I should never have fucked Raphaël or Lisette.
Revenge has consequences; these are my five days of hell, and my penance will last a lifetime. Leaving Paris immediately, I am far away, living on a favour from a relative.
This tiny village on the headland is my bolthole - a place of old sandstone houses and their painted shutters. Alone, I sit on an old wooden slatted chair, shaded under the canopy of a stone pine tree. While I stir the ice in my crème de cassis, a snap of wind lifts some dusty earth.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Behind these sunglasses, no one can see my forsaken eyes, and the tranquillity soothes my tormented mind. I know I have lost so much. I cannot face the beach with its joyful laughter and smiling faces. My heart is calcifying stone, I know I will survive, and I have been here before, but this hurt is profound. Vacant eyes gaze at the ornate fountain, smoothed by the centuries and comforted by its babbling spring water.
Childhood memories are the liferaft I cling to. We stayed here, and I dwell on them; they are long deceased. I write, unable to think, eat, or make sense of the madness. Motifs come and go, and my scrawny notebook collects them. It was fat and new once, and many torn pages rest as tight balls in the bin or my pocket.
I cannot be optimistic, but I play a game with words, not actions.
Actions are what brought me here.
-=-
When my ex-fiancé said I was an objectionable woman, he was right; I am.
There is one thing I never objected to - affection. It was Thursday morning last week and two days before what I craved. My eyes were blurred, and I blinked. I did not want to move because Lisette’s hand rested on my waist, and she slept with simpering lips as if kissed by an angel.
As my first emotion of the new day, I wanted tomorrow to come as long as I was with her. It was a silly emotion; we were in too deep, too quickly, and I should not feel this way.
But I did, and I am glad I lied to myself now.
This was the morning after the day before. We ventured into the suburbs for a clandestine rendezvous. It was not that we were ashamed. What we had was too precious and fragile to risk anywhere near the University and its scurrilous gossip. Walking through the park under the watchful gaze of the Château de Sceaux, we held hands in the warm sun. I was a lowly public servant, and she was a student, yet in this setting, we were royalty.
This was not shallow living; Lisette was curious about my depths as much as I was fascinated by hers, and our magical day passed far too quickly. It brooded between us, in a glance, a muted smile, or an innuendo. As scintillating as that night was, as the caramel of a crème brulee, this was the perfect accompaniment to the rich experience of her company.
It was sex with a purpose, and what required courage before were simple words delivered with sparkling eyes. We cavorted in bed, and our posture did not matter. We could find the places that conveyed our desires. We twisted, turned, giggled, laughed, and reduced each other into panted whimpers. Lisette raised her pert behind, and I lapped at her sex, flicking at her ass with the tip of my tongue. Two twisted fingers massaged that place inside her as my devious thumb chased her clit. From my dress mirror, Lisette burned my apartment to the ground. Inducing her orgasm and seeing the relief in her eyes, the sounds she made, and all its physicality - it filled my heart with joy.
Her intuition, my intuition, we could not exhaust our eagerness to find new sensations and pleasures. Of the noisy exclamations in a soixante-neuf as she writhed. Sucking on my clit, as I tongue-fucked her sex, her delicious juices flowed into my mouth. As her hostage, with my wrists tied and protesting, I dug in my heels and came hard on her fingers.
Draped over me, her need written as furrows on her brow, I swept her damp hair back. Restless to the point of exhaustion, Lisette drove on. Her entire body poised as flexing curves, dragging her sex back and forth on my thigh. With her elegance exhausted, she pinned my arms down, our fingers interlaced, and she writhed for one more orgasm. Her brow creased, speckled with sweat, she revealed its rising intensity.
“I… I cannot get enough of you,” Lisette rasped.
“Then, take everything, take it all.”
Beneath the veil of her hair, we were alone in the world. No one could touch us or take these enormous emotions from us. She dragged her breasts over mine, and her animated hips hovered, primed to deliver the sweetest sting of another climax. Lip-locked, stifling the rising need as her whimpers grew, she tried to deny herself.
“Lisette…” I pleaded, too.
Her palm rested on my torso, and she posed above me. Indelible in my mind, Lisette’s wistful smile, her flushed countenance, and those kindly eyes seared into my soul. A nascent love filled my mind. The first sweeping gesture from her body carried me away. It transcended the physical, and what took hold grew.
You can look into someone's eyes when you understand them enough and know. Words never did this justice; writers have come, gone, and are dust, leaving us without answers. Moving on instinct, without calculation, seeking the perfect gesture for these unspoken sentiments. What is love? Ten days of madness compared to a lifetime of sanity?
This is how we reached that pinnacle when everything narrowed to a single point. When the mind, body and soul combine in a perfect conjunction. I had to cry out as I fused in spasms, and she clung on in a tight embrace. Lisette rode it out with me, gasping for air, and joined me with a final telltale kiss. Crashing down, quivering, I consumed her with my embrace, peppering what skin I could find with my approval as she panted.
That is when I knew my old life was over. Burned in this inferno of passion, destroyed forever. I am a rational woman, and… this madness took me whole. If I said I did not want it – I am lying.
Happy and exhausted, our rushing blood spiced with a feast of climaxes, we declared an uneasy truce. It lasted as long as we could slake our thirst with cold water. One sly glance too many was all we needed. Laid across my bed, our hair lank, bodies clammy, slippery to the touch, and the wettest, softest flesh rubbed together. Lisette’s body was mottled and blotchy; the rash over the mounds of her breasts matched the colour of her swollen sex.
Clasping her leg, we writhed in perfect synchronicity. Meeting her gaze, as the purveyors of sweet mischief, I saw her designs for me as we rode this wallowing wave. Drenched and frictionless, I electrified her by sucking on her big toe. Exposing another fetish, I forced those jade eyes wide open, and she flailed like a fish out of water. Shaking with each yelp stronger than the last, Lisette thrashed towards an indelicate orgasm. She bucked and flailed with giant gulps of air until her cries echoed through my apartment.
As a vision of abandonment, it overwhelmed me, too. Still quivering, Lisette was relentless; her slight hands, like pincers, kept me bound to her. Unable to escape, intoxicated by her determination, she propelled me there, and my rigid body shook. Such was its totality; I tried to extract myself, reduced to a convulsive fit. My addiction was complete; I needed more, and so did Lisette. Finding my voice, sobbing for air, we chased out another intense climax from our ravaged bodies.
We were human wreckage, a tangled mess of limbs, in a mire of sweat and the musk of sex.
I chuckled, still panting.
“Oh God.” She was breathless. “No one… no one ever.”
She did not need to finish her sentence.
“Me too,” I panted, “me too.”
Warm together under the duvet, content in the silence of our embrace. There was no guilt with this emotion, and it flowed through me. I would never take it for granted again – happiness.
It was a perfect day. Despite my fears and the scars of rejection, I adored Lisette. I knew I had to forgive myself and be brave for her. There were so many things I wanted to tell her, and I would… tomorrow.
It hurts to realise it was grains of sand slipping through my fingers. The answer to that big question was always that, and tomorrow never came.
Just as well, Lisette took my vulnerability and loneliness and reflected it onto me. At least my betrayal was incomplete, and I fought back. It is a tiny crumb of comfort.
The ice in my crème de cassis has melted.
-=-
Opening my notebook, I write, ‘used’. I do not want to close it because it feels like the end. To find acceptance, there must be grief. Right now, I am in denial, trying to change the past. If I could see the signs, I could change the course of history.
I was not sure who was more nervous, Lisette or me. We talked it through and what we wanted from Saturday. Revenge, vicarious pleasure, a good fuck – cheap tricks when we had much more going for us.
Raphaël sat in my apartment blindfolded, and we stripped him naked. Reassured by her confidence, we tied him to a dining chair, and I revealed myself to him. He was surprised. Was he surprised enough? The sight of us in racy lingerie was powerful enough to erect his phallus. Wearing our collar, his first masculine moan was convincing. As our voyeur, his pleas were heartfelt.
We surveyed him together, and I admit the sight of a fully aroused penis was highly arousing.