A Little Side Business Pt. 04

"I used to play in this labyrinth as a child," Kathryn said, gesturing to the tall hedge that I'd been leaning my bike on. "Now it is overgrown, more of a maze than a labyrinth. Do you know the difference between a maze and a labyrinth, Frank?"

"Well, one has a religious significance I think, right?"

"The labyrinth was co-opted from older cultures by the Catholic Church, as so many things were. A labyrinth is meant to be a single path to a center, a journey to self-discovery and a return. On the other hand a maze is meant to be a place in which to get lost."

"I don't see how you even get into this little jungle," I observed.

"You wouldn't want to, Frank. There are chiggers in there, thorns two inches long and spiders as large as your face."

I knew chiggers too well. I'd had them burrow into the flesh between my toes and raise gooey, itchy welts that lasted weeks. Standing there naked with Kathryn was beginning to feel the opposite of arousing. This was not the garden of eden. I was happy to hurry toward the house as we climbed the stone stair to a rear terrace.

Kathryn seemed compelled to be a tour guide, saying, "The family don't use this place often. Sometimes only once a year during the film festival in January. Surely you've noticed it isn't kept up well. A sad indication of how the family fortunes have withered. Still, we have five other houses."

She opened the french doors into a nicely paneled library. I recognized it as the room from the short video on the Chatterley website, minus the plants. This was where the beautiful woman had stood in quiet contemplation. She'd been looking out over the wreckage of Bateaux's garden.

We passed into a dark, lofty central hall, Kathryn still holding my hand. The place smelled of must and mildew, as old unused houses do, and echoed and creaked as we stepped on the heart-pine floors. I saw, dimly, in other rooms, furniture covered in dust cloths as she led me up the stair. The air was close and hot, still and thick. At the top of the stair we turned into a corner bedroom with open windows in which gauzy curtains hung, limp. A ceiling fan churned the heavy air to little effect. The room was decorated tastefully, but for a teenage girl, it seemed. Even without glasses I saw white wicker furniture accented with pastels and soft fabrics, dimly lit by the noon sunlight, a bed with a white cover, a chair, a dressing table, framed art.

We two stood naked in the sweltering room, still hand-in-hand. "Is this what you wanted to show me?" I asked.

"This is where I stay when I visit. It's Charlotte's old room." 'Kathryn' didn't fit in it, of course, being a grown, sophisticated and apparently uninhibited woman.

"Why are we here?"

"I am going to tell you why you can never have Charlotte. And give you something she can never give." She dropped my hand and walked to the window looking over the rank garden. Her back to me, as smooth and voluptuous as a marble statue, she sighed, melancholy, "Charlotte was neglected by her parents, molested by an uncle, could never get the love she needed. Private schools, nannies, the jet-set life. She was an afterthought, when they thought of her at all. Hers was a life of poverty amidst all this wealth."

That silenced me. There's no greater sin than harming a child. I suddenly felt sad as well as angry. I realized that this was the damaged part of her that called to me. And I didn't know what to say. Would I be speaking to Kathryn or Charlotte?

She continued, "Charlotte became a kind of little monster, acting out in school, becoming a family embarrassment, getting attention in all the wrong ways. She destroys what she most wants because she doesn't know how to respond to it. She was raised to respond to pain and neglect. She doesn't trust love. Though she desperately wants it she will turn it to something ugly every time."

"Her movies?..." I wondered, wanting to go to the woman at the window, whoever she was, and hold her.

"Trying to make something beautiful out of something ugly to her."

We were both quiet for a long time. Kathryn seemed lost in thought, staring out the window. I was torn between going to her and flashing back to my own dysfunctional childhood; a drunken mother who veered from loving too little to too much, an absent father. The pain was familiar.

Finally, Kathryn turned and came to me, taking my hands in hers. Silhouetted in the daylight she was exceptionally beautiful, a thing to desire, apart from her history, assuming it was her history, too. And I couldn't help desiring her even knowing about the pain, maybe because of the pain. I rose to connect with her, our losses seeking each other. This close I could just focus on her eyes, see the longing there again, see the person there. We'd connected once before.

"Come to the bed," she said, simply. And I did. Was it wrong? In recent days I'd lost any reluctance to make love and I guess I thought I could be a healing force. Kathryn was inviting me. It felt right.

She put her hand on my chest, knotting her fingers in the gray hairs. Dropping her forehead to my shoulder, she drew my body to hers. The electric pulse as our skin touched from thigh, to belly, to breast made me lightheaded. My swelling cock hung between us in the warm, steel wool nest of her pubes. I smelled her dark hair, all sunshine and lotion.

When she raised her lips to mine I kissed without reservation, softly, then with rising urgency. She pulled me tight and wrapped one leg around me, clinching us. I ran my hands down her silky back to her round behind, tracing the muscles, the knots of her spine, the dimples at the join of her torso and derriere. It was hot enough to sweat just standing still and our passion amplified that. We were slick. My hands slid in a sheen of salty moisture.

Between us, sweat lubricated where her breasts pressed into me and we slid against each other as we kissed, telegraphing each subtle movement from head to toe, breathing hard.

Kathryn broke the clinch and lay on the bed, pulling me over her. "One time," she said, "This is yours." She closed her eyes. I dropped my lips to hers, kissed and tongued and dragged my cock along her thigh. Her legs captured me, squeezing. I moved down, kissing her chin, her neck, her clavicle and she ground her hips. I kissed my way down to her breasts, pecking around their fullness, circling toward the nipples, first the right, then the left and she began to squirm under me.

The nipples rose in fat urgency as I suckled them, arched above her now, my cock still trapped between her hot, slick thighs. Kathryn tangled her fingers in my hair, sighing. She let me pull my cock loose as I kissed further down across her ribs, her belly, her navel and very, very slowly toward her delta. Her feet rubbed my legs, languidly scratching me with her toe nails.

As my mouth approached, her legs parted, the smell of musk and ocean powerful. I had left drops of fluid on her thighs and I licked them up, salty and sweet, driving my hands under her so I could lift her pubes to my face. There were the familiar meaty labia where my tongue had played so gratefully before, still thick and red, again inflamed, wet with her juices. I teased along them, sucking in a mouthful of flesh, drooled into her as I licked around her hood. My cock was pulsing where it hung between my legs.

I just touched her clit with the tip of my tongue and she went stiff, fingers curled into fists in my hair. Kathryn made a high, thin wail through clenched teeth and her thighs clamped against my head for a long moment as she peaked. I kept gently licking, tasting her, preparing her.

Then she collapsed and pulled me up by my hair, reaching down with one hand to find my cock and pull it down and in. I sank into molten flesh, melted into fire as she opened for me and we slowly slid together. I got purchase with my knees and pressed forward, she dug her heels into my ass and pulled up onto me, curling her body, still wailing.

On stiff arms I hung over her, then bent and took her bottom lip between my teeth, letting her taste my juice-coated mouth. We sank into the mattress, fully joined, the hot tip of my cock deep in her yielding, muscular body. She clenched at me on the inside as well as the outside. Our bodies began dancing in rhythm, moving naturally, knowing the scales they were singing, up and up toward release. Time was lost, we were lost, in pleasure.

I rolled my hips forward and back and she responded, gripping me with her legs, clawing my back, gasping, grunting. We were driving straight to bliss. Kathryn's body stiffened and quivered under me and I felt my balls tightening, as my end neared. I dropped my chest onto hers and pinned her to the bed and she came again. I was balanced between a delicate, surgical piercing of her body and a mindless pounding, trying to rise into that perfect chord.

She reached down and stroked my shaft just behind my balls and I pistoned without control, exploding inside her, a fire streaming from my spine through my cock as, on my elbows, I grabbed the back of her head and pressed our mouths together, bit at her lips, sank down to get her neck between my teeth and heaved against her until I was spent.

She matched my wild thrusting until we both collapsed into the sweat-soaked bed. I panted and she cried, then, the tears trailing down against my face, still buried at her neck. I could barely lift myself to let her move, sliding across her body, smearing fluids, semen and sweat as I rolled. We held each other, silently, long and still in that sweltering, dim pastel room.

I slept. And dreamed.

Three angels of death approached me, grim reapers dressed in gauzy shrouds, gray, black and chalky. I asked them to make it quick and turned to run. They swung their scythes at me, striking me from behind. I saw the blades exit my chest, shiny and red, elated that my death didn't hurt like I'd expected it to, ready to leave my body hanging there, impaled.

Out of the darkness I rose again to wakefulness, drifting up through the warm ocean of liminal space, feeling the weight of my body return and press me down into the mattress. I was alone. I listened but only heard the beating of the ceiling fan, the shift of the curtains in the window.

Cracking an eye, I saw blood on the quilt. I reached and touched something hard and brought it close where I could focus - a fingernail. A red fingernail. There were several scattered around on the white coverlet. Kathryn was gone. I squinted at the room.

Someone was sitting at the dressing table, silhouetted, silently watching me. "Kathryn?" I whispered. No reply. I rolled my feet to the floor and went to her. I found a dark wig on a stand, still smelling of sunshine and lotion. I was alone, naked and blind in a decaying house on an island only three feet above sea level. And the woman I'd just made love to might be sick.

I needed to get out of there.