by O. L. Casper
Emily Mordaunt, hotelier heiress of thirty-four, is really preying on my mind quite a lot lately. She’s beautiful, refined, tall, elegant, graceful—that’s all surface. Beneath that, she’s a mystery. She’s a deep thinker who knows her own mind. There’s nothing of the superficial about her. She’s strikingly honest and straightforward. That, unfortunately, is something Sophia is not. I feel that with Sophia I am dealing with someone who is exceedingly calculating and cunning. Like the villain of any number of films I saw as a boy, only a whole lot more clever. And this purity Emily has through and through, which Sophia lacks, draws me to the tall Brit. Now my heart’s divided. I’m being pulled in two different directions. Which will it be?
Sophia Durant’s Diary
November 30, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
I needed to clear my head. I found a couch in an otherwise empty room on the top story of the villa suited to the task. It’s at the opposite end of Stafford’s room but still on the same side of the building. I noticed that from the couch I could see into his room. I had brought along the D-SLR to take photos of the beach; the view from the room was extraordinary and I could see all of Anse Lazio from there. But I decided also to use it to spy on Stafford. That is, if he was in. But inevitably he wasn’t. I turned on the camera and zoomed in on the beach. It glistened in the evening sun. I snapped a few photographs, trying to capture the decisive moment in the action of the waves (if there is such a thing), and set the camera down. For a moment I felt at peace with the world in a way I hadn’t for quite some time. Perhaps it was the warm colors coming up off the beach and filling my lens or the fresh sea breeze wafting in through an open window. I thought about Emma Green and Ava Madeiros and now it all seemed like a distant dream with which I could no longer connect. The feelings were all gone out of it. From my handbag, I took out rolling papers and a new strain of grass Anna had given me on my return called Green Lantern. I rolled some up and lit it, careful to blow the smoke out the open window. My thoughts turned even mellower and more peaceful.
Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It was movement in Stafford’s room. I fixed my telephoto lens on his window. Through the layers of glass between my eye and the room, I saw Anna drop off a package on Stafford’s bed before leaving in a hurry. She had a disgruntled look on her face. I wondered why. Lowering the camera, I took another toke. The Green Lantern took hold fast and strong. The reds and purples projected on the wall by the setting sun put me into a sentimental frame of mind. I was relieved that some sense of peace had come back to me. At times I had thought it never would. My phone buzzed with a text.
MARK: Up for a visit later?
SOPHIA: Your room?
MARK: Why not?
SOPHIA: Time?
MARK: In a couple of hours, I’m just getting in now.
It would be a pleasant way to wind down the night. We hadn’t really had an intimate evening since Emily Mordaunt had come into the picture. I wanted to show him that I still cared. I wanted to give him that sign he was waiting for. To put his mind at peace about things. Hopefully he would lay off his ideas about Mordaunt.
There was movement in his room again. I raised the lens. Stafford was in. He opened the package on the bed. It was a white box. He looked at the contents and set the box aside. Then I noticed someone else was there too. Emily Mordaunt. The cunt. I wanted to slit her throat. Before I saw her in the room with Stafford I’d had pleasant, forgiving thoughts about her. Now all that was out the window. The murderous thoughts returned with a vengeance. I watched them, Stafford facing in my direction, Emily with her back to me, and I adjusted the focus. Setting the camera into video mode, I pressed record. It was perfect timing; Emily slipped off her evening dress; loosening the shoulders, it sailed to the floor like a piece of silk blowing gently in the wind. As much as I dislike her, I have to admit she cuts a gorgeous figure from behind. Tall and slender with very white skin and an ass I just wanted to squeeze. Her hair was all tucked up neatly into a bun.
He smiled. She stepped toward him as though she was very nervous or even afraid. I know he liked that. It probably reminded him of his wife. Was Emily nervous or was she acting? She’d evidently understood him quickly. He cupped her breasts in his hands. The sting of jealousy ripped through my body, putting its hooks in my heart. I tried to keep an open mind and take pleasure in watching. It was definitely a pleasure spiked with pain. They kissed for a moment. She ran her fingers down his sides, and to his pants. Then she got down on her knees and unbuckled his belt, pulling his pants and underwear down to expose his full erection. She stroked it. For a moment it seemed she did not know what to do with it. Perhaps she was making up her mind.
Then she buried it in her throat. She bobbed her head back and forth, sucking him off passionately. He cocked his head back in pleasure. I couldn’t blame him and almost felt sorry for him; he was taking it where he could get it, unsure of anyone’s love. Reading his diary, I had realized he was a hardcore romantic of the old school. He was the type that lived for love. And it was the one thing that had eluded him all his life. It was the most troubled aspect of his life. The one area he couldn’t quite get right.
He took his shirt off and turned her around. She got down on her hands and knees, facing me. I watched as her breasts draped down toward the floor. They were beautiful and full, nipples erect. I began touching myself as I watched. I set the camera on the arm of the couch, propping up the lens with the lens cap, and set the imagery to be displayed on the screen on the back of the camera.
Stafford slid it in gently. He was so tender it seemed he was afraid of breaking her, as though she was a fragile teacup or a porcelain doll. I sprawled out on the couch and masturbated while I watched. My vagina was gushing. I hadn’t had sex in a week or so and I was fiending for it. The jealousy subsided, and I considered asking Stafford if we could have a threesome. Maybe I would try making friends with Emily and eventually fucking her one-on-one.
I was surprised at how quickly they arrived. After only three and a half minutes of lovemaking—I know because that’s what the timecode read on the camera—Stafford pumped his load in. Then, in gestures that seemed overly formal, they both dressed and she departed. No more kisses, no hugs, nothing.
After dropping the camera off in my room, having a nap and changing clothes, I went up to his room.
Chapter 19
Sophia Durant’s Diary (continued)
I knocked on the door to Stafford’s bedroom. It was after ten o’clock at night. He opened the door, eyes cast down.
“Mark, what is it? Are you alright?”
He glanced up at me for the briefest moment, then back down.
“Yes…I am fine. I am…just distracted.” He rubbed his eyes. “Long, weary day.”
“So how was it?”
For some reason I couldn’t contain myself.
“How was what?” he asked, casting me a sideways glance.
“Your short visit with Emily Mordaunt.”
He gave me a stern look. Then he walked away, head down.
“You’ve given to spying on me now, huh?”
“Mark, look at me.”
“What?”
“Turn around and look at me.”
He did. Head still facing down, I could see the whites beneath the irises.
“I wasn’t spying on you. I wasn’t even spying on her.”
I took a breath.
“I was relaxing in one of the empty rooms over there.”
I pointed.
“I happened to look over…”
“What were you doing in one of those rooms?” he asked.
“I like to explore the empty parts of the house in the time I have off. I like to get away from everyone.”
He nodded.
“I like to hide out where no one will know where I am. I didn’t even realize I had a view of your room till the movement caught my attention: I saw her—enter.”
“And you kept watching…” His voice trailed o
ff.
“Not at first, but then I couldn’t help it.”
I searched for the right words.
“I hope very much that you’re not mad, but I understand if you are. Who wants to be seen when they’re doing that? By someone else—someone…not involved?”
This little outpouring of mine was followed by a dead silence. I looked at the floor the whole time. I couldn’t tell where he was looking, but for the fact that he was not looking at me. I felt awful and ashamed and very small. Wishing I could disappear, I took a few steps back.
“You don’t have to leave,” he said in a high-pitch, nasally voice.
I looked at him, pulling my trench coat tighter around me.
“I don’t mind that you saw. I’m just trying to…piece together where you fit into all of this. Where I do. Where she does.”
He took a step forward.
“I don’t know where any of us fit in all this. I understand if you’re mad, but you have to understand why I did it. First of all, because I’m weak. I didn’t know how you felt about me. I still don’t.”
I took a step back. I really didn’t want to be in the room having this conversation with him. At that moment I was very confused and weak myself, and I didn’t want anyone to see it. Least of all, him.
“I came to believe that we don’t share the same interest in one another. Particularly that you don’t want what I originally thought you did. I felt you pushing me away.”
He stopped talking suddenly as if he felt he had said too much. Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t control it. He walked over and put his arms around me. For a split second paranoia washed over me and I saw myself at the bottom of a ditch somewhere, blood seeping out of my broken skull, lining the cracks of dried earth in a bleak, crimson hue. I saw him looking down at my corpse, smiling, as it was covered over with wet sand. Wispy clouds rushed by over his shoulder as though animated in time-lapse photography. I felt sick to my stomach. Then came a flooding feeling of being loved by him. How strange that it should follow a vision of death in the workings of my mind. Next came the fear of rejection. But why should I fear it when it had already happened?
“I’m here,” he said simply.
“I know,” I said between sobs.
I felt like a big baby.
“I’ll do anything for you.”
“I’m afraid,” was all I could manage.
“I’m afraid, too. Everyone’s afraid. It’s one of the biggest parts of life. And unfortunately it defines most people—it decides who they are and what they do.”
There he went, setting himself apart from the rest of us.
“We don’t have to do that. We can have what we want. It’s right in front of us. We just have to recognize it. And take the bull by the horns.”
I sniveled and dried my eyes. He was laying it on rather thick, I thought. But I liked it. And perhaps he really meant it. Who knows?
Rapidly the emotional connection turns into a physical one. It starts with kissing, then he removes my trench coat to reveal the camisk I wear. I play the role of a good kajira. After more caresses he leads me to the bar where he pours two glasses of Pinot Noir. He tips the contents of one glass into my mouth to the point of overflowing. He kisses and sucks the wine off my neck as it flows down. He pushes back the camisk on one side, exposing a solitary breast. He pours more wine over it and drinks off it, stopping at the hardened nipple, kissing around it and sucking it and nibbling it. I begin to slip into ecstasy. I open my eyes to see him stark naked before me. His muscles glistening in the moonlight that bathes us, his cock standing at attention, throbbing as he kisses me. I kneel down and kiss the tip before I insert the whole head in my mouth. I roll my tongue around it in circles, playing with it, teasing it. As he pours more wine down my back and on my shoulders and begins to massage it into my skin, I get the impression that it’s not wine but blood that’s being used in some strange ritual to initiate me into I know not what. Whatever the ritual, it’s extremely liberating. I feel as though I have to cling to earthly existence or else my soul will lift off into eternity in all the ecstasy I feel. I have never known anything like it. He lifts up the front flap of the camisk, exposing my vagina. The wetness dripping from it and running along my leg has mixed with the wine and I can no longer tell which is which. I put one finger inside, then another. He strokes me a bit before he takes his fingers out and rubs the tip of his cock between my legs. Then he thrusts it home.
Sophia Durant’s Diary
December 4, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
Emily Mordaunt rounded the circle of driveway before the main house of the villa in her Hummer and stopped a few feet in front of me. I opened the door to the passenger side and got in. She smiled in her elegant way as we started off for Governor’s Harbour. She had invited me for an outing on her seaplane. It was a Cessna 185 that she’d had flown in “to play with” during her stay on the island. It was parked in the Governor’s Harbour Marina. I knew little of her true intentions for inviting me. She’d said it was to get to know me. Though I doubted she’d taken a liking to me. Inevitably there was some other motive. But I didn’t care. I didn’t agree to come to make friends. I was here to explore and possibly avenge other feelings.
Emily was pleasant and sweet and for some moments on our journey I was able to forget what I’d seen a few days before and believe she was really a genuine, kind-hearted person.
“I hope I’m not imposing by asking you to come along with me. I really want to show how wonderful it is to fly this little plane of mine. It’s an older model—the Cessna—but it’s been updated inside. It has all new digital controls and is entirely computerized. No more analogue dials and indicators and so forth.”
“It sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to see it,” I said, mustering what false, enthusiastic tones I could.
“Good. I’m glad. You know, you really are such a sweet woman. I bet you’re wondering why I wanted to have you along.”
“Actually, I was.”
“Of course. It’s just that you made such a nice impression on me in the Seychelles and I wanted to talk to you and become friends with you as equally as I was becoming friends with Mark, if that’s possible.”
It was hard not to laugh aloud at this proclamation considering the bedroom scene of the other night. Did she want to bed me too? I wondered.
“I admire you a lot, considering what little I know of you,” I began.
“Why’s that?” She smiled.
“You’re not shy and not afraid to speak your mind. Both of those characteristics run against the commonly held notion of what the British are like.”
“Cheers. It’s refreshing to hear. You know, I’ve been chastised terribly on both accounts back home. Something to do with the reason I’m such a black sheep in my family, I suppose.”
I could relate to that. Though I was disgusted by her in most ways, I found this little fact charming.
Emily and I walked along the marina to a locked gate I hadn’t noticed when I was with Carter. Beyond the gate were several docked seaplanes. The sun was low in the afternoon sky and it made for a picturesque scene as the reflection danced luminously on the water all around us.
“There’s mine on the end.”
She pointed to a small Cessna at the end of the dock. As I first viewed the aircraft, several mischievous ideas began to circle in my head. The gears began to turn in regards to a solution to the Emily Mordaunt problem even before I had made the conscious decision to do something about it. I was startled to find myself so easily thinking in this direction. For a brief moment I wondered whether I was subject to some insane criminal disorder; a compulsion to kill. In college I had attended meetings with a therapist after the loss of a close childhood friend. I stopped attending when she told me the only reason I had come to see her was vanity, and the only care I had in the whole case of my friend’s death was to focus attention on myself. She decided I was a “borderline personality.” I never considered the reality of the possib
ility till now when her words came back to me with such clarity, as if she had spoken them yesterday. I made a mental note to look up the definition of “borderline personality” and “sociopath”—another word that came to mind from our talks—when I got back to the villa.
Emily got into the Cessna first and I followed close behind. I was already a bit scared for our safety after seeing how small the aircraft was up close and stepping from a pontoon in through the passenger side.
Emily must have sensed my apprehension for she asked quite tenderly: “Are you alright?”
I assured her I was fine.
“If at any moment you want to abort this flight of fancy, just say the words. And I’ll never mention it to another soul if you don’t want me to.”
She smiled.
“I’m fine really. Very graceful of you, your concern.”
I forced another smile. My thoughts were much darker than my sunny exterior perhaps led her to believe. So much was I obsessing over thoughts of killing her, and the question of how, I had to make myself stop. I told myself, half-heartedly, that I would give her another chance. I would let her prove herself a good and decent human being. I would prevail with Stafford and she would be on her merry way. But what if those things don’t come to pass? the other part of me asked. What if she’s a terrible bitch, she wins Stafford over, and it all turns out to be too late for you because you refused to act when you had the chance? I wanted to slap myself or dip my face in some ice water—anything to get a grip. I started to get a headache due in part, I think, to the strange and disparate voices struggling for dominion over my mind.