Triptych, An Erotic Adventure

by Krissy Kneen

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Have you looked in the mirror, ever?’

  Katherine found herself blushing again, the succubus banished. In her place, this shy angel lowered her eyelids. She noticed her breasts still spilling out of her singlet top and adjusted herself. Looked around for her skirt; bent and held it pressed to her naked loins.

  ‘Katherine, I am sorry if you are going through something difficult at home, but I am also not sorry because what just happened was incredible. I just hope you don’t regret it too much. And if it never happens again, well—that one time was so awesome.’

  She kissed his cheek and she paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘You are the only other man I have had sex with apart from my husband. Ever. In my whole life.’

  ‘Really?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well, any time you want a repeat performance. Any time. Seriously. All you have to do is mention this alley and I’ll be hard in a second.’

  She laughed. ‘I like you, Trent. But I don’t know you very well, and also I love my husband very much.’

  He glanced at her and she watched his shoulders begin to shake as he was overwhelmed by a fit of giggles. It was infectious. She laughed with him.

  ‘Oh god,’ she said, ‘we are ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s okay if your husband watches porn on the internet, you know,’ he told her when he had his breath back. ‘Everyone watches porn on the internet. It’s no big thing.’

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘Nah. Everyone I know does it. I do it.’

  ‘What do you watch?’

  ‘I don’t know. Girls doing it together, hetero stuff, some gay boy stuff sometimes. Not that I’m gay or anything, just that it’s interesting, you know? I don’t think what you watch is any reflection on who you are. It’s like how you like Lolita— come on, I saw you reading on your lunch break. But it’s not like you are a paedophile.’

  ‘Don’t you think Nabokov is different?’

  ‘Sure. It is incredibly clever writing,’ he shrugged again, ‘but what’s the difference really? It was considered to be pornography when it was first published.’

  ‘So you are trying to tell me that one day my husband’s internet sex will be seen as great art?’

  ‘Course not. I’m just saying watching it doesn’t make him a bad person.’

  Trent began to button his shirt. His penis hung out of his tugged-down pants like a wilting flower. He slipped it in and zipped himself up, trembling and laughing. ‘Look at my hands.’ He held them out and let her watch them shake. ‘You know my knees are like jelly now?’

  She took his hand and stood brushing the dust from the back of her dress. ‘I know I shouldn’t have made you come inside me. I’ve just…it never…’

  ‘Well I’ve had my tests, but you shouldn’t take my word on that. You’re on the pill, I take it?’

  ‘I’ll get the day-after pill tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks. And, just, thanks.’

  She grinned. ‘Crazy. Anyway. I had better get home.’

  He kissed her a little awkwardly and they walked off in their separate directions. Katherine glanced behind her at his retreating form. He looked so slight and vulnerable. He looked so unlike Aaron. Sweet boy. Someone she could like but could never grow to love. Still, the passion that had overtaken her so suddenly made her smile a little. She could barely believe what had just happened.

  Katherine stood at the entry to her apartment block. She held her card up to the electronic lock. Touched the doorframe to get her balance. Aaron would be waiting for her. Aaron would be inside. She took a deep breath and pressed the button to call the lift.

  Two in the morning. Wide awake. She felt alive, her body tingling with wakefulness. She realised now that she had been asleep for many years. Finally she had woken, and the world had changed in her absence.

  She placed her feet firmly on the carpet, moved quietly down the stairs. Aaron sat in front of his computer. This time he was settled in the lounge chair, facing away from her, the back of the chair obscuring most of the laptop, which was perched on his knees. Again the rhythmic jerking of his elbow. She could see it rubbing at the arm of the couch.

  She stepped forward as quietly as she could, peered around the high back of the lounge and saw a man on the screen, his penis in his fist, a fast and furious tugging.

  She placed her hand on the couch gently, so that Aaron did not feel the touch of her fingers, and watched him watching some other man.

  It was as if she were observing him from a great distance. She watched his hand on his penis, the quickening of his rhythm. She knew him so well it was almost as if she were standing outside herself, watching her own body bring itself to climax; he was close.

  She bent towards him. At the moment of ejaculation she lowered her face to his ear and slipped her tongue inside it; he had always liked that.

  This time it made him leap from the chair just as his ejaculate leapt from his penis, and sent the computer crashing to the floor.

  They sat at the kitchen table. Aaron poured a shot of vodka for each of them.

  ‘Ready?’

  It was ridiculous. She laughed. She tipped her head back and swallowed the liquid, feeling the slow burn of it coursing down her throat.

  ‘What are we?’ she asked him. ‘Eighteen?’

  ‘Do you remember when you were eighteen?’

  ‘God, you were so skinny. Do you remember?’

  ‘And you, Kiss-Me-Kate, always thought you were right. My year of being right. Remember?’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘Wasted on the young.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He filled her glass once more, tipped more vodka into his own glass. ‘I loved you so badly I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘I still love you, you know.’

  And he kissed her then, gently, and when he pulled away from the kiss said, ‘So do I.’

  ‘So. How does this work.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Katherine wondered for a moment. Placed her hand on her stomach. There was an excited whirlpool starting deep in her guts. Half elation and half fear. That perfect mix of emotions. She gazed into his deep blue eyes and nodded carefully. ‘Never surer.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Hold on tight. Get ready for the ride.’

  Katherine was gorgeous. A simple fact: his sister was extremely beautiful. She had been since high school, when her body caught up to her sudden height. She’d grown into herself quickly, developing a kind of grace that set her apart from the other girls. He would watch her from a distance, noticing the attention of the boys. Katherine would meet him at the school gate and they would walk home together, tight as they had always been, and the other boys were jealous as he took her satchel from her and carried it all the way home.

  His sister had only become more beautiful with age. He opened the world wide window and felt himself glow with pride. Katherine was still here beside him, still the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Aaron understood why she had strayed, albeit briefly, and was grateful that she had made her decision to stay by his side.

  ‘You call them up directly? Like a telephone?’

  ‘Oh no. It is a completely random connection. Unless you have exchanged your Skype address with them.’

  ‘You do that? Exchange addresses?’

  ‘Only twice. The first girl was called Susanna. I never saw her face but I suppose that is the closest I have come to infidelity.’

  She lowered her eyes, he saw her cheeks begin to colour at the mention of the word.

  ‘Maybe you should have met up with her in person. It would serve me right, I suppose.’

  ‘God, she might have been a boy for all I know. It is like that on the internet.’

  ‘And the second exchange of addresses? Did you fall in love with her too?’

  ‘Ah no. That was the zoo girls. I suppose that was more curiosity than anything. The world is a strange and various place. That is
one thing I have learned in all these years.’

  He typed an address in the bar at the top of the screen and an image flicked up, a man’s torso. She could not see his head. His body was a different matter, or one part of it was: there was a huge red cock in his fist, bigger than anything Katherine had ever seen on a man. She held her hand in front of her mouth to hide her sudden laughter.

  ‘Can he see us?’

  ‘Not yet. I can turn our webcam on if you like.’

  ‘Can he hear us?’

  ‘Not until I activate the mic. Do you want him to hear us?’

  She touched his arm. He could feel the excited energy radiating off her.

  ‘I think we should get our story straight first.’

  ‘What story?’ He liked the sweaty glow of her skin. The widened eyes. The way she perched forward on the chair.

  ‘They don’t know who we really are or where we live, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So we could tell them any story we wanted, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why don’t we tell them the truth?’

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘They’re going to think we are lying anyway,’ she said with a little half smile. ‘They’ll think the sister-brother thing is just a tease. The fun will be pretending to lie by telling the truth.’

  Katherine took charge of the game. She had always taken charge. When they were kids she would organise their days with military precision. Now she ordered him to turn the webcam on, told him he should take his clothes off. Started to undo her own buttons as if these were the rules of the game they were about to play.

  ‘Are you sure? The internet can be a dangerous place.’

  She pulled the computer to face her, unclipped her bra and angled the camera to take in the sight of her generous breasts.

  ‘Well hello there,’ said the man on the screen in front of her. ‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’

  ‘Sore cock too if you keep pulling it like that.’

  His gorgeous sister. He remembered now how sassy she had been when they were kids, the filthy language flowing so prettily from her mouth. Somehow in the intervening years he had forgotten this, recasting her as an angel, something sweet and untouchable. He wondered now how long this had been happening. The illusion of her politeness was certainly shattered as she settled into this conversation.

  ‘Who’s that man there?’

  ‘Him? He’s my lover.’

  ‘So am I going to get to watch you be lovers?’

  ‘I suppose you will. But there’s something else about him you must understand.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘He is also my brother.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. We used to play doctors and nurses under the kitchen table when we were little.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You think I’m making it up but in fact it is true. Shall we show them, Aaron?’

  ‘Darling, I will do whatever you tell me to do.’

  And he would. He was waiting for her instruction, she was in charge. He lifted his arm as he was told to and pulled his shirt over his head. He showed the man his penis when she ordered him to.

  ‘Call me sister.’ And he did, the word so strange on his tongue after all these years, and yes, it was arousing to remember that this was a most unusual connection.

  ‘My sister,’ he whispered into the small of her back, and followed her lead as she leaned herself across the back of the chair.

  ‘Spread me for him. Show him how wet and damp my sisterly love can be.’

  And he opened her to the camera and marvelled along with the naked stranger at the glistening excitement of his sister. He slipped himself inside her and it seemed suddenly to be a breaking of taboos, this coupling that had become so ordinary in their day-to-day lives became a kind of transgression through the lust-filled gaze of the stranger.

  ‘He can’t come inside me, you know. Because it is sibling sperm. He must not come inside me. See him holding back?’

  And suddenly Aaron needed more than anything to come. He tried to think of other things. Ham sandwiches on white bread and, when this did not work, their mother making ham sandwiches on white bread. But even this idea only added an extra layer of arousal; he remembered suddenly the wonderful excitement of the fear of being caught.

  That time when their father popped home to pick up a letter he had forgotten on the kitchen bench. The terrified cessation of all movement. Aaron pausing mid-thrust, his sister lying face-up with her hips raised up on a pillow, the glorious sight of her new breasts so young and firm, her eyes wide with the knowledge that this might be about to end for them. The moment stretching out; their father calling out his name.

  He remembered his voice shaking as he yelled back that he was in the bathroom.

  Okay, well, we’ll be home pretty late. Make sure you feed your sister. And then, hearts pounding as the car pulled out of the driveway, his sister’s relieved laugh. Go on, then. Feed your sister. And his excited answer with each thrust of his hips. Feed her? Like this? Eating it? Eat it. And the wonder of her slipping out from under him, taking his penis in her mouth still slick with her own juices. She would be able to taste herself on him. She licked his penis clean and the sight of it was too much for him to take. He held her head hard up against him and she pinched him when he thrust too deeply into the back of her throat.

  He pulled back from inside her and the man on the internet would be looking at his penis, twitching against her still-shapely arse. When he came the seed spilled onto her back and she was laughing as he finished. She was turning to kiss his lips, adjusting her position on the chair.

  ‘Too soon,’ she said, more to the man on the internet than to Aaron. ‘I think you need to help me finish.’ She spread her thighs and he dipped his panting face towards her. The wonderful bitter-sweet taste of her. He thought of truffles and parmesan and perhaps a hint of anchovy. The salty brine of her juices. He lapped at her and it was all now as it had once been.

  He noticed her hips twitching with the oncoming orgasm, slipped his fingers inside her. He liked to feel her coming around some part of him. He liked to test the violence of each orgasm, sometimes they were so hard that they sucked greedily at him, sometimes so gentle that it was like an animal sighing and turning over in its sleep.

  She rocked back on the chair, her neck exposed, her face tilted towards the ceiling. Her thick dark hair spilled down and over the back of the chair. He watched as her nipples jerked tighter. He could see the beating of her heart inside her ribcage, a little fluttering of the pale flesh. A fine layer of sweat sprang up on her shoulders, a sudden scent of sex so strong that he felt his penis surge with blood again. She was more beautiful at this moment than she had ever been and he was moved to stand and press his face, slick with her juices, against her mouth. She tasted him hungrily and when there was some space for breath she gasped and told him she loved him and he hugged her so tightly that it squeezed a single tear from his eyes.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘I’ve always loved you. I always will love you. Forever and forever.’

  Aaron turned towards the computer screen and noticed that at some point the man had disappeared, turning his webcam off or changing to a different site. He assumed that the man had come and then gone: a mutually satisfying end to this first experience. He did not really care either way. He reached out and shut the laptop and hugged his sister tighter.

  ‘I’m sorry I fucked Trent,’ she told him. ‘I promise I’ll never do it again.’

  ‘Don’t say never. Don’t say it. Just tell me if you feel like doing it with him again. Perhaps we could have him over for dinner sometime. We never invite your friends.’

  And here they were twinned again, Romulus and Remus. Taking their turns, sucking from the same teat.

  Acknowledgments

  I gratefully acknowledge the support of Varuna, The Writers’ House, Kári Gíslason, Katherine Lyall-Watson, Anthony Mu
llins and Ellen Thompson, and the endless invaluable support of Fiona Stager and Avid Reader Bookshop.

  Thank you to Mandy Brett; her tireless, insightful and sexy work as an editor should never be undervalued.

  For this book my thanks go to the strong, smart and sexy women in my life: Judith Lukin Amundsen, Rebecca Harbison, Belinda Jeffrey, Kris Olsson, Donna Hancox, Dr Maureen Burns, Naomi Stekelenburg, Anita Heiss, Elissa Freeman, Kristina Shultz, Kate Lee, Kasia Janczewski, Anna Krien, Nike Sulway, Jay Court, Jen Clark, Zoe Strout and Helen Bernhagen.

  To my Varuna Chatroulette team, Benjamin Law, Anna Goldsworthy, Linda Jaivin and Shalini Akhil, you all have very nice breasts (even Ben).

  And to the men, my muses and creative companions, Chris Somerville, Christopher Currie, Scott Spark, Jason Reed, Trent Jamieson, John Hunter, Ronnie Scott, Peter Cossar, Patrick Holland, Colin, Marty and James Cosier, James Butler and Stuart Carrier (yes, Stuart, I did indeed tell them the dog story).

  Thanks also to the providers of my ‘offices’: The Boys Café, Café Bouquiniste and Mad Espresso.

  And finally to my families in their various forms—I hope you forgive my profanities: my maternal tribe, Wendy, Sheila and Lotty Kneen; my sister Karen; my father Barry Elphick and stepmother Denise. To my family by marriage the family Mullins, and my surrogate families the Cosiers, the Somerville/Gordons and the Avid Reader family.