The Lover From An Icy Sea Read online

  “Vous désirez quelque chose à boire, Monsieur?” she asked with perfect French aplomb.

  “Eh bien, oui,” Kit answered with the most serious tone of nonchalance he could muster. “Du café, s’il vous plaît. Et un jus d’orange.”

  “Volontiers, Monsieur,” the flight attendant answered with no change in tone or expression. The bobbing continued unabated. Kit wondered where she would put the coffee and orange juice, and whether she would finally notice, possibly comment upon, the peculiar air turbulence that had attached itself to Kit’s tray-table.

  Instead, she poured the coffee into a cup and placed it on her drink cart. She next pulled out a plastic glass and a pitcher of orange juice, then filled the glass and put it down next to the cup.

  Without comment or pause, she reached in over Kit and lowered Daneka’s tray-table. She was close enough that Kit could smell not only her perfume, but also some of her perspiration. The flight attendant stood back up; picked up the coffee and orange juice; put them down on Daneka’s tray. Kit’s tray continued its satanic bob.

  Just as Kit thought the ordeal over, the flight attendant reached under her service cart and pulled out a plastic flute and a split of champagne. In what seemed like one quick motion, she removed the wire and wrapper and popped the cork. She placed bottle and flute on Daneka’s tray-table alongside his coffee and orange juice.

  With no variation in tone, the flight attendant looked at Kit. “Pour Madame. Avec nos compliments.” She then turned her attention to the passengers opposite Kit and Daneka’s seats and proceeded with the same battery of questions.

  * * *

  When they arrived at the airport in Lisbon two hours and thirty-five minutes later, Daneka was indeed asleep, but upright in her seat and with the most self-satisfied of smiles on her lips. She still held an empty champagne flute in her hand, but all other evidence of a late-morning refreshment had long since been removed. The first bump on the tarmac awakened her.

  She took one glance out the window, smiled, and then turned to Kit. “Portugal! Be a sweet man-of-war and give me some of your best poison.”

  Without wasting a word, Kit reached down inside her blouse and grabbed a breast. Daneka’s mouth was on his as she answered with an inarticulate growl whose meaning, however, was clear to both of them. After only two or three passes with the tip of his finger, her nipple began to respond while her low growl conveyed a clear message of appreciation. She took her mouth from his and moved it up to his ear. At the same time, she opened her eyes and caught an equally appreciative stare from across the aisle. These French, she thought to herself. They love to watch almost as much as they love to do.

  Although she could easily have put an end to their very public display, she resolved to enlarge it. With perfect calculation of the consequences, she threw back her shoulders so that a button popped off her blouse and a breast sprang into view. At the same time, she reached down into Kit’s pants. The fit was tight, but he instantly, reflexively, sucked in his stomach. Her mouth at Kit’s ear, she whispered just loud enough for her neighbor across the aisle to hear.

  “How about a little fucky-fucky?”

  Kit had been assaulted from too many angles at once to know how to react appropriately. Even if he didn’t share Daneka’s precise knowledge of the voyeur across the aisle, he was nonetheless no exhibitionist. That Daneka’s breast was on display sent the equivalent of fire alarms to his brain. Those alarms quickly put an end to his momentary arousal, and his hands did the rest to return both Daneka and himself to the status quo ante.

  “Where, in God’s name, did that come from?” he asked, as much amused as horrified at the inventiveness of her vocabulary.

  “Oh, it’s not mine, darling. I just read it. Last week—in a story I found in Granta, by a Ms. Erthal, or Erdview … Erdal, that was it! Jenny Erdal. Called ‘Tiger’s Ghost’.”

  “You read Granta?” Kit asked, visibly amazed.

  “But of course, darling. How else am I going to enlarge my vocabulary?” Daneka said chuckling to herself as she slipped back into her seat and rearranged her blouse less one critical button. The chuckle became an audible laugh as she looked up at Kit, whose blush was almost fire-engine red.

  “My terribly demure darling,” she whispered as she reached her head and mouth back up and nibbled at his ear. “But you know something? I happen to disagree with Ms. Erdal on one critical point. I, for one, do not think that ‘discretion is the better part of ardor’.”

  She looked over at her erstwhile spectator and noticed that he, while appearing to study the air traffic scene outside his window, had both hands in his lap—as if attempting to keep quiet and firmly in check the happy testament to his voyeurism. Boys will be boys, she thought to herself. Silly little boys. With their even sillier, predictable little toys.

  As their plane taxied to its gate, Daneka and Kit sat together, quiet arm in quiet arm. Kit’s blush gradually receded behind normal flesh tones as his thoughts turned to disembarking, finding luggage, getting a rental car and driving down the coast.

  Daneka’s thoughts, however, stayed momentarily with this man—this Kit immediately beside her—and with the seemingly unending source of pleasure he‘d become in the space of only a few weeks. As she then considered how she, at her age, was still apparently as much a source of pleasure to him, she also felt the pride of her sex. It was wonderful to be a woman. To be able, with the exposure of a body part, not only to hold one man entirely captive, but to arouse the feral desire of another in the same instant. She decided to try again.

  “Wanna coït?”

  Kit looked at her and blinked.

  “Wanna coït with a poet?”

  He had understood her correctly. What a word! He’d never heard it before.

  “Wanna coït with a poet, man, and bank some doh re ME?”

  She was too much. He looked at her—bemused by this jewel of a woman who had not only lips to die for, but killer words at their behest. An empress of blow-jobs with a brain, he thought to himself. There’s something downright Baudelairian about her. Now, why does that sound so familiar? he wondered—and continued thinking.

  Daneka, believing she had just been rebuffed, allowed her thoughts to stray beyond her immediate lover. She began to dissociate and wonder which of her body parts and available orifices could hold a number of men captive at any one time and in a way that would render her literally—if not præternaturally— fulfilled. She closed her eyes and drifted off into a contemplation of a score of naked bodies—under, over, at either end of her, writhing like rude snakes in competition for her attention, for her ministrations, for a mere touch of her fingers, or lips, or hair to bring them to, and hold them in, a state of excruciating suspense. And then to watch those for whom she had not enough hands or lips or hair, out of impatience or brute lust, finish off the matter in their own way. This, as they watched her being taken by those more fortunate and aggressive participants who might actively and simultaneously engage both hands and the three portals in which intercourse with her was physically possible.

  She noted the sensation between her legs—like tensely roving fingers—as she allowed herself the crude calculation of how many she could actually take on at once. She marveled not only that she could feel what she imagined was real love for this man next to her, but—in the same instant—could count the number of penises or fingers or lips having simultaneous commerce with her mouth, her vagina, her anus. It was not guilt or remorse that caused what felt like an electrical short-circuit to her brain, but rather the sheer overload of inputs as she visualized all of them thrusting vigorously and selfishly to fill her. At the same time, she felt others’ hands on her breasts, her thighs, her stomach—kneading, squeezing, caressing wherever there was a swath of skin not already occupied by some other hand or mouth or organ of penetration.

  And then there were the spectators—the less fortunate ones who could only watch, but who were an additional gift of pleasure. Her own eyes, she knew, wo
uld be wide open watching them as they watched her and her several partners. She would watch these second-tier participants, men and women both, masturbate alone or with each other as all eyes were trained on her body, this object of collective pursuit and conquest. She would only too happily allow the men to cover her with their ejaculate and the women to spread their legs and flush their passions out on her legs, her breasts, her face. Yes, even that. Once the men had emptied themselves onto her, she would welcome the women and their more delicate—if equally hungry—lust. She could see a woman’s mouth between her legs, licking and swallowing the semen of however many men might have chosen to leave it there. She’d allow another to take her clitoris between her lips. A third to straddle her own face and nose and eyes with a ravenous cunt.

  As she felt the momentum of this fantasy carry her slowly to the brink, she realized her own silent vocabulary had easily accepted a cruder, pornographic jargon for which Anglo-Saxon, she felt, was the perfect vehicle. In her mind, she was fucking—and the givers as well as the recipients of that crude passion were cunts, tongue-fucking cunts, hers no less than theirs.

  She’d lost track of the number of bodies and organs she’d just entertained when she felt the shudder of her own orgasm. She kept it in silence, however, as one of the flight attendants spoke up over the intercom and welcomed them all to Lisbon.

  Kit, she noticed, was ignorant of any of what had just occurred. Her former spectator was also seemingly preoccupied with gathering his belongings in preparation to disembark. She allowed herself a small smile of private knowledge and gave Kit a peck on the cheek. Within a matter of minutes, both of them were calmly out of their seats and standing in line to exit the plane. As they made their way forward, they came abreast of the flight attendant who’d first served them, and who now smiled in a cordial French way.

  “Au revoir, Monsieur, ‘dame. Bon séjour au Portugal.”

  “Merci, Mademoiselle. Et bon retour à Paris,” Kit offered.

  “Merci bien,” Daneka said simply as she prepared to exit. She then thought again, paused, looked into the attendant’s eyes and said with just the hint of a twinkle in her own: “C’était un voyage sans pareil.”

  The attendant didn’t miss a beat. As she leaned down to give Daneka the French kiss on both cheeks customarily reserved for close friends and family, she said just above a whisper: “Pour nous toutes, Madame, je vous assure. Pour nous toutes.” At that moment, Daneka knew: she’d made a spectacle of herself—not just for this one attendant, but for all of the female attendants. None of them could’ve known, of course, about the additional male spectator—not to mention the myriad of bodies, both male and female, she’d enjoyed in her fantasy. And yet, a blush of shame was the furthest thing from her mind.

  Chapter 23

  It took them only minutes to retrieve their luggage, find the car rental agency, then get to their car and negotiate their way to the airport exit. As Lisbon was a port city, their journey would be a coastal drive all the way down to Cabo de São Vicente. The weather was perfect as they set out—still relatively cool even by Mediterranean standards. Daneka opened a road map.

  “I figure about two, two and a half hours at most. We should be there by late afternoon but maybe still early enough for a little swim.”

  Kit squeezed her hand. “You and a pool. It sounds positively primordial!”

  Schools were still in session throughout Europe—and so, vacationers were relatively few. In another few weeks, Daneka knew, hoards of Scandinavians and Germans would descend upon Iberia and head straight out to one of several of the more popular coasts of Spain or Portugal. By the end of July, traffic on the peninsula would be bumper-to-bumper on roads like this one. But today, most of the traffic was commercial—and as Portugal was not precisely an economic powerhouse, commercial meant negligible.

  Almost exactly two and a half hours later, Kit and Daneka saw the first indication that they’d arrived at their destination. In Portugal’s traditional red and green colors, a sign on the outskirts of a tiny seaside village announced Cabo de São Vicente. The view out over the Atlantic was breathtaking. They stopped their car alongside the road just long enough to admire it and to allow Daneka to determine from her own notes the most direct route to their villa.

  It was only a matter of minutes before they found Villa Sol. Small by the standards of most European villas—but with well-manicured lawns—it was certainly adequate for two guests. They parked their car and walked to the front door. The owners had sent instructions on the location of the house-key, and Daneka looked in the appointed spot. She found it, unlocked the front door, and the two of them stepped in.

  The villa’s interior was as tastefully laid out as the surrounding grounds. Stone floors were set off on a couple of different levels; rooms were partitioned by solid stone walls with heavy wood baseboards and door frames. The one concession to modernity was the rear wall, which had been replaced with sliding glass doors leading out to an oval-shaped pool.

  “Let me go and get the luggage,” Kit offered. In the meantime, Daneka, transfixed by the view of the pool and the ocean beyond, opened the glass doors and stepped out. The pool basin had been lined with what must have been several thousand hand-painted tiles. Steps descended down into the pool at one end. Daneka removed her shoes and walked to them. She sat down on the edge of the pool and tested the water with her toes. The temperature was just a few degrees cooler than body temperature. It was simply too tempting.

  She was out of her clothes in seconds and into the water. After several days on dry land, the return to that world of water and liquid warmth touching every pore felt like a return to the womb. She closed her eyes and submerged her head so that even the whisper of sea breezes was turned to silence. She concentrated on nothingness, on the absence of all external stimuli except for the caress of the water. After almost a full minute, and when she could no longer hold her breath, she broke the surface of the water and inhaled. She then opened her eyes and wrung the water out of her hair as she refocused on her immediate surroundings.

  Kit was standing at the side of the pool smiling as he looked down at his water nymph.

  “It, and you, look lovely!” His smile earned a smile in return.

  “Darling, why don’t you come in? Just leave your clothes there next to mine and come right in.” Daneka’s suggestion sounded more like a demand than a mere invitation. When Kit didn’t immediately respond, she barked in mock anger: “Subito!”

  Kit stepped out of his clothes and, rather than wade into the water as Daneka had done, dove straight in. He swam around a bit beneath the surface, then approached her from the front and suggested with a nudge to both ankles that he wanted her to open her legs. She obliged and he swam through. When he re-surfaced immediately behind her, he placed his arms on hers and raised them to encircle his neck. Standing in direct contact with her from shoulders to toes, he slowly slid his hands down her cheeks and neck, then down and around her shoulder blades until they met in front and found her breasts.

  Daneka bent her head back, searching for Kit’s lips. As he gently pinched her nipples, she slid her tongue into his mouth.

  Daneka responded eagerly as Kit began to massage her breasts. Starting at the top, he dragged just the tips of his fingers down and over her nipples, then cupped each breast from underneath and gave it a generous massage. He repeated the maneuver until Daneka’s chest was heaving, her breasts reaching out to find his hands, her breath hot, honey-sweet—and like a steam-belching locomotive leading a train of kisses now smothering his face.

  Kit gently pulled her up, and Daneka placed her feet on his. He then walked both of them to the edge of the pool facing out over the Atlantic.

  “Open your eyes, darling,” he whispered into her ear.

  She did as he’d asked. What they both saw would have impressed even Turner. The sun was just dipping into the Atlantic at the western horizon. The optical distortion that normally occurs at just this instant—and so dimini
shes the sun’s brilliance as it sets into the ocean—was absent. Kit and Daneka watched it sink like a golden plumb directly into the water. At the same time, the sky overhead gradually changed from orange to bright red—like the petals of an exotic orchid folding back on themselves.

  The air already had something of a nip to it, but the fire in the sky and the fire between the two of them made the pool water feel like soup. With Kit’s chest still against her back, Daneka pushed up on her toes and reached around to Kit’s erection, which she felt sliding down the rift of her buttocks as she pushed up. She took him with one hand and guided him down between her legs and inside her. She then moved the same hand back up behind his neck and joined it to the other to make a necklace of soft flesh. She liked this gentle bondage. She liked being “tied” to his neck and, at the same time, caught between his body and the wall of the pool, and so rendered captive. Kit did the lifting from behind her, and she accommodated by pushing up on her toes and then settling back down again in an easy pas de deux. Little ripples spread out from them across the surface of the pool. Larger ripples of red reached out overhead and gathered the clouds as if plucking tufts of cotton long enough to saturate them with crimson dye, only to spring them free again.

  When they finally came, they came quietly—a whispered benediction to a sun now chanting a last, equally quiet song as it sank far out over the western horizon.

  Chapter 24

  It was early evening as Kit and Daneka walked along an unpaved road into the village. Occasionally passing other couples or lone pedestrians along the way, they would offer a nod and a smile in exchange for a “Boa noite”—a very fair exchange indeed, Kit thought. Although Kit didn’t know a word of Portuguese, he’d figured he could make do with Spanish if necessary. But he also knew they were at the mercy of the locals—and of English, or of some lingua franca—for any serious conversation or assistance. In any case, the spontaneous greetings and friendliness of these evening strollers were a welcome change from New York, and Kit and Daneka slipped easily into that frame of mind peculiar to more experienced world travelers: they simply observed—and adapted their behavior to that of the locals.