Monogamy Book One. Lover: This is one love for life and beyond time

by Victoria Sobolev

  Yes, I hug him! Because my pride and my coldness lost the upper hand to my sexuality a long time ago.

  Alex turns around and tenderly hugs me back with a smile, holding on for a long time and burying his nose in my still wet hair.

  ‘You smelled so delicious at the airport, but it’s gone. Why did you have to wash it off so quickly?’

  ‘I thought we’d be getting down to the main event straight away, but you seem to have got a little distracted!’

  Alex laughs and, deliberately kissing me on the cheek rather than the lips, says: ‘I have to feed you first!’

  ‘I ate on the plane!’

  ‘But you should eat more. It will do you a world of good!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course! Look how skinny you are!’

  ‘So you’re trying to make me fat...’

  ‘You women seem to know nothing about your own femininity! You’re all overly obsessed with being thin!’

  ‘That’s quite a specific opinion you have.’

  *** ‘Waves’ by Mattia Cupelli ***

  His warm hands are already under my dressing gown and on both sides of my waist. There is a particular spot where his touch always has consequences, but he senses it and takes his hands away, and I... I once again have no idea what’s happening. There is no doubt he wants me – his darkening gaze is unmistakeable – but it’s also obvious that this sexy man is stubbornly holding back, just like in Spain when I discovered that sex and large amounts of alcohol don’t mix.

  But we haven’t drunk anything today, so what’s going on?

  We sit at the table and eat, and all the while Alex doesn’t take his dark eyes off me. He smiles, tries to make jokes, but it’s not going well and I can feel the tension. Finally, he fetches two elegant glasses and fills them with white wine, and I think, ‘Right. So now you’re going to waste even more time by getting me drunk. Then we’ll have to wait until we’ve sobered up before we can get on with it!’

  Alex himself eats almost nothing and merely tastes the wine. I try to do the same, but he comments that he has gone to a lot of trouble and my poor appetite will offend him. As usual, however, my quick thinking comes to the rescue.

  ‘I ate so much on the plane that I’m just not that hungry.’

  And in my mind, I keep asking, ‘When will this torture end?’ My need is so powerful, so desperate, that it won’t be long before I just take the initiative and pounce on him.

  I never used to be like this. He has done this to me. He created me and now he’s torturing me. What do I do? How do I tell him that my insides are aching? That I want to be with him so much my whole body is moaning – no, crying out in need? How can a woman admit something like that without debasing herself?

  So I remain silent.

  Finally, Alex goes to take a shower, telling me not to bother tidying up, that he’ll do it himself. Yeah, right. And I’ll just sit here and wait while His Excellency Mr Cleanliness tidies up the kitchen, will I? I don’t think so! I clear everything away and then I wait.

  Alex emerges, a towel wrapped around his waist, his eyes darker still and his face serious, suggesting that what I crave so desperately is imminent. I lay my head on his pillow and he lies down next to me, but he doesn’t embrace me, he just stares into my eyes. What on earth is he doing?

  But my role in this is very small. He always plays the lead and that’s absolutely fine with me. First, he knows much more about sex than me, who knows practically nothing. I might as well be a complete beginner, while Alex is not just good at it, he’s a connoisseur. If carnal knowledge was a university degree course, he’d be awarded a first. Second, I’m terrified I’ll do something wrong, because Alex once took my hands off his head. I have never touched his hair since, but I want to so badly! And in bed, we do every possible position except for the one where the woman is on top, and this gives rise to some deep, troubling thoughts given his extraordinary skill when it comes to love making. I know almost nothing about him and he never talks about himself very much. He only ever shares snippets of isolated events that are essentially unimportant. Noting all these peculiarities and putting them together, I can’t help feeling that Alex is hiding a number of secrets – far more than just the real reason why he doesn’t like people admiring his naked body.

  *** ‘Remember my name’ by Bliss ***

  And here he is, lying beside me and breathing calmly, his eyes no longer dark but completely black. We have done nothing for a while but look at each other. I stopped trying to understand him a long time ago and now just simply trust him. Finally, he lays his hand on my waist, slides it slowly down to my hip and starts to caress me. Eye to eye, the only variable in the room is the movement of his hand. With indifference and an unnatural sense of calm, I am aware of streams flowing through my body, merging into rivers, forming deltas, and flowing into seas and then oceans of bliss.

  My eyes are open, but they are not looking at Alex. Instead, they are staring at a newly discovered space where the energy of the soul is no longer a separate phenomenon but is capable of making contact with the energy of another soul and merging with it into a single whole.

  It is not an orgasm, but something incomparably greater, fuller and more intense that excites every level and sublevel of your consciousness and makes every atom vibrate. It is the delight of awareness!

  I have never felt sensations like these before, but quickly work out that what we’re doing right now is Tantric sex. But the most amazing thing is that, experiencing it for the very first time, I am aware of and appreciate every single millisecond of this extended, molten intimacy.

  Every muscle in my body, every cell, every thought is relaxed. Everything that’s going on is the natural flow and reflow of energies from one state to another.

  ‘Tantric sex does not necessarily involve an orgasm, so it’s not about either the man or the woman experiencing release,’ I recall reading once.

  I can’t take it any longer and move closer to his lips, silently begging him to kiss me, and Alex hears my call. He presses his mouth against mine, but not passionately. With the same slow tenderness, he touches my lips with his, covering them individually and together with small teasing bites. His tongue touches my lips seemingly accidentally, just barely brushing against them, and something inexplicable happens to me. I have an orgasm. An actual full-blown orgasm, no higher levels, I am only affected physically, and all from just a kiss. Is that possible? Absolutely, if you’ve been waiting to sleep with a sex genius for two months and if this beautiful, attractive genius is now lying next to you naked, gently nibbling at your lips with his.

  I don’t let on what just happened – I don’t make a sound, or change my position, or move, or open my eyes – I simply continue to accept the caresses of his skilful lips and hands. And I don’t really understand what’s going on. I don’t understand how or why, but he certainly knows what has just happened to me, because now he is gently lifting up my hips and, without changing our position, makes his first thrust.

  I have never been so grateful to the Universe for endowing men with such an organ, and it’s exactly the size that I can’t help but arch my whole body towards it, praying, begging for movement, for male self-gratification, greed, and maybe even disrespect – a little, only a little. But Alex moves slowly and carefully, and it feels more like the tenderest of caresses than friction, bestowed on a woman’s body by a man’s.

  His brown eyes implore mine not to look away, seek to keep them focused, but whatever he’s doing to my insides is making it very difficult. I can see his parted lips and want to trace their beautiful contour with the tip of my tongue, then grab them between my teeth and bite a little until it hurts. I want to so badly... before long, my body is rocked by a powerful orgasm – long, intense, rainbow coloured.

  Alex smiles because he can feel my internal contractions, but he continues with his kisses, covering my whole face in them. He stops for a short while, giving me a little breather, then carries on mov
ing. Like French cheese, the two of us are slowly melting in time with the leisurely pace of our two bodies joined as one. No passion, no rushing, no groans, no screaming out ‘Alex!’.

  Our extraordinary Tantric sex session lasts for nearly two hours and we’re exhausted. In this time, I experience another seven orgasms.

  Alex pulls out of me and I realise two things: he didn’t come once and, despite my own numerous and fairly strong orgasms, I need more, I desperately want to feel his powerful thrusts inside me. So badly, in fact, that I start to sob and they’re not tears of frustration or resentment, but some kind of rootless emotions that I can’t link to anything or even explain.

  But Alex doesn’t see my tears because he has disappeared off somewhere in the apartment. It is the first time he has done this – previously after sex, he would hold me tightly in his arms for a while and I always knew that he needed it more than me.

  Not now, though.

  *** ‘Midnight’ by Coldplay ***

  Calming down a little, I switch on my laptop and search ‘Tantric sex for men’. I find what I’m looking for almost immediately: the ultimate goal is the dominance and implementation of mind over body, the desire to teach the physical to obey the mental. The latter, in turn, controls every physiological process and especially sexual energy, which will be transformed into other types of energies such as creation, wisdom, and creativity. The teachings (according to Ayurveda) are based on the legend that the male seed is a powerful source of energy that is lost with every natural (or unnatural) copulation. Hence, every man should try to prevent the loss of this life-giving energy until he has taught his body to completely reject sex as an absolute evil.

  I already know by now that Alex is a powerful generator of continuous sexual energy. The smallest things get him excited and it happens so quickly and is so unavoidable that you’ve got to wonder how he does it and, more importantly, how he lives with it. It seems, however, that my friend has now decided to learn how to control his extraordinary sexual appetite.

  I go and find him. He’s sitting cross-legged on a chair fully dressed, although he was naked when he left the bedroom, picking at his unfinished green salad with a fork and staring out of a window that takes up one entire wall of the kitchen. It looks out onto an ocean of tall buildings and skyscrapers, joined together by overpasses filled with the flickering lights of cars.

  I sit down next to him and he lifts his sorrowful eyes to mine.

  ‘So, did you like the Tantric sex?’ I ask him.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I asked first.’

  ‘Have you done it before?’

  ‘No, today was my first time.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  Silence.

  ‘You don’t seem like you enjoyed it much.’

  ‘No, I can’t say I’m that crazy about it,’ he says, looking back out at Paris bustling below us.

  ‘Then why are you doing it?’

  Alex says nothing for a while, clearly trying to put together an answer I’ll understand.

  ‘I want to befriend my body.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean me controlling it rather than it controlling me.’

  ‘Sounds intriguing, but it doesn’t seem to be making either of you happy,’ I say softly with a tender smile.

  Jesus, I seem to be unwittingly trying to seduce him...

  I don’t know why, but it suddenly becomes abundantly clear to me that Alex has not been messing around with any French women. The way he reacted to our kiss at the airport and the fact that his eyes have remained dark ever since I arrived is evidence of one thing, and one thing only – a very, very long period of abstinence. Maybe not for the whole two months, but for the last two weeks definitely.

  And then a show is staged in Alex’s stylish grey apartment called ‘I am satisfied; I want nothing more’ with an audience of one – me. I sit calmly on the protagonist’s bed, accidentally exposing a shoulder and part of my chest in the process, and pretend (that is, I am also playing a role, but in my own production) that I am engrossed in looking for something on my laptop, but, out of the corner of my eye, I am also watching what is happening on the main stage, where a drama is unfolding. A strong and wise ruler of his own body is wandering aimlessly around his apartment looking for something to keep him busy, since the pent-up energy of his male seed needs to be spent on something.

  I bend a leg and the flap of my white dressing gown slowly slips to the side, revealing further and further up my thigh. I have beautiful legs and I know it. I keep my eye on Alex: his gaze has already caught my little performance and is frozen in contemplation. He breathes heavily for a while, then nervously looks away and, like a hunted animal, flees to the kitchen – to freedom.

  About twenty minutes later, in which he has obviously managed to calm himself down, Alex comes back and, without glancing at me once, walks over to the bedroom’s panoramic window. ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’

  It’s an interesting suggestion. It means there’s not going to be any more sex, not even Tantric.

  ‘Why not? It’ll give me a chance to introduce my new coat to the world...’ I muse aloud.

  Alex breaks into a smile and even allows himself a brief glance in my direction, which almost instantly slides down to my chest before immediately returning to the skyscrapers of Paris as if scalded.

  I put on a dress with a plunging neckline, high-heeled boots and my new coat, of course, and I’m ready.

  *** ‘Burning’ by Garou ***

  We go for a stroll in the Paris evening. The sky has already cleared up and what is left of the day’s sun fills it with a romantic light that flows from pink to golden. Tall glass and metal buildings are connected to each other by complicated labyrinths of squares with mini gardens, fountains, pools, and overpasses joined together with complex loops between levels.

  We take a confusing route, often using the lifts to go up and down, and I have to say that, without Alex, I would never be able to find my way back. We finally emerge into a big, open space – La Défense – which is home to the enormous La Grande Arche, a stupendous white building in the shape of a square arch standing on one of its sides. It is a symbol of modernity in art and architecture. The whole area is really beautiful, especially to me as a lover of hi-tech.

  It is surrounded by ultra-modern skyscrapers and finished off with a huge elaborate fountain lined with small, brightly coloured tiles. This comes to an abrupt end with an artificial waterfall that leads to a long, stylish garden decorated with modern, rather strange-looking sculptures and another pool of water with large coloured beads on thin spikes sticking up out of the water’s flat surface. I have never seen anything like it before. You wouldn’t think it would be that amazing, but the futuristic balls on long spikes against the elevated backdrop of the old city opening up from the square are mesmerising. The road leading to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower itself are also visible.

  Suddenly, Alex makes another suggestion, ‘Are you hungry? We could go to a restaurant.’

  ‘Do you think that’ll help?’ I reply, trying my best not to be sarcastic.

  ‘We could try,’ he says, quietly.

  ‘You had plenty of food at home, but you didn’t want to eat any of it. Do you really think restaurant food is going to be that much better?’

  ‘Let’s see. I mean, a change of scenery will be better than sitting at home.’

  ‘And what will we do tonight?’ I ask, taunting him with my untiring maliciousness.

  Alex breathes in and, on his breath out, says, ‘Sle-e-e-p!’

  ‘In the same bed or separate ones?’ There seems to be no stopping me.

  ‘The same one, of course!’ He looks scared.

  ‘Just checking,’ I reply.

  *** ‘Sous Le Vent’ by Celine Dion and Garou ***

  We retrace our steps through the same labyrinth back to his apartment, go down to the basement car park, find his newly repaired black Porsche
and drive to a restaurant. Alex says nothing the whole way there and looks serious, troubled even.

  When we arrive at the restaurant, I take off my coat and hand it to the doorman, but my low neckline is hidden beneath a turquoise scarf. We are shown to our table. Alex is wearing his blue cashmere jumper – my favourite. He looks beautiful in it, but also very endearing. Baby blue is definitely his colour; it goes surprisingly well with his brown eyes and black hair.

  About five tables are occupied and, as expected, every woman in there casts her eye in my companion’s direction. Their stares click in place like a lock or stick like adhesive tape and are almost impossible to remove. I think it’s funny that, no matter where he is, Alex’s presence always has this effect. I pull the turquoise scarf off my shoulders and know that I’m being cruel. The black dress I’m wearing is designed solely to seduce. It is off the shoulder and reveals just the right amount of cleavage to keep a man guessing.

  Alex is floundering and seems ready to surrender all of his defences. This poor guardian of his own male seed energy can do nothing but look since we are sitting opposite each other, and it is the restaurant’s intention that we should talk to each for about an hour before the food arrives. The spectacular neckline gradually starts to take effect, as evidenced by the persistent and even steadfast stares of the other diners in this sophisticated and clearly expensive restaurant. I am even starting to regret wearing it.

  ‘So, how much training have you done so far?’ I ask him.

  Alex casts a quick, questioning glance in my direction, but he doesn’t say anything and looks back at his glass of white wine.

  Smiling, I carry on. ‘How long do you think your willpower will last?’

  ‘Can we not talk about this?’ he snaps, but he’s such a mild-mannered person that even the sharpness in his voice seems affectionate.

  ‘Okay, sorry. I’ll stop.’

  I take a sip of white wine and its aroma and taste are exquisite. It compares favourably with our wines in that the alcohol is almost imperceptible, giving it a brighter, deeper bouquet. I relish the wine, my eyes slightly closed and my lips pursed. Alex is staring at me as if paralysed and it looks like he has finally lost his hard-fought self-control. I remember that my lips are what excite him the most, but my heart is filled with genuine compassion because my god of sex looks so pitiful. And, without taking his eyes off my mouth, the poor guy suddenly says, ‘It’s been two months...’