Chapter 8
Joanna and Mayo Kinsolving moved in a zombie-like trance during the days following that disastrous dinner at the De Fonseca home. They lived together-existed together would be more apt-they moved within the confines of their hotel room, they ate and slept together.
They spoke to each other in monosyllables, their conversations dealt with only the most essential exigencies of their daily rounds. Was Joanna ready to go down for dinner yet? Don't wait up, Roul and I will be late. Aimee and I will be shopping all day.
Otherwise they might as well have been mutes.
There was the one aborted confrontation. The one time they tried to explain what had happened that night, what forces had driven them to that debauch. A conversation Mayo had cut short with a shouted: "Okay, so we're both degenerates, we can't go on living with this lurking in the back of our minds. We'll call things quit. Fine."
"That isn't what I want, Mayo," Joanna had said. "There must be some other way. We have to talk out, understand what made us act that way...."
"Well that's what I want. Out! I'll accept my share of the blame, I'll do right by you in the settlement."
"Please, Mayo, listen to reason. Other couples have had troubles, they've managed to...."
"Not troubles like these. Skip it, Joanna. I'm done, fed up. You might as well book a flight right now, get things rolling in Peoria. Anything you and that vampire lawyer decide will be all right with me."
"Won't you come with me?"
"No, damn it! Can't you understand? This subsidiary plant, these European franchises come first. I'll stay here until this whole deal's wrapped up neat and tidy. Take off, catch the first plane out of here."
Still Joanna hadn't given up. This was her husband, this was her marriage. Time would confer perspective; they'd find an exit from this impasse. And even if they did have to live like virtual strangers these remaining few days-
Something would happen. Something had to happen! What, she couldn't begin to imagine. What did she expect to happen? And remembering those futile hopes during their first days in Paris, that same ephemeral something, she wanted desperately to cry.
Only there were no tears left now. She'd expended them in sick surfeit of grief and shame during those days immediately following her one and only infidelity to her husband. There were times when she couldn't really make herself believe the betrayal had happened. Looking closely at Roul those few times they'd been together since, seeing the imperturbably noncommittal expression in his eyes, it was incredible to even think of being in bed with him, letting him do those heathen things to her.
There were other times however, when, tired, dispirited and lonely, she remembered all too clearly. When she was sexually piqued, when she all but wallowed in memory of that exotic night. And as she actually trembled, actually yearned after repetition of that soul-igniting love, she knew the event hadn't been merely imagination, byproduct of too much drink. This hadn't been emotional D.T.'s.
Roul had driven her out of her mind, he'd transported her to the stars. She had screamed, clawed and writhed beneath him, she had uttered all those pagan profanities.
Small wonder Joanna thought more and more often of suicide of late. She was truly mixed up. More mixed up than she'd ever dreamed she could possibly be.
As further evidence of the illusory dream-world she and Mayo sleepwalked through was the fact that they could even tolerate being in the De Fonsecas' presence after what had happened. Civilized? Joanna raged now. Sophisticated ?
Just how civilized, how sophisticated can the world get?
Theirs was the craziest of arrangements. They met for dinners, they went sightseeing, there were casual encounters. Yesterday Joanna and Aimee had gone to the Louvre, had spent almost six hours there, Aimee very knowledgeable in artistic matters, guiding her predominantly through the modernists. Yet, not once, during that time, had either referred to that night in the De Fonseca boudoirs.
Looking at the chick, aristocratic woman, thinking that she had taken Mayo to bed with her, that she knew Joanna had gone to bed with her Roul, Joanna was stunned and confused. Here when we should be clawing at each other, railing, spitting out dirty names-
They'd talked about art.
They'd acted like nothing had ever happened, as if their orgiastic swap had been something apart, something existing in another, phantasmal world.
They'd even made plans for a shopping jaunt this afternoon. They were visiting the salons of Yves Saint-Laurent, Aimee had an in there.
Civilized? Joanna thought anew. No, not civilized. Unreal, insane. Weird, weird-
Luckily Joanna wasn't allowed to pursue the unsettling train of thought further. The telephone rang at that moment, provided welcome distraction.
Aimee was on the line. "Darling," she purred, "I have to make a small change in our plans, I hope you won't mind. I know it's rather late-"
Joanna was surprised to find it was almost noon. "No, that's perfectly all right. What is it?"
"An old school friend of mine has just arrived. I'm with her now. We're having lunch at her place. I wonder if you could stop by here first. Then the three of us will go on. You'll love Claudine."
"Surely. Give me the address, please. I have a pad and pencil." She rapidly scribbled down the street and number, confirmed the spelling. "At two instead of one. Fine, Aimee. I'll be there."
Still, numbed by the enormity of her transgressions during the past few days, glad for diversion, Joanna never for a moment thought the phone call suspect. She turned, marshaled her thoughts. She had to baths, choose some special ingerie, an appropriate gown for a visit to such elite couturier's. Then there was the matter of a quick lunch. This Claudine of Aimee's sounded interesting. But on the other hand, if she was as emancipated, as much a free-thinker as Aimee-
Joanna hurried toward the bathroom, throwing off her peignoir as she ran.
The building at which the cabbie dropped Joanna was a structure of fairly modern design, surprisingly near the metropolitan part of Paris. It was tall for Paris, sported four stories, was obviously an apartment building. Shrugging, she entered the foyer. Finding no guard door to impede her, she went directly to the small self-service elevator, pushed the three button. She checked her crumpled note.
Moments later she stood before room 320, wondered at the ominous silence within. If Aimee and an old school friend were catching up on old times. There should certainly be sounds of chatter, female laughter. Again she shrugged, pushed the buzzer.
Almost with a rush the door was flung open. "Oh!" Joanna gasped. "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong apartment-" Then her vision focused, the male figure was immediately recognizable. Roul! I...."
She wheeled, tried to flee. B ut the man was too fast for her; his hand shot out, clamped to her wrist with a steel grip. Joanna was amazed at the mans' strength, at the swiftness with which he whisked her into the room. "Joanna, pet," he slurred, "don't be afraid ... I won't hurt you." Now the door slammed behind her, she heard the click of the lock, the rasp of the safety chain.
"Roul, no!" she choked. "This is insane. I don't want ... " The rest of her protests were drowned out. As the man pulled her viciously into his arms, fought her face into submission with his own. As he seared her lips with a painful, dominating kiss. A brutal kiss. A strange, exciting kiss. A kiss that gradually made Joanna feel weak, helpless, almost dependent.
Her brain rebelled at that last moment. As, the kiss going on, she found herself going limp in his arms, found herself almost yearning to that melting heat. No, you slut! she raged. Stop this! This very instant. What kind of alley-cat round heels are you turning into?
She tore her mouth from the man's. "Roul" she hissed.
"Stop now. Are you out of your mind? This is impossible, we-can't. Wasn't that one time bad enough? We were drunk, we were out of our minds ... there might have been an excuse then. But this ... Roul, Roul ... Please!"
She managed to break away, she retreated toward the davenport, got fleeting impression of the room, saw it was sumptuous and lavish to the ultimate degree But there was little time for appraisal of decor. For immediately, a smug, hard smile on his lips, Roul De Fonseca was stalking her again. "Perhaps I am insane," he grated. "Insane about you, Joanna. I haven't been able to get you out of my mind since that night. I want you, baby. I must have you."
"No, Roul! Not again. Never. I've hated myself ever since. You were the first man-besides Mayo. I'll never betray him again. Let me go, Roul. I thought Aimee and her friend-"
"Forget your bourgeois morals, Joanna," he said softly, coming closer, his fingers lightly caressing her throat. "They count for nothing at a time like this. The important thing is us. Was I good that night? Did you enjoy me? Did I show you how love between a man and woman was supposed to be? Answer no to that, tell me I disappointed you."
"You were good, Roul," Joanna said, her mind refusing to function at this moment. "That love-that night was wonderful. Only I...."
"Then why shouldn't we have that again? Why shouldn't we even have a better love? A love when we aren't drugged with drink, when we can savor, enjoy every emotion, every sensation, to the utmost?" He tried to pull her into his arms again. "We have such an opportunity now. A whole afternoon to do with what we want. An afternoon alone." His voice grew husky, persuasive. "An afternoon of love. An afternoon to remember the rest of our lives...."
Joanna couldn't repress the shudder, the surging arrow of evil that pierced her body at that moment. She fought Roul, but he was too strong for her. He pulled her tightly against him, drove a dozen stinging kisses into her lips, into her eyes, into her throat. "You know you want me," he breathed hoarsely. "You want those beautiful things I do to you. You want-a-real man...."
Then as his tongue began to batter at her lips, as she felt her entrails jumble and tighten. Joanna exercised a last reserve of control, she twisted free. "No, Roul," she quaked, her eyes frantic, "this is wrong, it's evil...."
"Wrong? Evil? My silly little American. Who is to say what is wrong, what evil? If we are offered love-an interlude of ecstasy-a peep into paradise...."
"Aimee ... " Joanna croaked. "She was supposed to be here. Where is she? What is this place? I don't under...."
"This place as you so charmingly put it, is my own private town apartment. I-use it to entertain my friends-away from home."
"And Aimee knows about this ... ? "
"Knows? Of course she knows. She has a similar lair of her own. In another part of the city, however."
"And neither of you object to the other? I mean...."
"Object? Why should we? We are both adults, we realize marriage grows stale, must seek diversion. We realize marriage is no prison in which one person is shackled to the other forever and ever. Wives-husbands need variety. Can't you see that? Or does your childish American philosophy preclude such acceptances?"
He moved away from Joanna, went to a small bar in one corner of the room, poured two small snifters one-third full of cognac. "Here, drink this. We will sit down and talk about our differences, I will try to explain our continental ways to you. Perhaps convert you."
Joanna knew that to attempt to flee was futile. She would humor him, reason with him, escape from this sin-nest somehow. She wouldn't be such a pushover today. And yet she wondered at the lack of real conviction she felt. She sipped the cognac sparingly, was pleased at the smooth bite of it, at the gradual ease the liquor conferred.
"I'm still confused," she said. "Aimee told me...."
"Aimee told you what I told her to tell you. I knew if I invited you here you'd refuse. So I prevailed upon my sweet little wife...."
"And she willingly ... ? "
"Of course, chert. Can't you get it through your head that we are both of a mind? If I genuinely wanted you ... " Joanna sipped at her drink more avidly. How long, she mused, since Mayo, since anyone looked at me like that, let me know they wanted me so badly? Another spine-twisting shiver went through her.
"No," she warned as he sidled closer to her on the davenport, desire aflame in his eyes. "Roul, we can't...."
"Who is to say we can't?" he murmured, catching her, drawing her close. Joanna cursed her damnable weakness. "No one but us will ever know."
"Aimee knows...."
"She doesn't count." Inch by inch his lips lowered to hers. And, as that last crucial gap narrowed, Joanna's body spasmed, she found herself waiting breathlessly for that hot contact. Their lips fused, melted, became one. His tongue darted to hers in erotic challenge. Joanna felt herself sinking, sinking-
She started when Roul's free hand slid inside her jacket, clutched one straining breast. "Oh no, Roul," she gasped, regaining minor control, fighting him viciously. "This can't be. No, never again...."
His smile was sardonic. "No?" he mocked. "Why are you worrying about being faithful to your husband? When he isn't being faithful to you?"
"What ... what are you talking about?"
"Don't be such a child, Joanna. Where do you suppose Mayo is at this very moment? If Aimee did me a favor by inviting you here, don't you think she'd expect a similar favor from me?"
"You mean-she and Mayo-at her apartment...."
He didn't answer. But his shrug, his mocking smile was answer enough.
Joanna's rage, her hurt crushed her. A deadly, maen-adic resolve formed in her mind. Her jaw twitched, her eyes became steely blue, determined. With one long swallow she drained the remaining cognac. "Another," she said in a firm voice, pushed the snifter at Roul.
"Good girl," he murmured, "good girl. I knew you'd listen to reason." This time he filled her glass half full.
By the time this cognac was down, Joanna was out of control, she was so much limp putty to be manipulated any way Roul De Fonseca desired. Memory of their last love bout titillating her, the loneliness of the past days, the hopeless state of their marriage further hacking her, she thought, why not? What's the harm? What's to lose?
Thus she made no protests whatsoever as De Fonseca began to undress her where she sat. She drank and watched, felt lust snowball in her as he knelt before her, as he unloaded her lacy, purple brassiere, as he adored her aching breasts with tongue and lips and teeth, made them ache the more. She felt queenly, she writhed and tingled as he propped her back with pillows, arranged her legs before her, kissed them, caressed them with burgeoning passion; she thought this the most magnificent of sensations.
Then, the combination of cognac, the frank touches of his fingers, the bold words and analogies he used to praise her body, her very self-
Joanna all but swooned where she sat.
Thus she was not overly amazed when he finally carried her to the bedroom, laid her-still in her hose and shoes, in her panties and the matching purple girdle-on that massive bed. Sensually inflamed as she was, virtually out of her mind with lust, she was only faintly curious about the many full length mirrors on all the walls, about the soft spotlights that fell on her body, afforded the only light in the heavily draped room.
These were just so much background noise, the main signal, demanding, incisive, still came in painfully clear, banged one echoing message into the nerve centers of her brain. Soon, soon, soon-I hurt. I want. I need. Oh, soon-
The slavish adoration as Roul finished stripping her was almost anti-climatic to her. Golden towers of sensation, remembered glories, still loomed before her. If she could only reach them, embrace them, scream from their soothing touch-
She giggled lazily as he kissed her legs, her feet, as he let his lips slither up the insides of her legs. She jerked involuntarily as his teeth nipped her thighs. Then she was moving her knees, adjusting herself to him.
Those kisses, those searing, maddening kisses! That silver needle that was driven, in countless thrusts, through her very body! That ecstatic pain. Pain she hungered after, never to stop!
Looking at him, seeing the slavish, fanatic light in Roul's eyes, she felt supreme, confident, she felt like empress of the universe. She twisted her fingers in his hair, chuckled thickly, drew him back to that exquisite embrace.
She felt a deep sense of loss when he deserted her not much later. Again there was mild wonder as she saw him take the purple panties, bunch them in his hand, kiss them. Then, murmuring something about, "Souvenir, my darling," she saw him put the item in a shallow drawer in a nearby dresser. Raising slightly she saw that the drawer was a riot of colors. That there were panties of every description there, at least fifty pairs, a veritable fetishist's trove. Still the revelation failed to sunder or shatter the erotic torpor she floated in now.
If this was the way the man got his kicks-
So long as she was being, in no way, short-changed-
Thus she didn't protest, beyond hair-raising wonder, when he went to a long closet, brought out the full length rubber garments. Leotard-like things, black and glistening with dull sheen, resembling nothing else so much as long winter underwear of olden days.
"Please, darling," he seethed, his smile sick, as he advanced on her with the weird costume, "Let me put this on you. I enjoy my women so much this way, I find this liberates me, allows me to express myself completely. I rise to heights, descend to depths ... no one can begin to imagine. And you, my pet, can go along with me."
"What ... what is that?"
"A rubber suit, Joanna. They're made special for people like me ... like us. For sensualists who want to experience every iota of sensation there exists on this jaded planet of ours." He leaned, kissed Joanna's tummy again. "Please, my beloved...."
Joanna fell back, surrendered. Felt incredibly strange, a distillation of evil in her mind, as the thin, rubber garment was drawn up about her. The tightness about her feet, her calves, her thighs and buttocks incensed her, made the nympho, wanton fires lick higher within her. Now she was turned on her belly, felt the rubber encase her breasts, felt the zipper being drawn up her back. She giggled to find openings in the suit, to find her nipples protruding from the black garment, to find the lower juncture of the suit ventilated also.
"Beautiful, beautiful ... " Roul wheezed as he attended to last details, smoothed wrinkles from the suit, pulled the high collar about her throat, pulled the cuffs to her wrists. Uncontrollably he fell upon her, wriggled against the rubber, attempted to embrace her, compact her into a tiny ball. His lips attacked the proud berried topping each of those ebony conoids, his hand speared that other peephole.
Joanna squirmed, thought how lovely the sensation was. How unique this concept
Shortly Roul deserted her. "Your shoe size, my doll," he called from the cavernous closet. In which, she now saw, were stored racks and racks of high heeled pumps of every color and description. "Such tiny feet you have."
"Five," she quaked. "Roul-what?"
He brought a pair of black kid pumps, exotic things with stiletto toes and heels, the heels fully five inches high. With fawning motions he put them on her feet over the rubber glossing already enclosing them. There was that sliding kiss again.
Then, later, when he had pulled on his rubber suit, had let Joanna zip the back, there was yet another part to the sensualist rites. This, the posing session Joanna consented to. She stood before him in the black suit, the tight rubber enhancing, modeling every curve of her body, revealing every indentation, every ripple. Joanna saw herself in the mirror, shuddered of her own accord as she saw the evil vision reflected there.
The glistening curves, the long flare of her lovely legs, the fetish shoes. The way her buttocks and breasts protruded in saucy, glistening allure, the incongruous pinkness of her nipples against the midnight rubber, the gold of her elsewhere, was certainly enough to drive her, let alone a man, into gnashing fits.
When Roul could stand the fashion show no more, he ran to her, fell on his knees before her. The groveling, the hot kissing, the adoration of her calves and thighs, the hot kisses conferred upon that smooth body, the strainings and sobbings to get at those turgid nibs of her breasts.
And always that building heat, that mind-cracking desire. Incredible, will-sapping. She had never felt so wild, so wanton, she had never lusted after depravity so crazily.
Until finally, when it seemed her legs would cave in beneath her, Joanna pulled the slobbering man to his feet, clung to him. "Please, darling," she choked. "Now, now! Don't torture me any more."
When Roul whimpered, tried to prostrate himself before her once more an aboriginal fury erupted within her. "Now!" she growled. And with that, tore open the flap at the base of Roul's suit. Then she wheeled, flung herself on the bed.
Stiil he didn't immediately take her. Instead he let his body go topsy-turvy on the bed, he worshiped her even more frenziedly, made her scream and whimper with pain.
But at long last, when it seemed that layer after layer of molten lava was flowing over her, the suit intensifying body heat, driving her beyond reason. She literally forced him up, forced him to take her.
But the interminable work-up had worked devastating effect upon De Fonseca. And this afternoon, only a fraction as drunk as he'd been that first night with Joanna-
He had taken her with one beautiful, singing motion he had made her scream and sob with delight. But then, the glory hardly begun, her body surging up, conforming, holding itself to his-
Joanna reached one cataclysmic glory, felt like her entire body was being constricted into one excruciating, withered ball, was being pulled tighter, tighter. More and more compact. She began to scream, to praise this fantastic lover, almost immediately went in pursuit of still another rocket-ride to that blissful lotus land. There were other glories out there, countless glories. She had but to gather them.
Only at that moment Roul screamed, cursed, throbbed atop her. He spat a thick, satisfied howl into the air. A moment later he went limp over her.
Joanna didn't remember ripping off their rubber suits. But now, another glass of cognac down, the sense of being cheated a goading, maddening thing, moving in an insane, irresponsible trance, she dazedly noted the limp, rubber skins on the floor. She had to have Roul again. She had to have that prolonged love. There were victories waiting for her, taunting her, beckoning her.
This was something she'd never done for a man before. Never in her life, not even for Mayo. But at this moment no sacrifice was too great.
She hung over Roul, worked determinedly, no shred of revulsion inhibiting her now.
Then as he began to groan, as he reached for her, reciprocated greedily for her-self sacrificing attentions-
Joanna sighed huskily, worked faster.
Everything's gone now, she rationalized. Ruined. What have I got to lose? Nothing, nothing to lose.
She worked still faster.