So Nate and I began slowly, edging into sex like blind people feeling their way into a room, relying on the walls to guide them, as well as their own instincts. Snogging turned into heavy petting, and that went on for a while, until the day came when it was no longer enough for me to massage his dick through the heavy fabric of his jeans and, looking into his eyes, I’d pulled down his zip and put my hand inside. My heart was in my throat as I did so, and my pussy was burning. I knew then that I was crossing the line, and I was ready to do so. I took hold of him assertively, marvelling at his smoothness against the palm of my hand as I wrapped it around him. I glanced down, at the snug fit of me on him. Then I began to move my hand over his shaft, looking back into his eyes for confirmation that I was going about it the right way. I was.
I was leaning over him, and he pulled my sweatshirt over my head then reached around me to unclasp my bra. It fell onto his chest. His eyes moved down to my breasts and then he brought his hands to them. As he grasped them, equally assertively, I arched my back and moaned. With the pads of his thumbs he began to massage my nipples, sending shivers through my whole body, and this time I threw back my head and cried out. I was beyond ready now. I was gagging for him.
Nate let go of me in order to fight his way out of his clothes like a wrestler on amphetamines. I stripped off my jeans and pants too, and as I threw them to the floor beside us was amazed by the wetness of my pants. So this is desire, I thought, and the P.J. Harvey lyrics came to mind: ‘Said “I’m not scared”/Turned to her and smiled/Secrets in his eyes/Sweetness of desire.’
As if tapping into my thoughts, Nate smiled up at me and whispered, ‘I’m not scared.’
Taking it as a sign, I grabbed his hand, brought it to my pussy. He gasped as he realised how wet I was, how ready for him, and, bringing his other hand to my hip, he began to pull me down to him. I was shaking by now, the anticipation having become too much, the months of waiting stacked behind us, teetering over us, like buildings on the verge of collapse. It had to happen, and yet …
‘Wait,’ I said, and he froze. The look in his eyes was one of disbelief, terror even. Don’t do this to me, they seemed to say. But I didn’t want him to stop. In fact, that was the whole point. I wanted to draw this out for as long as possible, to savour it fully. I knew that this was one of the most important moments of my life, and I didn’t want to let it go yet.
I clasped his hand where it had halted on my pussy and set it in motion again. As I did so, I opened my legs and straddled him more widely, so that I was fully open to him. He got the message, sliding two fingers inside me. I pressed myself down to meet them, letting my head fall back again. There was a strange gurgling noise emanating from my throat like something otherworldly, divorced from me. My whole body felt shot through with some kind of tingling, glittering matter. It was as if I was being lifted higher and higher, even as I tried to impale myself on my lover’s hand.
And then I let go and folded myself back down onto him, revelling in the soft down of his chest against my bare breasts, the firm press of his skin against mine and the flutter of wispy hair against my nipples. He slipped another finger inside, and for a while I rode him, pushing to meet his hand as he moved it in then retracted it. With his other hand he had grasped his dick and brought it close to me and, sliding out his hand, he let it graze at my hole for a moment until we could both bear it no longer. He pushed himself inside me at the very moment that I was bringing myself down on him, taking him inside.
He yelled out, falling back against the bed with his arms outstretched above him, eyes closed, an expression of utter helplessness on his face as I began to ride him. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I followed my instinct, moving backwards and forwards, and then side to side, and finally in a circular motion over his hips. All the while, my hands on his shoulders, pinning him down, I watched his face for signs I was doing the right thing. At first he silently grimaced, as if in some kind of pain that couldn’t be articulated in sound. Then his jaw unclenched and he opened his mouth wide and gasped. After a few moments his face slackened, and then he lay with his mouth open, his eyes rolling beneath closed lids. From which I knew that I was on the right track.
I closed my eyes again, and my hands moved to my breasts. Caressing them as Nate had done, both with my whole hands and the pads of my thumbs on my nipples, I carried on circling his pelvis with my hips, feeling him thick and hard inside me. It was an incredible sensation, and I wondered that I had been able to wait so long. I knew already that now that I had tasted this sweetness, it was something I wouldn’t be able to live without, that it would be part of me as I had always known it would be.
Time slowed down as I gyrated on top of him, slowly, luxuriantly. What was the hurry, after all? We were young, without obligations or responsibilities. Essays could wait, lectures could wait, our friends could wait. It was spring, and before us stretched a whole summer of lazy fucking, in our rooms, in the long grass by the river, in any number of secret places. Now that we had started, the only limitation was our imaginations.
But the rhythm that had insinuated itself between us began to accelerate, as if of its own accord. Raising his arms and swinging them down over me, Nate opened his eyes, then he clenched my buttocks and swung me over onto the bed. For a moment he slipped out of me and I felt bereft. But he took hold of his dick and guided it back inside, and it was like welcoming back an old friend, one that I had come to rely on, couldn’t live without. This time it was I who threw back my arms, at the same time spreading my legs further, encouraging him to go deeper and deeper into me. He was heavy on me and, as he moved up and down, his pace gradually increasing, his weight and the friction he exerted on my clit made my pussy begin to tingle and melt in a way I’ve never been able to put into words. It was as if I was expanding inside, and filling with warm honey, flowing with it like a river that has burst its banks.
Sensing my excitement mount, Nate struggled to contain his, but his thrusting motion seemed like something outside of him now, and he couldn’t hold himself back. Crying out, he tightened his grip on my shoulders and collapsed on top of me as he came.
I was elated and let down at the same time, having felt myself to be on the verge. But Nate recovered himself quickly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, looking into my eyes, and hesitantly he brought one hand to my pussy. ‘Can I?’ he said.
I nodded. ‘Of course,’ I said, and then I swooned back as his fingers went inside me again.
Reaching down, I teased my lips apart a little, to show him what I needed. He understood and with the fingertips of his other hand he massaged my clit, first up and down and then with sweeping circular motions. The tingling sensation started up again, the feeling that I was expanding inside, opening up. I brought one hand to my mouth and bit the back of it so hard as I came that I drew blood.
‘I’m sorry.’ Nate’s voice brings me hurtling back into the present. ‘There wasn’t any easy way to tell you about Anne-Mette. But it shouldn’t –’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I’m shaking my head as I interrupt him, although I know he can’t see me. ‘I … I’m happy for you. Really. I want you to be happy.’
And there it is again: them falling into his room, falling through the door and onto the floor, fucking each other while still only half-naked, speechless with desire, unable to make it to the bed. I’m happy for him, and I’m jealous as hell, and I’m horny as hell too, thinking about him and me, and about him and her, and then, last of all, about James and me. That’s why I called Nate in the first place – because of all this stuff with James. Because I needed to hear a familiar loving voice that will bring me back to normality.
Nate still loves me, as I still love him. But he’s not there for me any more, not really, no matter what he says. Anne-Mette has turned his head, has opened up the future to him again, a future that excludes me. Oh, we’ll swap emails from time to time, but they’ll become less and less frequent, until finally they die
away and we are nothing more to each other than memories of things long gone. Nothing more than trails of smoke on the horizon, from fires long burnt out.
‘I have to go now, Nate,’ I say, and I tell him again that I’m happy for him before hanging up quickly, before the sob that I can feel building up in my throat, clogging it, breaks out.
I’m still sitting on my bed, and the rain is still falling. I stand up. It’s time to face the future, no matter what it holds.
A shower does me good: clears my head and freshens my spirits. I didn’t want Nate back – that’s not what the phone call was about – and I am genuinely happy for him that he’s found someone new. But thinking about all the sex – me and Nate, Anne-Mette and Nate – has brought me back full circle to James and to my current situation, and before I know it I’m down in the living room in front of Anne’s laptop, Googling Calla Lily, the ‘secret place’ James mentioned.
The website comes up, and at once I’m sucked into a seductive world of designer sex toys where the gaudy plastics of more downmarket options have no place. As well as wood and leather, the choice items here come in steel, crystal, ceramic, jade, pearl and even fourteen-carat solid gold. A gold-plated butterfly ‘body piece’ catches my eye – I’m not familiar with the idea but the blurb explains that it’s an item of body jewellery worn around the neck and trailing down to the groin, where a ‘clitoris clip’ produces a stimulating sensation when you move. It sounds delicious, and I’m sorely tempted, but then I notice the £450 price tag and I think again.
I carry on browsing though, studying the anal beads and the Japanese silk bondage ropes and the embroidered masks, and thinking that I really haven’t lived. There’s a whole world of sex out there that I haven’t even begun to explore, that I didn’t know existed. A whole world of sex that both intrigues and frightens me. Do I want to be part of it or not? Am I missing out or better off keeping my distance? As with James – or should I say, with Anne and James – I am unable to gauge.
Thinking about James, I Google him next, wondering if the internet can remedy my ignorance as to his personal life. He has his own website, I find, but frustratingly his biography is strictly professional, listing his numerous fellowships and books and little besides. Wikipedia is equally uninformative. Irritated, I return to the Calla Lily site.
I keep checking over my shoulder, guilty, afraid that Anne might catch me ‘in the act’. Not that I don’t have any right to be using her laptop – she already told me I’m welcome to help myself. And of course it’s through her that I know about Calla Lily at all, so it’s not as if she could disapprove. But I feel, in some part of me, ashamed by what I’m doing, like a miscreant schoolgirl about to be found out and punished. There’s something else too, something that I can’t quite pinpoint but that has something to do with my not wanting Anne to know about my appetites. She knows too much already. Any more and she has a hold over me that wouldn’t be tolerable.
Then I remind myself that she is my employer and that there’s no way I should be sitting here doing this, that it is a sackable offence, and I go upstairs with the intention of knocking on her door and asking her if there’s something I can be doing. So far, the only things I have done for Anne, beyond clearing the dresser, are of a sexual nature. And to believe that they are part of the job, that that is my role, is something I am unable to do. They are incidental to what I am here for.
But standing outside Anne’s door, I can’t bring myself to interrupt. I can hear the tap-tap of her keyboard inside, and I’m worried that if I break her concentration she’ll be livid with me. I know I would, if I were a writer. And so I walk back downstairs, and after a moment’s deliberation take my set of keys and head out of the front door.
For a while, aimless, I walk around Bayswater, telling myself I’m getting to know my new neighbourhood. But before long I’m walking down Queensway, looking at the shopfronts, and soon pleasantly surprised to find what I’ve been looking for: a branch of Ann Summers. Feeling a little thrill ripple through me at this first foray into a sex shop, I step up to the door and push it open.
This time I don’t linger, don’t browse. There’s plenty to fascinate and to tempt, but I know what I’m here for, and so I head straight for the sex toys and cast my eyes over the selection. There are some bog-standard vibrators, but also all kinds of variation on the theme, from Rabbits to Lovebrushs – the latter a set of mini attachments that can be hooked up to an electric toothbrush. It’s a hard decision, but I’m finally won over by a Rock Chick, which according to the literature is a unique hands-free clit and G-spot stimulator producing incredibly intense orgasms. And a mind-blowing orgasm is what I am burning for right now.
I let my card take the strain and leave in a hurry, eager to try it out. I’m so eager, in fact, that I doubt my ability to make it back to the house. But then I tell myself that it’s best not to go back anyway, not just yet. Anne might be finished what she’s doing and if she hears me return might find some task for me to do. It’d be a classic case of Sod’s Law. Or I might make it upstairs to my room and be mid-wank when she comes knocking on my door, wanting me for something. No, I need pleasure and I need it now, no holds barred.
I cross the Bayswater Road and head into Kensington Gardens, casting my eyes around for a deserted spot. It’s not so busy on this midweek afternoon, but I can’t just do it right here in the open, where any old jogger or dog-walker can chance upon me. Heading east, I skirt the railings, looking for a clump of trees where I can take refuge. After a while I find what I need.
Casting my eyes about me once more, I lower myself to the ground, clutching the plastic bag containing my purchase, my new toy, to my chest. The grass is springy and inviting beneath my hands. I lie back and hitch up my denim skirt, glancing around all the time. Then I place the bag beside me on the ground and fumble around inside it until I’ve removed the Rock Chick from its flimsy packaging. My breath is coming ragged with anticipation as I withdraw it from the colourful plastic and take my first proper look at it.
It’s not like a vibrator, or any that I’ve seen before – it’s not long and straight but curves round on itself, so that it can be inside you and stimulate your clitoris at the same time. I don’t need to read the instructions to understand that the principle is presumably to rock oneself back and forth to get a double-whammy action alternating from inside to out and back again.
I reach between my legs, wet just from thinking about it, and pull my knickers to one side. But, as I bring the toy to me, I realise that the fabric will get in the way of the clitoral stimulation, and so I pull them down and off and push them into the plastic bag. Then I open my legs and push one end of the Rock Chick inside.
I gasp at the rush of pleasure as the other end settles against my clitoris and a wave of sensations both internal and external takes hold of me. It soon becomes apparent that I really don’t need my hands and, as I take my lead from the tool and rock myself backwards and forwards, establishing a gentle but highly sensual tempo, my first instinct is to bring my free hands to my breasts and squeeze my erect nipples through my T-shirt. My jaw clenches as I do so, and my head grinds against the grass until I can feel the earth packed hard beneath it. But then I start to vary my movements, to experiment with a little swirling and tentative thrusting, and those combined with the vibrations running from tip to tip of the tool invoke a sort of dreamy languor in me, to the point that I actually feel myself relaxing. Letting go of my breasts, I throw my arms up over my shoulders and then let them fall back over me onto the grass. I smile and moan at once. I feel I could go on like this forever.
I think of no one as I let the toy work its slow magic: not James, not Nate. I’m lost to the feelings that are storming my senses, my organs, and not only my clit and my pussy. The soft grass against my arms and the backs of my legs, the warm sunlight on my face, the purr of traffic along the Bayswater Road alongside me – everything conspires to create a mood of abandon. I feel blissfully alone and untrammelled i
n the middle of the city, like some kind of nature spirit. I feel intoxicated and liberated and far from any other living being. No one could make me feel the way I feel now. This is pure me. Or should I say, pure impure me.
The sensations build up, however, almost without my realising: my moans grow louder and more frequent, my thrusting motions more forceful. I feel I’m on the cusp of something wonderful, some kind of revelation, and I’m rising to meet it at the same time as wanting to fend it off, to fully live these moments of crystalline pleasure. In a bid to head off my orgasm, I rise to my feet, still feeling dreamy and spacey, and lean back against a sturdy tree, facing the hedge so that I remain out of sight of any passers-by who might happen along the nearest pathway. Felicitously, the tree has a small jutting section at about the height of my buttocks, forming a handy ledge that I can use as a platform from which to instigate a sort of upwards thrusting motion. My hands come up to my breasts again and I squeeze them as the pleasure mounts like an inexorable tide. A cry escapes me.
My eyes pop open. Above the hedge, the top three or four storeys of a swanky-looking hotel are visible. A man is standing at one of the windows, staring down at me, a curious half-smile on his lips. As I spot him, he nods, as if to encourage me to go on. Enjoy yourself, he seems to be saying. But I don’t need encouragement. The thought of being watched like this sends me over the edge; I thrust forcefully and unclench a climax so mighty that, afterwards, looking in the mirror back at the house, I find my back and my haunches scratched and grazed where I have driven myself up against the rough bark of the tree, oblivious to the carnage I was inflicting on my skin.
Then I fall forwards onto the grass and lie there panting. I don’t look up, although the hedge would now obscure my view of the hotel window again. But I’d bet any money that my admirer is now jerking himself off, my image still blazing behind his closed eyelids.
The Apprentice Page 8