Lady in Red Page 5

  John, his colleague, excused himself and wandered outside to have a smoke.

  Milo leaned into me. “Everything OK over there?” He squeezed my knee, and immediately that tiny gesture told me that I hadn’t been the only one holding back.

  Now I no longer needed an invitation, and I put my mouth to his right ear.

  “I sure am now.” I slightly tilted my head in his direction, so that a few golden hairs caressed his face and became a bit tangled in his stubbly cheek as I reclined. I was a little light-headed, and I couldn’t quite tell if Milo or the vodka, or both, was responsible for the delightful mess that was about to happen. I went back to staring at him quite indecently.

  He swallowed visibly and bit his lip.

  “Please don’t.” He turned his eyes away, but I wasn’t planning on letting go this time. He felt my still-burning gaze and looked back. He pinched my arm. “Damn you.”

  He turned his eyes up at the ceiling now. Meanwhile I took a chance. I dropped my fear and just went with my gut, scraping the round toe of my stiletto along the inside of his calf. I could feel the desire building up. The days, months, and years of yearning were stuck together like a huge ball of fire in my belly. There were no other words for this than immeasurable craving. Milo scraped his fingers through his hair, much like I once had done, and looked at me the way he would look at me when I was the one making the gesture.

  “You drive me crazy. You bitch.”

  He was the only one within earshot who could hear me gasp for air through my slightly parted lips. Milo undoubtedly read the yearning in my eyes and got out his credit card. Our moment in the bar was coming to an end. I knew it. He knew it. Without a word, our gazes tangled. His blue stare made me cringe on the inside with uncanny delight. With firm precision, he pressed the corner of the card deep into the milky skin of my temple. Instantly, I was deliciously afraid to breathe or blink my eyes. A sweet anguish was taking control of my body. My thighs tightened, and the pressure applied near to my fixed gaze wakened a hunger in my loins. With a steady force, he dragged the card down my face with a provoking deliberation, my eyes still captured in his tantalizing gaze. His strong hand enclosed mine with delightful determination. We got up, never even entertaining the thought that John was still out there somewhere on the terrace, and walked toward the exit in meaningful silence.

  We turned the corner of the bar together. He promptly put his arm around my waist and led me outside. My breathing quickened with every step. And, with every step in the direction of my car, the earth below felt like it was slowing down its spin. His hand climbed all the way up my back, above my beige-lapelled blazer, to grab my neck and a large portion of my long hair. With a hefty jerk, he forced my head to turn his way, and I willingly sunk into the kiss that been lingering between us for hours. We knew full well that this would happen if we saw each other again. It was that toxic magic we had that made us act boldly insane. His other hand pulled me against his body and, right at that moment, I knew escape was no longer an option. Although, honestly, I readily admit, it had never been an option from the get-go. For an instant, he allowed me to come up for air. I stared at my shoes because I felt another sliver of frightful delight building up. Gazing into Milo’s eyes now would surely not stave off the inevitable. On the contrary, that feeling would stretch out into a fear of losing myself once more, a fear of that powerlessness he inspired every time he looked me in the eye. I felt a haze setting in. This time, it wasn’t the vodka. As for those few hits of alcohol, there was nothing quite as sobering as a cool evening breeze in early spring. Milo was the one making my head spin. His spell was incontrovertible.

  When we finally got to my car, I found renewed courage to look him in the eye. He collected my hair in the palm of his right hand, not turning his eyes away, not even for a second. They were staring me right into the abysses of oblivion. The soft wind caressing my locks contrasted painfully with the way his body squeezed me up against the side of the car. With a resolute tug on the golden bundle in his hand, he compelled me to stare into the night sky and watch our fumes ignite the stars above. With gentle moans, my enjoyment floated up as I felt his teeth dig into the flesh of my throat. My head became weightless, empty. Everything stood still. Everything went quiet except for him. My body paralyzed upon tasting his greed. I no longer had the power, nor the courage, to move an inch, but I really didn’t want to either.

  “My slut. That’s what you are. Look at me.”

  Without thinking twice, I complied. Something in his eyes had changed. I could read the hunger. The desire of a beast untamed. His fingers fell back into place on my neck as they pressed upon the veins alongside my windpipe. I stretched my neck to regain my breath and detected how much effort my blood was putting in to make it up into my head. His grip weakened a bit while his other hand pinned my face against the car. He was truly intoxicating; a force of nature, raw and pure. God, he was so fucking beautiful. All of his strength was concentrated in his thumb as it pulverized my lips before forcing itself between my teeth. The tension underneath my skin just let loose at once as I tasted his skin, and another moan escaped me.

  The crackle of the grayish pebbles of the parking lot interrupted us, announcing the arrival of visitors. Milo let go and took a step back. I felt bereft. Without his supremacy I was strangely lost, naked, albeit only mentally, since I still had all my clothes on. Freedom from his brutal hands meant physical liberty, but by now I didn’t want anything more than to surrender myself completely. I had recovered what I had once lost. His ice-blue eyes were lit with flaming seas of passion. The creaking sound deafened, announcing the next attack. With that familiar unleashed desire, I got thrown against the car’s steel body, and my face welcomed his greedy bites as his hand slid up under my silk blouse. His nails scratched their way up along my stomach, finally crushing my breasts. I found myself lovingly tormented and hit my head against the roof as I threw it back in pleasure.

  “Watch your head,” he whispered, but Milo recovered quickly as he panted in my ear, “My filthy whore.” His words clung to my ears like liquid honey, and he forcefully pulled my hair again. My human boundaries fell prey to his primitive ways, and my excitement audibly flowed into the night.

  With a decisive movement of his sculptured knee, Milo spread my legs without loosening his grip even a little bit. His hand dove briskly into my pants, where three of his fingers quickly found their way into my darkness. Yearning for more, my back instinctively arched, and with short, powerful sighs, my lungs emptied themselves passionately. I was no longer able to control my urges and, on the spur of the moment, I eagerly licked his face and bit his lip. This startled him, and his thumb brushed along the cut left behind by my uncontrollable hunger, smearing the faintest trickle of blood across his cheek. Beyond the surprise, I recognized that wild nature of his. We were equals; I know that now.

  The smacking sound of my lust reverberated with the tempestuous rhythm of Milo’s hand. Delicately, his index finger withdrew from this dance and decided to go for it all on its own, with that same irresistible passion, a little bit farther down. Immediately my knees quivered with newly discovered intensity. The quiver tingled up my clammy thighs. Once again, he grabbed me by the throat; this time I fixed on the fire in his eyes, turning a sparkling black in the dim-lit shadows of the streetlights.

  “Dirty bitch, I knew you wanted it bad.”

  In response, I folded one of my shivering legs around his and grated my nine-inch heel forcefully up the back of his calf. He sighed and let his head fall into my neck.

  “Oh, you little slut, you should’ve been mine.”

  I whimpered feverishly in disbelief. I clutched his salt-and-pepper hair and dreamed along with him. “You animal, if only that were true.”

  The following morning I woke up in a swoon of happiness that quickly mingled with disappointment when I gazed upon the reality snoring next to me. I turned my eyes to the ceiling
, desperately clinging to that last shard of illusion that would soon leave me disenchanted in bed next to Charles. A last trace of Milo was burning on my cheek. I slid out from between the damask sheets and snuck barefoot into the bathroom. In the mirror, I discerned the silent witnesses Milo’s fire had left behind on my face. Delicious was the first word that popped into my brain. Filled with unholy admiration, I offered my full attention to the scratches and blue-green marks, my delicious war wounds. It was a true miracle to have surrendered. I just hoped it wouldn’t be the last time. I wanted to relive the magic, and soon at that.

  I sighed and thought about how this would seem quite deranged to “normal” people. Very few would be able to see the beauty of the imprints of pure emotion. They would only see the pain, the torture, or the fear, perhaps. They would not go beyond that, beyond the superficial part of it. And its deliberateness would surely send them over the edge, thinking it is ludicrous and absurd, not to mention completely insane. This might be true in their eyes, maybe, but not in mine. What beauty lay behind that pain—not the particular kind of pain to be put up with, but rather something experienced consciously in all its intensity, something to be savored. A pain like that could only be followed by this wondrous greatness, and that blissful moment when my entire being encountered pleasure of the purest kind, that moment of complete surrender making my senses soar and my head dazzle.

  Sure, perhaps it seems like an odd thing to do. Some will tell you it’s all about the giving up of control, the surrender. It is true that relieving yourself of the task of making any decision by passing it on to your lover frees the mind of its preoccupations, the heart of its anxieties, and the soul of its restraints. But that’s only half of the story. In some way, it felt like the manner I should be treated. It felt like it was what I deserved for my individual betrayal. All of it—the biting, the cursing, the torment of anticipation— was the appropriate way of handling me. Because I longed for things, brutal and sublime in nature, maybe sordid to some; and I yearned for the high of submission, a sense of living as it was originally intended—forces of nature uninhibited by human will or intellect, an untainted stirring of the senses to heal my soul. His rawness was my ecstasy. His brusqueness was my absolution. I fondly caressed my bruises and quietly longed for more. More pain. More pleasure. More Milo.

  Chapter Seven

  There is a certain pleasure hiding within the pain of longing anticipation. I had my life. Milo had his. Before that last infectious episode with him, I had managed to be Estelle without him. Or had I? I breathed as a version of myself, a partial one at best. Everybody likes that version of me: my parents, my partner, society in general. But alone at night, I slip and fall into the dark fantasies that are so much a part of me. So much so that that version, the one the outside world knows, hardly covers even a considerable part of me. At night, I travel back to the one that touched my core, saw the darkness, and, instead of running, invited it out to play along with his. That’s what I love about Milo. He is flawed himself, just like me, just like all of us. But this particular trait made him perfectly imperfect for me. He is a lover filled with gloom, dauntlessly approaching me, penetrating my shadows, and in doing so, not bringing them to light; no, in fondling my darkness, he showed that it is just as vital as the light, that without it we humans would not recognize all that is shining, boasting bright.

  So, I am at my house, waiting, silently hoping nothing will stand in the way of my plans. I wallow in this sweet, stinging anticipation, for without it I would never have felt like I belonged anywhere at all.

  The day had finally come. I was driving toward rapture and relished the silence before the storm. This night was a present of old times, but judging from the nervous throbbing in my chest, I clearly wanted it to be the first of many more to come. On a countless number of occasions and in myriad devilish variations, I had dreamed of this day. There wasn’t much I could control—certainly not the future—but today, tonight, I held the power to create memories bordering on the realm of dreams. I might just be a quick distraction, Milo might be, too, but I didn’t want to waste time wondering and pondering. I just longed to have passion this close to me again, within reach, and scorching my fingertips while roaming his body. There was only one thing cruising through my mind about the subject: giving myself to him the way he knew me best, as the girl in the red dress. She had grown up since then, she had had the time, plenty of it, to think about and fantasize about everything she had missed out on, wished she had done. But she was here. Today. Tonight. Ready, yet again, her red lace dress hugging her body.

  The traffic light in front of me turned red, and I stopped. Waited an extra minute. Patiently. Not so much. One more minute of torture that made me decide this wouldn’t suffice. That’s the problem with the exquisite pleasures of life. As long as we are oblivious to them, we manage fine without them; but as soon as we get a taste, it’s unthinkable to content ourselves any longer with the status quo. I wanted Milo as I liked him the most. I wanted him crazy and uninhibited. The red dress, the attempt at casual sexy makeup, and, of course, the hooker heels he adored wouldn’t be enough. In a last-minute influx of inspiration, my right hand fumbled clumsily under my dress. My seatbelt didn’t make my quest any easier. But, as is often the case in these matters, perseverance pays off. I pulled my silk thong down along my legs and wriggled it over my shoes. The girl in the car in the next lane flashed curious eyes in my direction, probably trying to figure out the purpose of my squirming. I chuckled in my mind like a bad schoolgirl, realizing she had no clue about my partly crazy, partly stupid motives. I dropped the ball of silk into the left-hand pocket of my coat, while the key to our room was burning in the right-hand one. Green light. Finally. I was relieved to drive toward our half-night of paradise.

  Exciting, huh.

  His text said it all. Of course it was.

  I parked my car and saw Milo standing in the parking lot. With my towering heels, I strutted toward him as he rubbed his hands nervously together, leaning against his car.

  “Damn, honey, I am quite nervous about this.” He turned around and opened the trunk to get out his overnight bag, and the trembling of his voice softly lingered on his breath. I slid closer and tenderly pushed myself up against his bent torso.

  “There’s no need for that,” I whispered in his ear, and used the occasion to plant a tiny kiss on the side of his neck. I must admit, this side of him was quite adorable. The nervousness painted all over his face, however, was slightly familiar. It was raging underneath my skin, too, but my desire brutally repressed it.

  “How…how do we do this?”

  My fingertips slipped reassuringly into his hand.

  “Walk with me,” I said as I led him along the tiny paths silently crossing the garden.

  When a few passersby appeared, the charming doubt on his face resurfaced. He slowed down to walk behind me, got out his cell phone, and started an imaginary conversation with an even more imaginary caller. As I said, he had a most-alluring cuteness. My pleasure crackled almost audibly inside my stomach. His misplaced innocence—I adored it. My sweet little man was harboring a wild animal in there somewhere, invisible and hidden from the outside world. Ravishing. All of him. What if those cocktail-sipping nitwits had seen straight through our shells of decency and stared at the primal cores boiling underneath? I smiled as he followed me. Still, Milo seemed nervous and slightly unsettled. We approached the door that would protect us from the tedious world of convention, and I felt it, just the tip of our lustful antics. But I knew, then and there, that this night would be full of wonder.

  Slowly I turned to face Milo. His eyes were still the place I found my calm. He bridged the distance between us, kissing me gently in the sultry night. This felt like something privy to us both, as if we had been chosen to witness something excruciatingly pure and new. A matter of seconds later, joining forces with the evening breeze, a crushing sadness enveloped me. I didn’t wan
t to give in to the conventions of appropriate behavior this time and leaned into Milo.

  “Maybe you should get the key out of my pocket,” I whispered.

  With these words, I declared war on the narcotic boredom that was much too common a thing in this world. He looked somewhat surprised but did as he was told.

  “It’s not in here, maybe the other side,” he said as his hand searched a second pocket.

  “The right question, darling, is what does the pocket contain?”

  He didn’t see that coming. Astonished as he was, his hand delved into my left-hand pocket again. My thigh detected his curious fondling of the smooth fabric of my underwear. I stared at him, unrelentingly. I didn’t want to miss the instant of discovery. Comprehension slowly crept into his eyes as they glistened in the moonlight.

  “You haven’t changed at all, have you?” Guided by his boyish, nervous sniggering, Milo turned the lock and swung the door open.

  With resolution, I stepped into the dining room and let my handbag fall to the floor next to the taupe couch. He wavered a little at discovering the space we would have to ourselves, all fifteen hundred square feet of it, providing us our secluded freedom. Still without underwear, I graciously sat down on the couch while he asked me from the kitchen for specifications on how to mix a screwdriver. It was a common drink, but he had limited his knowledge to the art of making gin and tonics. When he finally sat next to me, I noticed how he was fumbling with his hands again. Fluttered is the word. Milo turned on the TV, browsing the channels in search of music. The first tones flooding the room were those of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. He frowned slightly and shrugged his shoulders.