Eighty Days Yellow Page 8

  Another lengthy look into his eyes, wordless but nonetheless self-explanatory. It meant ‘more’.

  He moved his thumbs away from her thin wrists, fearing he might be leaving her marked, bruised, and let them glide downwards until they were pressing against her neck and his hands circled the skin like a necklace, a choker. Her pulse radiated outwards, moving from the surface of her skin to the hard tips of his fingers. Her life signal.

  She took an insanely deep breath and cried out, ‘Harder.’

  He was both scared and aroused to rock hardness sheathed inside her, expanding still as his erection grew to seemingly abnormal proportions, pressing against her soft, wet inner walls, just as his fingers were now pressing against her neck, beginning to cut off the circulation, and the colour in her pale face went into overdrive across the spectrum of the rainbow.

  Kathryn came with a loud, guttural moan, an almost masculine sound of triumph. He loosened his grip on her neck and with the animal sound came a savage outpouring of breath.

  All the time he had been fucking her, the incessant come and go of his cock fracturing against her, like a machine, pitiless, cruel, unshackled. He closed his own eyes and at last allowed himself to come; it felt as if his whole being was bursting into flames. Elemental. Primeval. Possibly the most intense fuck of his life.

  Later, bodies still bathed in sweat, half-eyeing their watches and thinking of last train times, she said to him, ‘You know, I’d always wondered what it would feel like, harder, like that. You knew how to do it.’

  ‘I’ve never tried that before. Read about it, of course, but it was all just theory, just words, concepts on a page.’

  ‘I knew I could trust you, that you wouldn’t take it too far.’

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I would never hurt you.’

  She leaned closer, resting her head on his still-slick shoulder, and whispered, ‘I know.’

  Thus began weeks of sexual experimentation in which Kathryn slowly unveiled her innermost desires, her fantasies at their most basic, the fire within that betrayed her submissiveness. It wasn’t that she was a masochist, far from it, but the craving for pain, for the breaking of limits, was undeniably present, had been for many years, dormant under the surface veneer of civilisation and breeding, and had never been given the opportunity to break loose. Dominik was the first person to recognise this trait in her, instinctively channelling it in the right direction, dominating her, liberating her.

  He’d read the novels, knew the stories, but this was no master-and-slave, dom-and-sub situation according to the clichéd rulebook. They were both in this together, peeling away layers, getting down to the foundation stones of lust and sexual attraction. There was no need for all the paraphernalia that they had once associated with this new land of joyful excess: the latex, the leather, the baroque and cruel implements.

  Their eyes had been opened, and Dominik, for one, knew he would never be able to close them again.

  It was also, inevitably, the beginning of the end for their furtive relationship. With every step nearer to the abyss of no return, with every new improvisation and move away from the conventional river of sex, he could see the seeds of doubt being planted in Kathryn’s mind. The fear of where all this might be leading.

  Eventually, Kathryn succumbed to the burden of reality, a middle-class upbringing, a Cambridge literature degree and a dull marriage to a man who was kind but had no imagination, and she opted to break up. They never spoke again and were both careful not to bump into each other at functions or events, until she and her husband moved out of town and she gave up teaching.

  Dominik, however, had opened Pandora’s box and the whole wide world had become a jungle full of delicious temptations and the knowledge that, with Kathryn, he had reached another level, that there was more to life than he had previously assumed, would never leave him.

  First, Dominik knew he had to test Summer, ascertain her willingness, her propensity for play. He was already comfortably aware that she had a mind of her own and would not respond to crude manipulation or blackmail. He wanted her to enter the adventure, the experiment, with a full knowledge of the risks and consequences. He was not seeking a puppet whose strings he could pull at leisure, a blind participant. He wanted a partner in crime whose trepidations would pulsate in unison with his.

  From the brevity of their encounter and the many words unsaid, she must know already that the violin was just a bait to ensnare her, that he would require more than the gift of music in the long term. Maybe not a deal with the devil – he didn’t see himself in that Machiavellian role – but a game in which both participants could play each other to the end. Not that he had a clue as to what end he wanted to reach. Yes, there was a darkness he wished to probe, but he didn’t yet know how deep it could be.

  He phoned an acquaintance who worked at a music college in the City and had a somewhat shady reputation. He was willing to answer his queries. Yes, there was a store where he could hire a reasonably good-quality violin by the day, the week or even monthly, and indeed his acquaintance knew the best place to advertise for classical musicians in search of a gig.

  ‘It’s for a very private party, mind,’ Dominik established. ‘Would they be likely to object to wearing blindfolds?’

  At the other end of the phone line, his interlocutor guffawed. ‘Damn! I think I’d love to be a guest at such a party!’ he replied. Then, more thoughtfully, ‘If they knew the piece they are hired to play and the money was good, I’m sure you could reach a satisfactory agreement. Maybe best not mention that particular requirement in the initial advertisement, though?’

  ‘I see,’ Dominik said.

  ‘Let me know how it goes,’ the other added. ‘I’m now eminently curious.’

  ‘I’ll keep you informed, Victor. Promise.’

  The following day, he visited the music store he had been recommended. It stood halfway down Denmark Street in London’s West End, just off the Charing Cross Road. From outside, like most of the other stores on this street that had once been called Tin Pan Alley, they appeared to be doing a roaring trade in electric guitars and basses and amplifiers; no other instrument was on display in the window. Thinking that he been advised wrongly, Dominik took a tentative step inside and was quickly reassured by the presence of a bulky glass case with half a dozen violins on display.

  A young woman behind the counter greeted him. She wore her jet-black, evidently dyed hair down to her waist, skinny jeans like a second skin, and her face was heavily made up with full crimson lips to the fore. A heavy piercing dangled from her nose, and her ears bore the weight of countless earrings made of a variety of metals. For a moment, Dominik amused himself by watching her and imagining the rest of the piercings she most likely sported. He’d always wanted to go to bed with a woman with a genital piercing of some sort, or a nipple-ring or two, but so far had only enjoyed navel adornments at best, which he felt sadly didn’t convey the right level of eroticism for his own sensibility. Surely there was something downmarket – nay, proletarian – about bellybutton piercings.

  ‘I’m told you also hire instruments,’ he said.

  ‘We do, sir.’

  ‘I require a violin,’ he added.

  She pointed to the cabinet and its glass front. ‘Take your pick.’

  ‘They can all be hired?’

  ‘Yes, although we’d need a deposit secured either in cash or by credit card, and a proper form of photo ID.’

  ‘Of course,’ Dominik confirmed. He always carried his passport in his inside jacket pocket, an old habit he’d never lost. ‘Can I take a closer look?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  The goth girl liberated a key from an assortment dangling from a long chain attached to the cash register and unlocked the cabinet.

  ‘I don’t know much about violins, I fear. This is for a friend I’m helping out. Mostly plays classical music, though. Do you know much about them, by any chance?’ he asked her.

  ‘Not really. I�
�m more a rock, electric sort of girl,’ she replied with a smile. Her lips were like beacons.

  ‘I see. Well, which of these is considered the best?’

  ‘I reckon the most expensive.’

  ‘I suppose that makes sense,’ Dominik remarked.

  ‘It’s not a science,’ the sales assistant said with a flirtatious smile.

  ‘Indeed.’

  She handed him one of the violins. It looked old, its wood brushed orange by seemingly generations of previous owners, burnished and shiny, catching a reflection of the store’s fluorescent strip lights.

  Dominik pondered a while, all the time holding the violin. It felt so much lighter than he had expected. He reckoned its musicality would depend on whoever played it. He was momentarily annoyed at himself. He should have done some homework about violins before coming here. He must look like a total amateur.

  His fingers stroked the side of the violin he had been given to hold.

  ‘Do you play anything?’ he asked the young woman with the jet-black hair. Her T-shirt had slipped slightly over her right shoulder and he saw the faint outline of a large tattoo.

  ‘Guitar,’ she answered, ‘but when I was a kid, I had to take cello classes. Maybe one day I’ll go back to it.’

  From the mental image of her imagined piercings, Dominik quickly drifted to a private movie of her on a stage with a cello between her legs. He smiled at the thought and abruptly said, ‘I’ll take it. Say for a week?’

  ‘Great,’ the assistant said. She pulled out a pad and began her calculations as Dominik kept on gazing at her bared shoulder, following the black, green and red flowers of her tattoo, then noticing she also had a minuscule tattoo of a teardrop inked below her left eye.

  While he waited for her, other customers streamed in and out of the store, attended to by a male assistant in matching principally black goth attire with a minimalist geometric haircut.

  Finally, she looked up, giving her column of figures a final glance.

  ‘So what’s the damage?’ Dominik asked.

  The violin came with a case.

  Back at his house, he carefully deposited the expensive instrument on one of the sofas, went to his laptop and checked the seven-day weather forecast. For the first episode of the adventure he had in mind, he would rather not be inside. That would have to come later, when discretion would become the better part of valour and events might branch out into somewhat more illegal-in-public manifestations.

  The forecast was good. No rain was expected over the next four days at least.

  He texted Summer and informed her of the day, time and place of their next meeting.

  Her answer reached him within the half-hour. She was available, and still willing.

  ‘Do I have to bring a partition?’ she queried.

  ‘I don’t think so. You’ll be playing Vivaldi.’

  The sun was out on Hampstead Heath, the sound of birds chirping as they criss-crossed the tree-lined horizon. It was still early in the morning and there was a bit of a nip in the air. Summer had alighted from the tube at Belsize Park and made her way down the hill, past the Royal Free Hospital, the Marks & Spencer store that had been built on the site of an old cinema, the small shopping parade on South End Road, the fruit and vegetable stall by the entrance to the overground railway station, finally reaching the car park where they had arranged to meet. She’d been here before, some months previously, with friends intent on a weekend picnic.

  There was only one metal-grey BMW parked there, and from a distance, she recognised Dominik’s silhouette in the driver’s seat. He was reading a book.

  As instructed, Summer was wearing her black velvet dress, the one that bared her shoulders, and, to keep the chill away, Charlotte’s coat, which she had not been asked to return yet.

  He saw her approaching, opened his door and stood waiting by the side of the car as she made uneasy progress in her heels across the rough sand and stone surface of the improvised municipal car park, which doubled during holidays as a fairground.

  He looked down at her feet, noticing the high heels. Her regulation formal stage footwear. He was all in black. Crew-neck cashmere sweater and black trousers with a sharp front crease.

  ‘Maybe you should have worn boots,’ he remarked. ‘We have to trek over the grass a little to get where we are going.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Summer said.

  ‘There’s still a lot of dew on the grass at this time of the morning. Your shoes will get wet, damaged maybe. You should take them off for the walk. I see you’re wearing tights or stockings. Do you mind?’

  ‘No, not at all. Stockings, actually.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘Hold-ups or suspenders?’

  Summer felt her cheeks warm. A streak of impudence provoked her to answer back. ‘Which would you have preferred?’

  ‘A perfect answer,’ Dominik replied, but did not elucidate further as he opened the door behind the driver’s seat and pulled a dark, shiny violin case from the back seat. Summer shivered.

  He clicked on his fob to lock the BMW and indicated the vast expanse of grass, the field ahead beyond the low-hanging car-park fence.

  ‘Follow me.’

  Summer took her shoes off when they moved onto the grass. He was right: it was wet and spongy under her almost bare feet. Within minutes the sensation became pleasurable enough. Dominik led the way, past the ponds, across a small bridge facing the outdoor swimming area and up a path. Here she had to slip the shoes back on because of the wilderness of pebbles digging into her soles. The squelching sensation of soggy nylon against the unyielding leather felt awkward, but they soon reached an expanse of grass again and she was able to resume her stocking-footed progress behind him as he held a steady, determined pace, holding her shoes by the straps in one hand. She wondered where they were heading. This part of the heath was unknown to her, but there was something about Dominik she trusted. Gut instinct. She didn’t believe he was luring her into some dark cranny in the woods to take advantage of her. Not that the thought of such a fate was in any way disturbing.

  For a few hundred yards, the canopy of trees hid the blue of the sky and the warmth of the sun, and then they emerged into the light. A circular field totally open to the sky. An infinity of green, like an island emerging from a busy sea, a slight inclination and, at the top of the mound, a bandstand. Old-fashioned Victorian wrought-iron columns, rusting in places, overlooking a blissfully empty field.

  Summer gasped. This was beautiful, an absolutely perfect setting, oddly deserted and eerie. She now understood why he had chosen such an early time in the morning for them to come here. There would be no spectators, or at any rate very few, unless the sound of her playing began to attract some from further afield across the heath.

  Dominik bowed, indicating the bandstand, which they had now reached.

  ‘Here we are.’ He handed her the violin case and she mounted the stone steps leading to the bandstand’s stage.

  Dominik positioned himself in one corner, leaning casually against one of the supporting metal posts.

  Summer, for a fleeting instant, experienced a pang of rebellion. Why was she obeying his damn orders, being so docile and obliging? Part of her wanted to put her foot down and just say, ‘No’, or, ‘No way’, but another part of her that she didn’t know had existed until recently seductively whispered in her ear to go along with the game. Say ‘Yes’.

  She froze.

  Then, composing herself, Summer moved to the centre of the stage and opened the violin case. The instrument looked exquisite, so much better than her old battered and now useless instrument. She caught his eyes as she greedily ran her fingers across the burnished wood, the neck, the strings.

  ‘This is just a temporary instrument,’ Dominik said. ‘Once matters are settled to our mutual satisfaction, I will procure you a permanent violin, a better quality one.’

  Right now, Summer couldn’t imagine ever holding a finer instrument than this one. Its weight, its ba
lance, its curves just seemed downright perfect.

  ‘Play for me,’ he commanded.

  She slipped off Charlotte’s coat and allowed it to slide to the floor. By now, the morning cold on her uncovered shoulders was no more than a gentle breeze as she travelled into the zone, oblivious to the place where she stood, the unnatural and isolated situation, the undertones of the relationship – yes, she knew it was going to be a relationship – with this curious and dangerous man.

  She leaned over to retrieve the bow from the case she had set down on the bandstand floor, allowing Dominik, she was aware, a brief glimpse of her breasts. She never wore a bra with the black dress.

  Summer looked back at him as he stood there, patiently waiting, expressionless, and began to tune the violin. Its sound was so full and rich, it bounced across the bandstand, every note floating towards the roof and back again like a silent echo.

  And began playing Vivaldi.

  By now, she knew the concertos by heart. Always her party piece whether busking or playing for friends or even just rehearsing. The centuries-old music just made her heart sing, and as she played it, eyes ever closed, she could evoke the landscapes of the Italian Renaissance she had seen in so many paintings, the unrolling life of nature and the elements. Somehow there were seldom actual people in her musical reverie inspired by Vivaldi, although she’d never bothered to find an explanation for this curious fact, this possibly Freudian omission.

  Time came to a standstill.

  The sounds she was now extricating from the violin were truly blissful and she felt she was finding a whole new undiscovered dimension in the music. She had never played this well before, relaxed, finding the truth at the core of the melody, navigating its waves, losing herself within its maelstrom. It was almost as good as sex.

  By the time she reached the third concerto, she briefly opened her eyes to check on Dominik’s presence. He was still there, in the same place, motionless, pensive, his eyes hypnotically fixed on her. She remembered someone once mentioning to her that the shape of her body was not unlike that of a violin: small-waisted, generously hipped. Is that what he saw in her right now beneath the billowing folds of her black velvet dress?