The Lover From An Icy Sea Page 12

  One might debate whether it’s the French themselves who put it there. One could just as easily argue that visitors come already well equipped with lustful expectations, and that the French, being French, do their utmost to accommodate those expectations. In either case, it would be foolish to suggest this is merely a country like any other. It’s not. It’s as civilized a place as can be found on the planet; at the same time, it remains as close to the mythical Garden of Eden as any piece of earth can aspire to be.

  They were through Customs in a matter of minutes and then out the door for a taxi, which they found quickly. Daneka gave the name of the hotel and the address: Grand Hotel de Champagne, 17 rue Jean Lantier. As they entered the heart of the city, Kit was pleasantly surprised to see that their residence for the next forty-eight hours was on a particularly quiet street almost equidistant from Notre Dame and the Louvre. Daneka told him, though in no way boastfully, that the building dated back to the sixteenth century.

  They checked in, were then immediately escorted upstairs to their room. At the far end of that room—a sumptuous appointment even by the most fastidious of standards—stood a canopy bed. Both Daneka and Kit struggled to appear indifferent, almost aloof, to the enticement of it for as long as they had the company of their porter. But nonchalance did not come easily to either of them at this particular moment.

  As soon as the porter had deposited their bags and completed his minor preparations for their stay, Daneka tipped him and showed him the door. She closed it gently but firmly, bolted it, then turned around to face Kit across the room. In the seven or eight strides she required to reach the bed, she managed to kick or strip off everything she was wearing but her panties, and then to grab him practically in mid-flight.

  Now, lying face to face with her, Kit kicked off his shoes. She then helped him—clumsily, speedily—to get rid of his jacket, shirt, pants and socks. Kit put a hand down to remove his underwear and then hers, but Daneka was too impatient. She urged him on top of her; reached into his boxer shorts with one hand; pulled the crotch of her panties aside with the other; and then guided him carefully in.

  Apparently, in the same amount of time it had taken her to get to the bed from the door and strip off most of her clothes, she’d also become so wet that penetration was as easy as pushing a blunt nail through warm butter. It may have been only a matter of seconds before they both came, then immediately fell asleep.

  When Kit awoke several hours later, the sun was just beginning to set. He got up, put on his shorts, and opened a pair of floor-to-ceiling doors leading out to a tiny terrace. A few lights were on here and there like glowworms out on an early-summer-evening scouting party, but there was still enough natural light to allow people to go about their Saturday evening business without recourse to desk lamps or headlights. That—Kit decided—or the French simply preferred to conduct their business and their lives in semi-darkness.

  He looked across the street and through a pair of half-open French doors much like the ones he was standing in front of, and noticed a candle burning on one side of the room. As he looked to the right of the doors and through sheer window curtains, he noticed two bodies moving rhythmically under a bed sheet. He didn’t look away. A woman was on top—that much was clear. What she was on top of he couldn’t quite discern.

  Just as Kit was about to avert his glance, she raised her head and opened her eyes. She seemed to be looking directly up at him. His immediate reaction was embarrassment at having been caught in the act of watching. However, her reaction was anything but annoyed or ashamed. Instead, she smiled up at him without once breaking stride, then half sat up on her partner. Her eyes never left Kit’s, although his now took in her face, her breasts, her stomach, and just the top of her pubis. As if being a voyeur’s object were just what she had longed for to add a bit of zest to her love-making, the woman leaned back on her outstretched arms and raised her knees up in the air. In this more exposed position, she supported her weight on hands and feet to either side of a pair of outstretched legs below her as she raised and lowered herself onto her partner over and over again, each time with increasing urgency.

  Kit could now indeed see that her partner was not another woman.

  The woman continued to stare at Kit, and he could feel the onset of a second erection. Without realizing the conspicuousness of what he was doing standing in front of a pair of open French doors, Kit reached inside his shorts and grasped his penis, then brought it out into plain view. In that same instant, the woman’s eyes lowered almost imperceptibly, and her mouth opened. She reached forward with one hand and grasped her partner’s arm, then brought his hand to her mouth. Kit saw the mouth move, though he had no idea what she said. But in the next instant, her partner inserted three fingers into the woman’s mouth, and she moved her head on those fingers to the same rhythm she moved her body up and down on her partner’s body. Her mouth remained fixed on her partner’s hand; her eyes, however, on Kit’s hand.

  The woman lurched violently forward on her partner. Kit saw two arms encircle her tightly. At the same instant, the pair of previously passive legs beneath her bent at the knee. The man’s thighs slammed up against the woman’s buttocks, and he pushed his pelvis up and into a locked position with hers.

  Kit felt no compunction at having witnessed the moment of a simultaneous climax, even if he wasn’t a part of it. However, he now had his own excitement to deal with and turned back into the bedroom. Daneka still slept.

  Kit walked to the foot of the bed in order to better view and admire her sleeping body. He shook his head, not knowing or even being able to fathom that he would ever tire of looking at it, of touching it, of making love to it. He leaned over, reached up, took hold of her panties, and gently pulled them down and off. His action was enough to stir Daneka, but not to wake her. He raised the panties to his nose and sniffed. They contained the evidence of both of them, though it was only her smell he sought. When he found it, he closed his eyes and inhaled.

  He then dropped her panties to the floor, gently pushed her legs apart and climbed on top. She was still wet from their earlier love-making, and he entered her easily. As if by instinct—Kit could not yet tell whether she was fully awake—Daneka raised her legs and encircled his back with them. It was only when she also put her arms around his neck that he knew she was indeed awake.

  Whether it was France, the scene he had just witnessed, the time of day and softness of the light, the smell and sounds of Daneka—or some combination of all of these—Kit couldn’t have said. All he knew at this moment was that he cared deeply about this woman he was making love to. He dared not yet speak the words, but he certainly felt them. He knew it was only a matter of time until they would find their way from his lips to her ear, this ear into which he breathed, and on which he began to nibble. In return, she made soft cooing sounds and moved her hips below his in perfect syncopation.

  They were finding a rhythm together—a lovers’ rhythm—and while it might occasionally, even frequently, result in exquisite orgasms for both of them, it would inevitably result in that other thing Kit was not yet ready to openly declare and which had, up until now, been entirely foreign to Daneka. She, however, also now felt it. The resulting confusion between her brain and her body resulted in the predictable, and she began to cry.

  With his lips on her ear, Kit felt rather than heard the first, warm tears as they slid down her cheek and onto his. He knew they couldn’t possibly be tears of sadness—not at this moment, not in this pool of sensation in which they were both swimming. He maintained the tempo of his love-making, and she reciprocated to every thrust with one of her own. If lust was the fuel of passion, then love—and especially incipient love—was both bellows and damper. As they moved together towards an inevitable climax, Daneka’s tears began to flow in a steady stream, and she no longer attempted to muffle the sound of her ecstatic weeping. The brute joy of it produced a similar reaction in Kit, and he sensed tears welling up in his own eyes at the same momen
t. When, a few moments later, they both came, the climax was as much in their heads as it was between their legs. He put his mouth on hers, and she embraced him with all the strength she possessed. The sheer physical force and pressure of one upon the other spoke the words neither was yet prepared to say.

  Thirty minutes later, they both still lay side by side in a tight embrace. The room was dark and filled with evening sounds. They could’ve remained in that same position until some dire necessity would’ve reminded them that life did, unfortunately, consist of more than love-making. It was consequently not their will, but the grumbling of their stomachs that signaled to them there were things to do in Paris other than simply make love. Daneka was the first to speak, albeit barely above a whisper.

  “How about a shower and dinner, darling?”

  Kit smiled down at her. “You’re on.”

  They both climbed languorously out of bed and walked to the bathroom. Kit started the water running while Daneka sat down easily and unselfconsciously on the bidet. Kit stepped in behind the curtain, and Daneka, satisfied with her ablutions, then stepped in behind him. For the next fifteen minutes, they ran the water as hot as either of them could stand while they soaped and shampooed each other.

  There were more kisses, of course, but no more erections.

  When they finally turned off the water and stepped out into the steam-filled bathroom, Daneka regarded the skin of her arms and hands and noticed, with some consternation, how much older they looked than Kit’s. As he towel-dried her from behind, then kissed her shoulders, back and buttocks and moved down towards her ankles and feet, he was entirely unmindful of the fact. He adored her—quite simply adored her.

  Kit tenderly and lovingly moved the towel up her ankles and calves to the insides of her knees and then thighs as she obligingly opened her legs. Just as she thought he was finished, she prepared to return the favor. However, she suddenly felt two hands on her, felt them push her buttocks apart, felt warm breath, then a mouth, then a tongue in an area of her body entirely unused to any such sensations.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered. “The man is insatiable.”

  She had been quite prepared to finish drying off, get dressed, step outside and find a restaurant, then settle down to dinner and pleasant conversation. Instead, she found herself overwhelmed by a desire she’d not experienced before in a part of her body that had never been part of her sexual repertoire. She couldn’t resist the impulse. Unprompted, she spread her legs further, then leaned down and placed her hands on the sink to support the weight of her upper body.

  Her mind went blank as she felt Kit’s tongue slip into and out of her anus, slide along the length of her perineum and then enter her vagina from the rear. Some of these were nerves that had never been touched except for purposes of hygiene—and then, the touching of them had been her own and quite disinterested. She could not have believed there was yet enough strength left in her body to respond, or that the response would bring further wetness with it. Consequently, her body surprised even her.

  She bent over further, as low as she could, and pushed herself up on her toes. Kit reacted as would any male and increased the pace of his tongue thrusts. The accumulation of his saliva and her own natural wetness increased from a slow drip to a steady flow. Kit swiveled around underneath and put his mouth up against her, then spread her lips with his lips. The tip of his nose nuzzled against her clitoris. Now supporting her upper-body weight against the sink with her breasts rather than with her hands, she reached down to either side of his head and pulled his mouth hard against her.

  Her orgasm was long and liquid. The bathroom was filled with the mixed sounds of her barely muffled scream and his lapping sounds as she came into his open mouth. Her orgasm wouldn’t stop, but rolled on wave after wave and surge after surge. She reached down and around to his throat and felt the motions of his neck muscles as he swallowed. She thought her climax might know no end, and her legs began to tremble with the exertion of it.

  Finally, of course, it did. Her signal, to both of them, was a low, guttural “Oh, God!”

  As she pushed back away from the sink and off her toes, she looked down. Kit looked back at her, squeezed into the plumbing like an awkward, but deliriously happy puppy. His chin was a bright red from their mutual exertions.

  “So?” he asked as he raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  Daneka dropped to her knees and squeezed her arms in through the plumbing and around him. Neither seemed to notice that two rather large bodies were scrunched up together in an impossibly small space and in imminent danger of banging heads and other hard parts against some rather unforgiving lead pipes and porcelain.

  “Oh, my darling, my darling, my darling! My love.”

  She’d said it before either of them could check the impulse. They’d entered new territory; they couldn’t go back—and both of them realized it in the same instant. It was not the three-word declaration, of course. But she’d used the most important word, and only subject and object were missing.

  Kit would not be greedy and demand more—not for a while, at least. For the moment, he was ecstatic—and Daneka, in her own way, was too.

  Chapter 22

  The next two nights and all of the space in between were filled with bliss: the bliss of young and crazy love; the bliss of sensual delights to their eyes, ears, nose and stomachs; the quiet bliss of just lying or walking side by side. Something in each of them knew that what they were experiencing was a true folie-à-deux—but this was, after all, France. Where better to fall under the spell of their own lovesick insanity than in the country whose language had given the world such a singularly apt expression for it?

  When they packed their bags Monday morning and headed back out to the airport, it was not entirely without regret for the loss of this first, fresh bloom. They might never again recapture it, but at least they’d had it. Whatever else might befall them in the coming weeks, months and years, they, too, would be able to say: “We’ll always have Paris.”

  As the plane lifted off the ground through a thin fog, both Daneka and Kit looked out over the city with something already bordering on nostalgia. And yet, they each privately knew that other adventures lay before them. In just over two and a half hours, they’d be in Lisbon. From there, by rental car, they’d descend along the coast to the most southwesterly point of all Europe, the Cabo de São Vicente, in the Algarve. Daneka had already done her research from New York; had wanted a place they could have to themselves; had found one and booked it: Villa Sol. With its swimming pool and view of the sea, a restaurant or two within walking distance, she figured they’d know how to spend their time in agreeable pursuits.

  As the plane began to level off high over French soil, Daneka and Kit settled in for the ride. Daneka looked around and noticed that most of their fellow passengers were businesspeople merely en route from someplace to someplace else, with probably little more on their minds than making a deal and heading back home. Were it not for this man and this brief interlude, she knew she’d merely be one of them. These businesspeople were each in their own separate universes—and, at this moment, theirs had nothing to do with hers.

  As she contemplated her happiness, a flight attendant approached on her way to the rear of the cabin. She first looked, then smiled at Daneka as she continued her journey aft. Daneka took the woman’s smile as an invitation to request a favor.

  “Mademoiselle, cela vous importerait de me descendre une couverture?”

  “Mais pas du tout, Madame.” The flight attendant promptly opened the overhead bin and took out a blanket. “Aussi un oreiller?”

  “Non, merci. La couverture me suffit. She looked once at Kit, then back up at the attendant and smiled conspiratorally. J’ai déjà mon propre oreiller,” she said, looking back at Kit.

  The attendant handed her the blanket with a barely perceptible smile. “Je vois bien.”

  “Merci, Mademoiselle.”

  “Pas de quoi, Madame.”

&n
bsp; And then to Kit, “I think I’ll take a little snooze, darling. ‘Mind if I use your lap?”

  Kit was surprised. They’d only just crawled out of bed an hour and a half earlier. But he was only too happy to oblige.

  Daneka kicked off her shoes, spread the blanket over her, and put her head down on Kit’s lap. She pulled the blanket up to her chin so that only her head was visible, then slid her hand over Kit’s thigh and let it come to rest on his crotch. At the same time, she turned her head to look at him, smiled mischievously, and ran her tongue over her lips. Then, like a spirited child up for a game of hide-and-seek, she snapped the blanket over her head.

  Kit leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and reveled in the sensation of Daneka’s hand. He couldn’t suppress a chuckle when he felt himself responding to her touch. The chuckle turned into an audible laugh when he heard Daneka’s muffled voice from beneath the blanket.

  “Oh, dear me! What have we here?”

  He swallowed his laugh, however, when he felt her hand reach up to his belt buckle, which she unfastened with ease. He gulped when he felt that same hand take hold of his zipper and pull it down in one easy motion. And he felt the tingle of minor panic when he realized she was reaching into his shorts.

  The next thing he felt was Daneka’s lips. The only thing keeping him from drifting off at that moment into his own quite separate universe was the tingle of panic. He looked up and saw a flight attendant moving down the aisle with a drink cart. He calculated, at her present dispatch, that it would be no more than a minute or two before she’d be parallel with him and this blanketed mound in his lap.

  This may be Air France, Kit thought to himself. But even Air France has limits. He looked down at his lap and saw the outline of Daneka’s head bobbing up and down under the blanket. He decided in favor of camouflage, and quickly lowered his tray-table. He looked down again. The table indeed covered the bobbing blanket, but was, itself, bobbing. He thought maybe a magazine would help and picked one up. It didn’t. It simply became another link in the chain of bobbers. Daneka’s head had its own motor, and that motor couldn’t be stopped. At the same time, the flight attendant had her own motor, and it, too, couldn’t be stopped. Kit foresaw a collision of wills, and he was sitting right at the point of impact. He froze. The flight attendant pulled up alongside him while his tray-table and magazine continued to bob.