Eighty Days White

by Vina Jackson

  ‘No big plans for tonight, Miss Lily?’ he asked me, frowning as I sat alone in my recess.

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s a shame, a pretty thing like you. No boyfriend, no man?’

  I blinked and grinned.

  ‘Ah, a woman of secrets. I’ll leave you to it.’

  He moved on to take an order on the terrace, leaving me at my improvised observation post.

  I sipped my beer, later switched to coffee, idly biting into the turkey and chutney sandwich and daydreamed and watched the diners, the new arrivals and latecomers as they came and went.

  An older couple at a table by the terrace’s entrance were savouring a huge plate of oysters. There was something old world and charming about them, I thought, yet not without a hint of danger, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it or come up with the right story for them. Like seasoned partners in crime, relaxed, suave, worldly.

  Stellios hovered by, three cups of coffee balancing on his tray. He dropped mine off and continued to the old couple’s table and served them the remaining cups just as the beach restaurant’s sound system was switched on behind the bar by the duty manageress who ruled from afar. Unctuous strings began to swirl across the terrace, familiar melodies spilling onto the beach, gliding through the small lights hanging from the trees. It felt like a picture postcard, although a kitschy one at that. The first song was a waltz.

  The bamboo dance floor at the end of the terrace extended into the sand.

  I saw the older couple both turn their heads to the dance floor as some younger diners began to rise from their tables and make their way to the bamboo matting. I followed the direction of their gaze and noticed a tall blonde with short hair and her partner, a rugged athletic guy in jeans and white shirt, moving hand in hand and begin dancing. I hadn’t seen them before as the table they had been sitting at was obscured from my view by the bar counter.

  The older couple began whispering to each other, as if they were commenting on the handsome new arrivals.

  The woman wore a modest white dress that reached down to her knees, and flat ballet pumps to attenuate her height. Amber earrings hung loose from her lobes, and I noted the deep emerald hue of her nails, a perfect combination of colours.

  They began to dance.

  Even though her hair was so much shorter than on the two previous occasions I had seen her, I recognised the woman instantly. It was the dancer whose very particular act I had witnessed at the country mansion and then seen later on Viggo’s arm, alongside Summer Zahova, at Grayson’s private view in Southwark.

  It was definitely her.

  It was as if, along with the cropped hair, her features had grown softer and the ice princess within had melted away. She danced with her partner as if they were the only souls on the terrace, floating above the bamboo matting, oblivious to their surroundings. I couldn’t take my eyes away.

  Captivated, I began to imagine their story and the travails they had both endured before coming to Darwin. My imagination was running away with me. But people often said that truth was stranger than fiction, and I smiled to myself as I imagined what the dancing couple would guess about me and my history if the tables were turned. I bet nothing they came up with could better the strangeness of the reality.

  A few songs later, they returned to their table, settled their bill and departed. By then the older couple had also left, though I had not seen them go, plunged deep in my crazy thoughts, my final coffee now cold and useless.

  Half the tables on the terrace were empty, I realised, as the evening dragged on. It was time to go home.

  I waved at Stellios on my way out and he returned my smile.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ he cried out as I stepped into the small car park where I had left my bike. I peered at my watch. There was half an hour to midnight. I could get back to my room and watch the celebrations on TV.

  When I reached the house, I noticed through the shadows a dark form slumped against the steps. Damn, a drunkard, I reckoned. I just hoped he would not prove aggressive when I asked him to move.

  I approached, holding on to my bike, ready to give the sleeping refugee a nudge to wake him up, and caught sight of a suitcase standing next to him.

  There was a movement in the darkness and the shape looked up at me. The nearest street lamp was a few houses away, so I had to squint to see better.

  ‘Lily! Thank God!’

  ‘Neil?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ he gasped. There was a look of sheer terror in his eyes. ‘I thought maybe you’d gone away for New Year, that I’d come all the way here for nothing.’

  I was dumbfounded.

  I had a million questions.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ was all I managed to say in a splendid show of inarticulacy.

  ‘I came,’ Neil said calmly.

  10

  At the House of Bamboo Dolls

  He stumbled to his feet.

  ‘You came?’ I repeated, dumbly. ‘All this way, for me?’

  ‘Yes. I came for you.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just shut up and kiss me,’ he replied, and pulled me into his arms.

  The line was so straight out of a Hollywood film that I began to laugh, and consequently when Neil’s lips met mine my mouth was half open. His tongue slid along my bottom teeth with a flick and to my amazement sent a shudder rippling through my body.

  ‘Oh,’ I said in surprise.

  ‘Oh, Lily,’ he moaned in return and began to kiss me in earnest.

  His mouth was warm and wet and our lips melded together in uncanny harmony. Our tongues danced gently, hovering on the tightrope between teasing and too much and never crossing over.

  He buried his hands into the back of my hair and pulled me so tightly against him I thought that soon I would have to fight him off just so that I could draw a breath. Neil was trying to inhale me. We rocked back and forward on the front step, pushing against each other, each of us warring to devour the other.

  I grabbed his wrists from where they rested at the base of my neck and flipped his arms over his head and pushed him up against the door. The deep grunt of animal pleasure that rose in the back of his throat as I did so, a heavy ‘ungh’ noise, got me right in the guts and I dropped my bag and forgot my plan to wrestle my keys out of it and get us both indoors and instead I slammed my body into him so that his legs were spread to make way for my hips. He lowered his head to my neck and began to suck hard on my skin and I leaned into him, enjoying the pull as my blood rushed to the surface. I hadn’t had a hickey since we were at university together, I thought with a flicker of amusement, but the thought disappeared again as I noticed the hard bulge of his cock pressing against my thigh.

  At that moment, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to take Neil’s cock in my hands and feel the entire length of him in my mouth. A little cry of disappointment burst from his lips as I dropped the grip that I had on his wrists. That was soon followed by a questioning murmur as I took hold of his leather belt and tugged at the buckle.

  ‘I can see I’m going to have to gag you,’ I said under my breath.

  He moaned again.

  ‘I’d stuff my panties into your mouth,’ I continued mischievously, ‘but I’m not wearing any.’ It was true. I had discovered just as I was leaving the house that all of my laundry was still damp after I’d forgotten to bring it in before that afternoon’s storm.

  He dug his fingers into my shoulders and banged his head against my front door as another shudder rippled through his body. I was worried that I’d made him come before I’d even managed to get a glimpse of his erection, but I needn’t have. Neil was still hard as a rock.

  His trousers pooled down around his legs and I took his shaft into my right hand and prepared to take his head between my lips. He smelled fresh. A musky male backdrop against the tang of clean skin and soap with a hint of citrus.

  He’d come all this way for me and I was overwhelmed by a sudden surge of af
fection for him. My old friend. More than a friend. I wanted to get to know him better in every possible way and I planned to begin in the most primal, basic way that I knew.

  When it came to blow-jobs, I wasn’t like Liana who tried to swallow her men whole in one gulp. For one thing I hadn’t had much experience. Seeing She at the ball go down on the submissive with the ‘Eat Me’ sign was a shock to me. Dommes didn’t go down on submissive men as a general rule. At least, they didn’t talk about it, and besides that single occasion, I’d never seen one do it in public. Leonard had been so eager to please me orally that he rarely allowed me the chance to return the favour, and Dagur had enjoyed having his cock sucked but he had always wanted to pull me on top of him and sixty-nine, and in that position I found it impossible to concentrate and even harder to position my mouth so that I could pleasure him without accidentally catching any sensitive parts on the jagged edges of my teeth.

  Whether or not oral sex was a dominant or a submissive act was one of the age-old arguments that the artisans of kink loved to debate and write about on online forums. Of course, I loved the feeling of having a man pinned between my lips and knowing that he couldn’t move even if he wanted to. Going down onto my knees was neither here nor there to me. I was shorter and far slighter than most of the men I had dominated anyway and I had long ago learned that there was much more to demonstrating power and encouraging another’s surrender than whatever position I happened to be in at the time.

  When I took Neil into my mouth, I did it for pleasure. Both his and mine. Nothing more than that. His silky skin gliding against my mouth. The enjoyable sensation of being filled to the brim. The familiarity of finding a rhythm and holding it in a steady up then down motion. The sound of his moans as I caressed him. It was a simple act, but one that brought me a great deal of joy.

  He tangled his hands in my hair but didn’t grab my head as I always saw doms do to their subs in the club, or as Leroy had done to Liana. His hands stroked my locks gently as I licked up and down his sizeable shaft and circled my tongue around the furrow of his glans.

  I shifted my weight into a crouch as my knees were starting to ache on the concrete step. Neil gasped as I changed position. I had inadvertently taken his cock deeper as I did so and brushed his head against the rougher skin on the roof of his mouth.

  ‘Like that, do you?’ I said in a muffled voice, my mouth half full.

  ‘Oh God,’ he replied. ‘I like everything you …’ The word trailed off as he sharply drew breath when I took his balls into my hand and ran my nails lightly over his delicate skin. He tugged my hair a little harder and pumped my face back and forth, jamming his long member further towards the back of my throat.

  The ebb and tide of celebratory noises floated down the street towards us as drunks wandered down the footpath outside in search of home and a car drove by with Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’ blaring out of the windows. A warm breeze kissed my shoulders, easing the pressure of the constant humidity. The air felt heavy at this time of year in Darwin, always building towards an explosion of rain or a lightning storm. There wasn’t much of a nightlife here, so even on New Year’s Eve half the town was sitting out on deckchairs on their balconies drinking beer and listening to the perpetual croak of the frogs. My neighbours were gathering on their porch in expectation of the fireworks. They probably had a clear view of my head bobbing up and down against Neil’s crotch, but I no longer cared.

  New Year’s Eve. Neil and I had rung in several such evenings together during our time at Sussex University, but never like this. I had always avoided him as the clock struck midnight for fear that he would try to kiss me and I wouldn’t know what to do. How ironic, I thought, that I’d spent so much time at the fetish club learning techniques to beat and humiliate men but I had never quite adjusted to the sensation of having them worship me.

  Shouts rang into the air as the countdown began. I pulled back lightly and gripped Neil’s shaft, sliding my hand around and back in circular motion as I jiggled my head up and down and flicked at his tip with the flat of my tongue.

  ‘Five, four, three, two …’ cried the guests at the party next door, in unison.

  At ‘one’ I wet my finger and slid it into his arse without changing the rhythm of my strokes.

  ‘Fuck!’ he cried, as his whole body jolted and a hot stream hit the back of my throat and the neighbours shouted, ‘Happy New Year!’

  I clung onto him and stroked his thighs until he had stopped trembling and then drew back and licked my lips.

  ‘Happy New Year!’ I said jovially, smiling up at him. My legs were now so stiff I wasn’t sure if I could stand up.

  ‘Lily, oh, Lily,’ he breathed again. ‘Come here.’

  ‘You don’t have to kiss me,’ I murmured, well aware that my mouth was still full of the lingering taste of his orgasm.

  ‘No, I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you always and for ever.’

  He pressed his lips to mine.

  ‘We should probably go inside now,’ I said, ‘before the people next door start pointing their video cameras at us.’

  My bunch of keys seemed heavy and noisy in contrast with the lightness of the moment and I fumbled to turn the lock.

  ‘Lily,’ he said, lifting my hair and whispering into my ear. His breath was warmer than the temperature outside, but I shivered anyway. ‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to do to you. May I?’

  ‘Well, you haven’t told me what it is yet, but OK.’

  I tensed in apprehension. Even if it was Neil, the kindest man I’d ever known, I wasn’t used to handing the reins over.

  ‘Relax,’ he said, and then lifted me up and swung me into his arms. He batted my hand away from the key, turned it easily, kicked the door open and carried me over the threshold.

  He’d hitched his trousers up, but hadn’t belted them up and after two steps they dropped around his ankles again and severely hindered our progress.

  ‘This isn’t going quite how I’d imagined,’ he said glumly as we shuffled forward and I burst out laughing.

  ‘Put me down,’ I said with mock outrage, ‘or I’ll spank you.’

  ‘In that case,’ he replied, ‘I’m never letting you go. I hope you’re comfortable.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You want a funishment.’

  ‘Funishment?’

  ‘Don’t pretend all innocent, like you haven’t been all over the Internet reading up on BDSM since you saw me with a whip in my hand. Funishment. It’s a punishment that’s fun.’

  ‘Aren’t they all?’ he joked.

  I thought of She and some of the torture that I’d seen her inflict on her slaves. It certainly didn’t look fun to me, but if there was anything that I had learned since my introduction to the alternative scene, it was that everyone had their own ideas about what was and wasn’t likely to be an enjoyable experience. For some people the fun was all in enduring whatever torture their dominant chose to dish out so the less pleasurable the immediate sensation, ultimately the greater the reward. It was all very complicated, but it reminded me that Neil and I had never really talked about what we each liked and didn’t. He’d hinted that he wanted to be dommed. But to what degree and in what way I wasn’t certain.

  Before I could ask him, he pressed his hands lightly against my breasts through my T-shirt and began to move his thumbs in a slow circular motion, stimulating my nipples. They were hard in seconds. I loved having my breasts played with, and because they were small, had often been disappointed when previous boyfriends had not paid them as much attention as I would have liked. Learning to ask for what I wanted had been a slow process and my self-awareness didn’t always keep up with my desires.

  ‘Isn’t your suitcase still outside?’ I asked, breathlessly. Darts of arousal were taking root in my spine and I was having trouble holding onto any kind of rational thought.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck if a dingo runs away with it,’ he replied forcefully. He tugged my T-shirt out from the waistband of my cot
ton skirt and reached inside, taking one of my breasts into each hand and kneading. With every few strokes he would twist my nipples lightly between his fingers.

  It was as if my breasts were in complete accord with my cunt. I leaned into him and relaxed. Neil was making me wetter and wetter with every touch.

  ‘There isn’t anything I don’t want to do to you,’ he said, ‘to you, with you, for you. Where is your bed?’

  I righted myself for just long enough to indicate the way towards the bedroom and he pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his shoes and trousers and picked me up again and carried me there, laying me down gently onto the bed as if I were the most delicate of tropical flowers with petals that needed preserving.

  ‘May I undress you?’ he asked tentatively.

  I looked up at him. He was standing at the foot of the bed looking down at me with an expression on his face that suggested that he was already seeing me completely naked and perhaps spread out in a ceremonial bathtub filled with rosewater with a crown on my head. It felt strange to be idolised so, but also unusually wonderful. I could certainly get used to it.

  Neil was now completely naked. I pushed myself up and spun around onto my knees so I could get a better look at him. He had definitely been working out, but he was still the sweet, slender, boyish-figured Neil that I’d always known. I doubted he would turn completely buff if he lifted dumb bells every day for the rest of his life. He just wasn’t built that way. He had a smattering of hair and a few copper-coloured freckles on his breast bone. His nipples were a rosy pink, and completely erect. His cock was even harder. It slapped against his thigh as he shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You may not undress me.’

  His face fell.

  ‘I’m going to ride you first.’

  I took his hand and pulled him towards me until he clambered uncertainly onto the bed over the top of me. As soon as he began to lower his body weight, I flipped him over onto his back.