Autumn

by Vina Jackson

  ‘Do neither of you girls wear any undergarments?’ he asked. ‘Got to the stage where you can’t afford any, ever?’

  ‘I’ve never really seen the point of them,’ I replied. I knew that my tone was impertinent, almost provocative.

  ‘So the cat hasn’t got your tongue after all,’ Alissa interjected.

  ‘Not yet, it hasn’t,’ I immediately jabbed back, my voice purposefully breathy, lewd, full of double entendre.

  Antony yanked my hair back and pressed his lips against mine. He didn’t start by kissing me gently. He thrust his tongue immediately into my mouth. He tasted of bourbon and pungent tobacco, though thankfully both were fresh. I had always enjoyed the aroma of fresh cigarettes.

  ‘Is this what you want, Summer?’ he asked, breaking away. ‘To fuck? All of us? Now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. Right then, that was exactly what I wanted. Ached for.

  ‘You’re not going to ask me?’ enquired Alissa, a note of jealousy apparent in her voice.

  ‘I already know what you want,’ Antony told her. His presumption sparked an envious note in me, also.

  I would show him what she wanted.

  We stumbled towards the bedroom. Antony drunken and unsteady on his feet. Me, so aroused that my limbs had seemingly forgotten how to work. And Alissa, struggling to keep up on her high heels with the weight of both of our bodies pushing her sideways and into the wall.

  He shoved us towards the bed.

  ‘Undress,’ he called, turning and walking back towards the living room.

  He returned moments later holding the bottle of bourbon by the neck.

  Leaned against the doorway and took a deep swig.

  ‘I thought I told you to undress,’ he said. I was lying on the bed with my legs tucked under me and Alissa was sitting on the edge, struggling to remove her long boots.

  ‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ he muttered, then got down on the floor on his hands and knees in front of her and unzipped and yanked off one boot, and then the other.

  From my vantage point behind her I had a view of Alissa’s thighs, now spread apart, and Antony’s face looking up at her crotch. I expected him to stay there and bury his tongue into her exposed pussy, but he didn’t.

  Instead he rose to his feet, picking both of her calves up as he did so and swinging her around so that Alissa now lay next to me, breathless and flat on her back. She promptly turned to face me, pushing herself up onto her elbow.

  ‘Strip,’ Antony commanded me. ‘I’m not going to help you. I want to watch you undress in front of both of us.’

  Alissa giggled. She was genuinely aroused, as I was, but I knew that she was enjoying my humiliation also.

  I lifted my blouse over my head and then turned to a sitting position and unbuttoned and slipped off my skirt, lifting my hips and sliding the material over my ankles and kicking it away onto the floor.

  ‘Better,’ Antony said. The bland, expressionless mask had left his face. Now his dark eyes reflected a deep hunger. Desire. Something unleashed inside him. I did not look away.

  He reached forward and took hold of my left breast, squeezed. Pulled my nipple. Then lifted his arm back and slapped my tit so that it bounced into the other.

  Alissa grabbed my right breast and did the same.

  I closed my eyes and moaned. The physical sensation, half pain, half pleasure, mixed with the mental impact of Antony’s words, his behaviour, sent lust flooding through my veins. My cunt throbbed. I was dripping wet.

  ‘I can see why he likes you,’ Alissa breathed.

  She was on her knees now with her legs spread apart, her face a picture of curiosity, like a kid who has just discovered a brand new way of misbehaving. She still had her little black dress on, and I could see no obvious way to remove it. Perhaps the fastener was at the back. Certainly it could not be lifted over her head. It may as well have been painted on. The hem had risen even higher, and now just bordered the very tops of her thighs. A hint of pubic hair was visible.

  I lifted my fingers and reached for her pussy.

  ‘Ohh,’ she said, and began moving her hips back and forward, sliding along my hand. She was at least as wet as I was and her lips had opened, ready for entry. I thrust two fingers inside her. She leaned her head back and pushed against me.

  Antony moved behind her and, unlike me, managed to locate the zip on her dress. He pulled it down halfway, and yanked the material up at the bottom so that the fabric bunched at her waist, leaving her breasts and cunt and arse exposed. The length of her dark hair over pale shoulders, her black dress like a belt around her middle and the lustrous thatch of her pubic hair gave her something of a domino effect, black on white. She was undeniably hot, in a terribly fulsome, sexy way.

  Antony’s hands roamed over her throat and breasts, tweaked her nipples. Not for long, though.

  He stepped away. Picked up the bottle of bourbon again and took another swig. Then lifted my chin with his hand, interrupting the smooth rhythm that I was exacting on Alissa’s pussy.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ he said to me, waving the bottle in front of my face. ‘I think you have some catching up to do.’

  I did as he said, then choked as he poured quicker than I could swallow and the bourbon burned my throat.

  Alissa took my chin from Antony’s hand and kissed me. She lifted my fingers – the two that had been inside her moments ago – to her mouth and sucked, licking all of her juices from my skin. She kissed me again, pressing the taste of her cunt into my mouth. She was sweet. Undoubtedly sweeter than the bourbon.

  ‘Like the taste of her, do you?’ Antony asked.

  Before I could reply he had pushed her onto the bed, and then lifted me up by the hair and directed my face towards her pussy. Alissa was only too happy to oblige, spreading her thighs wide and wriggling her body into a comfortable position.

  I bent my head and began to lap. I had little experience of licking women, and so mimicked the movements that Antony so expertly utilised on me, alternating between fast and slow, gentle and rough and adapting my technique to suit her reactions.

  Alissa was a particularly responsive lover, as theatrical in bed as she was in the rest of her life and it did not take her long to begin moaning and grinding her hips against my face. She threaded her fingers through my hair and held me hard against her. Antony placed the palm of his hand on the back of my skull and held me even more firmly in place, so that I was only able to take occasional breaths through my nose.

  ‘Go on,’ he said ‘Fuck her with your tongue.’ He placed his other hand beneath Alissa’s hips and lifted her up. ‘Lick her arsehole too,’ he said.

  I did.

  Her breathing had turned ragged and I could hear the sound of fingernails scratching fabric as she screwed her hands up into claws and tugged at the bed sheets.

  Alissa was visibly close to coming and her desire fuelled mine. I grabbed her thighs and continued to hold her in place so that I could lick her freely from her perineum to her clit as Antony moved away again. I buried my face into her cunt, my tongue shifting between hard, cock-like thrusts and then concentrating on swift, rhythmic licks against her clitoris.

  I was so distracted by my task that I didn’t register I had moved onto my knees with my arse in the air, or that the slight scraping sound of metal on denim was Antony undoing the button of his jeans, until I felt his rock hard cock plunging straight inside me. The impact of his weight against mine pushed me directly into Alissa’s pussy in one final, vigorous stroke and in that moment she grabbed my head and came, thrusting and bucking her hips and grinding against me with all of her strength.

  Antony ignored her entirely and continued to plough savagely into me from behind. It was all I could do not to bite Alissa as I was knocked back and forward between them and the force of Antony’s cock inside me made me want to scream aloud, it felt so good.r />
  A thin haze of warm liquid sprayed over my face and left a damp patch on the sheets. Alissa had gushed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed, motioning to the wet patch. It was the first time I had seen her blush. She shunted herself out of our way, her limbs loose and relaxed, a look of bliss mixing with embarrassment on her face. Recovering from her orgasm.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I whispered back, though I’m not sure that she heard me as Antony immediately pushed the side of my face into the wet patch that Alissa had left behind. He wiped his palm on the sheet and then pushed his fingers into my mouth. His cock continued pumping into me and I thrust back against him, both of our bodies now slick with heat and sweat.

  For a short while, I forgot that Alissa was even in the room. She was silent, watching us or not, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care. The scent of her juices bathed my nostrils and aroused me to the point of explosion. Being fucked with my face pressed into another woman’s come. Just the thought of it was enough to send me right to the edge, without any extra stimulation.

  Then Antony shifted his body, supporting his weight with one arm, his other searching for my pussy. He found my clitoris and began to rub.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I cried, and came.

  My exclamation elicited a groan from Antony. He came inside me. We collapsed together onto the bed and lay motionless until my limbs began to lose feeling and I wriggled beneath him.

  He slipped out and off me without a word and walked towards the bathroom.

  ‘Well, that was fun,’ Alissa remarked drolly, to no one in particular.

  I heard the sound of water running, and the shower door creaking on its rollers.

  ‘I’m getting a snack,’ Alissa announced. ‘You don’t mind if I wear this, do you?’ she continued, picking my white blouse up off the floor.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. Probably I would mind, another time, but right then I was still too busy basking in the halo of my orgasm and mixed-up emotions to care about what she did.

  Though I was taller than her, my blouse covered even less of her body than Antony’s shirts did, leaving the flat of her belly and her pussy with its full covering of dark hair totally visible.

  She slipped off the bed and walked to the kitchen.

  Now alone, I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I didn’t feel ready to join Antony in the shower and have to begin some conversation about the events of the afternoon, and neither did I want to spark up a conversation with Alissa in the kitchen. Nor did I wish to return on my own to Clapham and leave the two of them together.

  I pulled back the covers and slipped into bed, away from the wet patch.

  Alissa returned with a plateful of bread and cheese and proceeded to munch the lot under the sheet next to me. Food finished, she rolled over and went straight to sleep.

  I was still awake when Antony joined us again, but pretended not to be.

  The sex and the shower seemed to have sobered him up. He draped an arm over me tentatively, and I snuggled back against him. A gesture of forgiveness on both parts. If there was anything to forgive. I still wasn’t sure if either, or both of us, were in the wrong.

  Alissa was snoring softly, seemingly entirely happy to be sleeping alone on the other side of the bed.

  Before long, I was dreaming. The usual mixture of strange images, music, the lingering touch of the island’s vines on my skin, flashes of lovers future and past, haunted violins, empty stages facing faceless audiences that consisted of just eyes shining in a pool of darkness, and always Antony’s face, sometimes loving, sometimes not. I began to twitch in my sleep.

  ‘Shhh …’ Antony whispered, caressing my arm softly.

  He pulled me back against him. Instinctively, I pressed my arse against his groin. He pressed back. I felt his cock growing rigid. I was still wet, partly as I hadn’t washed since our earlier fuck or due to those recurring night visions of mine that had an unerring habit of veering towards the erotic, triggering in the process deep-seated and uncontrollable signals at the core of my body.

  He reached for his cock and slipped it inside me.

  We fucked quietly, barely moving, careful not to wake Alissa. He held me tight in his arms. Pulled back my hair and kissed my ear firmly as he came.

  ‘Sleep, Summer …’ he whispered. I felt his body relax almost instantly after he orgasmed, but he didn’t move away. I drifted off again into slumber in his arms.

  Morning arrived even earlier than usual, as we had forgotten to close the blinds, and I was woken by the sun. I glanced at Antony’s bedside clock. It was barely even 7 a.m., and a weekend, at that.

  Alissa had a rehearsal to go to and had left. Antony was sleeping peacefully by my side.

  Was I kidding myself in thinking that despite the angry words and gestures, the way that he was sometimes dismissive and sometimes affectionate, there was still something between us? That even through the drunken temper he’d displayed last night, there were still moments of tenderness? Plenty of people would have walked straight out and cut the romantic relationship between us off before it could start, but I didn’t feel that I had any right to be self-righteous. I had enough flaws of my own.

  I felt at sea. Lost without a recognisable star to get my bearings from. Uncertain about the next step. It was like that song I vaguely recalled: ‘Should I stay or should I go?’

  I had to pee. Slipped out of the bed as quietly as I could manage. Antony stirred, grumbling in his sleep. When I came back, his eyes were wide open and he was lying on his back, watching me tiptoe back towards the bed.

  ‘Maybe I should go home?’ I suggested. ‘Let all things simmer down?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Stay.’

  I stayed.

  ‘What about …?’

  ‘Alissa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s not important,’ Antony said. ‘Just an ambitious actress who’ll do anything to secure a part, really. How do you musicians put it? A divertimento …’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘You on the other hand are a complete partition, Summer.’

  I would have preferred a whole symphony. It would have been more eloquent. But beggars can’t be choosers, can they?

  From what Alissa had alluded to, it appeared that Antony’s drinking and his adverse reaction to setbacks was not a new phenomenon. But he seemed to have the matter under control and for the following weeks his anger and blue funk did not manifest themselves again.

  Neither of us tacitly brought up the subject and we continued our work on the project. Nor did Alissa come knocking at the door again to suggest a further romp between the bed sheets. Antony let pass that she was on the second leg of a UK regional tour with a small troupe alternating Shakespeare and Chekhov plays. He was unaware what parts she was playing.

  I was, however, wary of treading ever so cautiously in his presence and got into the habit most nights of returning to Clapham to sleep rather than stay with him back in his Isle of Dogs penthouse. We still had sex, but it was easy to pretext that I had partitions to consult back home, new clothes to change into and a need for some thinking space. He never objected.

  The play was beginning to shape up, and I was now at ease with the half dozen musical reference points, take-off boards for the flight of my improvisations and Antony appeared satisfied with the way they caught the mood of the play he had in mind, and served as an integral part of it rather than an add-on.

  So far, he had been financing all the project’s expenses himself, preferring to have his concept fine-tuned before launching out in search of backers.

  A good friend of his, a lanky Irish guy called Mark Bruen, who had designed the sets for some of Antony’s previous productions as well as one of his American movies, came to visit and joined us on several occasions for our work sessions. A week later, he returned with a phantasmagorical construction mad
e out of minuscule slithers of wood, cardboard, paper and glue, a miniature version of the play’s set, which spun on itself, and revealed new layers from every perspective you peered into it, a house of dolls of exquisite beauty and precision, hand-painted in places, full of Lilliputian furniture and matchstick characters we began to assign names to. Both Antony and I felt like kids in a sweetshop. All of a sudden, the project was turning so real!

  Mark was followed by Wally, a gruff Northerner big on silences and nods, who agreed to come on board to devise the lighting which would bring the set to life. As Antony, with my occasional prompt, carefully explained the concept and atmosphere we were hoping to summon, Mark would listen with a profound mask of indifference, seemingly uninvolved with the whole process, not even writing down notes.

  When I pointed this out to Antony, and questioned the wisdom of Mark’s choice, he dismissed my fears with a smile.

  ‘It just looks that way,’ he said. ‘He’s the silent type, but already inside, his gears are moving. Don’t worry, he always comes up with the goods. You’ll see on the day.’

  I had to submit to his experience. The lighting process for my concert and recitals had always been rudimentary by necessity and it was not an area in which I had the slightest expertise.

  The words were now all written, bar a few last minute adjustments, and the music was halfway there, partly on the page and more importantly inside my head. I knew I could pull it off, and not get stuck embarrassingly for inspiration in the middle of any of the meticulously planned improvisations. Prokofiev, Vivaldi, Khachaturian, Sibelius, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana and entrancing melodic lines appropriated from Counting Crows, Luna and Noir Désir were my roadside markers for the journey.

  All we now needed were actors.

  And a budget to support the project. For which Antony had invited an experienced accountant to go over all the play’s forensic details in order to cost it. When he first remarked that the whole farrago appeared frightfully expensive, I blurted out that I would not be charging any fees to play at every single performance. He barely raised an eyebrow, just giving Antony a sideways look, a sly understanding that the relationship between Antony and me had become more than just professional. If my agent had been in the same room, she would have begged me to reconsider and come up with a hundred valid reasons to do so.