him while yet he groaned. Upon my being done with and my drawers replaced and finding myself alone again, she entered my room, observed my tousled bed and passed her tongue into my mouth. “How deeply he goes up you,” she had murmured. Her eyes were the colour of an autumn sky. There was peppermint upon her breath. Mama knocked at my door but was not answered. She was not of that moment but of other moments when simplicity was more apparent. Mama perhaps did not offer herself so. Such was my intuition. The purity of love between us was not the less thereby, though enfolded, creased, disguised, and crenelated by the mundane, as though in tissue wrapped.
“Do you not prefer a holder for your cigarette?”
A voice assails me. The newcomer, modishly attired in blue relieved by murmurings of white, seats herself at my table. She has lived, as I judge, a decade more than myself. Her hair, bunched high, extols the virtues of an oval face, lips full, nose aquiline, wide eyes. Her voice is mediocre, not displeasing. I am not disturbed-indeed, return her smile.
“Sometimes I use one, sometimes I do not. Have you been dancing?”
“You note the turbulence?” She laughs, her breasts rise, fall, are heavy, somnolent. “There are ever parades, fantasies, illusions, when the music sounds. Have you experienced such? I danced with a girl. Her form was clinging. She had been caressed, I believe, was unappeased, sought more. Her belly blended beautifully to mine. Do I bore you? Do you like such chatter? Have I not seen you on the Downs at Ascot? The jockeys dressed like butterflies- how pretty they look.”
Her excitation is obvious. No doubt it is my eyes. She has swum in the lakes of night and felt the water's lapping at her thighs.
“I would dance with you.” Exclaiming as she does, my silence evidently provokes.
“Very well, but let me finish my cigarette. Are you from here? Do you inhabit the hotel?”
“I shall not tell you. You must discover. Come.”
“To feel my belly against yours?”
“If you wish. What purpose is there otherwise? Do you wear your garters high, as I? They will rub to mine. Women are more sensuous than men. What are your theories about the matter?”
My hand is taken, warm, enclosed. In my rising. The lilting of the orchestra attracts. Through curtained fringes we obtain the floor. The languid dancers stare and then perform. We, merging, bring our flesh to feel the flesh. She is no more over-dressed than I. A blindness takes me. We kiss in our circlings. There are intervals of watchful eyes that pass between my own and yet are strangers to me.
“It does not matter if they look. Let them look. Have you been mounted, spermed, and satisfied today?”
“How frank you are!” I cannot help but laugh. Her tits wobble gelatinously and bulge against my own.
“Have you? Who were you given to first? You are scarce twenty. Laura? Is it Laura? There was once amid the stirrings of the elms, bold beatings of the bushes, a vision of you. As I recall, as I recall, as I recall.”
“Yes.” I know not here or now, nor there nor here. It matters not to me to be uptaken. Columns of silk, our thighs rub sensuous. “Were you of the county? I do not recall you.”
I have never asked before. To ask is to impinge, to break the spell.
“You do not ask. You know you do not ask. To ask is to impinge, to break the spell. Come with me. You will come, come with me, come?”
“If you wish. Do you wear drawers?” It is my turn for laughter. The dancers, still, bemused, are left behind.
“One should always wear drawers, my pet, unless one is about to be wed. Your baggage will be sent for. There is no returning. You do not wish to return? This is a place of lost souls. The corridors are dark by night; I would not have you stay. Come.”
We are gone-among the lost, the found. Her carriage horses paw the sad and dirty road and we are gone. Her arm enfolds my shoulders, draws me close. Tongue leaping wet to tongue, my corsage loosed.
“Let me see them. Were they fondled often? Cupped in his palms while he put you to his pestle.”
“Yes.” I drool with love, confused by love surrender. My skirts are raised, the carriage bumps, my thighs assailed.
“What a softness and yet firmness of contours! How your bottom must have wriggled to him, legs kept straight and linen ever clean. What pantings in the night-what dreams of lust. Loosen your drawers-let me feel your rosette. How tightly it puckers and yet will open like a baby's mouth, absorbing the full the stem.”
“How do you know?” I would ask yet not ask, in my feverings. The soft rotation of her finger round my rim.
“Was it not so? Brown your dress and brown your drawers. Did you not rut in secret with him? Come, bring your nipples to my lips that I may lick them. What fine points they have! What aureoles of bliss. I will put a cock up you tonight myself.”
“How wicked you are!”
I cannot help myself, have fumbled, found. Her bush sprouts springily beneath her drawers. Some passage of time, some passage of time, passing, is gone, is gone in our embrace. Leaves stir beyond the windows, brush the carriage sides. We are gone beyond the town, I know not where.
“Mind the branches, dip your head, be careful. Have you been chased by trees, as I? There, my love, where the lights glow-across the sward. I call it my Petite Trianon, as Marie Antoinette did. Her adventures were numerous, though little detailed. How she was licked and loved! I will show you a trick or two of hers. You are not modest, I trust?”
“Was I in the carriage?”
The carriage goes, a trundle-roll of wheels, is gone. Bells jingle faintly. A dimness of cows, here now, there now, and darkly through the pasture lowing.
“You were never modest within enclosures, Laura, though fain would have been had not the leather bit into your bottom. We are at Richmond now-home of sobrieties, licentious secrets. My neighbour is an ass-that is to say he has a donkey's prick. His wife and daughters bray upon receiving it. I have listened at windows, heard the calls of night. Perhaps in mirrors have I seen you, turned about, upended, put to it, my fingers scratching at the glass, yet never would you turn about to look, embrace my eyes, draw me within your realm.”
“Such is improper to do,” I laugh.
She has the merit of attractiveness, of guile. Her fingers weave a spell about my orb. The Trianon comes closer-laughter sounds. Tall windows hang their gaieties of light. There are statues here, in the dimness. Perhaps I shall see Perdita again, the tears of rain upon her bottom round.
“What do you think of? In this instant?”
Upon the curving steps we halt.
“In this instant and in all others one can see within a mirror and yet not without. Those within are ever cased in glass. Is that not a sadness?” I reply.
“You may be quiet tonight or speak as you wish. There are no rules to the matter. Those who come silently to us are ever the receivers, abundant gatherers of sperm. Within the mirror or without, it does not matter. Shall you be unclothed? Were you unclothed before?”
“I thought you saw!” I laugh at her dismay. “Once I was married and my husband lay upon my belly, nightdress to my armpits. He alone assailed my cunny then.”
“My love, were you not mounted thighs to thighs before?”
“My bush was never sprinkled, no. I had full knowing of virginity until the marriage bed. It was proper so to be. Do you not think it was proper so to be?”.
A curiosity has seized me on the matter. Had my aunt told me to lie with legs akimbo on my back, my bush full ready for the ripened fruit that daily cleaved my cheeks, I would have done so, done so, done so, waiting there.
“What a sprinkling he would have given you-more a flood! Come, there are girls here to be annointed. There are rehearsals for some-not all. Will you titillate, spur with your tongue? I will hold the first, to your pleasure. She is the youngest of the tribe, has yet to take the cock. What a coming he will have of it! Her nooky is delicious, her breasts as pomegranates. Such hard nipples they have at that age. Show me your willingness and doff your drawers as even now shall I.”
The deed is done-our bellies palely gleam. A lambent moon glints diamonds on my bush. Our hands extend to cup each other's mound.
