This isn’t just for him. This is for me.
He is hard now and huge, pushing into my mouth and shoving to the back of my throat and I realise that this cool, mysterious man is about to lose control of himself at my bidding. I try not to gag, ridiculously remember Polly telling me how it was done, demonstrating on a banana when we were on the beach one day, looking really filthy as she licked this curving yellow peeled fruit and pushed it right down her throat.
Guys love you to swallow, she said, biting the banana so that it almost squealed with pain. How I giggled and spluttered. If you swallow they’ll be your slave forever.
When I next see her I’ll be able to tell her I’ve done it at last. Or are we too grown up for all those confidences now? I’ll tell her what she didn’t tell me, that it only really works if you’re falling for the guy. That’s why I couldn’t have done it for Toga Tomas. Or Jake.
I push the thick shaft back with my tongue, close my lips round it again, and start to suck it into the wetness of my mouth. As it gives a little buck, and starts to grow even more, so does the balloon of triumph inside me.
I’m getting wet all over again. Gustav’s big warm hands are jammed over my ears, but stroking and tugging at my hair at the same time. He’s stiffening and swelling as I suck. I don’t know if it’s my breath or his that is gasping and rasping with excitement now, but pride surges through me.
He thinks I’m his pet. But watch this. He’s my pet, too. His obvious, thrusting pleasure is turning me on. I can taste him. His hands tug at my head, up and down, moving my mouth up and down, he’s a little more rough now, tangling and yanking at my long hair.
My mouth loosens, lips losing their tight grip. I start to bite instead, nip the taut surface, no idea how hard to bite or how much it might hurt.
He moans, his hands growing weaker, and elation surges through me again. Here am I, Serena Folkes, just up from the country, with my lips wrapped round one of the most powerful men in the arts world. I am the one making him whimper.
He thrusts deeper into my mouth. I will myself to exercise control for a little bit longer and start to fondle underneath it, the soft balls shrinking shyly as I encircle the base with my finger and thumb. The chain is tangled up between us. He’s filling my mouth. He’s pushing at the back of my throat and now he’s forcing me down over the velvety surface.
I nip once, nip a little harder, then suck, my lips sliding up and down, and then he is jerking, pushing himself into my face, he’s jerking against the roof of my mouth, blocking my throat, his fingers are pulling at my hair, pulling me away, pushing me back, and then he’s groaning loudly and painfully, sobbing his control away. His life force is spurting and flowing. It’s hot and thick, and alien. What did Polly say to think about when you were doing this?
Imagine you’re dying of thirst in the desert. I open my throat and swallow every drop.
I kneel back at last, wipe my mouth quickly, and watch him. His eyes are closed now, so I can’t tell what he’s thinking. His throat bulges as he regains his breath, swallowing down the shouting excitement. His mouth slowly closes and he lies back, totally spent. I could watch him all night. The lovely man I’ve reduced to this exhausted heap.
Instinct tells me I can watch him but I can’t kiss him. Can’t do anything except rest my hands on his legs, watch the pulse in his neck judder to a calmer rhythm.
After a few moments, his eyes still closed, he packs his subsiding erection away into his jeans then lifts his hand and finds my bracelet to unhook it from the silver chain.
‘Will you leave me now? You can find your own way to bed tonight.’
I stop his hand on my wrist. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
‘No, sweet girl. I just need some time. Please.’
I want to sit beside him on the sofa and watch the dying embers of the fire in the enormous grate. But I get up obediently and watch the silver chain fall away from me and trickle against his leg, and as I leave he waves me away as if he really is a Roman emperor. I turn abruptly and walk into the chilly hall.
How can I sleep after this? How can he dismiss me like this after I know I’ve pleased him? I stop on the landing outside a set of double doors, churning with anger. I’ve a good mind to go straight back down and tell him to act like a normal lover. At least to talk about it.
I turn to grab the banisters. I’m ready to straddle and slide down them in my fury, and then I catch sight of it. The Rossetti painting he mentioned earlier. The model, Elizabeth Siddal I’m certain, is in typical pre-Raphaelite pose, doomed woman bathed in early evening light from a window outside which a river slowly flows. Her mournful eyes are turned upwards, cheeks and jaw pointing down, a mane of tawny hair falling over a green velvet medieval gown pulled slightly off one shoulder, candles symbolically blown out around her.
I calm down, looking at that. No matter where I go, I know that every time he passes that priceless picture, he will think of me. My hand comes to rest on the doorknob of his bedroom. Is he a collector? Has he more in here? But the door is locked.
I glance down at the hall, the flickering strip of light from the sitting room. He must be sleeping now. One day he’ll take me into this bedroom, carry me over its threshold like a prize.
I run up those shadowy stairs to the little room in the attic, lit only by one lamp.
I feel light as a feather. I climb up onto the high four-poster bed and fall into the mountain of white cushions, running my hand over my lips, where I just tasted him. Down to the place where he tasted me.
Then, as the wind rattles insistently at the glass doors to try to get into my bedroom, I fall straight into a deep slumber as if tumbling off a cliff.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The girl solemnly lowers her face into the man’s groin. I stand and watch her. I’m leaning against a warm, cracked wall. All I can see of the man are thick, muscular brown legs, hands pushing the girl’s head brutally into him. All I can see now of her is the tension in her hunched shoulders as she grasps the stone seat he’s sprawled on, her knuckles white, her knees on the stone floor and spread apart to take the strain, her toes curling into the cracks of the paved floor.
I feel dust come off the wall as I try to move away. There’s a metallic rattle and my short progress is stopped. I’m chained. There are terracotta smears on my arms and hands, on my bare legs. I’m naked apart from a scrap of faded, torn cloth wound under my arms and again round my waist. My hair is coiled up on top of my head, and every part of me is dripping with sweat.
It’s so hot.
In this low ceilinged, claustrophobic room the shade is impenetrable and black. The top half of the man is hidden in shadow. But it still feels like an oven in here. I glance outside. I make no effort to get out because I know I’m in a kind of prison. The sky was its usual bowl of bright blue when I walked here through the city earlier, but now, through one small window, I see that it’s turned a dull, angry yellow, hanging low over Pompeii and scratched across with grey smoke. The ground is shaking and simmering as if we’ve all been set upon a stove. The air is choking hot. Hotter than I’ve ever known it.
A pair of hands grabs my wrist. I have a thick metal cuff on both wrists, joined by a stubby chain, and the person unhooks me from the wall and leads me by this chain out of this little chamber and into another one even darker than the first. I am pushed onto my knees just like the other girl. They scrape painfully on the stone floor. That was blood mixed with the terracotta dust on my skin.
As I fall against the ledge which acts as a bed, the whole world seems to shake. I’m sure I can hear people running and shouting outside.
But I can’t move. I’m chained up again. Big, rough hands