Masquerade (11 page)

‘Say goodbye to everyone,’ he says firmly.

Some of the men jokingly tell Jaron not to spoil the party by taking me away.

‘See? They don’t want me to go,’ I tell Jaron.

‘Sorry, guys, but it’s my bedtime,’ Jaron says good-naturedly.

I stand on my tiptoes and whisper in Jaron’s ear, ‘I ain’t going to bed until you show me all kindsa shit.’

‘Right you are, beautiful,’ Jaron says coolly, catching me as I stumble.

Noel grins at me. I say my bleary goodbyes and let Jaron lead me to the boat. I have to admit the return journey on the boat is not nearly half as much fun as the journey there. I lie at the bottom of the boat feeling quite sick. Instead of urging him to go faster I yell at him to slow down. ‘Oh God! I’m going to throw up.’

The man is pitiless. ‘Just hang your head over the side and throw up,’ he shouts. Fortunately, it never gets to that and thankfully the ride is fairly short. The engine is cut. As I loll about at the bottom of the boat in a state of inebriated self-pity, Jaron comes to me. He stands over me with his legs spread wide to steady himself in the rocking vessel. I squint up at him.

‘Give me a hand then,’ I groan.

His answer is to heave me up like a sack of potatoes onto his shoulder.

‘Whoa,’ I cry.

He walks me up the path and opening the front door takes me directly into the bedroom. The cool air from the air con makes my sticky skin tingle. It feels wonderful. He puts me on the bed and I look up at him. His hair is messy with the wind and a whole shock of it has fallen on his forehead.

I raise my hand and pinch his rough cheek. ‘You are so cute,’ I tell him. ‘I could take you to bed.’ I spoil it by then yawning widely.

‘You’re totally wasted, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ I insist, but my words are slurring so badly they are almost indecipherable. 

‘Bed for you, I think.’

I snake my arms around his neck before he can straighten. ‘No, no, no. I want to fuck…you.’ I smile feeling inordinately proud of the way I left that pause between fuck and you. 

He raises a disbelieving eyebrow.

I let go of his neck and start trying to wriggle out of my pants, but it’s difficult to accomplish in my condition. I look up at him. He is standing over me, stone cold sober, just watching me.

‘Help me then,’ I demand.

He holds both the ends of my trouser legs and tugs hard just once, and my trousers slide out from under me like water.

‘Smooth,’ I tell him in an impressed voice. ‘Now my top.’

He makes even shorter work of that. I slide a finger into my knickers and look up at him with flirtatious eyes.

‘Last bit,’ I say invitingly.

He slides them down my legs and off my feet. His eyes inspect me. I like that! I open my thighs wide and say, ‘Come and get it, big boy.’

I
wake up in a very uncomfortable position. In fact, it is surprising that I managed to sleep in such a position at all: on my back totally trapped under Jaron. One of Jaron’s legs, bent at the knee, is under my butt and the other is lying on top of my stomach. One of his arms is under my neck and the other is thrown across my body, the hand possessively covering my breast, and his head is buried in the crook of my neck.

For a few seconds I don’t move. Then I slowly start to extricate myself, mainly by bringing one of my arms up to remove the hand that is stuck on my breast. The moment my hand wraps around his wrist, his grip tightens and a small protesting sound comes from under my chin.

‘You owe me,’ a sleepy voice says.

I swivel my eyes down to the top of the dirty blond head. It looks very silky, like the head of a boy. ‘Owe you what?’

He lifts his head and looks at me. His eyes are green, but calling them green would be like calling Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa
a painting. His eyes are like the carpet of moss that grows only on certain stones. It is fresh and bright and only found in secret gardens where humans don’t bring their business.

‘Don’t you remember?’ he says slowly. Right before my eyes, the colors of his gaze change. They seem more liquid and blue-green like the tropical ocean seen from the sky. He can’t decide if I am serious.

I shake my head. The action properly dislodges the headache that was hovering at the edges of my consciousness. Damn hangover.

He gets his arm from under my neck, lifts himself on his elbow and looks at me with surprise.

‘What is the last thing you remember?’

I dig through my mind. ‘I know I had a great time and that I absolutely love Bahamian people. I remember coming back on the boat. Oops, and nearly being sick overboard.’

‘Mmmm…’

‘Then I think we came back and went to bed, right?’

‘No, you promised me a lay, opened your legs wide and passed out.’

‘I did?’

‘I want to claim my lay now.’

‘Well, you can’t. I have a splitting headache,’ I say, frowning and exaggerating my malaise.

‘I’ll be so gentle you won’t even notice I’m inside you.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I’ll start and if you notice that I’m fucking you, just tell me and I’ll stop.’

‘Do you even know how big your dick is?’

‘Yeah, but I’m working hard to ruin you. After me, baby, all other men are going to be like shoving pencils into your vagina.’

In spite of myself I have to giggle. ‘Can’t you take no for an answer even once?’

‘No.’

‘Ah,’ I exclaim and suddenly find the entire lot of Jaron Fucking Rose lying on top of me.

‘Fine,’ I say, determined that I will be such a wet blanket that he will not enjoy it either.

He grins, and sprinting off me energetically and extremely lightly starts by targeting the one place he has found on my body that makes it impossible for me to resist. My big toe.

‘Ahhhhh…’   

He takes my big toe out of his mouth. ‘Can you feel me yet?’

‘No.’

He puts his mouth back on my toe and sucks gently. Oh! Heaven. His large hands start traveling along my calves. I must really like him, I’ve shaved my legs. A fact that he has noticed and seems to appreciate. One by one he does all the toes. I wriggle them in his mouth and he swirls his tongue around them. It makes my body arch with pleasure. He puts the right foot down and takes the big toe of the other foot into his mouth and gives that a good ole suck too. By this time I can feel the heat of watching him suck my toes in my groin. He starts kissing the inside of the soles of my feet.

‘Ah fuck… Jaron.’

‘Did you feel that?’

‘No.’

His mouth moves along the inside of my calves and sucks at the backs of my knees. My thighs start trembling. He moves up until he is so close to my throbbing core I feel his breath on me when he obsequiously tells me, ‘If I’m making your headache worse, just tell me.’

‘All is still good,’ I croak, my sex aching for release.

He licks at the slit and then opens the lips with his fingers and even widens the passage with his fingers, but he doesn’t hang around very long. Maybe he knows I won’t last this morning. That I’m about to explode any moment now. He lifts himself to his knees. Raised in that position his hair catches a beam of morning light coming in through a gap in the curtains and glows like spun gold. I watch in awe as this blond god slides me down the bed and lifts my hips to the level of his.

And then he very deliberately, solemnly, and gloriously drives the full length of his thick, hard sex deep into me. Stretched wide and filled to the brim I gasp and weaken all over. The overwhelming impression is that of being impaled, possessed, and taken. With one arm he supports my hips while with the other he plays with my clit. The sensation of his slow and deliberate fucking and the relentless caressing circles he makes are hypnotic and irresistible.

My body drenches with pleasure. I feel myself float closer and closer to the edge and my hips start snapping against his so his thrusts become cruel too. That pushes me over the edge and my body arches so rigidly it lifts his body with mine and somewhere in my moment of exploding pleasure I hear his groan of release. Hot fluids fill me as I lay gasping.

Still held up by his hips and dick I moan softly. He watches me with a satisfied look on his face and then he withdraws out of me and puts me down. He sits between my parted legs and spreads apart my knees so wide that my hips rise up and off the bed, buttocks split open and my exposed sex feels as if it is protruding and hanging down. It is a humiliating position but his hands on my knees are powerful and will bear no objection. And this position also reveals my sex to be a craving thing. It wants him. It wants everything he wants to give it. It flutters open and closed like a desperately hungry mouth. He gently massages me between my legs, smearing the juices leaking out of me into my lips and stroking my sticky clit.

‘Not again,’ I object, but weakly. I am greedy for it and because that orgasm really did take a lot out of me I feel lethargic and exhausted.

‘Again,’ he says very firmly and between my legs, my sex throbs helplessly at the brutal dominance in his voice. I shiver, trying to restrain its greedy throbbing.

‘What’s the matter?’ he whispers, his hands expertly working the moist flesh.

I flush bright red. I cannot admit to it but I cannot help being violently turned on by the feeling of being overpowered. There is a certain amount of shame to being overpowered but at that moment the path of acceptance seems more hospitable. I gasp as the pleasure between my legs mounts and mounts. His fierce fingers strike the wet, throbbing flesh.

‘Oooooo…’ I sob as the waves come. The sobs are a delicious release for the warm pain. Moisture trickles out of me and runs down the crack of my buttocks. He smiles and using that slick wetness inserts his finger straight into my ass.

I
get out of the shower and feel slightly fresher but my head is still throbbing. I slip on my bikini bottoms and go into the kitchen. I know exactly what will cure my hangover. The hair of the dog. Jaron is bent over something at the kitchen table. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m repairing your watch. It was running late.’

‘You can repair watches?’

‘Sure. I’m very handy with anything that is full of tiny springs or precision machined to close tolerances. When I was young I spent hours completely dismantling watches and locks and putting them back together.’

‘Great.’

I open the cupboard and reach for the vodka bottle. A large hand covered in golden hairs curls around my wrist. I jump. I didn’t hear him come up.

‘Don’t,’ he says softly.

‘What?’

‘You drink too much, Billie.’

‘What?’ I repeat in disbelief.

‘You heard me.’

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

‘How old are you now?’

‘Fucking none of your business.’

‘Let’s say you’re twenty-two or three. You’ll be an alcoholic by the time you are thirty-three.’

‘Fuck you,’ I say angrily, but some part of my brain is recoiling in fear as I lash out. I yank my hand out of his grip and deliberately take the bottle and pour myself a huge measure. I gulp it all down very quickly while he watches me expressionlessly.

I put the glass down with a ‘take that and put it where the sun don’t shine’ thump, but in fact, I have drunk it too fast and I feel downright queasy.

He stares at me. ‘What’s the matter?’

I turn around and run to the bathroom where I am violently sick in the toilet.

When I put my head up Jaron is holding a wet towel. I don’t look at him. I take the towel from him silently and wipe my face. He goes out and I brush my teeth before I follow him.

‘I’ve made coffee,’ he says, holding out a mug.

‘I’m sorry I was so rude,’ I say.

‘It doesn’t change anything. You drink too much.’

I put my head down. I know he is right. It feels like fun, but I’ve seen enough alcoholics on the council estate to know where I am heading.

‘You don’t need it, Billie.’

‘Sometimes I do.’

‘Sometimes we all do. But you even drink in the morning. It’s not cool, Billie.’

I take a sip of coffee and make a face. I hate coffee.

‘Can I have some orange juice please?’

He pours me a glass and hands it to me with two painkiller tablets. I take the pills and drink the whole thing down. I realize how awfully dehydrated I must have been.

‘How about we agree that you’ll drink when you need to and when you’re out having fun, but no more vodka bottles in your bedside cabinet.’

I glower at him and every fiber in my body rejects being told what to do. That is my MO. No one, and absolutely no one in the past has told me what to do. I do what I want. Period. I don’t buy the ‘do it for your own good bullshit’ from anybody. And to be honest, if it had been anyone else other than him I would already have decimated them to an insecure blob of jelly by now. And yet I can’t with him. Some secret part of me is craving for him to take control, to care enough to make me do it.

I nod. ‘OK.’

He grins. ‘You made that too easy. I was prepared for a huge fight.’

‘You don’t know when to stop, do you?’

He raises both hands as if to ward me off in mock alarm.

And it is impossible not to laugh. He takes me into his arms. His face is so tender it makes me feel quite strange. Our relationship seems to have suddenly become really serious. For some reason that makes me fearful. ‘I want something back from you in return.’

He stiffens imperceptibly. ‘What?’

‘Let me drive your car?’

I feel it then, that great big wave of relief that washes over him. I wonder what he thought I was going to ask of him.

‘I’m making breakfast,’ I say.

‘You are?’ His eyebrows are in his hairline. A bit irritating, that.

‘Mmmm…’

‘I’d better keep it simple then. Just eggs.’

I go to the shelf, take an egg out of the carton and throw it directly at him.

He moves so fast even I am startled. He catches it neatly between his loosely cupped hands, looks at me, and smiles wryly. ‘I really wanted cooked eggs.’

I smile. I am determined to know more of the man. I know nothing about him. I walk to the cupboard I saw him take a pan from yesterday. I take out a pan, put it on the stove and look around me.

‘Top cupboard to your right,’ he says.

I open it and take out the plastic bottle of oil. I pour the oil into the pan, wait for a minute and then smack the egg on the edge of the pan and pour it in. Great! It has kept its shape. I crack another egg and it too keeps its shape. Jaron puts two slices of bread into the toaster. He brings jam out of the fridge and puts it on the kitchen table with a bowl beside it. I really want to turn the eggs over but I dare not. I turn to look at him and he says, ’Sunny side up is fine with me.’

I breathe a sigh of relief and turn down the fire. When the toast is ready he puts it on a plate and taking a metal spatula from a drawer comes over to me. I take the metal spatula and carefully slide his eggs onto his plate. I am inordinately pleased with myself when the eggs go onto the plate unbroken. My first ever lot of cooked eggs and they turn out so great. Yay!

I look at him with a victorious grin and he is staring at me.

‘What?’

‘Thank you,’ he says softly, and I just know he is not talking about the eggs, but I am suddenly too shy to ask what. We sit at the table and I watch him shake salt and pepper on the eggs.

‘How long have you had this place?’ I ask filling my bowl with jam.

‘Five years. It’s a queen’s ninety-nine year lease,’ he says, buttering his toast.

‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No, I’m an only child,’ he says casually, but suddenly I feel the care and caution that come into his face.

‘Are your parents still around?’

‘Yes.’ His voice becomes even more distant.

‘Where do they live?’

‘In Australia.’

I feel a movement in the corner of my eye, turn to the window and see that a stork has landed in the garden. It is very beautiful. For a moment it stands very still and then it drops its head and gracefully pecks under its wing.

‘There is a stork in the garden,’ I say quietly.

‘Yeah, they drop occasionally.’

I could have turned around then, but I don’t. I am not so foolish as to turn around and expose myself to his devastating weapons. To allow him to wrap his sensual spell over me. ‘Why did you go to Monte Carlo?’

I wait for him to answer and he doesn’t so I turn to face him.

‘Why all the questions, Billie?’

‘No real reason. It just occurred to me that I know nothing about you.’

‘In time you’ll know everything there is to know.’

Suddenly I feel very naked and exposed sitting in my bikini bottoms. Jaron’s T-shirt is draped over a kitchen chair. I take it and slip it over my head. Now we are both hiding from each other.

Because of high winds the water is cloudy so we do not go snorkeling. Instead we have a sandcastle building contest. Jaron’s is bigger but mine is definitely better. Afterward he buries me in the sand. He takes photos of me and when it is his turn I give him large conical breasts and that looks really funny. We laugh a lot. He breaks out of the sand and chases me into the water. 

We swim in the nude, our bodies slipping eel-like against each other in the silky water. We start kissing in the water and end up on the beach where the waves still touch our feet and Jaron’s tongue is everywhere all at once. We make long, languorous love on the hot sand, the sun beating down on us, and the ticklish waves sometimes reaching up to our hips.

‘Sticking my cock inside you is like sticking it in a wall socket,’ he murmurs in my arms, sleepy with the exertions of pleasure.

I bury my face in the hair that smells of sun and sea and me. The reality of love has surpassed anything I could have imagined. I remember when Lana told me she was in love, and I had arrogantly claimed I never wanted to be under another person’s control or power. And now my words have come back to haunt me. My life seemed so empty before he came. I can’t even imagine life without him.

At nearly two in the afternoon we go to the mainland for lunch. Jaron wears sunglasses, which make him look like a really cool movie star. He takes me to a shack, painted bright green with purple doors and yellow window shutters. The sign is in faded blue. It’s funky. And I like it a lot. Plenty of beers are cooling in a huge metal drum full of ice. A man called Ernie whom I met at last night’s party owns the place.

He makes an especially super-strong rum punch and puts it in front of me. ‘On the house,’ he says with a broad grin.

Jaron shrugs.

‘Oh dear, looks like my reputation has preceded me,’ I say, taking a sip. It is delicious, but I remember what I have promised Jaron, and I don’t drink it as fast as I normally would.

We order barbecued chicken and sweetcorn local style. Jaron has chutney and one tiny drop of their scarily hot Scorpion Pepper Sauce, which he cautiously spreads on his chicken. It’s H-O-T-T-T hot stuff. Two drops, I am told, would make the food inedible! Even the label carries a warning to use it with discretion and not recommended for children.

I heap my plate with fried plantain (yummy) and local avocados. Just when I think I am nearly done, Ernie comes out with hot dogs and burgers. We go into the tiny town where Jaron takes me to an old bell tower church. We climb to the top and can see for miles around.

Afterward we go into a little convenience store in the town. It is a rustic, sleepy place where there are no schedules to keep and everything runs on slow time. Jaron buys some pasta for our dinner. We go back to Ernie’s to drink one of his cocktails and watch the fading light dancing over the sea and the sand. Ah, the sand. So soft, so white, so pristine.