Triptych, An Erotic Adventure

by Krissy Kneen

  The bathroom door opened so suddenly that Katherine fumbled the soap. It slipped off the rack and bounced off her toes to partially cover the plug hole. Water began to swish over her feet and rise to her ankles.

  Katherine felt her heart beat faster. She looked out through the fogged shower curtain and saw the shadow of his naked body towering in the doorway. Aaron was so tall and impressive; more beautiful than any other man she had ever seen. Even after thirty years masquerading as husband and wife she could still catch a glimpse of him and find her breath stolen from her.

  ‘Hi darl,’ his sleepy voice. A radio voice, she always thought, deep and genuinely warm. ‘Just need to use the loo.’

  She listened to the tinkling sound as he stood, leaning with one hand against the wall. She watched the sleepy sway of him, lust and tenderness rising inside her. In their first weeks in the apartment he would wake early like this, to find her in the shower.

  She remembered one moment, years ago, with perfect clarity. The sliding back of the shower curtain—a dark blue at the time, with little raised bubbles in the plastic—and Aaron grinning, presenting his nakedness to her like a gift. Her reflex movement as she knelt under the play of water, unable to control her actions, pushing forward to take his penis in her mouth. Thirsty for him then, parched, as if the only thing that could restore her was the slippery jet of semen that he would eventually pump into her throat. She remembered how he tried to lift her to her feet, frightened, perhaps, that she would drown, wanting to kiss and touch her in return, and how she clung to him, pushing his hands away, pulling his hips closer, happy to feel breathless under the spray, desperate to feel him come into her mouth.

  They had been sexual for many years, but the sudden removal of restrictions had opened up a world of play that they had never known before. They made love in the shower, on the couch, on the bathroom floor. He bent her over the kitchen bench when they were making dinner together, lifted her up among the chopped garlic on the counter top. One time he was inspired to put a Lebanese cucumber inside her and eat the whole thing, crunching the crisp flesh till his lips touched her slick wetness. Even then she felt him suck at the vegetable and devour it inch by gradual inch, salty and warm from inside her body, his shameless abandon making her juices flow all the more freely.

  They experimented with every possible implement; she came to like the feel of a wooden spoon inside her, the crack of an egg on her pubic bone, the taste of honey on his penis. The bedroom they found especially erotic, playing at husbands and wives under the covers as they once had played doctors and nurses.

  Aaron finished and shook off the drops, and she saw his outline through the curtain as he turned to face her. She wanted suddenly for him to come towards her, to pull back the shower curtain and reach for her. Her mouth was dry, the same thirst now as that very first week of freedom. She would swallow him if he would only take a few steps forward, she would grab at his hips and not let him go until she had drunk her fill. She watched as the shadow of him hovered just beyond her reach.

  ‘Do you need me to pick anything up this afternoon?’

  The sudden flatness of her desire dissipating. ‘We need coffee.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll stop at The Boys.’

  ‘And anchovies?’

  ‘And the deli.’

  She let the water cascade over her hair. She brought her hands up to her face and wiped the lather from her eyes. When she opened them again the shadow of her brother had disappeared, a creeping cold breeze tickling in from the door he had left ajar.

  Katherine leaned against the tiles and closed her eyes tightly. She put her hand between her legs and pressed her fingers onto her clitoris. She imagined Aaron naked, still only vaguely awake, in their bed, his knees pulled up to touch the place where her body heat was still a memory on the sheets.

  She slipped her fingers inside herself, remembering a time when he would have been here, eager to do this with his own hand. The way he would kneel under the spill of water, gazing up at her with his startling blue eyes. She imagined that instead of asking about coffee and anchovies he had stepped over to the shower and pressed the plastic sheet to her breasts. His mouth finding hers, the gorgeous suffocation of plastic forced between her teeth by the press of his tongue, his penis hard, tenting the curtain towards her, his hand reaching around and his fingers burying themselves inside her.

  She imagined the curtain tearing off its rings, the fall of it encasing her, the sound of the shower drumming against the thick plastic. And he would lower her then just as she lowered herself onto the floor of the shower. He would leave her upper body blindly wrapped in plastic as he exposed her hips and eased her thighs apart. Her lips would be moist from soap and water when he prised them apart, but his tongue would find her own slippery juice and spread it along her labia, making sure her vagina was slick and ready for him.

  Then the longed-for weight, the pressure of his body as he lowered himself onto the curtain. Again the plastic in her mouth, the barrier between their bodies only heightening the pleasure, his cock suddenly there, deep inside her.

  Only in this kind of fantasy could she ever know him skin to skin. In dreams, his cock was the only thing that was naked, the one point where their flesh connected. In real life they were too cautious for him to linger inside her unprotected for more than a moment. She could never, in the real world, feel his semen shoot into her as she did now in imagination.

  He was her brother. They treated his seed as if it were acid to her inflamed vagina. She could swallow it, she could smear it on her breasts, he could aim it onto the jut of her pubic bone; but it must not fall inside her.

  Only here, alone under the heavy fall of warm water, she could spread her legs wide and imagine his violent final thrusts, the warm water a thin substitute for his hot semen, the feel of it splattering her moist labia, and when she spread the lips wide and thrust her own hips up towards the cascade of water, it was the idea of Aaron, her brother coming inside her that finally brought the spasms of release.

  She felt the palpitations around her finger as Aaron must feel them, squeezing his sheathed penis when they made love. She luxuriated in the dwindling waves of pleasure; but when it was done, a terrible sadness rushed in to replace the sheer physical joy.

  Breakfast alone at the kitchen bench. Coffee sipped from a thermos cup in the car. Katherine dragged herself towards another day with the other librarians, none of whom knew her particularly well, none of whom she liked. She strolled down the fiction aisles touching the books that were her favourites, Nabokov, Orwell, Eugenides, Nin. Books as friends.

  Surely Anaïs Nin would have understood her situation. They might have huddled, heads close, in the tearoom. I am in love with my brother, I have always been in love with my brother, and Anaïs would touch her lightly in the small of her back and breathe into her ear so that the hairs raised up on her neck. If only I had had the courage to make love to my brothers. The three of us could have the two of you over to dinner. Our families could make out in the loungeroom over dessert.

  ‘You on first lunch break?’

  Katherine started. It was the new boy, Trent, a slight young man with large brown eyes that stared up at her as if anxious to know whether she would pet him or kick him aside. She smiled. ‘I’m not that hungry. You can go first if you like.’

  ‘It’s a shame we can’t take breaks at the same time.’

  ‘Why?’ She didn’t mean her question to sound so terse. She saw him flinch: kicked, then. Already sidling away.

  ‘Oh, no reason, I just like this café around the corner and it would be nice to buy you a coffee. It wasn’t a thing, just a thought. But we don’t have breaks at the same time. So anyway. That’s—I just—I’ll take my lunch first then if you don’t mind.’

  He was gone before Katherine could apologise. Leaving her standing forlornly cradling a copy of Little Birds.

  Later, on her own lunch break, she pressed her forehead against the laminate of the desk as if sh
e were praying to the apple she had placed there. She felt the dull throb of a headache beginning behind her temples. She lifted her face and checked her watch; groaned at the stretch of hours she would have to drag herself through before the day ended.

  Trent was standing near her locker. Katherine was transported back to the school corridors for a moment, the young boys hovering, placing themselves in her way. They kept trying despite her reputation, calling her frigid because she always managed to wriggle politely out of the invitations to school dances or parties on Friday nights. They thought she was a career virgin, saving herself for god or country or a life of higher pursuits. They were not, of course, to know about her regular trysts with her brother, the quick consummations achieved furtively on her bedroom floor.

  Now, as then, Katherine felt her cheeks redden at the sight of a boy waiting by her locker. She smiled at him shyly and he shrugged as if in answer to a silent question.

  ‘Sorry about before. I wasn’t trying to hit on you or anything…’

  ‘You weren’t?’

  ‘Well not, I mean, I could, I want, but I don’t know—I didn’t mean…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she told him then. ‘If you still want to go for coffee I wouldn’t mind one now.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘As long as you know I am married.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘Over twenty years.’

  ‘What, really?’

  ‘How old do you think I am, Trent?’

  It was his turn to blush. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.

  I suppose you are a bit older than me.’

  ‘Yes. A fair bit older, I would imagine.’

  He shrugged again and pulled his satchel higher on his shoulder, a sweet little self-conscious gesture, and Katherine found herself smiling.

  ‘Actually that café closes early,’ he said, ‘but there’s a cute little bar next door.’

  ‘Come on then.’ She threaded her hand into the crook of his arm, and found it was nice to walk like this beside him. He seemed like a sweet enough person. Katherine had not gone to a bar with anyone for so many years.

  She took Trent around the corner from the bar and kissed him on the mouth. His route home was in one direction, she would be going in another. Before the point where their paths diverged there was a small alley between a Chinese takeaway and a little bookshop. Perhaps it was the window display: some rejacketed classics and Little Birds now with a shy girl on the cover, naked, her smile that perfect mixture of brazen and coy. It was Anaïs, egging her on.

  Katherine took the boy by his collar and before either of them could protest she eased him back into the darkness of the alley and leaned him against the warm bricks and pressed her lips hard against his mouth.

  It was the first time she had kissed another man. All her life she had reserved her kisses for her brother, from the first platonic ones to the kinds of kisses that would inflame them both. The feeling of another man’s mouth against hers was strange and arousing. His face was so smooth she could rub her cheek against his without the slightest risk of a beard rash. She threaded her fingers through his hair and kissed him again, longer this time, parting his lips with her tongue.

  She knew it was the novelty that excited her. The idea that this tongue belonged to someone completely unrelated to her. The smell of his skin, so different. Tart, with a hint of citrus, the feel of his skinny chest pressed against hers.

  Katherine was suddenly filled with a sense of urgency. She held his hips against her and there was his erection. Another man, not Aaron, finding her attractive in this way. There was no love, no memories of childhood tumbles, no fights over the washing-up. The sex with Aaron had been exciting, always, but it was infused with all the complications of a deep and unassailable love. This man was simple. He was no one to her; she could walk away from him tomorrow and her life would not be diminished. And it was with complete understanding of how unimportant it was that she took his hand and moved it under her skirt.

  She was wearing thick winter tights and his fingers scrabbled at the waistband. He was not gentle and sure, like Aaron. His nails scratched. When his hand finally found a way into her knickers, the fingers were colder and thinner than her brother’s. He slipped one finger inside her but it was not enough. Even with his whole hand, the fingers bunched into a kind of pointer and pushing into her, even then she did not feel as full as she did with Aaron’s fingers.

  Still, he was keen and very nervous. His shaking hand filled her with tenderness and she hugged him closer. She wanted to take him into her body to calm him. She reached into the low-cut shirt she was wearing and pulled one of her full breasts out, and Trent dipped his head to lick at the nipple pointing up at him.

  She felt the bounce of his cock pressed against her leg inside his trousers. If they were both naked perhaps he would have slipped it into her now; she was certainly wet enough. There would be nothing to stop him from laying her down in the dirt, pulling down her tights and her knickers and slipping his cock inside.

  Once the thought was out, she seemed unable to drag it back in. She pulled him down onto the pavement with her, the red light from the Asian restaurant spilling onto her feet. She glanced at her sensible heels and, with deliberation, kicked each shoe off. Trent was kneeling next to her, his mouth still suckling at one of her breasts, his cock still straining at the tent of his pants. She wanted him to take her tights down. She needed his flesh inside hers but he seemed content to suck at her breast.

  She reached out and touched his penis through his trousers. It was harder than Aaron’s cock had been for a long time. She felt the tip of it leaking dampness through the fabric, the sign that he was excited. When they were still young, Aaron would drip the juices of desire all over her stomach. She loved the feel of pre-come and the taste of it. She slid her fingers up towards his zipper and the gasp he made as she eased it down was flattering. She slipped her hand inside and there was only the thin cotton of his underwear between her hand and his penis.

  She lay back, her hair in the dust of the alley, her breast slipping away from his lips. A position of submission. He could climb onto her now, with his cock this hard. It would be so easy to take it out of his pants and spread her legs wide enough and slip it inside her. Instead he seemed frozen. Kneeling, his head bent as if in prayer, his cock hard under her hand.

  She reached under the elastic of his underwear and there it was, the softest skin on his body, the slippery wet head coating her palm with juice as she moved her fingers along the shaft. She could smell the excited musky odour, a masculine scent, a scent that made her shift her hips unknowingly, to lift her knees and raise her groin towards him. She felt as if all her blood had pooled between her thighs, her lips swollen to the size of a split melon. She knew he would be able to smell her too. There was that damp earthy female smell that she emitted when she was aroused. He leaned over her until his lips brushed her chest.

  ‘I’m not sure you should do that,’ he said, and it was a throaty voice, sandpapered with desire.

  ‘Do what?’ She slipped her palm over the head of his cock. She spread her thighs wide. The crotch of her tights was soaking by now, she would have to hide them at the bottom of the washing basket when she got home, and here in this moment it didn’t matter to her at all. He sucked her nipple into his mouth and she felt it draw a tight line down into her clitoris. She was on the edge. All he needed to do was to straddle her, shift his weight. She didn’t even need him to undress. She would come as soon as she felt the head of his cock plunge into her wet flesh. She reached down with her free hand to lift her tights down away from her crotch, the cold air brushed over her skin. It would be too late if he waited any longer, she would be gone.

  ‘Oh god.’ He bit down on her breast and sucked in suddenly. She felt his cock begin to pulse in her hand and pressed her fingers onto her clitoris. The orgasm swept over her with such violence that her hips thumped against the pavement. She would be bruised and sore
but in that moment of release she did not care. She clenched her jaw and heard the grunt that must have escaped from her throat, the sound of an animal snuffling at the earth. She thought of truffles, tasted the rich dark flavour. He eased away but it wasn’t over for her yet. She felt her back arch for a second time and her hand, slipping out of his trousers, clasped at her mouth, the taste of his come on her fingers, smeared onto her chin and her cheeks, the smell of him and the dance of her body and for a while she felt like it might not stop. She rode another wave of contractions, her throat exposed to the night air and his gaze.

  ‘Oh man,’ he murmured, ‘you look awesome.’ He held her shoulder gently as she finally felt her chest release. Katherine relaxed onto the footpath, gasping for breath.

  ‘I wish you could have seen yourself,’ he said, wiping the glistening juice from her lips, ‘you look so sexy when you come. I can’t believe I just saw that. It was amazing.’

  Katherine took a series of long and shaking breaths. Her breast was slicked with spit, the nipple pointing out from her clothing. She pulled her bra and dress back over it. His semen was drying on her mouth, her hand crackled with the feel of it. She watched him wipe his own hand on his shirt, her juices, her scent marking him.

  He zipped up his pants and brought his fingers towards his nose, a sweet unconscious gesture as he smelled her sex on his hand. It was almost enough to rekindle her desire. She was aware that she had not seen his penis, not taken it in her mouth or, better, her body. She felt suddenly ashamed for thinking this way and pushed herself up to a sitting position, stroking her hair back away from her face, lifting her tights back to hide her wet and flushed sex.

  ‘I’m…’ she was about to say ‘married’ but realised that she had said this several times already. Realised also that she had been the one to drag him into the alley beside the bookstore, it had been her lips that kissed him first, her hand that found its way to his penis.