Objects of Desire (9 page)

Before Anoushka slid down off the pillows and on top of him, slithered snake-like down his body, leaving a trail of sensuous kisses, culminating in one on the knob of his penis, and sucked him into her mouth, they already knew this was to be a sexual odyssey to remember but never to repeat. It was too perfect: the intensity of their desire for each other and where they wanted to go with it, the time and the place. A moment in each of their histories. Anoushka intended to make the most of it.

‘I’ll always remember you for this night,’ she told him. And he stroked the top of her head as she took his rampant phallus further into her mouth.

Only a woman as experienced, as appreciative of
oral sex as Anoushka, could take a man of such exquisitely large proportions whole, suck him so passionately deep into her throat. The sensational sucking rhythm as she fondled his scrotum lovingly in her cupped hands gave Hadon sexual pleasure so intense he lost himself in her. He gripped her head between his hands, pulled at her hair during those moments when he had to fight hard not to come, once, twice, several more times before he eased himself still throbbing with desire for orgasm from her. He was her object of desire as much as she was his.

Once more he pulled her up and arranged her against the pillows. ‘Don’t move. Wait here, just like this,’ he ordered, and slipped off the bed and left the room. Anoushka’s heart was still racing, her mind was filled with nothing but thoughts of tasting his come, of having this virile sexy man’s sperm filling every orifice of her body. She closed her eyes and tried to calm the sexual fires raging within. But her imagination had taken flight and would not settle: the sweet and salty taste of come, a strong and copious orgasm flowing over her lips, her cunt wet with the mingling of both their orgasms, those moments when they would ride out on the wings of eternity into oblivion as they came together.

Hadon returned to the side of the bed. She looked incredibly raunchy: sexual hunger raging in her eyes, her arm across her breast, her hand in her mouth. She was biting into the loose skin on the top of her hand, the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger. She
was holding her breath. He watched her body go taut. Anoushka came, and came again, and closed her eyes. Release, glorious release. Her body relaxed and went limp. It was all there in her face, that exquisite look of sexual ecstasy. He waited, choosing to remain silent so as not to divert her pleasure, nor his, for being there to watch it. Her eyelashes fluttered and, quite lazily, she opened her eyes, removed her hand from her mouth. A deep sigh, and a languid smile for him crossed her lips.

Hadon had two plates heaped with thick slices of melting Baked Alaska on them. He spoke to her. ‘That looked as if it was
very
nice.’

‘Very nice indeed,’ she told him with no embarrassment for having come without him, or for him having seen her in the most intimate of moments.

‘They’ll get even better,’ he promised.

‘Oh, I know that. More intense. And they’ll last longer, because you’ll be there.’

He leaned forward to kiss her, liking her very much for being so honest. He wondered as he handed her one of the plates and sat down next to her how long it had been since she had been as sexually honest with herself as she was with him? He spoonfed her from his own mound of melting ice cream and meringue.

‘This is wickedly good,’ she told him with a smile.

‘I always hate the pretension and performance of a great pudding, especially Cherries Jubilee and Baked Alaska, but my taste buds don’t,’ he admitted.

‘That’s me too. I hate the pretension of all the best things in life,’ she told him.

Something as casual as two people sitting on a bed eating ice cream did nothing to dampen the ardour these two naked people had for each other. Hadon sitting cross-legged was still maintaining a massive, erect penis and Anoushka, reclining against the pillows, erect nipples surrounded by dark nimbuses of sexual excitement. Sexual tension was building, still building for them as they fed the confection from their plates to each other.

Hadon handed his empty plate to Anoushka and walked back into the dining room only to return bearing the silver platter with the remainder of the Baked Alaska. He picked up a pillow that had fallen on the floor and placed it on the bed between them and the platter on it. He broke off pieces of the meringue and ate it, feeding chunks of it to Anoushka. She ate them from his hand and licked and sucked his fingers into her mouth, seductively, one at a time. Playing with him, she would occasionally give his throbbing penis a long, wet and sensuous lick, trailing rivulets of vanilla ice cream over it. Her warm tongue, the cold ice cream … an irresistible tease and taunt. He retaliated by rubbing the back of the silver spoon between her cunt lips. Sexual game playing? She was good at that, seductive as hell with it. So could he be, but he had had enough. He no longer wanted to play with her but to fuck her.

The mound of melting ice cream was all that remained on the platter. Anoushka scooped some on to her fingers and placed it on her dark nimbuses and
nipples. The cold made her squirm and she laughed. Hadon watched it trickle over her bosom and lowered his head, enabling him to lick the trickling cream with his tongue, then suck it clean away. He fed her more ice cream, dribbled more of it over her breasts, and found her very erotic lying naked against the pillows, the ice cream on her lips, the warmth of her body melting it into pools of cream running over her breasts and down her torso. He had held back enough. He removed the tray from between them and placed it at the foot of the bed.

‘We can do better for each other than ice cream, no matter how good it tastes,’ he told her, and she knew he was right.

Anoushka closed her eyes. She was trying to get possession of herself, but it was too late. She knew what he was promising and lust had her under a sexual spell. He had held back long enough. With a spoon, he attacked the now collapsed mound of ice cream still left on the platter. He would penetrate a cunt through swirls of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. The very idea both amused and excited.

‘Madness, this is madness.’ But it was not a protest from Anoushka, more an observation.

‘That’s right, Anoushka, delicious madness to pave the way for us,’ he told her as he raised her legs and placed them high on his shoulders. The tray clattered to the floor but they were barely aware of that. He grasped her by the hips.

The cream made it easier for Hadon. One thrust and
the knob of his penis was tightly lodged inside her. It felt marvellous, much too good for her to keep silent. ‘Hadon, how wonderful! More, now.’ Her heart was racing. She drew in a deep breath and held it.

Hadon moved his hands from her hips to slip them under her arms and over her shoulders. He would pull her on to his cock as he thrust into her. Anoushka felt him move in deeper, slowly take possession of her until she could feel him tight up against her cervix, his scrotum slapping against her as he fucked her slowly, sensitising her to the slightest exchange, every nuance of a great fuck.

He did nothing to stop her cries of pleasure. They excited him and he didn’t care who, if anyone, in the adjacent cabin heard them. Hadon and Anoushka took their time. This was to be no violation, this was to be sex and coming, carnal desire fulfilled at its very best. They were cunt and cock in flagrant togetherness, working in total harmony. So many positions to excite, for another sexual sensation so that they might go that little bit further into an erotic landscape from which neither one of them ever wanted to return. They revived themselves periodically with catnaps and a bottle of Bollinger, the taste and scent of sex at its very best. And so went the night and the beginning of a new day.

Chapter 6

‘You don’t have to say anything about last night. In fact it’s better if you don’t.’ There was nothing nervy in Anoushka’s voice, it was more matter of fact.

‘Not even if it was to say thank you for a great brief encounter? You will at least allow me that?’

Hadon reached across the table where they were having hot croissants and coffee and took Anoushka’s hand in his. They gazed into each other’s eyes.

‘No more than that, please.’

There was something in the way she said it that made Hadon agree. ‘All right, but just answer me this – you’re not sorry about last night?’

Anoushka was quick to tell him, ‘Certainly not. Overwhelmed that I should have had such great sex with a stranger, grateful to have come so alive again when I thought my life was over. Not sorry. But it will never happen for us again. I’m sure you understand.’

Hadon kissed the hand he held and remained silent. He liked the romance of their situation: two people who gave themselves entirely and forever in one
encounter, then passed on to other lives and other worlds. She was of course right, and once more he was surprised by this woman, how sensitive and romantic and very honourable she was, how incapable of tarnishing one night of perfection. For a greedy woman that said something, and he had no doubts that she was a greedy woman, or had certainly been one until her fall.

They were sitting on the private terrace off his suite of rooms, Anoushka dressed in her gown of the evening with his coat over it. There was little wind, and the ocean looked calm as the liner cut through it. The sun was high in the sky but there was warmth in it. A waiter slid the glass doors to the sitting room open and announced breakfast was served, and they left the terrace to sit at the table with the red roses on it.

There they were presented with omelettes stuffed with a ragoût of shrimps and mushrooms in Normandy sauce. They were accompanied by diced potatoes sautéd in black butter, purée of creamed spinach, and a mound of crisp bacon. Hot brioches and hot black coffee followed.

After serving, the waiter reminded Hadon that disembarkation at Cherbourg was at eleven o’clock and Southampton at approximately four o’clock that afternoon, and then left the sitting room leaving them to dine
à deux
.

The information seemed to Anoushka an intrusion of the real world she would rather forget.

‘My luggage goes ashore at Cherbourg, but I disembark at Southampton. By the time I get home tomorrow evening my luggage will have been unpacked and my things put in their proper places. I live in Nice.’ That was the only thing Hadon had volunteered about himself, and that was too much for Anoushka. Anonymity, Hadon as a man of mystery, was easier for her to deal with.

‘I’d almost forgotten that great ocean liners have schedules. They dock and people get off and resume their lives,’ she told him.

‘That’s what ocean voyages are for, to cut yourself off from everyday existence. You can meet yourself for the first time on an ocean crossing. Have adventures that can change your life, your thinking. Or some people can.’

Anoushka listened to Hadon and had to agree with him. In his presence she felt somehow a very different woman from Anoushka Rivers, wife of the eminent Dr Robert Rivers of Harley Rogers Clinic, and it felt good. This man, the night before during their sexual escapades, and the way he was with her now, gave a boost to her damaged self-esteem. She was living every minute with him and enjoying it, feeling so very much alive that there was no time for thought, the past, the future, concern over what impression she was making; nothing mattered except being herself. She felt high on herself, as if she had had too much vodka, or, she imagined, had smoked too much dope. She was excited, but about what? A new life? No, just being alive.

It was a strange sensation this feeling so good, having her head in the clouds. She hardly knew who she was, where she was going, what she was going to do – and it didn’t seem to matter. Strange sensation or not, that was how she felt and didn’t question it.

She looked up as Hadon rose from his chair to cross the room and place a disc on the CD player. Music from the court of Louis XIV, fragile and sweet, the sound of harpsichord and the flute. It didn’t so much fill the room with sound as soften the atmosphere, whisper exquisite chords, ethereal sounds, that triggered the imagination.

Hadon broke off a piece of brioche and buttered it. She watched him. Anoushka liked the way he ate, with gusto and appreciation of food; he had the same lust for it as he had for sex. He broke into her thoughts. ‘Is it Cherbourg or Southampton for you?’

His question took her by surprise. That was the first time he had asked her about her life. Who she was, where she was going. All he knew about her until now she had volunteered. ‘Southampton,’ she answered him reluctantly.

‘And then what?’

Again she was surprised that he should ask her to explain herself. She had thought they had come to an understanding: no questions asked. A brief interlude, never to be forgotten or perpetuated. His questions were like invisible threads drawing her back to the reality of her situation: rejection, pain, deceit. Of having to face creating a new and different life for
herself, maybe even a new persona. She was sorry he had asked, and didn’t answer.

He was unabashed by her silence. ‘I’ll give you a card, my London agent’s. I’ll see him for dinner this evening and tell him I have met someone I would like to take on the translation of some of my manuscripts. He’ll have instructions from me that if you should want to work we’ll give you a chance. It’s what I would like, and it doesn’t matter when if you do decide to do it. It doesn’t even matter if you decide never to do something with your languages, not to me anyway. Everyone is replaceable, you’ll find that out soon enough. Unless you have already. For example, last night.’

A mean and leading statement, the twinkle in his eye, the insinuation that it might have been he who had replaced Robert in sex with her. If he was trying to provoke her, he hadn’t succeeded.

‘I think you’ve spoilt me,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘You’ve dined me so well and wined me and taken me to an erotic wonderland, a trip to be remembered, one to last a lifetime.’

How clever she was in changing the subject of working on his books, with flattery, reminding him they were to be nothing more than a one-night stand. She was smiling at him. He couldn’t help but laugh and tell her, ‘You’re such a coquette, a seductress
par excellence
. You show me only flashes of it, but I do see it. One day I might write about a woman like you.
Make you the heroine that I think you probably are. But I would describe you as a young woman before you married the wrong man.’

He held up his hand to stop her before she made a protest. ‘No, don’t defend yourself or him. I don’t want to hear your story. I’m only telling you what I see, what I know from the few facts I have learned about you. A writer’s imagination will do the rest. Something I write one day might well be inspired by you. I’ll make a deduction. That is, if you will allow me?’

Fascinated, she said, ‘No, don’t tell me. Write it on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope and seal it. I’ll place it in my handbag. A year from now I’ll open the envelope and we’ll see if you were right.’

Amused at the idea, he told her, ‘If you prefer.’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

She rose from her chair and went to the desk, returning with pencil and paper and an envelope.

He wrote several lines and then folded the paper and placed it in the envelope, sealed it and slid it across the table towards her. She caught it before it fell to the floor and looked at the envelope. He had addressed it to Anoushka Usopova. She stared down at it for a very long time, trying to remember the last time anyone had written to her using her maiden name. Puzzled, she gazed across the table at him.

‘That is who you are. Had you forgotten? If I were to think of you – but I am a heartless man at the best of times, so I probably won’t – but
if
I did, I would like to think of you leaving this ship more whole than when
you arrived. A little less Mrs Rivers and a great deal more Anoushka Usopova. Broken hearts take time to heal and rebirth is painful so I will not think about you in that light. I prefer to think of you as I have known you sexually, and as an adventuress who is out there creating a new and exciting life for herself. Those sparks of seductive femininity you possess – use them well, Anoushka. Seduce lots of handsome young men who can satisfy your voracious appetite for all things erotic. Play with them, have the best of times. You’re free. If you need someone to answer to then let it be yourself. You’re no longer the appendage of a husband.’

Anoushka was not displeased at his advice, more amused. She threw back her head and laughed. A throaty, sexy laugh he’d had no idea she was capable of. ‘Talk of seducers, talk about charming! You’re a dangerous man, Hadon. How is it that you make me feel safe, while all the time I know when I’m with you I might come to harm?’

‘That shows how desperate you are, my dear. I’m a bastard.’

There seemed no answer to that. Anoushka knew he was telling her the truth. She had sensed it during their hours of sexual madness, for at some point that was what it had turned into. Had she not been the willing partner she had been, would anything have stopped him from taking her as and how he wanted to? She doubted it. But ever since she had met him at the ship’s rail when the liner had been pulling away from
the New York dock, he had been many things to her and a bastard had not been one of them.

‘Not to me, Hadon,’ she told him.

A look of understanding passed between them and then there was nothing more to be said. They finished their breakfast, lost themselves in the beautiful music and drifted further and further apart. Finally Anoushka rose from her chair and went round the table, to place her face among the long-stemmed red roses and breathe deeply of their scent, a perfume she wanted never to forget. Then she walked to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘I think this is goodbye.’ That was all he said. He slipped a card with his agent’s address on it into her bag and walked her to the stateroom door. There they stood facing each other. She half expected him to ask, ‘One more time?’ and take her then and there. She would have liked that.

But he didn’t. Instead he said, ‘Ships that pass in the night,’ and opened the door for her. He stepped into the corridor and called the cabin steward. ‘Mrs Rivers would like to return to her cabin. Would you please escort her there?’ There was one last smile for her. She returned it with one of her own then turned away from him and never looked back.

Anoushka was by no means living in dreamland; she knew that as soon as she had returned to her cabin. Bathed and changed into something more appropriate for disembarkation in Southampton, she found reality
if not easier to deal with then at least something she could face. The voyage across the Atlantic and her encounters with Hadon had given her strength to reach down into the core of herself and there she had found her remaining self-esteem.

Opening suitcases and folding clothes absorbed her for a while until memories began to intrude: so many years of packing and unpacking cases for the family; holidays, long weekends away with Robert, summer camps for the boys, a second honeymoon in Europe. Anoushka felt herself slipping into a cold and distant place, a void she feared. She sensed that black clouds were about to envelop her and so was depression. She had had enough of that so rang for the maid, someone else could pack, spare her the ordeal she had always loathed and been made to do for herself and her family.

Anoushka handed the woman a twenty-dollar bill and said, ‘Please pack for me. That’s for the packing and for seeing that my luggage is put ashore.’ Then she took out a fifty-dollar bill and handed that too to the woman. ‘And this is for taking care of me during this voyage.’ And she gathered up her things and fled from the cabin, hoping that she was leaving behind that black cloud.

And she did feel better standing at the rail in the bow of the ship. The sun had grown even brighter and the wind had not risen. The salt air felt clean and fresh, healing her. Anoushka had control of herself again and wondered if she had tipped the maid enough. There were others to see to but she felt quite
lost in dealing with travel etiquette. There had always been Robert to deal with such things. She had however remembered what he had told her once, when she had travelled alone to visit a dying uncle in St Petersburg: ‘A lady alone will be considered a bother but not if you are a seriously good tipper. If you want service just pay over the top for it and your travels will be much easier.’

Anoushka felt good about being here among people, and watched the other passengers with interest. She even greeted a few, smiling pleasantly at others. She was sorry that she had wasted so many days in some deep dark coma of her own making. Being so utterly alone in that cabin during the crossing had been a lesson that she knew would last her a lifetime. She would never again allow her despair to get on top of her as it had. It was killing. Here was rebirth.

She felt the buzz of excitement that is created on board when the voyage is over and the ship is about to dock. Suddenly the real world is about to intrude: luggage to oversee, travel connections and timetables to meet, shipmates parting with promises of continuing friendships, never to meet again. It was happening all round Anoushka, was something she could see but did not feel in any way a part of. She remained isolated from it, preferring to remain in limbo on the ocean waves.

‘Look, the first sight of land. It’s Lizard Point,’ she heard someone shout excitedly. People rushed camera in hand to the ship’s rail but for Anoushka the most southerly point of the British Isles, south-west
Cornwall, rising up out of the Atlantic Ocean, was something she was not quite ready for. A brief look at the magnificent coastal scenery and she turned her back on it and walked away.

‘So what?’ she said aloud just above a whisper, and walked into one of the nearly deserted salons and ordered an espresso. Some time later France appeared on the horizon. At Cherbourg she watched the grand lady of the oceans and seas dock, and thought about Hadon Calder’s luggage being manhandled from ship to shore then driven to Nice. Her imaginings stopped when she realised she had no real image of him or his luggage, what his life was like outside their brief encounter. One of the most exciting and intimate nights of her life, and when they had been together their souls had never touched. At the time she’d thought they had.