Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 90

no dirt should be left in the interior crevices

You don’t tell Gabriel, you let him discover for himself. You’re not wearing underpants, of course. You feel an exquisite vertigo as he kneels before you, as his hands push up your skirt.

He recoils.

What’s this?

Cole did it.

Gabriel tightens, his whole body, his face.

Are you still sleeping with him, he asks.

Well, yes. He’s my husband.

There’s a prickle of irritation at having to say that.

He gets up and goes to the bathroom. The door slams shut.

Gab? Gabriel?

He talks through the door: I just didn’t think you were still fucking him. I thought – and there’s a sigh. What? Gabriel?

I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought. I’m married, remember.

Gabriel comes out, he is flushed, he sits you on the bed and his hands hold your upper arms. He says that you’re unhappy with your husband, you’ve been unhappy with him for so long, he asks why you’re turning back to a man you don’t love. I never said that, you bristle, you shake your head: it’s too big a question, he has no right. He says let’s go to Spain, let’s go be together for more than a few hours.

There’s a little villa by the sea, that my family owns.

You stand. You know in this moment that Gabriel is at your mercy, you can do what you want, he is completely yours and with the knowledge of that something goes, you can feel it slip from you like a fish through the net.

I don’t want this to stop, he says. You don’t either, he says. We can’t. We’re part of each other’s lives now. You know it. Don’t lie to yourself. I feel like the past couple of months have been the happiest time of my life; the only time I’ve been living.

You step back. Gabriel has fallen in love and you almost despise him for it; it’s all messy before you, he’s a man wild with uncertainty and want. He’s broken the rules; insisting on exclusivity and demanding nights. You’re not sure, suddenly, what it was that bound you to him. Infatuation, perhaps. The craving for a man to be tender with, to touch. The challenge, the thrill of the chase. Revenge. The desire to learn, to open up your life.

And then he was caught.

And you’re at a loss, in this moment, over what to do next.

You stand before Gabriel with your hand covering your mouth, as if in shock at some terrible news, as if you’re about to be sick. You feel you’re learning everything about love as you watch him, from the other side. He imagines you leaving your cosy London world for a man in his thirties who has no real job, who still travels on buses, who’s never found a firm footing with his life. The poet, the dreamer, and you would have fallen for it once. But you’re too old, now. You just want to fuck. As did the author of your little book.

Where trow yee finde a man be hee ever so kind and curteouse to his wife that was willing to substitute another man in his place.

There was nothing in there about leaving her husband. That wasn’t the point.

Gabriel’s still on the bed, the heel of his fist at his forehead. You assess with your head, not your heart. You want him to have more of a life than you, to have other women, to open out his world. The idea had once given you a frivolous thrill: you dreamt of him going off and finding other women and learning their secrets too, and bringing all that he gathered back to you.

Like a snail prodded with a stick, you retreat.

Are you going home to your husband, he asks.

Yes.

Fuck you.

There’s such a force in that ‘fuck you’, it brings you up sharp, it’s a side of him that takes you by surprise: he’s masked it well.

And fuck him too, he spits.

Something curdles up within you; a defensiveness, a protectiveness. Leave Cole out of this, you say. You want your husband, suddenly, very much. His calm, his dependability, quiet. You fear for him suddenly, for what Gabriel might do. For you’ve seen now the vehemence of someone who shakes a girl to rattle the laughter from her, shakes her so hard that she will never come back.

You dress. You leave. In silence.