Summer in the City (2 page)

As the waves of pleasure subsided, and our laboured breaths began to settle, she rolled over and smiled at me. There was a delicate sheen of perspiration around her temples. She extended her arms to me and drew me to her breast. And there we lay, enraptured in each other's arms, until it grew dark.

It was the height of the summer. The time when all of the city people—at least all of the city people who are able—retreat to their country houses. Bankers and brokers give up the stultifying commute to recharge for a month by the lakes or by the sea. Doctors and pharmacists make themselves only slightly less available when they kick off their city shoes and clothes, dust out their cottages in sleepy hill towns and settle in for a four-week stint.

My Aunt Francesca was no different. A teacher in the cold, short days of the year, the summers were her own and she could never get out of the city fast enough. If she wasn't cycling through Italy collecting wild herbs, she had a bright, breezy little bungalow at the seaside that was her refuge. In the summer at least, the bungalow was bright and breezy. That was the only time I'd ever seen it. In the winter, I'm sure it was dark, flimsy, and far too draughty. Aunt Francesca's lifestyle had come to suit me very well. For the past three summers she had watched me metamorphose from a girl into a young woman. As my hips filled out under my skirts, the puppy fat narrowed around my waist, and my new breasts began to strain the fabric of my tops, Aunt Francesca's trust in me grew also. So, for the past three summers, Aunt Francesca had asked for me to come into the city and look after her place while she was away. I was more than happy to oblige.

My aunt was a sensual woman whose home reflected her appreciation of the body. It was a side of her she had to carefully ignore every day she went to school. But her home was an alcove of her imagination. Statuettes of theatrical bawds with bare, upturned breasts rested on tabletops. On the walls lived sculptures of women with pink, up thrust, achingly taut nipples. And graphic novels, featuring cartoon men with great, throbbing, erect cocks, innocently adorned her bookshelves. My mother never understood why I was so anxious to look after Francesca's place, and I preferred to keep that knowledge a secret. Francesca's place had the ability to strip away from me layers of conservative modesty, so that my summers in the city made me bolder and freer. I looked longer at the passer-by; I stood nearer to friends and strangers alike; I touched more often—and longed to be touched.

This summer, my step-cousin Talia had been invited to spend a few weeks at the apartment. I'd thought to have the place to myself, and I had been unhappy to hear that Talia would share the space I had come to think of as my own. But, against my first judgement, I liked her as soon as I met her. Better still, we were different sorts of individuals. We lived separate lives and Talia was often out. But when she was in, she was as good-natured and bubbly as a pixie, full of happiness and energy but always able to listen.

I had spent the day with the boy from the café. But when Talia came home to find twisted bed sheets and a quietly euphoric step-cousin, I had no intention of explaining myself.

The boy had gone and, as the time had drawn on into the evening, Talia and I had settled into Aunt Francesca's wide, plump bed. We drank cold white wine while we talked about our families, and about what her aunt could possibly see in my uncle. The best shower in the house was adjacent to Francesca's bedroom and I had decided to bathe there, even though I would sleep in the other bedroom.

As I stepped out of the shower the summer air softened the cool drops of water on my skin. I saw, through the crevice in the door, that Talia had begun to prepare for bed as well. As she crossed back and forth through my line of sight, she shed her regimented and purposeful clothes of the day until she moved about the room entirely naked. Her little feet danced off the soft carpet as she made her way around the room, in no hurry to dress. Her body was small and lithe, almost pubescent, and I found I enjoyed watching her move. She truly was like a pixie—small breasts, delicate musculature, gentle hips and soft little legs. Still, there was strength in her body; an ease and a pride that she could not pretend didn't exist even if she'd wanted to. I must have watched her longer than I'd meant to. It was as though she felt my appraisal of her when her gaze fell suddenly upon me as I watched her through the gap in the door. She seemed not to find it uncomfortable that I saw her naked. Her eyes took note of my body, as I had watched hers. We were two people who crested a mountain at the same time but from opposite sides. Two people who'd told all their secrets and had nothing left to hide. I guess that's what we are when we are naked—people on the same plane, unobscured and without secrets. A giggle bubbled up from her throat as we looked at each other and she put her hands to her mouth as she laughed. She was not laughing at us…or even from embarrassment. She was laughing because she was happy; happy that we had seen each other—knew each other—were unafraid of each other's vulnerability. She skipped out of my eye line and put on a big, soft t-shirt before tumbling into bed.

I put on my own bedtime attire, poured another glass of wine and dropped into bed beside Talia to finish the conversation we had halted when I went to shower. But before we could resume, the phone rang.

“Hi, baby!” she exclaimed after she'd answered, and I could hear the voice of her boyfriend on the other end.

Left to my own devices, I picked up my book to begin where I'd left off. But Talia's tone made her conversation more interesting.

As I tried to read, I heard her say softly, “No, baby, I'm not alone. Stephanie's here.”

In the pages of my book, somewhere in South America, a Turk had taken a wife—a languid, sultry, voluptuous woman who took no interest whatsoever in him.

Talia giggled. “Shhh,” she said into the phone. “You're making me blush…and my cousin's here!”

His voice was muted through the phone but I heard him ask, “Where are you?”

“In bed,” she said.

“And what are you wearing in bed?”

“A t-shirt.”

“That's it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You never wear clothes to bed. I'm afraid you'll have to take it off.”

Talia glanced at me and blushed. “Not with Stephanie here,” she whispered.

The Turk's wife lay naked on her bed. She kept a young girl who attended to her. The girl would pluck the fine, delicate hairs from the body of the Turk's wife until the nude, fertile flesh was as smooth as cream.

“How can you imagine me touching you if you're dressed?” came through the phone. “How can you imagine standing with your back to me…my cock stiffening against your ass…My warm, broad hands moving around your little waist, up under your arms and over your breasts….How will you feel that if you're dressed?”

Talia breathed deeply. Once in. Once out. She drew her knees up to her chin as if trying to entrap her burgeoning desire before I became aware of it. She might have been too late.

In the hot, equatorial air the naked flesh of the Turk's wife was cool and malleable. The girl would adorn the woman with bright gold jewelry until the woman lay as regal as a queen, but as innocent and ripe as Erendira. The girl clasped necklaces around the woman's neck and delighted as the woman's proud, expansive breasts rocked and the pendants nestled into the deep, buttery cleavage.

“You can't do this to me,” Talia chided softly. “I'll never get to sleep tonight.”

“I can't help it,” I heard him say. “I miss you. I miss the way you laugh, and the way you look at me when we make love. I miss the way you hold my ass and push me deep inside you…and I miss the way your pussy quivers and your fingers dig into my skin when you cum.”

She laughed again and put her hand on her tummy as if remembering that very orgasm and how deeply it had gripped her. “I….you…..” she began, and glanced at me again.

I must have looked convincingly absorbed in my book. She continued to her lover in a voice barely thicker than a breath. “It's your fault…..You make me lose control.”

Laying so close to Talia, I could feel the warmth as her skin flushed with longing.

“I've got to go,” he said. “Goodnight, baby.” And he was gone.

Talia was breathing quickly but softly as she took the phone away from her ear. She held the handset in one limp hand, staring straight ahead as if the life force at the end of that line had suddenly cut her adrift. Her t-shirt had ridden up over her hips and I noted how the curve of her bottom swept up into the back of her thigh. I felt a quick pang of affectionate curiosity when I thought of her lover, and of what he knew about the secrets that lay just there—warm and lonely, beneath the hem of her shirt.

I turned back to my book, but my attention was drifting.

When I focused again and allowed the shapes to become words, the girl in my book had bathed her hedonic mistress so that all of her luxuriant womanhood smelled of cloves and cinnamon. Together the girl and the woman had lay down and slept in the drowsy, pungent afternoon heat of the tropics.

Talia had slowly replaced the phone. She was still distracted.

“It's very hot,” she said absently. “I'm gonna take off my shirt.”

I didn't answer. But she wasn't asking my permission.

She lifted her shirt effortlessly over her head and threw it to the floor. She became like a dryad, such a natural thing—a truly elemental being. Seeing her so close to me, so naked, I felt I could never imagine her any differently. Her skin was soft and hairless, like the wife of the Turk. Although Talia herself was petite.

“You're like the woman in this book,” I told her. “But more delicate.”

Talia saw me looking at her body and smiled as I watched her.

I reached out and touched the back of her thigh—where I had been looking—with the back of my hand. “But your skin is hot,” I told her. “The woman in this book is cool to touch.”

“I'm sorry, Stephanie,” she said, almost in a daze. “But I was so hot.”

“Don't be sorry,” I said gently, and moved my hand to the centre of her belly where the embers of her want burned more fiercely. “You are very warm.”

She pulled a strand of hair away from my face and caressed my cheek.

I thought of the girl and the woman lying naked together in the mythic boudoir of my book. And I wanted to feel that closeness. I sat up and moved to take off my clothes. But Talia's hands were already at the hem of my camisole. In one motion she invited me to join her in her nudity, and she drew my clothing up and off in a single movement.

As my shirt came over my head, Talia's lips met mine. She surprised me, first with her kiss, then with the softness of her lips. She trembled slightly as I pulled her smaller body towards mine. Our breasts and bellies pressed together as she put her arms around me.

“Why are you shaking?” I asked her.

I smiled at her and pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead.

“Because I felt so…..I didn't know if you……”

I silenced her as I put my mouth to hers. As I kissed her with curious lips, as I caressed her with reassuring hands, it was like a dam burst in her. Her tongue slid into my mouth hungrily and without hesitation. She tasted sweet and deep to my palate and I let her know how good she tasted as my own sighs rumbled back into her mouth. Her hands became more assured and she began to discover the secret, sensitive places on my body. Her fingers ran over my shoulders, the backs of my arms and underneath, making the globes of my breasts prickle with goose-bumps.

Playfully, she rose up on her knees and tried to topple me. But I am bigger and taller than she, and she giggled as she realised she could not force me down by weight alone. I wrapped my arms tightly around her and drew her to me. I was amazed at how little and soft she was. When I hold a man, it is me who is the smaller. So it was a new and powerful thing to consider that I could overpower this lover. When I press a man to me as closely as this, I can always feel his cock throbbing against my belly. Here now, I only felt Talia's smooth belly and thighs, and a slight hint of the pouting mound of her pussy. My hands explored more of her body, admiring the tiny curve of her womb, leading me to her vagina.

I could tell by her wide eyes and the thumping of her heart that she was as excited as I. Long ago I'd felt my honey start to flow from that secret place deep inside me. I knew that if I parted the outer lips of Talia's pussy, even slightly, her opening would quickly become slippery with dew. But I had to touch. I had to know. I sat back against the headboard and drew Talia's back to me. With a rough playfulness that I was starting to enjoy, I straddled Talia between my legs as she reclined against me.

Her legs parted. Cautiously at first. Then casually. And then proudly, as my hands found their way to her sex. The spreading of her legs had already encouraged her pussy lips to open. And even as my hands found her petals, I saw she had begun to glisten. She laid her head back onto my shoulder as my fingers met the plump, round bowl of her vagina. I traced my way to the tiny, glistening opening and reveled in its sensual shape. From the vocal seductions of her lover, to her excitement at our experimentation, Talia was already so wonderfully wet. I realised how much I loved the feeling of her fleshy, pliant bits giving way immediately to slippery smoothness. I worked her honey into the clefts between her plump outer lips and inner petals, slowly working towards her little pink button—which was becoming harder to avoid. She bucked slightly. Her eyes rolled back and she laid her cheek against mine as I put light pressure on her clit.