The Blue Guide (15 page)

We grow silent, each lost to our private thoughts about love and fate. I lean back and adjust my position until the jets are pummelling me. Immediately I feel myself begin to slacken and relax as the tension is worked from my muscles. I close my eyes. Perhaps I will sleep well tonight after all.

I give myself up, picturing the different areas of my body as the jets pry at them like eager fingers. My lower back, my shoulders, my hands, the soles of my feet, my inner thigh . . .

My eyes open. I look down, then up at Carlotta. Her eyes are closed too, and there's a warm sleepy smile on her face. Her arm is moving from side to side, and I'd bet a million pounds I know where her hand is.

And where her foot is for that matter. I jump up, reach for my towel, and Carlotta's beautiful eyes flutter open, hold mine fast.

‘Where you going?' she says in a lazy, clotted voice. Her arm, I notice, has not stopped moving. I can't handle this.

‘I'm overheating,' I say. ‘I'll see you back in the changing room.'

By my locker I stand embarrassed, perplexed, wondering if I overreacted. Was that really Carlotta's foot creeping up between my legs, and even if it was, did she know where it was straying? The girl was clearly having a bit of sneaky pussy play; she probably wasn't paying too much attention to what was happening to her feet.

I sit on the bench for a while, and when Carlotta doesn't show up I decide she's probably enjoying herself too much to get out. I'll kill some time in the steam
room. I've never used one but have always wondered what they're like.

Bloody hot, is what they are. I guess that goes without saying. But it's a kind of heat you would probably only experience in nature at midday in a tropical forest at the height of summer. The ferocious dry heat of a sauna seems almost bearable next to this fuzz of hot steam and floating water. Your every pore is open and your lungs feel like they're filling and it's like you're drowning and suffocating all at once.

I lie down on my towel, wriggle out of Carlotta's bikini, thinking that might make me more comfortable. It will get more bearable in a moment, I keep telling myself, and besides, all the sweating will be great for expelling the toxins from my body. But the booze must still be in my bloodstream, combining with the heat to rapidly send me into some kind of trance.

It's all I can do to open even one eye when I hear, muffled by the steam, the click of the door. I turn my head with effort, peer through the clouds, but see nothing. Something else I must have imagined. I open my eye again, not convinced, and she's there, naked, in front of me – the divine Carlotta.

The first thing I notice – I can't really miss it given that her bush is on a level with my face – is that she's got a Brazilian, like me, rather than a Hollywood. So there's a fuzzy little strip of pale hair reaching from the top of her mons down to where her lips begin. From between the latter protrudes a fat purplish clit, like a little questing tongue.

In fact, that's all I have time to notice before Carlotta's swung one leg over me where I lie and is straddling me. As I feel the pressure of her groin on mine, she falls forward, and somewhere in amongst the cloud of blonde hair that falls about my head and
shoulders I feel her mouth on my neck, on my earlobe, on my own mouth. I open mine, and our tongues and teeth slurp and clash as we almost eat at other's faces.

Then she breaks away, sitting up on me, and I open my eyes and realise I can't even see her face, can't see her shoulders or her breasts through the thick steam. There's just this little rounded belly and that beautiful blonde cunt.

I'm reaching out for her but I don't have a clue where to begin. She must know that, must know I'm a novice where this is concerned. At a loss, I bunch two fingers together and slip them between her pussy lips, rub gently at that clit resembling the bud on some huge flower.

‘That's it,' she encourages. ‘Only harder.'

I increase the pressure at the same time as I feel her mashing herself down on my fingers, rocking back and forth. I feel a little braver, reach further between her legs and gently dab my fingers at the pink frill of her sphincter. Meeting no opposition, I slip a finger inside, while with the other hand I take her clitoris between my thumb and forefinger and give it a little tweak. She squeals, starts juddering backwards and forwards. I put another finger up her arse, start thrusting, and I'm amazed when she throws back her head and the muscles of her throat bulge and then slacken repeatedly as she gives voice to her rapture, arms folded behind her head, breasts shuddering like jellies on a plate.

Lesbianism, I'm thinking to myself as she sits panting on top of me, trying to catch her breath, is really just a matter of doing unto others as you do to yourself. Unlike with men, you have the advantage of knowing first-hand what a woman's body likes, what gets her going, which buttons to push when she's burning for an orgasm and won't take no for an answer. After all, if
you don't come up with the goods, she's perfectly able to sort herself out – maybe with a little help from a vibrator in one or other orifice, though it's surprising what you can achieve with your own fingers and a little imagination.

Speaking of which – Carlotta has recovered from her shock at being brought to a juddering climax by a novice lesbian in about five seconds flat and is repaying the compliment with a two-pronger approach on my own arse and pussy from behind. She's flipped me over onto the tiled bench, and my breasts are squidging and sliding and slapping around on the wet surface as she pushes in and out, thumb in my arsehole, two fingers in my cunt. And then three, and then four. Slowly she leans down on top of me, reaches round me and cups one of my breasts in her palm, clamps the nipple between her fingers. In-between nibbling at my shoulders, she's moaning in my ear: 'Licia. Oh, 'Licia.'

We slink and slide against each other like this for a while, and then she says, more forcefully, ‘Touch yourself, baby. Your clitoris.'

I bring my hand down, gently tease apart my upper lips with thumb and index finger to give my middle finger the best purchase on my little pink nub. The stimulation of my nipple, my clit, my cunt and my arsehole all at once is a rare occurrence and proves too much – my climax rips through me with the force of an explosion, leaving me heaped on the bench like a rag-doll. Meanwhile, above me, on top of me, Carlotta is so excited she's frigging herself off again, and in spite of all the moisture in the room I feel her juices leaking all over my back when she starts to buck and scream. As she does, I roll myself underneath her and ease my hand into her in time to feel her contracting around the fist I make of it.

Then suddenly she's quiet, flopped over me, my hand still inside her, feeling the pulses of her orgasm die away like a ship's beacons as it travels out into the night, bound for strange shores. Her breath is ragged, ruined, in my ear. I hold her to me, like a child in need of consolation. I think she may be crying, and I wonder if I will too.

We're subdued, afterwards, in the club lounge of the hotel, where a complimentary afternoon tea is laid on. I was all for rushing away, but Carlotta insisted we talk about what has happened between us. And she's right – if I ran home and avoided the issue, I'd spend all night worrying about facing up to her again. Far better to get it all out in the open, set out our respective stalls.

I'm expecting Carlotta to tell me it was all a big mistake, that it mustn't happen again, especially given her serious expression as she toys with her plate of fancy little cakes and fiddles with her teaspoon. And all considered, that would be the sensible thing to do. She's married, and I'm her husband's employee, for the time being. The fact that I've been fucking her husband is an extra complication she doesn't need to know about.

‘Listen,' she says, avoiding my eyes for a moment, looking everywhere but at me, then suddenly fixing me with an almost pleading gaze. ‘I think I need tell you this, but Paco is
not
to know what happen. He – he more vulnerable than he seem, and I think my infidelity will be a knife through his heart. I fear what he do.'

I nod dumbly, heart pounding both at the irony of what she's said and my doubts over my ability to keep myself from breaking into hysterical laughter. But then she surprises me, both by what she says and the way
she says it, a little shyly, like a nervous teenager trying to summon up the guts to propose a first date.

‘I want to see you again, Alicia. Not – not
just
as my chaperone. I mean as we are just now. I
want
you.'

My belly lurches, and I realise there's no chance I'd turn down the offer of re-experiencing a little of what Carlotta and I had in the steam room. If I'd known it could be that much fun with a girl before, I wouldn't have waited this long.

And then of course there's the flattery of it, of this bronze goddess actively wanting to fuck me, wanting
my
breasts,
my
pussy,
my
arse. Bestowing
hers
on me, like the most precious of gifts. A jewel box concealing rare and priceless gems, glittering beneath my touch. All those men who look at Carlotta's body in the streets, in the bars, in the galleries, as it oozes out of her clingy little dresses. And it's mine for the taking. All mine. And Paco's of course.

I'm thinking all this, and Carlotta must take my dumbstruck silence for a refusal, or at least a hesitation, for in a few moments she leans forwards and whispers, plaintively, like a lost little girl, ‘
Please,
'Licia.'

I grasp her hand over the table, lean forwards. ‘Of course,' I say, smiling. ‘You just try keeping me away.'

At home, a handful of messages await; in among them there's one from Daniel. I tut as I hear his voice; Carlotta has more than distracted me from thoughts of that little rat and his no-show.

‘I'm
so
sorry about earlier, Alicia,' he says. In the background I can hear flight numbers being called. ‘My jacket went missing at lunch, and with it my cellphone with your number on, not to mention all my credit cards, passport, etc. It was a bit of a panic. Eventually
they found it – a long and boring story to do with a cloakroom attendant who'd gone off duty – but when I called your cell it was just going through to messages, and I guessed you must have been with your afternoon client by then.'

Yes, I think bitterly. I was otherwise engaged. In all likelihood I was flat on my back with superstud flamenco dancer Paco Manchega between my legs. Either that, or I was in the spa with his blonde bombshell of a wife, his nubile new bride, feeling the spread of her pussy lips on the small of my back as she climaxed for the second time. So don't worry about me, Daniel. I had more than my fair share of fun. I'm in demand – maybe not by you, but that's your loss.

He's winding up his message with some trite comment about still wanting to do some more tours next time he's in town, and promising he'll take me out to dinner to make up for what happened today, but I can hardly bear to listen and I press the delete button and go on to the next message and decide, once and for all, to forgot about Daniel Lubowski. He hurt me before; he won't do it again.

It won't be hard to forget, I think – not with Carlotta Manchega in my life. It's funny, I muse, that it is her I am falling for and not Paco, given that I've always thought of myself as hetero. Given how gorgeous Paco is. But I feel somehow detached from Paco, whereas I have begun to consider Carlotta a friend, of sorts. Perhaps that's what made the sex so intense.

But soon enough, it occurs to me now, I'm going to have to face up to the fact that she and Paco are going to be heading back to Madrid. I'm hoping, given what she said over afternoon tea, that we'll stay in touch. They're bound to come back to London before long, and
when they do I will want to see her. But I won't press her for now: let's see how it goes over the next week before making any plans or promises.

I decide to go to bed early: Carlotta wanted to venture east tomorrow, to see some of the small commercial art galleries such as Victoria Miro and White Cube2. After that, she'd said with a roguish twinkle, we should find somewhere
cosy
.

I pull my duvet up, think of that mass of blonde hair descending on me, of that mouth on me, of those breasts pressing down against mine and that groin – rubbing, rubbing, desperate for me. Bloody hell, I think, I fucked a woman, and not just any old woman, but this amazing creature Carlotta.

I think guiltily of Jess: she left a message too, wants to ‘catch up'. I don't even know what happened with her barman yet. But I can't call her now, can't tell her that not only have I broken my promise to her but I've actually been frolicking with both Paco and his wife. She'll go mad, come round to my flat and read me the riot act (albeit wanting to hear all the titillating details about the spa, no doubt). I start to drift off, fingers caressing my pussy, thinking about Carlotta. Jess will have to wait for another time.

In the morning, I wake with the remnants of an orgasm rippling through me, and I know I've just come in my sleep. I sit up, feeling all warm and beatific. I must have been dreaming of Carlotta, I think, and then I have a moment of panic: what if the whole thing in the spa was a dream? What if I never had Carlotta, can never have Carlotta? How will I go on?

But the phone rings, and as soon as I hear Carlotta's voice, the new edge to it, I know that what happened was no dream.

‘Let leave the galleries for tomorrow,' she breathes. ‘Paco going out in half an hour, for all day. Come here.'

I dress rapidly, tucking my still-damp pussy into a pair of nearly-nude Lejaby knickers that I team with a matching bra. As it doesn't seem we're going to be leaving the hotel at all today and I don't need to look particularly smart, I slip on my skinniest jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt, with a tailored black cord jacket over the top. I'm in too much of a hurry to bother with a bath or shower, especially when I know my pants will be soaked through with excitement by the time I've got to the hotel. But I take a little time over my hair, brushing it carefully before folding it up into a loose chignon. Afterwards, I feel confident adding the barest hint of mascara and Kiehl's lip balm – my complexion is glowing with health and vitality, unsurprisingly given all this strenuous activity.