The Sexopaths

  ‘Well… whatever it is, you certainly are the uber-girlfriend.’

  Again she demures, sips to deflect the compliment. She places her glass down, almost empty. Adam tops it up obediently. Still he has the feeling that they’re dodging thunderheads, flitting hand in hand from one patch of sunshine to another, keeping alive their mainly bright and breezy free and easy conversation. Still he awaits a soaking, a lightning strike, a thunderous revelation. And still he dares invite a cloudburst:

  ‘Why do you think that is – apart from your being pretty gorgeous, I mean?’

  Her reply is both elementary and profound:

  ‘Kissing on the mouth. Oral without a condom. Anal. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Right.’ It’s like she’s let go of pretence and decorum, and turned to face him with a truth, Bo Peep pointing out to Boy Blue that they are alone in the corn and she wears no knickers. He grins inanely, forced to concede his universal male frailties. ‘There is that, of course.’

  Xara pushes back her stool and slips to the ground with a soft click of her heels. She says:

  ‘I was going to take a shower. Would you like to help?’

  ***

  Should we do that?’ Adam half-rises, pushing himself up from the bed on one elbow.

  ‘Relax – it’s fine.’

  She places a warm hand on his shoulder, exerting a gentle pressure that succeeds in repelling his protest, physically at least.

  ‘But…’

  ‘Shh… you can’t make me pregnant today.’

  It isn’t the specific concern he has in mind, but he yields nevertheless. So urgently has she made the running, so breathlessly has she driven their approach to congress, uninterrupted by formalities, that he feels ill-mannered even in raising the question. His next words are expletives and – he notes with a curiously detached awareness – so too are hers, melded into a furious coupling of spinning weightlessness, hyperventilation, near blackout (perhaps actual), then rapid descent into stillness, part-consciousness punctuated only by the girl’s breathing, gasps only slowly receding, then cognisance again, disclosure: such need for oxygen, she really must have come. Fingers touch his lips, trigger inhalation, release lungs paralysed since climax, a timely release from imminent yet delicious suffocation. Seconds tick and his respiration falls into time with hers, off beat and accommodating, moist bellies sharing in turn the available space between them. He won’t open his eyes. He could have killed her, the delicate throat smooth, his grip invited, the delicious pressure encouraged, the arousal mutual, his predicament solved, yet renewed.

  ‘Turn over, please.’

  She slips away so he can comply, then she reaches to tug open a drawer and extract a bottle of orange-tinted massage oil, naturally knowing its position in the half-light. The familiar aroma reaches him as she begins to smooth it up along the ridges of his shoulder blades, her own grip now lingering as if tempted to choke him in his helplessness. Lower, her weight is warm, a slippery suction each time she lifts. Heavy with sexual aftershock he wants to surrender all but a trace of wakefulness to her touch, especially now as she flattens herself against him with a sinuous sliding contact that has neither beginning nor end. But the certain knowledge of unprotected penetration worms insidiously amidst the roots of his consciousness, a larval anxiety that feeds upon his propriety, gorging, fattening for pupation. And it’s not for the first time: the threesome where he was bound and used (did they employ a condom? – he’s not sure); the staged rape – there was no doubt (and no condom); even Jasmin-Sharon’s initial probity was later surrendered when things went a little crazy.

  There is one saving grace – this he has already calculated – if some unwelcome rash or worse were to erupt, then Jasmin-Sharon will be his Typhoid Mary. He shared the girl – and thus potentially her flora – with Monique’s consent, so he is immune from censure, at least. Many escorts write on their websites about best practice, as if it’s a positive selling feature for most potential buyers. When transient soreness has visited him for a day or two, he has sought solace in such knowledge, friction to date proving the probable explanation. Yet now he has experienced a deliberate flouting of these rules, and by more than one practitioner. In Jasmin-Sharon’s case it perhaps should come as no great surprise, her will malleable, vulnerable to outside influence, chemical, emotional, financial – indeed don’t some men gladly pay extra to spill their seed unhindered, for which some girls gladly oblige? But from Xara, terrible Queen of Hearts, for such largesse to be among her repertoire of alms, dispensed to a minion like he, it’s an act that surely requires explanation? Can he be alone in this regard – what of her longstanding suitors? Might they all be linked by an invisible chain of viral heredity blissfully imparted upon them through acts of illusory love? Vengeance wreaked upon mankind. She wouldn’t do that, would she?

  ‘Nice?’

  He wonders if he dare intimate about matters of safe sex, but her question quickly scatters such antisocial thoughts before they can cause uncouth offence.

  ‘Mmm. Very. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s my thank-you, remember.’

  Shit. He’s still not asked about the financial arrangements. He says, words muffled by the pillow, embarrassment diffused:

  ‘Don’t let me forget your fee.’

  ‘I told you – it’s a thank-you. And I haven’t finished yet.’

  The bluff works. But he offers a little prayer that he summoned up the courage to pose the question; there’s no worse feeling than freeloading. A distant voice is suggesting he should leave, though he knows he cannot yet pay it heed – despite his impression that today they interact as equals, her subtle dominance has not been fully relinquished; and not just the tight warm bundle of body and limbs that pin him down, but a metaphysical energy that binds him in her thrall.

  Now she whispers:

  ‘That’s it – just relax. There’s no rush. I’m off duty today.’

  Adam nods his acceptance into the pillow as she continues to envelop him. She asks:

  ‘How about you?’

  He turns his head to one side. ‘You mean work?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Oh – it’s okay. I don’t really go by regular hours.’

  ‘Tell me about yourself.’

  Adam pictures the photograph on his desk, he and Monique supporting Camille, up to their collar bones in the warm blue Aegean; there’s a reflex urge to snap shut like a clam prodded with a toe. It’s the first time he can recall that she’s asked him anything about himself. His indecision palpable, she politely retreats:

  ‘You don’t need to say anything you don’t want to – I respect your privacy.’

  ‘No… it’s okay.’

  He reverts to the employment fallback, and tries to make his hesitation seem like a pause to construct a considered reply:

  ‘People ask me what my job is and I always struggle to come up with a short answer – you know, like plumber or teacher or tax inspector.’

  She giggles. ‘That’s a relief – although I do pay all my dues.’

  His mind explores this side-track: just where on a tax return do you put this kind of thing? He remembers Jasmin-Sharon’s remark about the properties – rent is often paid in cash. Would the taxman care where the money came from provided he got his cut? Or maybe she and her bank manager have a mutual arrangement.

  She prompts him lightly with her fingertips. ‘You’re involved in the internet?’

  A little alarm bell; has he told her something he doesn’t remember, or has she been doing her research? He says:

  ‘I am, but I think the attraction is one of a moth to a candle. You’re the candle.’

  The nails press again, teasingly. ‘I meant your job, not your hobby.’

  ‘The two often overlap.’

  ‘What do you think of my website?’

  ‘You mean your pages on Angels365?’

  ‘No – my own site, Xara7.’

  He hears ‘Xara’s Heaven’ and thinks the li
teral connection sounds apposite. He says:

  ‘You might not believe this – but I didn’t know you had one.’ He wonders if such ignorance might seem a slight. ‘I’d be happy to look at it for you – if you want to risk my dark arts – no charge of course.’

  She affects a laugh; it’s a purr in her throat. ‘You’re very generous.’

  ‘Though, if you don’t mind me saying – you don’t seem to have a marketing problem.’

  That said, it occurs to him that no mobiles have trilled during his time here. Could she have silenced her phones for his benefit? Or maybe she really is taking a day off. She’s quiet for a moment, then she hums to the track that’s playing in the background. After a pause, she says:

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘You mean you can’t hear the twang of Tiger Bay in my accent?’

  ‘You’re very well spoken.’

  ‘My pals from back home wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘If they could see you now?’

  It’s a cheeky retort, accompanied by pressure in the right places. Shadowy faces, male and female, flicker across the retina of his mind’s eye. Some leer favourably, others frown their displeasure, reluctantly obliged to look on. He can’t find he agrees with any of them.

  She adds:

  ‘Tiger Bay – it sounds exotic.’

  He chuckles. ‘If only. The answer’s Wales. Tiger Bay is the old port of Cardiff. Apparently I’m descended from a long line of smugglers.’

  ‘It would explain your creative streak.’

  Would it? And how does she know he might have one? He says:

  ‘Well, I suppose it took a certain talent continually to invent new excuses for the benefit of the Exciseman.’

  ‘But you are a Celt?’

  He gets her drift. ‘I guess so – if there’s such a thing. I’ve got a pal who works at the human genetics unit at the university and he insists we’re all Ancient Britons – English, Scots, Welsh – with a pinch of Genghis Khan thrown in for good measure.’

  ‘I think you got more than your fair share of Mr Khan.’

  He feigns a modest shrug beneath her palms. She’s massaging him more softly now, a repetitive sweeping movement that has become the background rhythm to their conversation. He says:

  ‘Of course, you’re far too good-looking to be descended from the likes of the Iceni.’

  His question is inadequately disguised as a compliment, but she appears not to object. She says:

  ‘I’m part-Brazilian, part-Portuguese, part… well… maybe native South American.’

  ‘If you were a cocktail you’d be a Caipirinha.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I’m sour-sweet?’

  ‘All the best cocktails are. Life would be so dull, otherwise.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘Did you grow up abroad?’

  ‘I’ve moved around quite a lot. Some time in London, actually.’

  She takes a breath, the kind that precedes a pronouncement, but then she seems to stifle any words that were about to break free. Adam, wishing her to continue, proffers more oxygen:

  ‘Do you ever tell anyone your real name?’

  Despite his care not to pose the question directly he immediately senses an impasse, her hands gliding to a halt, her fingertips playing in light deliberation upon his shoulders. She’s silent, for an age it seems – maybe twenty seconds – then he feels her release the air from her lungs, its passing breeze fluttering across his body, carrying away the unformed words. She inhales again and says, her voice edged with strain, though free of reprimand:

  ‘It’s best that I don’t.’

  ‘Of course – I’m sure I’d feel the same. You don’t want mad folk like me tracking you down and stalking you after hours.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as the stalking kind.’

  ‘What kind do I strike you as?’

  He aches to ask outright why he was chosen for the adventures of the past couple of months. Is he good at sex, attractive in some way, a boyfriend she can’t have? Or is it simply – as Jasmin-Sharon suggests – that his name came first on her list of candidates, a temporary outlet for her boredom, soon to be dispensed with; next time she moves and its Buggins’ turn.

  But her reply is considered: ‘Creative – like I said. Intelligent. Athletic.’

  He hangs on every word, but feels obliged to make light of her accolade. ‘That needn’t stop me from stalking you. It might make me better at it.’

  ‘That’s true.’ She digs her nails dangerously into his flesh. ‘But you might meet your match.’

  ‘Ouch. There’s no might about it.’

  ‘Sorry – there are just little marks – they’ll soon disappear.’

  ‘It’s okay – I quite enjoyed it, really.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. Turn over. Quickly.’

  There’s something in her tone that makes him at once comply and harden; she descends, destroying angel, for a final forbidden act.

  ***

  Adam nods for a moment at the silver number seven on her door. “Xara7” – of course – why didn’t he get that earlier? Becoming conscious of the silence that wells up around him, he turns and heads for the elevator. He feels curiously light, almost gliding, as though her physical demands have drained away some of his mass. But he’s depleted in spirit too, as if some irresistible software has interrogated his system, scanned him for viruses, leafed at light speed through his secrets. He reflects, should he expect some aftershock? The encounter was unexpectedly amicable; she’d even hugged him, stepping out across the threshold, risking public exposure in her flimsy lingerie. She’d whispered ‘Goodbye Adam,’ kissed him on both cheeks and then, lingeringly on his lips, before slowly retreating like a diminishing genie returning to its lamp, her dark eyes fixed upon his – then one dark eye that finally disappeared unblinking as the crack of the door dwindled to nothing but a final crushing click that severed the last resisting strands of what had seemed like a hard-woven union.

  And thus he comes away empty handed. His wish to understand her strategy, his hope to perceive something of her motives, lies unfulfilled – as deftly stripped from him and cast aside as were his shirt, jeans, underwear – now left behind like the little pools evaporating unnoticed from the shower-room’s soapy tiles. Yet there is one thing: in the misty blur that already begins to fog his precise recollection of what has just passed between them, a shape takes form, a belief of substance settles in his mind: he can trust her. Above Jasmin-Sharon she may loom large, appear sinister, Machiavellian – and perhaps for good reason – but for him she no longer holds any fear; whatever her intentions, however much witchcraft is afoot, about him her aura extends warm benevolence. He no longer needs to know.

  He departs the building, each step, each cool breath, distancing him further from the detail he might earlier have wished to evaluate. He’d kept the appointment, anticipating the worst on a bi-polar scale of probabilities: either a scolding and immediate exile, or some depraved and humiliating sexual scenario – yet no such outcome had materialised. Instead prevailed a master class, an hour or two (or was it three?) of paradise unpurchasable, a priceless triptych of passion, his body her canvas, her lithe self her medium, her domination her art. In her final act astride him, like a great spider capable of consuming her mate mid-coitus, she’d covered his mouth with hers, pinched his nostrils closed, tempted him with suffocation, annihilation, exploded him into her, at once absorbing his semen and his breath, capturing his soul; loving him, it felt.

  Then tea and biscuits – enigmatically she’d insisted – such stark contrast to anal sex. A pot, china cups and saucers, milk in a small matching jug. His arsenal of questions relinquished, like arms yielded up at the threshold in due respect to the host, he could only watch and wait and stir, feeble and compliant, for whatever revelation was to be forthcoming, some plan or scheme or demand. But… there was nothing. Inst
ead he sensed as if, in her unilateral giving of herself, she had intentionally tilted the balance of power through the horizontal to lie in his favour. True, she had not enlightened him where she might have – about Ms Y for instance – but perhaps she gave ground where she could. In her demeanour he imagined he detected an underlying relief – a sense of satisfaction, at the very least – as if the purpose of today were to put him to the test, to reassure herself that what she had entrusted in him was safe: perhaps secured by his ignorance, and if not, then eternally sealed by her love-making.

  And thus over tea, back at the breakfast bar, they’d conversed in bizarre banalities, the fickle Scottish climate, the intractable Edinburgh roadworks, the burgeoning number of celebrity chefs based nearby.

  He sets off in a randomly chosen direction, meaning to pace around the irregular block as it presents itself. He has no jacket; it’s cold and uncomfortable but he’s not ready for the claustrophobia of his car, the intrusion of the soundtrack. The streets are quiet but for the odd rattling workman’s van. Palladian-style former municipal buildings, soot-blackened and smaller than their Edinburgh counterparts a mile hence, crowd together with abandoned bonds and sixties flats like rows of uneven teeth; a late-flowering Buddleia springs from a crumbling sandstone gate-pillar; it’s as if the place survived the Blitz and then they forgot all about it, left its denizens to get on with their private lives in dull oblivion. He finds himself passing a graveyard, a Polish pub, a body shop, a boxing gym and a tattoo parlour in quick succession; only in Leith. And the call girls, of course. Is it tradition that draws them to this part of town, with echoes of its once-bustling port and unfailing flow of seamen?

  He wonders why Xara chose the area as her base. Maybe in those days she was just another girl trying her hand at escorting, and went with the crowd. Or perhaps she had a keen eye for the anonymity these mean streets provide, for girls and punters alike. She seems sure-footed at all times. He suspects Jasmin-Sharon has misjudged her mentor, the latter’s motives misinterpreted, the former’s resentment the misplaced frustration of the subordinate. And the split she speaks of – is there some semblance of that irrational fury of the woman scorned? He’s in no doubt that Xara is an eminently more reliable source of reality than Jasmin-Sharon, whose careering progress through life seems threatened by catastrophic derailment at almost every turn. And though he has no evidence of blatant misrepresentation on Jasmin-Sharon’s part, he finds it hard to comprehend her downward estimation of Xara.