He meekly obeyed.
He wanted to turn around and see where Emma was. And the tall man. Their own noises had been muted, distant, but nevertheless insidiously present all the while he had been involved with the purple-lipsticked woman. She sensed this.
“Do so as you are. Don’t turn,” she said, unclenching the black leather belt that circled her thin waist. “Look down to the floor as you undress.”
He noticed the smudged purple stains of lipstick on the mushroom tip of his cock, like dried wine against the ridged flesh of his masculinity. He pulled the trousers down over his laced shoes. Then kicked the shoes off and quickly slipped off his socks. Surely there was no more ridiculous sight than a naked man wearing just black socks? He then pulled himself up and began unbuttoning his shirt. As he did so, he saw the woman reach for her matching red handbag, which had been lying on the couch and pull a devious contraption, all leather straps and ivory trunk from it.
His stomach froze.
There was a faint cry from the other end of the room.
He was now naked.
The woman pulled her ruched dress upwards and belted the strap-on to her waist. The artificial cock jutted ahead of her like the prow of a boat. Hard, inflexible.
“Maybe this will give you a hard-on?” she suggested. “Legend has it that English men are much appreciative. .”
He knew he could say no, and just leave the room with no further words of protest. But the word wouldn’t pass his lips. And then he knew he could not leave Emma here alone anyway.
The woman indicated the couch and how he should bend over its sides and she positioned herself behind him.
Now, through the corner of his eye, he could finally see Emma and the other man. She had also been stripped naked, and wore only the hold-up black stockings. The pallor of her body was unbearable to look at, as was the shocking contrast between her skin and the dark as night material of the stockings.
The other man’s cock was thick and dark pink and was ploughing her roughly and systematically, pulling out of her almost all the way with every stroke and then digging back into her up to the hilt with every return thrust. Machinelike, metronomic, like a deadly instrument of war. Emma’s face rhythmically banged against the wall with every repeated movement in and out of her.
Geoff felt the pain explode through his own body as the woman’s artificial member breached him with one swift movement. He swallowed, almost bit his tongue
As he did so, he realized why Emma was so silent. A red handkerchief had been stuffed into her mouth. He couldn’t help noticing the handkerchief was the exact same shade of red as the lipstick she had decided to adorn herself with to attend the party.
Also, her hands were tied behind her back with brown fur-lined metal cuffs.
She must have agreed to this.
There was another huge stab of unbearable pain as the strap-on began stretching him and he felt himself being filled like he had never been filled before. For a brief moment, he feared he was going to defecate, as the pit of his stomach went totally numb, but the pressure against his inner walls soon reasserted itself and the pain slowly began to recede. Not that being fucked in this manner gave him any pleasure. He felt as if was becoming detached from his own body as it was being defiled.
And his eyes kept on hypnotically watching the abominable movements of the other man’s massive member inside Emma, the way the tight skin around her opening creased inwards and then outwards again as she was being implacably drilled, and the eyelet of her anus winked open and shut with every movement below it. There was sweat dripping from her forehead. Her calves tightened, her ass cheeks shook, her hair was undone, her curls spilling in every conceivable direction as if moved by an invisible wind rising from the nearby lagoon and flying over the Giudecca to shroud the city on its way to the marshes and Trieste.
From the tremors mechanically coursing through her body, Geoff knew Emma had come. The stranger had succeeded in raising her senses, playing her like Geoff had rarely been capable of doing.
But the man did not cease.
He would continue fucking her until she begged for him to stop.
Would she ever?
Back at the apartment, they at first could not bear to look each other in the eyes. They went to bed in total silence, still coated by the dry sweat of their exertions, of their shame.
They slept late into the morning.
After breakfast, they took a vaporetto to the Lido and later to the Isola di San Servolo — a trip they had agreed to undertake a few days before they had stumbled across the website which had lured them to the party.
Over dinner in the San Polo district, they began communicating again.
“Talk about an adventure!’
“I suppose you could call it that. .”
“Regrets?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Were you jealous?”
“A little, I suppose.”
“You?”
“No. It’s. . how can I put it. . life. .”
“Certainly one way of putting it. .”
They tried to go for coffee at Cafe Florian, but it was closed on Tuesdays in winter. They made their way back to the apartment. There was no power. They tiptoed their way through darkness to the bedroom.
“It doesn’t change anything, does it?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, spooning against him.
It was at that precise moment Geoff knew he was about to lose her.
That it was too late to plea, beg, affirm his love, however impure it now was.
He didn’t sleep that night. He stayed awake in the darkness, listening to the vague sounds of the Canal delle Due Torri lapping against the building’s rotting stone facade and the imperceptible melody of her breath, as her chest moved peacefully up and down against him under the duvet.
He smelled her, listened to her as if trying to fix these memories in his brain once and for all. What he would one day be left with.
Geoff finally succumbed to sleep around seven in the morning.
When he awoke, she had left the apartment.
The morning went by. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate on the text, whether a week-old newspaper or an anonymous serial killer thriller.
Emma returned at the beginning of the afternoon. She was wearing that black skirt he had once bought her in Barcelona and which held so many memories. The one with the giant sunflower patch sewn into its flank. And a T-shirt he had once loaned her in the early days of the affair when their lovemaking had proven a tad rough and messy and he had left compromising semen stains across the blouse she had been wearing that day. The T-shirt that advertised “Strangers in Paradise” across the Aubrey Beardsley-like face of a woman.
He was sipping a glass of grapefruit juice at the kitchen table.
He welcomed her.
“Had a good walk?”
“No.”
“Oh. .”
A shadow passed across the room shielding her eyes from his examination.
“I saw him again,” Emma said.
The pain inside returned.
“Have you fucked him again?”
“No.”
“I see.”
“There is another party tonight. A different palazzo this time, near the Campo San Silvestro. He’s invited me. Wants to introduce me to some of his friends. .”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yes.”
“Without me?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I still love you, you know.”
“I know. But love is not enough. I need adventures, you see. On my own. I don’t want to be owned. .”
“I’ve never tried to own you, you know that. You’re too much of a gypsy to be kept in a cage.”
Emma smiled. “You can come, if you wish, I reckon. As long as you’d promise not to interfere and allow whatever happens to happen. .”
“I don’t think so,” Geoff said. “Don’t much care to repeat the other evening’s foursome. Just didn’t feel right to me somehow.”