend, or another man's wife he was enjoying on the side? That's what hotel rooms are for, isn't it? Her two-piece suit had a conservative cut, only spoiled by the fact that the skirt had been hoisted up to mid-thigh as she had been straightening the line of her stockings as we had entered the room. The upper, uncovered half of her thigh was creamy, white, almost virginal, above the darker, flesh-coloured fabric of the hold-up stocking.

No garter belt, I couldn't help noticing.

‘Will you let me go?' she asked quietly, as if she no longer even believed it could happen.

‘I don't think so,' I replied.

‘Why?'

‘Because.'

She lowered her eyes.

I felt sad. There is no enjoyment to be found in killing innocents. I am not a sadist.

‘Now?' she enquired, seemingly resigned to her fate.

I walked up to the bed where she was sitting.

Looked down at her.

‘A waste, I know,' as if apologising.

‘Yes,' she agreed, her voice a thin sliver escaping from her mouth, touching the very root of my heart, or was it my stomach? Sometimes, emotions affect me in curious physical ways.

All of a sudden, I wanted to ask her so many questions. Who she was, why she was here, the nature of her relationship with the dead man? I wanted to know her. But I knew it was impossible. I didn't have the time.

Her name was Sarah. That was all I was allowed to know.

‘Get up,' I ordered.

She rose from the edge of the hotel bed, and stood, her gloved hands by her side. She was shorter than I'd expected.

She looked towards me, waiting for further instructions, a veil of sadness drifting across her pale face.

‘Had he paid you in advance?' I asked her.

She blushed. I wasn't sure if this was caused by embarrassment or anger.

It made her look quite beautiful, though. Her cheeks an attenuated shade of pink that served to emphasise the sharp delineation of her cheekbones.

‘With him,' she answered, ‘it had nothing to do with money. Absolutely nothing.'

‘Love?' I continued.

‘No. Nor lust either,' she said.

When I stopped responding, she brazenly straightened out her whole body, almost growing by an inch or so as her back snapped into position.

‘You just wouldn't understand,' she said defiantly. ‘Not in a month of Sundays.'

No, I couldn't.

‘Undress,' I asked her.

She obeyed unconditionally, and it wasn't out of fear, I knew.

Like many women when they shed their clothing, she began by the bottom. She unzipped the invisible fastening on the right side of her skirt and the light fabric of the garment slid to the floor where she elegantly stepped out of it. She wasn't wearing any undergarments and her plump mound was shaven totally smooth, which just took my breath away. She allowed me a minute of oppressive silence to collect my thoughts and drink in the vision of her obscene nudity, just standing there in stockinged legs and nothing else.

Her sexual slit was a straight line gash from which no inner or outer labia protruded, like a raw wound, a scar that hypnotised me. I couldn't help but stare at it.

Then she quickly shed the rest of her clothes, the suit jacket, the opaque black cotton blouse and a small, and somewhat unnecessary brassiere, which then revealed slight dark-nippled breasts I could cup in one hand, delicate hills in the porcelain landscape of her body.

I kept on peering at her.

Once I had taken in her prominent sexual characteristics, I quickly noted that the whole geography of her body was dotted with small bruises. These blemishes travelled across a whole spectrum of colours from dark, almost blue to brown and pale yellow as the skin had begun repairing itself.

These bruises had been created over a period of time; there was no way they could have happened on the same occasion.

‘Turn round.'

She did so, with elfin grace.

The bruises also generously populated her back, prominently spread across her thighs, with even redder lines, like the forgotten remnants of whip lashes or continued caning, crisscrossing her slightly androgynous buttocks.

In the small of her back, there was the tattoo of a Chinese ideogram, which I was unable to recognise. I should have asked her, but I didn't.

I had a million questions for Sarah, but none could make the tortuous journey from my brain cells to my lips.

‘Touch me.'

It was her turn to give orders.

Hesitantly, I moved an arm forward, brushed my fingers against one of her shoulders. Her skin felt damp. But electric. I slowly moved upwards, sliding my fingers through her short ash blonde hair. Like a journey through silk.

I noted one of the more prominent bruises on her body, a soiled few square inches of skin between her navel and her cunt where the skin had almost broken and still waltzed between dark tones of black and a borderline crater of yellow. I touched her there. The softness was divine. I perversely pressed harder.

‘Does it hurt?' I asked.

‘No,' she replied.

My fingers lingered over the flatness of her lower stomach, bathing in the nearby heat emanating in concentric circles from her sexual opening outwards. The pink gash was short and as straight as ruler, highlighted by her depilation. I'd seen shaven mounds in magazines and dubious films, but this was the first I'd come across in real life.

‘Did he beat you?'

‘Not him,' Sarah said. ‘Others.'

‘More than one?'

‘Yes.'

‘I see,' that was all I could prosaically say in the circumstance.

‘I don't mind,' she said.

‘Really?'

‘You can, too, if you so wish.'

‘I'm not that sort of guy.'

‘How do you know?' she responded, with the bare hint of a smile on her lips, as she glanced over at the body by the door.

‘I just know,' I answered.

‘But you can still fuck me,' Sarah suggested. ‘I'm available, I'm here, I'm yours for the taking, any way you wish. I won't scream.'

As she said that, all my imagination could conjure was the image of her being punched and whipped by other men, while she kept her silence and tears rolled down her cheeks.

How could she enjoy it, I wondered?

‘You know I can't,' I said. Then added, ‘But I like what I see. Really.'