She is startled by her waitress bringing the first course, and Dominique’s aware that she’s been staring at the book. She puts it down and looks at the other women dining around her to see if she’s been noticed.
Most of them are alone, but some are in pairs or groups of three or four. How many of them, she wonders, will be asking their waitresses for forms and filling them out?
As she places her napkin in her lap and squeezes lemon over her calamari, she’s aware of someone’s eyes on her. Looking up, she sees a man at the bar regarding her with calm and open interest, and Dominique finds herself glancing right back at him before she realizes the implications of what she’s doing.
The man turns away to let her eat in peace, and she feels a sudden flush of excitement. How could she have stared at him like that? She’d never done anything like that before. It must be this place, something about this place. He’s very handsome, distinguished actually, and his maturity is welcome after all the smiling youths she’s seen so far.
The calamari are excellent and Dominique eagerly attacks her main course – medallions of veal in Madeira with baby potatoes and fresh peas – keeping one eye on the man at the bar. He’s considerably older than she is, and his black hair and beard are flecked with grey. And yet it’s impossible to look at his back as he sits at the bar and not think of a man at the height of his powers: knowledgeable and sophisticated. The word “virile” comes to mind, and makes her smile. He’s everything that the boys in the catalogue are not and, for the first time since her arrival, Dominique finds her sexual curiosity rising in a personal way. She’s not above engaging in a little erotic speculation.
“Ms Béry?”
Again the waitress catches Dominique off guard as she lays down a beautifully arranged tray of cheese, nuts and fruit, accompanied by a cut-glass decanter of wine.
“What’s this?” Dominique asks. “I didn’t order this.”
“Vintage port,” the waitress says. “From the gentleman.”
Dominique looks up to see the man at the bar looking at her again, nodding in greeting.
Before she can think to say anything, the waitress has poured a glass of port and handed it to her, and there’s nothing she can do but take a sip. The wine is thick and rich, its sweetness aged to an earthy maturity, while the alcoholic bouquet hints at the intoxication to come. The sensual complexity of the wine takes her by surprise. She’s never had good port before.
She takes another sip.
The man leaves his stool and approaches the table. He stops some distance away, not wanting to impose himself. “It’s satisfactory?”
“Yes,” she says. “Quite good. Extraordinary. Remarkable.” She stops short of thanking him outright, enjoying this slight bit of rudeness on her part, just as she enjoys making him stand there as she takes another sip. After all, she didn’t ask for this. She’s quite aware this is an opening ploy and she’s curious to see how he’ll play his hand.
“Allow me,” he says.
He takes a knife from the tray and cuts a thin slice of yellow-gold cheese, slides it on to a plate and sets it down before her. “Use your fingers. We don’t stand on ceremony here. It’s meant to be enjoyed.”
Dominique is slightly taken aback by his gesture, but she picks up the piece of cheese and bites into it. It is as firm as flesh at first, then yields to the pressure of her teeth, and her mouth is filled with a rich, sunny flavour, buttery and smooth with an almost citrusy tang.
“The port,” he says.
She sips her wine and he smiles as he watches her face.
“Sun in a garden, isn’t it? What do you think?”
It’s just as he says. The cheese is warm and sunny, the wine cool, fruity and dark; the combination is wonderfully sensual and intimate. But at the same time it’s such an obvious pick-up routine that she has to smile, which is just what he expects. His smile in return tells her he knows it’s a clumsy approach.
He’s very good, perfectly charming, and yet when he looks at her she can see something warm and slightly dangerous in his eyes that brings a welcome flush of heat to her face and chest. She notices that none of the other men have chosen to approach any tables, and she takes that as a compliment.
“Please,” she says. “Won’t you sit?”
He holds out his hand. “Sheldon Lord,” he says. “I hope you’re suitably impressed?”
“With your name? Or with the whole presentation? The wine is very good.”
“Port,” he says. “Vintage port. It was a terribly transparent gesture, I’m afraid. But sincere. Things move very quickly here at the Arensen, and he who hesitates is often lost.” He fills her glass and looks at her. “Or she, as the case may be.”
Had all this happened only a few hours earlier, Dominique would have laughed in his face, but, sitting here filled with exquisite food and drink, in a room whose beauty seemed to impose its own set of rules, she enjoys his attention and his outrageous flirtation. This is, after all, what the Hotel Arensen is for, and this kind of elaborate attention is something new to her. She never engages in anything like this in her normal life. There’s never any time, and normally Dominique prefers to get right to the point. Now, however, she finds his attention both flattering and arousing. She still has doubts about herself, however, about her ability to go through with this.
Sheldon works at the hotel, in some capacity that isn’t entirely clear to her, something with event planning, she gathers. He’s terribly knowledgeable about the place and often refers to designs and scenes and programmes.
“And how is it that you happen to be in the Ladies’ dining room?” she asks him.
“Why not? There’s no segregation, nothing like that. Anyone’s free to go wherever they please. Most men are put off by the word ‘Ladies’ and so they stay away. This room is really intended for women who prefer to choose their own partners, free of the kind of pressure they’d feel in one of the mixed rooms. I find such women fascinating to watch.” He smiles. “I know, it’s terrible. Very voyeuristic, but it fascinates me to observe people exercising their desires. Don’t you agree?”
Dominique can only guess what he means. “Perhaps,” she says.
“But I hope you don’t feel that I’m unduly pressuring you,” he says. “I don’t want to insert myself where I’m not wanted.”
She looks at him and sees a hint of a smile in his steady gaze. He’s an intelligent man, and she decides his choice of words was deliberate. She returns his smile and holds out her glass for more wine. “Not at all.”
They talk of things of no great consequence, but the words are just an excuse to keep themselves together, like the wine and the cheese. There’s no hurry, and yet there’s a sense that time is wasting too. Inside Dominique is filled with doubt.
He’s everything she’s been looking for: older, experienced, and discreet – everything that Michael wasn’t – and extremely attractive. And since he works at the hotel, there won’t be any strings attached. When they’re done, she can just walk away.
Can she do it? Is it really as easy as just saying yes? It’s been months since she’s thought of being with a man, and she hardly trusts her own feelings any more. She’d be devastated if she failed.
At last the room and the decanter are almost empty, and Dominique is filled with a languorous goodwill. He tries to pay her bill, citing his employee discount, but Dominique won’t hear of it and he doesn’t insist. He’s wise enough to know how things would seem if he paid for her dinner, and so he just signs the tab for the port. She’s grateful for his sensitivity.
He will see her back to her room, though, and as they walk from the dining room she notices how the staff acknowledges and defers to him. Perhaps it’s the port, but it seems like she’s aware of everything, from the looks of the staff to the rustle of her dress against her naked skin.
He walks her outside on to a vast marble terrace overlooking the water. The lake is dark, the trees darker still, great black shadows blocking the re
flection of the stars along the edges of the water. He points out the landscape to her, the various views: the arrangement of the different textures of darkness.
It was all designed to be as beautiful at night as it is in the day, and indeed there is something soothing yet mysterious out there in the darkness. The moon is near full, slashed by thin clouds that cast moving shadows on the lake.
“It’s all designed to create a certain aesthetic sense,” he says. “Beauty provokes a type of longing in the soul, a desire for intimacy, to join with it. We’ve worked very hard to achieve that effect here.”
III.
The night is warm. The swans are asleep on the far bank, so the surface of the water is mirror smooth. There’s nobody about.
Dominique finds herself unaccountably nervous.
She knows what will happen when they reach her room, and it’s something she assumed she wanted, but now she wonders whether she’ll be up to it, whether her body will respond as it should, or whether she’s just going through the motions now because she thinks this is what she needs.
He seems like a lovely man and an interesting and sensitive lover, but what if he’s not enough? What if what she really wants is Michael?
“You’re worried,” he says. “I can feel it. Your wicked past is rising to haunt you, isn’t it? A man.”
She says, “It’s that obvious?”
“A beautiful young woman, alone at the Hotel Arensen. You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out. About four or five months ago, I’d say. And now you’re wondering if you still have it, if you still have anything left to give.”
“Eight months ago,” she says. She doesn’t comment on the rest of what he’s said.
“Eight months ago? It’s worse than I thought.”
The subject is uncomfortable, so she asks, “Tell me, Mr Lord. Just what is it you do here at the hotel?”
“Sheldon, please,” he says. She can see his teeth in the darkness as he smiles. “You’re going to hate me. I don’t have a regular title, but I’m a kind of facilitator. I help plan people’s activities here, the things they want to do at the hotel.”
“Volleyball games? Basket weaving? Things like that?”
He’s amused. “People come to us for all sorts of reasons. Most of them are just looking for fun, but some of them come to us with real problems. Sex can be a powerful force for changing people. I facilitate that change.”
“Like a therapist?”
“Not exactly. And not a surrogate either, not any more. Those days are behind me. Now I simply recommend therapies, things that might help. Of course, for special cases …”
Dominique watches one of the black swans stand up and ruffle its feathers. It beats its wings uneasily, and she can see the moonlight gleaming off the onyx feathers. Then it settles down and tucks its beak under its wing.
The thought that comes to her is an ugly one, but she has to ask.
“Is that why you picked me out? Do I look like someone who needs therapy?”
Again, he is amused. “Of course not. In any case, you’d have to request our services.” He’s silent for a moment, then asks, “Is that what you want?”
“What if I did? What would you recommend?”
She knows what’s going to happen, and at first she hates herself for even inviting it. He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her to face him and she feels a surge of fear and sudden trepidation. She searches his face but his eyes are impossible to read in the dark. His lips come down on hers in a gentle kiss: tentative, as if he’s examining her, and it’s not the feel of his lips as much as the sensation of his hands on her shoulders, holding her.
The kiss deepens, and he slides his arms around her back, pressing her against him, and she feels herself press back at him. The feeling of being held is delicious,
She lets herself be kissed, basking in his need for her, letting him take her where she wants to go, and thankfully her body doesn’t resist him. She feels again that needful ache between her legs, that fullness in her breasts, and she realizes that she still knows how to respond. Her heart might have forgotten, but her body remembers.
He lets go of her reluctantly, as if he’s afraid that he’s rumpled her dress, but Dominique is glowing with excitement now, her heart pounding with remembrance.
“Where’s your room?” he asks
She hardly remembers. She has to take the key from her purse and show it to him, and when she does, his eyebrows rise.
“Three thirty-one? But that’s an exhibitionist room number. All the threes are for exhibitionists.” He looks at her with curiosity.
“It was a mistake. I booked that room by mistake. I had them take the camera out.”
He smiles in the dark. “Yes. I don’t think that’s what you need right now, to be putting on a show for the other guests.”
“Is that your professional opinion?”
“No. It’s my male opinion.” He takes her hand. “Now come with me.”
He leads the way across the garden and into a nearly invisible service door at the base of the building. She’s hardly paying attention as he finds an elevator, and as they ride to the third floor, he puts his hands around her waist and she willingly wraps her arms around his neck. They kiss, and this time Dominique feels the heat rise into her face as he presses his body against hers.
Her mouth is suddenly hungry, and whatever she does to him, he does again to her, harder and more insistent, so that when she bites his lip, he bites her back, and when she opens her mouth for him, he opens his, and his tongue penetrates her in a lewd and delicious imitation of the sexual act.
His hands rise to find her breasts, and once again it’s the feel of his hands on her body that she finds so terribly exciting, even more arousing than these hungry kisses.
The elevator stops and he leads her down a maze of corridors until they stand outside her door. She opens it, and her eyes go immediately to where the camera was. It’s gone now, along with its concealing piece of moulding.
He looks about the room, and his eyes fall on the three neatly arranged bottles of pills. He walks over to the bedside table and picks one up, reads the label, then picks up another. She stands there uneasily.
She’d forgotten she’d left them out.
She’d forgotten all about them.
When he looks at her now there is something new in his eyes, something she hadn’t expected to see there: a kind of angry lust that makes her weak. She makes herself stand up straight. There’s no sense in trying to pretend or make excuses. He knows what they mean.
“It’s that bad?” he asks.
“At times.”
His eyes soften now and she’s relieved she’s not going to be lectured or consoled. He’s too wise for that. When he takes her in his arms, though, there’s a savagery in his touch, a sudden hunger, as if he’s afraid now that he might lose her.
One hand goes to the back of her head, holding her in place for his kiss, while the other slides over her back, pressing her close, then down across the small of her back over her bottom, where he opens his hand and grips her tight, squeezing her possessively, so hard that Dominique gasps in surprise.
His sudden hunger thrills her too. He doesn’t give her time to worry or think or say yes or no. He’s just there, bearing down on her with this furious need, and it’s all she can do to keep from being swept away on this cataract of passion. His sudden hunger for her is overwhelming. It’s as if she’s standing under a waterfall trying to breathe.
Both hands are on her buttocks. He kisses her and bends her back, keeping her hips pressed to his. He gathers up her skirt, lifting it over her bottom till she feels the cool air of the room against her naked ass. Now her decision not to wear anything underneath her dress comes back to haunt her.
What will he think of her now?
His hands find her naked flesh, and if anything it only inflames him more. He grabs both buttocks in his hands and sinks his fingers into her flesh, then pulls them apart. On
e finger slides down her crack and probes at her anus. Dominique turns her head to the side and gasps for breath, shocked at his boldness.
She clings to his jacket as if she might fall.
He pulls her over to the bed and stands her there, posing her like a doll as he kisses her face, her eyes, her mouth. His kisses are tender now, but still trembling with a restrained hunger. He seems poised on the edge of some terrible violence, and she’s almost afraid to move, afraid she might set him off.
He grabs her arms and pushes her elbows back, forcing her breasts to strain against the thin fabric of the dress, and he pulls her against him, crushing her yielding softness against his chest and making her his prisoner.
“I’m going to make you, Dominique,” he whispers hotly. “I’m going to make you so good you won’t ever think of those pills again. You’re more than what your boyfriend thinks, and you’re more than you know. That’s what I’m going to show you.”
He runs his hands up and down her body, from the hardness of her back down to the softness of her ass and Dominique shelters in his arms, her hands against her chest.
“You just leave everything to me,” he says. “Understand? You don’t have to do anything. You just do as I say.”
She already feels overwhelmed and incapable of doing anything. It’s exactly what she wants, for someone to take charge of her and do things for her.
He turns her around so her back is to him and unzips her dress. She stands there like a child as he pulls it up over her head, leaving her naked but for her shoes and stockings, her garter belt and jewellery. She should be ashamed to be seen in her nakedness, but already she’s taken his advice to heart. She’ll do nothing, not even judge herself. She’ll let him do as he wishes.
He turns her to face him and steps back, holding her at arm’s length so he can have a good look at her. He scans her body up and down, as if confirming what he already knows, and Dominique stands there nervously in her nakedness as he inspects her like a simple commodity. His face seems cold and distant, his inspection almost degrading, until his eyes meet hers again and she sees such a look of heat and desire there that she feels herself begin to swell and grow wet for him. Her pussy, her whole being, feels like a flower opening to the sun under the heat of his eyes.
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