Unlock Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy E-Short Part 0.5) (3 page)

She has never shared her apartment with anyone else, not since her mother left. It still startles her how easily it all fell into place, the fact of Theo moving in. She knows why she asked him. It was a knee-jerk reaction to her mother’s warning. Is he using her? Instinctively she rejects the suggestion. He was so hesitant about accepting her offer. Asked her several times if she was sure. There
is
something different about him. Already he has seen her at her lowest, and he didn’t leave.

Valentina knots the end of the sheet around her finger, pulls it tight. A ring of white cotton pinching her flesh, making her bite her lip. It’s because he doesn’t take anything for granted, she thinks; despite his easy life, he never stops trying to please her.

She lies back down on the bed and smiles up at the ceiling, studying each glinting crystal of the chandelier as she dwells on last night. She tentatively runs her tongue over her lips. She can still taste him. She savours the saltiness of her lover as she recalls how she caressed him with her mouth, pushing him as far as he could go, not stopping despite his plea to be inside her. She would not allow it. She wanted everything to be focused on him. And so she kept on going: licking, teasing with her teeth, flicking her tongue around his length and squeezing his velvet hardness tight between her lips. She needed to feel his abandon inside her mouth. His vulnerability, and her power. She had taken him over the edge. And when Theo cried out her name, it was like a flare to her heart. Burning her and yet warming her at the same time, filling her with the dual sensations of fear and satisfaction. How could that be? Normally she doesn’t like her lovers to speak, let alone cry out. She always insists on making love in silence. She hates false proclamations of love, uttered in the heat of passion. Yet Theo called to her, and deep down inside her there was an answering echo, despite her conscious denial. Now the salty flavour of him lingers still upon her lips. No wonder she dreamt of the sea.

SHE RETURNS AT DAWN, TO ENTER HER OWN DEEP LAGOON
of dreaming. She stretches on her back, her arms flung upwards and grasping her bedstead, her toes pointed, the sheets entwined around her naked body. Through a chink in the curtains she can see the pink blush of day. She hears a blackbird call to her and she imagines it sitting on her balcony, its oily feathers sleek in the morning light, singing as freely as her spirit feels. She closes her eyes and remembers the sensations of the night, a stranger’s skin against her skin, and the musky scent of shared desire.

She doesn’t feel wicked, nor does she feel good. She is detached from these emotions. She listens to the church bells of Venice, in time with the beat of her heart and the measured lap of the canal outside her window. She pushes her hand across her brow, lifting her hair as if to feel for fever, but in reality remembering the heat of his hand upon her forehead, less than two hours ago.

It is 1929. Picture her now, Signora Louise Brzezinska as Miss Louise Brooks. They are kindred spirits, she and the actress. Women who wish to share their sexuality, their eroticism and their affection. Despite her husband’s possession, Louise cannot live just one life with him. She is impelled to take risks because she needs to be another Louise. The Louise who plays the part of Belle, starring in her own private drama.

It happened quite by accident the first time. She was on her way to a costume party. Her husband was abroad and she had decided to be brave and attend on her own. She had been looking forward to it for so long. Her life had become unbearably dull, every day filled with running the household and looking after her husband’s needs. The only time they seemed to go out was to Mass. The party offered her some small escape, especially since she was required to dress up. She liked dressing up. She liked being another woman.

She decided to be daring, since her husband was not at home to be disapproving, and copied the image on a postcard from an arcade machine in America which one of her husband’s associates had given her, of a young woman dressed in Egyptian costume. Since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb a few years ago, she had been fascinated by Egyptian imagery. She had found some books in her husband’s library on the ancient gods of Egypt, and had spent hours studying Horus and Thoth, with their bird heads, and sinister Anubis, half man, half jackal, guardian of the dead and yet potent with sexuality. Sometimes during the solitary days when she seemed to spend every hour poring over these books, she would dream of Anubis, his splendid dog face snarling, licking, biting, while his human half was inside her, satisfying her in a way her husband never could.

This particular night Louise wanted to be Egyptian precisely because it gave her these sensations, the mixture of seduction and the macabre. She had her seamstress make her a shimmering outfit: a long transparent gown of black chiffon decorated with gold beading worn underneath a cream silk skirt that parted at the centre. This was held in place by a sheath of rich gold damask tied around her waist and curving beneath her behind, emphasising its outline. On her top half she wore dark silk, sleeveless, split down either side right to the waist. Over this was an embroidered garment that was little more than a brassiere encrusted with thick gold beading. On her head she wore a gold band neatly clipped around her black bob. The outfit was more than daring and Louise loved it.

It had been her intention to take a gondola down the canal to the party, but at the last minute she decided against it. Although it was a warm night, her maid, Pina, insisted she wear a light woollen stole draped around her shoulders, fearful that her mistress was a little too under-dressed for propriety. She had begged her to wear one of her furs, but Louise claimed it was too hot.

Louise listened to the sound of her heels ringing out on the cobbles of Venice. She loved to walk in this city. Sometimes she would let herself get lost and disappear for hours, much to the annoyance of her husband. This night she chose a circuitous route to the party, since she didn’t want to arrive too early. It was a quiet, empty trail through the city, and she was sure her husband would disapprove of her reckless behaviour, but there was a part of Louise that could not help but disobey him. It gave her satisfaction even though he would never know.

She had just passed Campo San Polo when she paused on one of the little bridges. Putting her hands on the balustrade, she looked out at a corner of Canal Grande which she could see from where she stood. Here in Venice the streets were like a network of narrow branches stretching and reaching across a great sky of water. Sometimes she felt marooned. It could be a haven, or it could be a kind of jail. She reached into her bag, took out her cigarette case and snapped it open. The walking had made her hot, and she hoped her cheeks were not too red from the exertion. She would have one cigarette before she moved on so that she could compose herself. She wanted to look cool and aloof when she arrived, just like a dark Egyptian soul. She pulled her stole from her shoulders and looked at it in disgust. Louise Brooks would not be seen dead in such a mediocre garment. In a moment of abandon, she dropped it into the canal. She hated that stole. She shook her head and adjusted the gold band around her head.

‘Shall I rescue that for you?’ A man had appeared by her side. She started in surprise.

‘No thank you,’ she said, turning to look at him.

He was not a tall man, but he had a beautiful face. Dark honey eyes, and a soft curly moustache. He looked young. Maybe the same age as her. Perhaps younger. She took a drag of her cigarette and stared at him. She saw the surprise in his eyes at her audacity.

‘Are you going to a costume party?’ he asked, indicating her attire.

‘No, sometimes I dress like this because I want to,’ she lied, enjoying the suggestion in her answer. She put her head on one side and smiled at him. He smiled back, and she noticed that he had a little chip in one of his front teeth. A thought came unbidden into her head. How it would feel for him to tease her nipple between his teeth; how would it feel for the sharp broken edge of his front tooth to catch on her skin? She looked into his eyes and his pupils had dilated so that they were almost black. He took a tentative step towards her, and she didn’t move.

‘Are you working?’ he asked, so quietly it was as if the water beneath the bridge spoke.

Working?
What could he mean?

He stepped forward again. From the glint in his eye, and his hand in his breast pocket, fingering some notes that he had begun to remove, she now understood what he meant.

He was up close. She could feel his excitement through his trousers as he pressed against the light layers of her skirt, which shifted easily as soon as he touched them to reveal her bare leg. For one so young, how bold he was to approach a woman he thought was a prostitute. Surely he had a beau? He was handsome, looked respectable, and yet she smelt it on him, his potent sexuality, just like her.

‘How much?’ he whispered.

She shivered with fear and excitement. She should have slapped him and walked away, but she didn’t. Her lips went dry, but she tried to keep up her sanguine façade. She named a figure, not knowing if it was the going rate, as she stabbed her cigarette out on the parapet of the bridge. She could see her hand shaking uncontrollably as if in shock at her own words. She grasped it tightly with her other hand, stilling her astonishment.
What exactly was she doing?

He counted out the notes, looking around him to make sure no one was watching, and handed them to her. She didn’t even glance at them as she stuffed them into her bag.

‘Where?’ he asked urgently, his hand around her wrist as if he was worried that she might flee now that she had his money.

Where?
She hadn’t thought of that. She could hardly take this stranger home. And even if she could, she knew that if she didn’t follow her instinct right this very moment, she never would. She would give him back his money. She might still walk away.

Yet at the same time as her doubt, another emotion emerged: a sense of power she hadn’t felt since before she got married. Louise was in control again.

‘Over there,’ she said, her voice low and husky, indicating a tiny alcove on the other side of the bridge, barely visible from the street.

He expected her to do it. This was the thrill. After thirteen years of her husband deciding when they would have sex, and being in charge – she was never allowed to actually touch his penis; just had to lie back and let him do his business – this young man wanted her to touch him. She reached out, her hands shaking with anticipation. It felt different from how she had expected. Softer, yet stronger. She squeezed hard and then relaxed her grip. She felt his penis nuzzled into her palm as if it was a being in its own right. Her back was against the old Venetian wall as he pulled aside her skirt, as simply as if he were opening a curtain. He fingered her for a few moments, and it was a delicious sensation. Her husband had never touched her here before. She pulled her silk underwear down and opened her legs wide. With his penis between her hands, she pushed him into her.

She was in Ancient Egypt now, in a dark tomb of desire. She was Anubis’s love slave. The young man growled into her neck, and together they rocked backwards. He lifted one of her legs so that it hooked around his back. Oh, this young one has done this before, she thought. It excited her to imagine that he believed she was experienced too. All he wanted from her was sex. He licked her neck hungrily, pushing up into her. She pulled her silk top back from her chest, and yanked down the brassiere. She put her hand behind his neck, forcing his head down to her breast. Oh yes, she could feel him sucking, and that broken tooth dragging on her nipple. He pushed in and out of her, faster and faster, and she was moving with him, not lying like a dead woman as she did for her husband. She was making love with her Egyptian jackal god. She desired him, and yet she feared him. He was burying her under layers of his touch. The deep earth of her longing was reaching into her and extracting her passion. Ah, she thought, sex is not death like it is with my husband. It is the life in death.

And now Louise was so deep inside her jackal god that she was no longer flesh and blood, no longer a woman, but gold dust dancing in the night air, a tiny part of Ancient Egypt brought alive in Venice. It had been so long, so,
so
long since she had felt these sensations. She was full of this young man’s penis. She sensed her vibrations exciting him, and he sped up, biting her nipple as he came, and jolting her up towards him so that he was deep inside her, deeper than her husband had ever been.

A moment’s breath and the young man pulled out. He was grinning with delight but she refused to smile, although she was proud of the effect she had had on him. It had made her happier than she had been in a long time.

‘Good night, madam,’ he said, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it delicately like a true gallant before disappearing across the bridge.

Louise was left shaking. She was shocked. Not at what she had done, no, she did not feel ashamed or disgusted with herself. Her shock was at the discovery of who she was. A vessel for lovemaking. She knew it in her heart, just as anyone who has a calling does. She had never felt so alive, so whole, so elated. What was love without sex? It couldn’t be real love. Yet what her husband classed as sex she would call procreation. The only reason he touched her was because he wanted a child. What had happened just now was sexual liberty in all its glory. Louise and this boy sharing their desires in a dark alcove in the backwaters of Venice. This was her freedom.

She rearranged her clothing. Took out another cigarette and smoked it, looking at the moon reflected in the canal. Her discarded shawl lay upon its surface like a gaping wound within its silver orb. An omen of pain to come, she feared, and yet she wondered if she would ever be brave enough to do again what she had just done. She tossed her half-smoked cigarette into the canal and set off towards the party.