“Proves your point,” Sophia murmured, relapsing into a torpor.
“Drink up, Zophie. I’ve had my head up my ass, droning away to you. You need your rest. Tomorrow will be our big asphyxiation night,” he breathed into her ear as he dragged her up from her seat.
She didn’t have the energy to protest.
CHAPTER 42
The next morning, her first small breakout group at the conference was giving her the heebie-jeebies. Eleven neurotic Jewish women and one nebbishy Wasp of a man, seated in a circle, were participating in some meaningless mindfulness exercise.
Sophia, still weary, still disappointed by Dirk’s abrupt departure from her hotel door last night, was suffering from her habitual paranoia when stuck in a room full of Jews.
Irrational, she knew. Absurd, she knew. But ever since she had seen The Night Porter years ago, the silent scene with a room full of naked Jews being filmed obsessively by Dirk Bogarde, the high-ranking Nazi holding a hand-held camera, periodically zeroing in on Charlotte Rampling, playing his partner in sadomasochistic sex, whooshed into her room full of Jews, rudely smacking her in the face.
The same claustrophobic feeling engendered by that scene, which had felt as if all the air had been sucked out of that room, as if everyone were holding their breath, permeated her atmosphere. In her mind’s eye, these people surrounding her in a touchy-feely circle, were all naked, humiliated, beyond despair, faces blank like death masks, the Nazis’ chattel. She saw their lumps and bumps, their sags and bags, and the blue-veined fragility of their skin. Their nipples, their stomachs, their pubic bushes, their asses, stripped bare, no longer among the living or the human.
Sophia, clawing at her throat, her eyes streaming, ran out of the room, chased by those reproachful eyes. Twelve mouths gaped at her.
“You got off scot-free,” they chorused in her mind.
Sophia flew out of the hotel, fled the two blocks to Waterloo Station, and immersed herself in the noisy hubbub of the station’s ceaseless parade of commuters, tourists, and shoppers. She wandered up to Boots’ second floor, drawing in great lungfuls of sweaty, dirty, diesel air.
She was calm. The vision was gone.
Sophia decided to blow off the rest of that day’s conference after that haunting start. She walked to the Thames. She sat on a bench facing the busy river. She let her mind go blank. She decided she needed Dirk to help her with that.
Dirk answered immediately.
“Hi Dirk. I had a horrible start to the conference, and I need you to help me escape.”
“At your service, Zophie. We can start our day early and work up to the big finale.”
“Yes, yes. Whatever you say, Dirk. But now I need to get out of here. A change of scene.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up, and we can come here. It’s an enormous suite, and no one will hear us when we’re shrieking. Not like your pipsqueak of a place.”
“Meet me in an hour and a half. I’m walking back to my room to change for you. I’m on the river now. I’m sure that even if I’d lived here all my life, this city would still be a source of endless fascination.”
Sophia walked briskly, reaching her hotel in no time. She spied a few seminar stragglers smoking around the side of the building, exiled slaves to their habit. She hurried inside, avoiding their gaze.
Sophia went completely red. Red underwear, red dress, red heels. Victorian jet jewelry was her only concession to another color. Mourning jewelry. Queen Victoria declared it so when Prince Albert died and she only wore black. Sophia wanted to pick up some more pieces while in London.
“When they find my body, I’ll look fetching in my red undies. Unless my face is blue with a bloated tongue protruding from my mouth. Like the victims of the necktie strangler in Hitchcock’s Frenzy.”
The dress reminded her of that steamy Lincoln Road encounter with the British duo. Dirk would probably top that scenario tonight. He’d have her screaming with pleasure. Or would she be screaming in pain? Or there wouldn’t be any sound because they’d be choking each other. This breath control sounded strange. Even the word asphyxiation was ominous. All the accidental deaths.
She shook free of her reservations by thinking of all the great innovative sex with Dirk.
And there he was, as if her thoughts had conjured him up, in a black cab pulling up to the curb. They were whisked off to the Ritz, passing its neighbors—stately Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park.
The suite was sensuously luxurious. Thick, shimmering gold curtains were drawn to shut out the outside world. Luscious golds, greens, and deep reds produced a symphony of harmonious color. Sophia discarded her shoes to sink her feet deep into the carpet’s mint-green pile.
The king bed, swamped with pillows, cried out for their bodies’ desecration of its pristine white, perfectly starched surface. She pounced on it, bouncing up and down.
Dirk joined her, handing her a perfectly chilled flute of champagne. In between sips, he undressed her slowly, relieved her of her glass, and began sucking and biting her buttocks.
“Do you want to go out for lunch?” he asked, grasping her globes as he looked up from his ministrations.
“No, I want you to spank me, Daddy. I’ve been an awfully bad girl. Really, really naughty. I missed you, and I strayed.”
“Tell me what you did, Zophie.”
“No,” she whispered in a wispy, baby-girl voice.
“Do you want me to make you tell me?”
“Yes.”
He flung her over his knees, perching on the bed’s edge, produced his pretty red scourge from underneath the mattress, and began whipping her slowly and deliberately, raising angry welts on her pearly skin.
“Tell me what you did,” he commanded.
“I fucked Paul Newman,” she gasped.
“He’s dead.”
“A look-alike, silly Daddy,” she said, reaching clumsily behind her to spread her buttocks out further, offering up every bit of her butt. “I picked him up on Lincoln Road, went to his hotel, and fucked his brains out.”
“Ooh, Daddy’s jealous, hard and jealous,” he moaned, increasing his stroke speed. “What else did you do, Zophie?” he growled, a mixture of menace and lust in his tone.
“I fucked two young English guys. I was the sandwich filling.”
She felt a vacuum. He had ceased whipping her. He tossed her on the bed, poured the fizzing champagne in her rectum, where it tickled deliciously, inserted himself expertly, and pumped away briefly, coming quickly in a frenzy of furious lubriciousness, inspired by her carnal tales.
They held each other close.
“Do you want more champagne?”
“Yes, please.” She smiled. “And then a long nap.”
“To prepare for tonight.”
They sipped their bubbly in bed, propped up high on the extravagant pillows, and fell into a spent sleep.
“Do you want to go out to dinner?” he asked when they woke.
“No, I want you. Let’s just nibble on treats from room service.”
He ordered caviar, lobster, asparagus, cheeses, and fruit, and two more bottles of Dom.
They fed each other. Dirk snorted from his vial. They guzzled champagne.
Dirk, flushed and ready for more, sat Sophia, who was swathed in an oversized snowy Ritz robe, down on his lap.
“Let’s talk before we’re too giddy with food and drink. I have a painful confession to make.”
“You too, Dirk?” She giggled playfully. “Fucking around as well? A frisky forger with his schlong in his hand?”
“No, nothing like that. Listen, Sophia.” He shook her by the shoulders to get her full attention. “Our first meeting was no accident. I was following you.”
He had her full attention now. Puzzlement creased her brow. Suspicion, fear, uncertainty all raced through her, chasing each other for prime position. “What do you mean, Dirk?”
“I had a plan for revenge.”
“Revenge? Revenge for what. We didn�
�t know each other.”
“You don’t have to know someone to want revenge.”
“Stop talking in circles. Tell me.”
“I wanted to avenge Monica’s death. I thought about it for years, plotting all sorts of schemes. When I was in Miami, I’d think of you, enjoying your life, while Monica was a desiccated skeleton crumbling to dust. Then I decided to put a scheme into action. To meet you. To seduce you. And then to kill you.”
Fear squeezed her heart with icy fingers. “To kill me?” She got up from his lap and moved to a chair. “What did I have to do with Monica’s death? You said she hanged herself. Where was I?” Sophia asked, feeling the temperature drop and pulling her robe together tightly. She pulled earnestly on her left ear.
“Use your head. You were her fucking therapist,” he shouted out in a hot burst of fury.
“But no one ever killed themselves on my watch.”
“Not on your watch, but after your watch. Monica Fleisch. She was bipolar like me. You let her go. You said you couldn’t help her.”
“Monica Fleisch. Yes. I remember her now. I see the resemblance. Beautiful woman.” Shiny sable hair, piercing brown eyes, and heavily freckled ivory skin, of all things. Her father’s tall, lanky body. Intractable, risk taking, fueled by cocaine, flying high and plunging low, unstable and mean spirited.
Dirk was staring at her, pain rather than anger obscuring his eyes. “Why did you let her go?”
“I didn’t let her go. Believe me. I didn’t let her go. She had had enough of me and my feeble attempts to stabilize her. To structure her.”
“Are you lying? Have I been cockeyed all these years?”
“I’m not lying. You’re the one who lied to me,” she said, outraged, forgetful of fear.
“Then Monica lied to me. I so desperately wanted her in therapy. She stayed with you the longest. I was grasping at straws. Anything. Anything to make her better. To keep her here on earth for a little while longer,” Dirk gasped, sobbing, pulling on his long, thick hair.
Against her better instincts, against her preservation, she went to him, knelt beside him, reaching up to embrace his shaking shoulders and comfort him like a mother comforts her hurting boy.
“There, there, my darling boy. You miss her so much,” she soothed.
“Yes.” He convulsed, trying to catch his breath. “I fell for you, Zophie. In the middle of the plan, I fell for you. First I stumbled. And then I fell hard. There’s my full confession. I came to slay you, and you slew me.”
“I guess we can cancel the erotic asphyxiation,” she said.
“Don’t be silly. The outrageous sex seals our love. We’re both worshippers of the god Hedonism. We’ll drink. I’ll snort. Then we’ll get down to business. It’ll clear the air.”
“But you just said you wanted to kill me. What if you get carried away?”
“That’ll be the spice of uncertainty.”
“Don’t jerk me around, Dirk.”
“I just told you that you slew me. What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees? Didn’t I offer you a clit ring? Here. Drink your champagne,” he said, handing her the glass. “My little Zophie.”
“My dirty daddy.”
CHAPTER 43
Tightening and thrusting. Tightening and thrusting. Tightening and thrusting.
Sophia was watching Dirk, wary, while he was working away on top of her. He was penetrating her and choking her with his pine-scented scarves, using three of four for strength. She was aroused. She was afraid. She couldn’t let go.
“Zophie, relax. Trust me. Just a tiny bit tighter,” Dirk panted, sweating from his exertions.
That did it. She was floating away, semiconscious, light and buoyant, like a balloon unwittingly released from a child’s disappointed fingers, meandering free and weightless through the infinite cerulean sky.
She saw her mother floating by, her head huge. She opened her jaw, unhinging it with reptilian ease, swallowing her naked Nazi lover whole.
A jaw-shuddering paroxysm of fulfilled lust penetrated her every atom as she plunged back to earthly reality with an astronomical orgasm disintegrating, shredding, and fragmenting her.
When the aftershocks died down to a whimper, she pried her eyes open.
“Am I dead? Did you kill me?” she asked a spent and slack Dirk, sprawling next to her, her lips barely moving.
“I know now I would never kill you because I want this to go on and on and on,” he said, turning his heavy head with difficulty.
“That was nirvana. We are atheists who experienced god.” She waxed poetic. “I did get nervous when I was doing you, and you started shouting Monica’s name.”
“I saw her when I skyrocketed to the stratosphere. She was drifting like a hot-air balloon, looking serene. Even though she was in the sky, she looked like a mermaid, streaming hair, scaled tail, and topless. The vision didn’t make me feel any animosity toward you,” Dirk protested.
“I’m sorry I was so clumsy.”
“It was your first time, Zophie. You were great with the choking. I didn’t mind jerking myself off. The choking took all your energy.”
“I was afraid I would hurt you.”
“You were perfect, my little love slave.”
“Your orgasm was something. You were coming apart at the seams, vibrating,” Sophia said, marveling at the memory. “It’s going to be very hard to part. Aren’t you glad you decided to let me live?”
Sophia then passed into a death-like sleep.
CHAPTER 44
Charming, charming, charming. Rouen was nauseatingly charming with its quaint old main street, Rue du Gros-Horloge, sporting a blue-and-gold beclocked arch, a modern church built to evoke visions of flames to honor Jeanne d’Arc, and frothy medieval churches with an equally frothy town hall. Pastry shops galore beckoned with impossibly delicious concoctions. Auzou Chocolatier offered chocolates called les larmes de Jeanne d’Arc. A martyr had been transmogrified into a cash cow.
Sophia marched along with Barth, Lili, and Chanel, still thin and baby-bump free, playing the obliging tourist, wife, and mother.
She was claustrophobic, yearning for London’s gritty, writhing spaciousness and Dirk’s punitive caresses. London’s endless possibilities.
They had parted with extreme difficulty. Oblivious to the bustle of St. Pancras station, they clung to each other, reluctant to let go. She almost missed her six-hour train to Rouen.
“I’ll be in Miami before you know it,” Dirk shouted, watching her collapse onto her seat, tears streaming, Dirk running, a futile attempt to stay with her.
Dirk’s intensity made everything else pale. She already missed the bloody bite, the whip’s sting, the tingling spankings, and the rear entry, filling her up with his heavy weapon. Uncertainty and excess. Terror and tranquility.
“Where are you, Ma? You seem so preoccupied,” Lili said.
They had returned from their outing. Jet-lagged Barth and baby-bearing Chanel were napping.
“What?” Sophia shook herself free of the images flooding her mind.
“Ma, you’re not here with me. The conference must have worn you out. I’ll make some tea.”
“I’ll be fine. This sunny kitchen reminds me of your SoBe kitchen. Same color.”
“Yes,” Lili said, melancholy and drained, withering like a neglected plant in the noonday sun. For the first time since her listless arrival, Sophia snapped out of her self-involved reverie, and she eyed Lili with concern.
“Go out to the terrace, Ma. I’ll be right there.”
The terrace overlooked a tranquil woodsy scene. A copse of narrow graceful evergreens, the kind she always associated with Tuscany, enriched the view. She breathed in the sweetly astringent, piney air, deliberately drawing a mental X through Dirk’s face when he popped into her head.
Sophia nodded off in her lounge chair in the pale sunlight, jerking awake when Lili appeared with a tray laden with tea things, a plate of madeleines, and a half-full bottle of calvados, th
e rustic regional apple brandy.
“Getting old, Ma?” Lili teased.
“I guess I am,” Sophia said ruefully.
“I’m only kidding. You’re a spry, sexy chicken.”
“Right,” Sophia said.
Ignoring the teapot, Lili poured two generous servings of the dark distilled cider.
“Delicious. Smoky, spicy, with apple in the background. I never had it before,” Sophia said, feeling the waves of warmth spreading slyly through her body, filling her gradually with a liberating sense of well-being. Dirk’s grip loosened, allowing her to be present for Lili.
“What’s wrong, darling?” Sophia asked, putting down her calvados and reaching out for Lili’s hand, gripping it firmly.
“Oh, Ma,” Lili groaned, sipping, sighing, and throwing her head back in despair. “Chanel’s cheating on me.”
“With that guy who impregnated her?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?” Sophia asked, stroking Lili’s hand.
“When I saw her so obviously enjoying herself with him, I started to worry. It kept plaguing me. Those images of her arching back rising up to meet him bucking and straining. Her neck stretching, veins practically popping. Her face, suffused with pure pleasure. I can’t get it out of my mind, Ma,” Lili said. She had let go of Sophia’s hand, dropping her head into her hands. “Ever since then, I’ve been obsessed. I keep seeing them having sex with wild abandon, totally into each other. I’ve lost my lovely little lesbian,” Lili moaned.
“You’ve lost no one,” said Chanel, eyes sandy with sleep, drifting out to sit with them, looking regretfully at the calvados while pouring herself a cold cup of tea. “Talk to her, please,” Chanel beseeched. “She is driving me crazy. I enjoyed it. The body takes over. Nothing more is going on. Maman, aide-moi. Help me.”
“Aide-moi,” Lili mimicked. “Don’t play the innocent with me. You’re fucking your brains out with this asshole,” she shouted. She was wild-eyed, looking like a fox surrounded by baying beagles.
Time's Hostage: The dangers of love, loss, and lus (Time Series Book 1) Page 28