The Blue Guide

by Carrie Williams

  I umm and err, sipping at my cognac. I’d be an absolute fool to pass up on an opportunity like this, but I feel so cheeky taking him up on the offer. My mind turns to young Carlotta: Paco may be offering his bath in all innocence, but how would it look if she were to walk in on the scene? Wouldn’t she freak out?

  ‘Go on,’ urges Paco. ‘You only live once. Look, I know it’s late and you’re thinking about all the hassle of drying your hair, getting dressed, going back out into the cold. But I’ll give you some money for a taxi door to door, or better still, why don’t you stay in the spare room?’

  That decides it for me. Carlotta’s not here and isn’t coming back tonight, and I’m not one to turn my nose up at a bit of unadulterated luxury without a damn good reason.

  ‘Thanks, Paco,’ I say, and he smiles.

  ‘Just shout if you need something,’ he says. ‘I’m going to make a few calls. I’ll have the butler leave the robe on the bed.’

  He takes my empty glass and exits the room, leaving me standing there looking around in wonder at the walls covered in indigo, purple and brown gilt and glass tiles, at the flatscreen TV set into the mirror above the two vanity units, and lastly back at the bath. I shrug off my blouse, unzip my skirt and step out of it, then peel off my underwear. I step up to one of the mirrors. They’re the expensive distressed silver-leaf glass-panelled kind that, combined with sensitive lighting, make your skin look young and soft and peachy. I touch my breasts with both hands, look down at my flat stomach and freshly waxed bush. I know I look great. I like to take care of myself. Not for anybody else, but for the pleasure of feeling toned and clean and smooth. Even, or especially, when I’m feeling a little low. I masturbate a lot, probably more than the average girl, but my body is a source of great pleasure to me, and nobody knows what I like better than I do, though Daniel seemed to be getting the hang of things pretty quickly.

  Daniel’s face in my mind, I slide one finger between my fanny lips, rub my clitoris a little; I’m wet and need no further lubrication. I look back at the bath, just in time to see it begin to overflow. I sprint over to turn it off, but water continues to slide over the edge.

  I panic, sling a towel around me and run out of the bathroom in search of Paco. I find him lying on the sofa watching a flatscreen TV that has materialised from behind a screen in the drawing room, talking into a cordless phone. Worried that he’s speaking to Carlotta and not wanting her to hear my voice, I gesture wildly at him.

  ‘I’ll call you back in a minute,’ he says and kills the line.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he says. ‘There a giant spider in there or something? The butler creep in on you? You women . . .’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I squeal. ‘Paco, the bloody bath’s overflowing. I don’t know how to switch it off. The whole place is going to be flooded and you’ll be . . .’

  I stop. Paco is laughing hard, his hand on my forearm.

  ‘What is it?’ I say testily.

  ‘Alicia, it’s supposed to do that,’ he says. ‘Sorry, I should have said – it’s also an infinity-edge pool, which means that it’s set to overflow the whole time.’

  I stare at him. ‘Right,’ I say at last. ‘Silly of me not to realise.’

  He rubs my arm where he still holds it. ‘Go back and have a proper look,’ he says. ‘You’ll see that the water is actually going into a recirculating channel. Now just get back in there and enjoy it while it’s still hot.’

  I trot off, wondering why I’m feeling so stupid. How could I have guessed? I didn’t know such a thing exists, although if I hadn’t lost my head I would have noticed that the overflow wasn’t going onto the floor. I tut under my breath, shake my head. Boys and their toys, I think. Gadgets and gizmos. Whatever’s wrong with a good old soak in a normal bath?

  Still, I slide in, allowing the bubbles to caress my skin, trying to decide on the right colour for me. I finally opt for white; I don’t know what it means, but I guess it has something to do with purity, and pure thoughts are what I most need if I’m going to spend a night in this seductive suite within a few steps of one of the world’s sexiest men.

  Immediately I’m in, the air jets beneath the surface of the water begin to work their magic, loosening my muscles, and the sound of the water cascading from the rim of the bath is strangely soothing. I lean my head back and start to drift away, a little sleepy now from the cognac. Then Carlotta pops into my mind again: I imagine her face if she walked in here and saw me languishing naked in their extraordinary bath. From there it’s only a small step to me imagining her in here herself, as she undoubtedly has been, all fleshy and pink from the force of the jets, scrubbing up after a wild session with Paco on that huge bed in there. She’s got the colour set to red: relaxation is not on her mind. The minute she’s out of the bath she’ll be back in the bedroom, rousing him from a post-coital doze, clambering onto him like a pantheress, insatiable.

  So much for being purified. I twist my hips a little, so that my pussy is in front of one of the air jets, and feel the tiny champagne-like bubbles whirling around my lips, the pressure prising them open slightly. With my fingers I rub at the bead of my clitoris, excitement mounting to the point where I have to satisfy myself now. I don’t care where I am: it’s an imperative. I roll back but find that this bath’s too deep and its edges are too wide to assume my normal position for bathtime wanks: legs looped over the edges. Nor can I turn over and do it on my knees: it’s too slippery. After trying out a few angles, I give up and climb out.

  I lie down on the bath mat and assume the missionary position. It may sound staid, but it’s my favourite both for fucking and for masturbating. I’m willing to try anything, and generally have, but I’ve never found anything that affords me as much pleasure. I think it’s partly to do with how wide I can open my legs: my cunt positively gapes, and that arouses me no end. There must be something of the exhibitionist in me. And then, when I’m with a man, it allows the most powerful combination of vaginal and clitoral stimulation, virtually guaranteeing an orgasm – in me, at least.

  I’m going at it hell for leather now, finger-fucking myself with four digits of one hand, while the thumb of it works at my clit. With the other hand I’m palpating my breasts. Then a little extra something is required down below, and I bring my second hand to my pussy and vibrate my clitoris wildly with the heel of my hand. I’m exploding now, rocking and bucking on the bathmat, trying hard not to cry out as stars dance behind my closed eyes.

  The climax is still ripping through me when I hear a voice and open my eyes just in time to see Paco’s head appear in the doorway. In his hand he’s holding up my cognac glass: I guess he’s come to offer me a refill and I didn’t hear him tap at the door.

  We’re looking into each other’s eyes, unembarrassed. I’m surprised I’m not mortified, but Paco’s gaze is so frank, so curious, that I don’t feel at all ashamed of myself. It’s natural, after all; everybody does it, even – or perhaps especially – in the four-thousand-pound-a-night suites of international superstars. Who can blame me?

  Paco clearly doesn’t. Nor does he do what I expect him to do and back slowly out of the room and close the door behind him. No, he’s still there, still looking at me – not at my sopping cunt, mind, or my breasts, but into my eyes as before. I sit up, smile at him.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ he says. ‘Really fucking beautiful. I wish I’d come in a little earlier.’

  I raise my eyebrows, emboldened. ‘I could do it again,’ I say. ‘If you wanted.’

  His face lights up. ‘You bet,’ he breathes, and he steps into the room and scoops me up in his arms, carries me through into his bedroom like a new bride. Through his trousers I can feel the head of his dick pressing into my hip, urgent for me.

  ‘Do you need a rest?’ he says. ‘You were really going for it in there? I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. I don’t tell him I can keep coming and coming like a train, with the right partner. Or by mysel
f.

  He sets me down and I look around, assessing the room. There are two richly upholstered sage-green and red chairs either side of an oval silver chest of drawers, and I pull one over to the bed, lower myself onto it. He sits down on the bed and I place one foot on either side of him, knees slightly bent. I’m on full display, giving this virtual stranger the most intimate of views, and I’m loving it. I’m loving the look on his face as he watches me bring my hand to myself and spark myself off again. The numbness succeeding my first orgasm has faded, and I’m electric again.

  I start with my arsehole, licking my fingers and then running them around the tender rosebud of my rim. I often do this in front of the mirror at home: it gives me a big kick. Next I part my lips and hole with my hands, wide as they will go. I stay like that for a few moments, letting Paco enjoy the scene. I can tell by the play of his hands on the top of his thighs that he’s fighting the urge to get his dick out and start going at himself. There’s nothing, in many ways, that I’d like better than to see his undoubtedly beautiful member spring forth from his Calvin Kleins and come to life in his hands, especially for me. But I also want to prolong this: he’ll come really quickly, I think, and then I will too and it will all be over. I’ll retrieve my clothes from the bathroom, get dressed and take a taxi home. Carlotta will be back tomorrow, and I’ll hardly see anything of Mr Bigshot Dancer. That’s if he doesn’t dispense with my touristic services after this little adventure. There’s a boundary, and we’ve overstepped it.

  I was right: his hand moves to his fly, and I have to reach out and stop him from releasing himself.

  ‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Wait.’ I turn over on the chair, so that I’m kneeling now, and he gets a whole new angle on my arse and cunt. I can feel myself drizzling down my inner thighs as I push my fingers inside me and fish for my core. I don’t know who’s moaning more now, Paco or me. I put my head down, close my eyes. I imagine he’s taking himself out now, but I’m too far gone to protest any more.

  And then all of a sudden he’s upon me, between my thighs, pulling my hands away and parting me with his cock, pushing into me. I haven’t set eyes on his prick yet, but I can feel its superb girth as he arches in and out of me, punctuated by the bounce of his balls against my arse. Rightaway – with a little help from my own fingers on my clit – I’m soaring, gasping, carried away by an orgasm that seems to lift me up into the air.

  Its contractions are still rippling deliciously through me when Paco pulls out with a yell and sprays my back with his come, then collapses onto me. We both slide from the chair and hold each other close on the floor.

  I don’t know how much time passes before Paco picks me up in his arms again and carries me through to the guestroom, where he pulls back the sheets on one of the beds and lays me down, wiping my back first with a tissue.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ he smiles down at me. Part of me wants to pull him back down to me, tell him to fuck me again, so hard that I’m begging for mercy. But I’m aware that the moment is gone, that something exploded between us that shouldn’t have, and that we each need to be alone now, to think about the implications and where we go from here.

  Do I tell him, for instance, that I am going to have to stop working for him and Carlotta? That I can’t be her escort after what’s happened tonight? Or can we salvage something out of the situation – act, in essence, as if it never happened? I’m not sure, for my part, that’s possible. We may not have fallen in love, but something extraordinary has taken place. Everything has changed.

  7

  I WAKE UP not knowing where I am, and then I look around me and remember, and an ache starts up in my pussy and I have to have a long lazy wank. I’m not thinking about Paco, specifically, as I do it. A whole host of people run through my mind, from Eric, to whom I lost my virginity during a stay with my French penfriend, via Arvind, to whom I was briefly engaged at university, to Daniel – of course – and Paco himself. Life has not been uneventful for me, from an erotic point of view. I’ve never been one to deny my lusts, even when it’s got me into trouble.

  I’m still not sure who blabbed about me, but I can’t imagine it was Daniel. God knows it hurts that he hasn’t been in touch, but when we were together he was so gentlemanly towards me, so solicitous to my needs and desires, that I can’t imagine he would gloat or gossip about what happened between us. Although I ought to face the fact that he may not be the man he seemed, or that I wanted him to be.

  No, I’m more included to think it must have been Kip, boasting to mates back in Sydney about his little adventure on the London Eye. Somehow word got round, as it usually does, with the net result that I lost my Blue Badge.

  Not that I’m too bothered: business is brisk, and I’m enjoying myself. Enjoying myself a little too much, some might say. Perhaps they’re right: Daniel and Kip were all well and good – harmless flings, if only, in the case of the former, I’d had the good sense to just enjoy it for what it was. But Paco has an adoring new wife to contend with, a wife who I am tasked with taking care of for the next two weeks, after being taken doggy-style by her husband right there in their bedroom. It’s a complication I didn’t expect, and certainly didn’t need.

  I get up and wander through into the lovely drawing room. The curtains are open and there’s a wonderful view right onto the church opposite, which I happen to know is John Nash’s All Souls. From where I stand I see mainly its pale-faced clock, but when I step up to the window I can look up at its famously slender spire, on which the architect was depicted impaled in one 1820s press cartoon. As a phallic image, it’s woefully inadequate to convey the majesty of the member I felt deep inside me last night yet never even clapped eyes on. Knowing that I’m unlikely to get the chance again, I creep into Paco’s room – the door is slightly ajar – and tiptoe up to his bed. The curtains are drawn around it; I tweak one corner and peep inside.

  He is sleeping, but the reading light inside remains on, and he is spotlit in all his glory. His cock, indeed, is a thing of beauty, a smooth olive-brown baton coiled in a nest of frothy black hair. My hand reaches involuntarily towards it, but Paco stirs and I retract it as if electrocuted. I head for the bathroom to get my clothes.

  I am washed and dressed and ready to leave when Paco saunters out of the bedroom with a cheery ‘Good morning!’

  We smile at one another; one of those smiles behind which a thousand secrets lurk.

  ‘Sleep well?’ he asks.

  ‘Very well,’ I say. ‘That bed is dreamy.’

  ‘And there’s nothing like a good fuck to send you off, is there?’ he adds.

  I look at him. I’m surprised he has brought the subject up, but then we are adults, and pretending that nothing happened would be a silly game. He is right to call a spade a spade, a fuck a fuck.

  ‘I enjoyed myself,’ I say, feeling brave. ‘Though I must admit it did take me by surprise.’

  ‘Me too,’ he admits, looking away from me, out of the window. Some new emotion flits across his features; I wonder if he’s having misgivings. But if he is, he manages to brush them aside pretty rapidly, for the next minute he’s saying, ‘How about I call down and order us a limo for the morning and you show me the sights in style?’

  I agree without hesitation; this sounds like fun, and I haven’t had much fun lately. And a few minutes later we’re in the lift and on our way down to a waiting car.

  We head down through Soho; I’m at a bit of a loss as to an itinerary, preoccupied by thoughts of what – if anything – is going to happen now. I was expecting to be headed home by this point, not in the back of a stretch limo with Paco and a mini-bar full of goodies.

  Paco is looking out of the window, watching the procession of Soho streets.

  ‘I’ve heard such a lot about this place,’ he says, ‘but never had chance to explore it.’

  ‘It’s lost its bohemian edge,’ I say, ‘now the media offices and designer hotels and expensive restaurants have moved in. There are still some classic haunts
– like Ronnie Scott’s jazz club – but they’re gradually being ousted. Raymond’s Revue Bar, for instance, which used to be the most famous strip club in London, has been replaced by a cult gay cabaret. It’s great here if you’re queer – you can come and cruise to your heart’s content on Old Compton Street. But there are more interesting places to discover in London.’

  ‘Like where?’ We are spilling out of the southwestern edge of Soho now, into the bottom of Regent Street and the traffic hell of Piccadilly Circus. As we grind to a halt, I wave my hand up towards the statue to our right.

  ‘Eros,’ I say, launching into tour guide mode. ‘One of London’s most famous landmarks. Only the winged figure is not really the pagan god of love – it’s an angel of Christian charity, built as a memorial to a philanthropist called Lord Shaftesbury in 1893.’

  Paco nods politely, but I can tell he’s not really up for the guidebook spiel.

  ‘Look, is there something particular you want to look at?’ I say, suddenly not at all sure what the point of this little jaunt was.

  Paco doesn’t answer at once, instead reaching into the mini-bar and pulling out a bottle of champagne and a couple of crystal flutes. It’s a little early, I think, but I’m not the kind of girl who sneers at a glass of bubbly any time of the day or night.

  ‘What you were just saying,’ he replies at last. ‘About more interesting areas. Take me there.’

  I reflect for a minute, then lean forward and tap on the glass partition separating us from the uniformed chauffeur. ‘The City, please,’ I say when he draws it back. ‘St Mary Axe.’ The driver nods, closes it again, and I sit back and enjoy my champagne.

  We’re parked at the bottom of a circular, glass-clad tower rising up through forty storeys to a gently pointed tip.

  ‘That is the biggest dick I have ever seen.’ Paco is laughing, looking away from the Swiss RE Tower only to slip another strawberry into my mouth.

  ‘Then you won’t be surprised to hear it’s also nicknamed the “erotic gherkin”, and the “towering innuendo”. You’ll notice,’ I add mischievously, ‘that it’s uncircumcised.’