Double Bind

by Karen Bell

  Adie was bubbling and excited and Mila soon caught her good mood. They found a parking spot miraculously close by and got to the class ahead of time.

  Immediately they were struck by the calibre of the girls warming up. All had amazing bodies and all looked like they belonged here. No baggy t-shirts or bare feet, no tracky-dacks or inquisitive housewives. Well none of course, except herself and Adie. These girls were elite athletes; Mila could see it in the definition of the muscles on their arms, shoulders and thighs. She noticed more than a few had six pack abs defining the expanse of skin between micro gym shorts and Lycra bras.

  They were stretching like gymnasts, while talking and strapping on their platform heels. Mila didn’t want to alarm Adie whose eyes were already bulging but she had done enough serious gym training as a teen to know that this group was in a league of their own. They approached the teacher to register and Mila enquired if they were maybe the wrong class?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the teacher laughed, they’re all working pretty independently. I’m giving them pointers but I’ll mainly be teaching you two. They’re using the stage and poles to perfect their own routines but we are also working on a group number that you can stay and watch later.

  As it turned out, the other students were from a mix of backgrounds, both in and out of the exotic dance industry but most were in training for Miss Pole Dance Australia. According to the teacher, they included a couple of fitness instructors, a Cirque du Soleil performer, two uni students working nights to put themselves through school, and half a dozen who apparently did this for a living. All were training several times per week if not daily.

  Mila was in awe of the control and strength, the beauty of the moves and the creativity of the routines that these girls had choreographed. She couldn’t believe how entirely different each routine was from the next, even without the benefit of costumes.

  All Adie noticed was how sexy they were.

  ‘Damn those are some hot tamales,’ she exhaled with a low whistle. ‘I wanna get me one of those bodies.’

  ‘That’s a bit ambiguous,’ whispered Mila with a grin.

  Adie’s expression was predictably shameless ‘Don’t I know it!’

  Mila was inspired and couldn’t help glancing over at the other dancers as they ran through some moves. On board the ship, the girls had been taught most of the easier spins, climbs and poses. Mila had been given some more challenging inverts and drops and she was now excited to put them all together and learn some new manoeuvres.

  Tired as her arms were from the day’s activity, she managed to pull off some intermediate and even advanced moves as the teacher divided her time between the two of them.

  Adie too was making impressive ground on her earlier attempts and confided that she had been doing daily push-ups, sit ups and stretches for a whole two days now.

  The teacher had chosen chose the song Sexy Love by NeYo for their routine and promised to send it as an MP3 file for them to practice at home. It was slow and beautiful and forced Mila to really feel the music and Adie to hold and control more than she would otherwise have done.

  Before they’d even pulled out of their car parking spot after class, the girls heard the simultaneous beeps of their mobiles, telling them that the dance teacher had sent through the music file by email. Adie showed Mila how to transfer and save it into her music library. Crazy modern technology, she marvelled.

  As they looked at Mila’s phone screen together, Adie noticed a missed call from a Sergeant Ryan Blake.

  ‘Who’s Sergeant Blake?’ she asked with all her usual discretion.

  ‘Well I was going to mention him tonight but I just hadn’t quite gotten around to it yet.’

  Adie’s eyes lit up with curiosity. ‘Spill it,’ she enthused and Mila was forced into an abridged version of the past three days, glossing over the seriousness of the break in, and Ryan’s subsequent concerns.

  ‘You fox!’ cried Adie, before scolding her for previously withheld information. ‘You sound very taken with this man. I need to meet him.’

  ‘It’s really not anything yet. I mean we’ve barely even kissed.’

  ‘You’ve kissed already? This is serious business for you, and now that we’ve slept together on the cruise ship, your business is my business.’

  ‘I know, I know, it’s crazy and completely out of character and out of my comfort zone but it just feels more natural than I can even explain.’

  ‘Look Mila, your heart is open and that’s a wonderful thing, but it also makes you vulnerable. He took you to meet his other family so you must bring him to meet yours. Plus Carlos and I want to make sure he’s going to treat you right.’

  It was important to Mila that they all got along, and the butterflies she felt now, just thinking of any meeting, forced her admit to herself just how smitten she was with Ryan already.

  ‘So with regards to the sex side of things, you’re going to make him take it slow?’

  ‘I wouldn’t actually know how to do that,’ admitted Mila.

  ‘It’s pretty easy, you just say no like you mean it. If he’s a gentleman, he’ll respect you and wait. Baby, you’ve come from an abusive past. You can’t allow yourself to repeat the same mistakes.’

  ‘But Ryan’s nothing like Robert, I mean he’s communicative and protective and gentle in that strong, hunky policeman type of way.’

  ‘And clearly he turns you on.’ Good old Adie, never backwards in coming forwards. Mila felt her cheeks colour and was happy for the dimly lit car.

  ‘Yes… despite my past experiences with Robert, everything about him turns me on, his voice, his smile, the intensity of his eyes, the broadness of his chest and shoulders, the way he pats his dog…’

  ‘Okay, enough, enough – I get it, he’s God’s gift to women,’ sighed Adie. ‘So call him back,’ she demanded.

  ‘No I’ll call him when I get home. I want him to wait.’

  ‘That’s my girl! See how quickly you learn to say no.’

  Mila was embarrassed that she could barely stop talking about the date as they drove home and that her thoughts were filled with him as she hugged her friend goodnight and walked inside. As instructed by Ryan, she switched the alarm to sleep mode, before heading upstairs.

  Setting down her mobile phone on the vanity, she found the music library and pressed play before peeling off her dance clothes and stepping under the steaming shower jets.

  With eyes closed, the sultry tones of the music and the mesmerizing images of her classmates entwined and slow danced in her head. She had been enthralled and aroused by their unashamed eroticism and the fluidity of their movements against the pole. She envied the close relationship they evidently shared with their bodies and their sexuality. What a revelation it would be to enjoy sex without feeling ashamed or fearful or disconnected.

  Mila allowed the hot water to caress her tired muscles and felt it rushing over her forehead and into her mouth, between her breasts and down along the plane of her stomach. She held the vertical rail of the shower and slowly rotated her hips, rolling her belly in the same sinuous way that she’d seen, feeling the river of water find new pathways as it tracked around her waist and along the gentle valleys between her hips and pubic bone finally finding the channel that then ran between her thighs.

  She allowed her brain to switch off, losing herself in unhurried movements, surrendering to the feelings brought on by the hot flow of water, the music and the images, exploring her sensuality and releasing her inhibitions maybe for the first time. She was unaware and unconcerned by the passage of time, slow dancing beneath the fall.

  Off in another world she became aware of a distant ringing, a phone, her phone, in her real world. Ignore it, said a voice in her head. But it could be important, said another. Drawn from her trance, Mila rubbed the steam from the glass and deciphered the name on the screen. Ryan, she smiled. Apparently he had a radar for interrupting her while in the throws of self-absorbed passion. Then Mila reminded herself that
he was possibly worried about her and reached out to take the call.

  ‘Hello?’ she heard the silky throatiness of her own voice brought about by the combination of steam and arousal.

  ‘Mila?’ he sounded immediately relieved. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at home in the shower – literally. I did say I was going out tonight.’

  ‘Did you? I must have been too busy making an ass of myself this afternoon to have heard you. About that, I’m sorry I frightened you earlier.’

  ‘No I over-reacted. But I got the message and I’m being really vigilant about my safety now.’

  ‘That’s reassuring. I’ll sleep better knowing that,’ he said sincerely. ‘So… you’re in the shower are you?’ His naturally deep tone took on an extra husky resonance and the sound of it set Mila’s already awakened body into high alert. She felt her abdomen tighten and her internal body temperature rising to well above the heat of the jets.

  ‘I am, and I was kind of lost in my own world when the phone rang.’ She was a little surprised by the velvety texture of her own voice.

  ‘I’d like to be lost in your world,’ he murmured languidly.

  ‘It was the second time he had alluded to wanting her sexually, and the admission was having the desired effect on Mila’s desire.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked casually.

  ‘I’m in the shower – what do you think I’m wearing?’

  ‘I just want to hear you say it – pleeeze?’ He had slipped into a voice that was nothing short of carnal and with the safety of a phone call’s distance, Mila was readily seduced into the game.

  ‘I’m wearing nothing. Not even so much as a washcloth.’

  ‘Mila, now you’re killing me.’ The sound of her name as it rolled low and licentiously off his tongue was enough to alter her breath pattern and intensify the pressure between her hips. Her body tingled with anticipation and it made her oddly courageous. ‘I always try not to lie to the police. It can get you into all sorts of trouble,’ she purred.

  ‘That’s true. So you won’t lie to me if I ask you another question?’

  ‘I can’t promise, but I’ll try.’

  ‘If I was standing outside your front door now, would you invite me in?’

  The air was becoming decidedly close and it had nothing to do with the shower. ‘What? You’re not are you?’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I…don’t know if I could trust myself if you came through my front door now,’ she answered truthfully.

  ‘But you could trust me.’

  ‘Trust you not to touch me?’ Mila asked, a little let down.

  ‘No, I didn’t say that – you could trust me not to disappoint you.’ His words made Mila catch her breath as she felt the tug of desire tightening within.

  ‘Are you outside?’

  He paused for dramatic effect before answering ‘Sadly no. I’m safely, several suburbs away, so it’s my loss.’

  Mila was quietly relieved. The conversation had been finding its way into an unchartered territory, well beyond her comfort zone, while he on the other hand sounded very comfortable, very self-assured in a manner that led Mila to believe he was no stranger to racy phone calls or late night trysts.

  She took the opportunity to retreat. ‘In that case you’d best let me get back to my shower. The soap is beckoning.’

  ‘How I envy that soap, and Mila, you know what I said earlier about sleeping better tonight? I take it all back.’

  Mila was buzzing. ‘Goodnight Sergeant Blake.’

  ‘It may be for you Mila, but I suspect I’ll be tossing and turning with images of you in the shower and that can come to no good.’

  She smiled at the innuendo and then hung up, hoping her phone would survive the steamy call better than she had.

  She was now a hot, wet, dishevelled mess and more unsated than before. As she hung up, the music cut back in and Mila was now conscious of its sexual and repetitive rhythm.

  Closing her eyes once again, she readily returned to her fantasy, imagining that the flow of the water was not one but several bodies against hers. With her back to the shower rail, she envisaged them, climbing the pole around her, oiled skin caressing hers, hands, lips, long fingers gliding under her arms and over her naked flesh, searching, tugging as they climbed and explored.

  She was high up on the pole, blindfolded, arms up over her head loosely secured by handcuffs, the naked bodies of the other dancers artfully winding themselves around her so that she was all but buried amongst them. Lips brushing over her breasts and between her legs; long limbs, undulating and sliding, wrapping themselves around her neck and her waist in an orgy of unidentified, ever moving flesh. Every inch of her body was caressed and bitten, from her eyelids to the small of her back, drawing her away from the pole and into the pressing forms around her. She arched her body, aching to feel more, much more and was rewarded by the sensation of her body and those connected, sliding part way down the pole into the waiting clutch of strong hands, powerful arms, distinctively male grasping her hips and butt and drawing her downward so that her legs locked about his neck, imprisoning him against her and her to him. Through the overload of sensations, her focus narrowed to the source, and the sweet agony of abrasive whiskers, hungry mouth and tongue searching, biting the apex of the space between her thighs, exploring every millimetre of the terrain, hills, valleys, mountains and crevasse until she was lost in weightless freefall, a whiteout of a storm where his presence was her only destination.

  Mind reeling and body still tumbling, she felt herself carried across the tundra of his chest, and his lips brushing against hers before locking on securely so she tasted her own salty sweetness within. Once again connected, Mila felt the cool metal of the pole slipping between her cuffed wrists and along her back as she imagined herself, lowered against him, slowly, exquisitely, anchoring her, so that they were one, not two and she was pinioned and stilled by his fullness inside her.

  In her mind’s eye, a maelstrom of bodies swirled around them, but locked in his embrace, safe in the eye of the storm they communed silently, their thoughts and rhythms one, savouring the intensity of the vibrations between them.

  Mila imagined that she could feel him grow and swell inside her and her grip tightened instinctively. The heat from his body radiated and sang through to every nerve ending. She felt the beginnings of something powerful engulfing her, pictured them being lifted, weightless over a precipice before crashing into an abyss. Mila fell into him again and again, and he held onto her as though she was the last piece of driftwood in an endless ocean.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was Sergeant Blake’s day off and he should have been out in the surf or sunshine with Jack instead of pacing about his living room as he was now, waiting for the phone to ring.

  He was not a happy man. Following the initial unsuccessful investigations, Ryan had taken it upon himself to run a search on Robert Taylor. Criminal records drew a blank, which was unsurprising, and a check on his credit rating came back clear. It seemed that he had never owned a credit card in his name. In fact, the man had never even received so much as a parking ticket. On paper at least, Robert Taylor had been a veritable goody two shoes but if nothing else, Ryan had learnt that if someone sounded too good to be true, he was usually a liar. Also Ryan was unconvinced that Mila knew everything there was to know about her late husband.

  His next call had been to the human resources department of Robert’s old workplace and it was there that he’d uncovered the first anomaly.

  Ryan had a head for remembering details and he was quite sure that Mila had said her husband had resigned from PricewaterhouseCoopers three years earlier to start his own business. His notes from the day of the break-in confirmed it.

  According to the head of human resources however, it had been five years since Robert’s departure and moreover, with some gentle prodding, Ryan learned that the circumstances of his resignation had been less t
han amicable. It came to light that Robert had been suspected of misappropriating company funds while travelling for work, claiming entitlements on his company credit card that fell well outside acceptable practice. There had been some suggestion of other more serious fraudulent activity but it had remained unproven and the company had been satisfied to let him go without further investigation. In forcing him to resign, they had saved not only a large severance payout but also a messy court case that was bound to have attracted bad publicity. Robert in turn had saved the disgrace of dismissal.

  Ryan, in his line of work, had seen it a hundred times before. Husband loses job, is too ashamed to tell the family and continues to leave the house dressed each day as if employed. In many cases, after months of unsuccessful job hunting, men became desperate, turning to gambling or alcohol, while slowly draining the family savings. Ryan wondered if that had become Robert’s story and if there could somehow be a connection between this latest information and the break in.

  From what Mila had told him, Robert Taylor had been a private man and Ryan’s instincts told him that Mila had been genuine in sharing what little she knew. He suspected that her husband had been cagey for a reason. He just had to work out what that reason was. He was waiting to hear back from the Department of Social Services regarding any claims for benefits that Robert might have lodged but it was strange at the least, that the same person who was conservative enough to never own a credit card had been caught in such an obvious stunt as carelessly overspending at work. It signified to Ryan, someone who thought himself above reproach.

  ###

  Mila had enjoyed an enterprising morning, cleaning the house and interviewing agents for the sale. She felt positive about making a fresh start and after having a long chat with Holly, was reassured that she was fine with it too.

  Both agents she’d spoken with had suggested that a February auction date was ideal and that apart from a little styling needed, the house was in a good state to sell. Mila just had to check with the bank and the solicitor that she was entitled to put it on the market before probate was complete.