Читать книгу Brief Encounters - Various, Glenda Jackson - Страница 5

Watching the aircraft leave as she sat in the airport lounge usually lulled Suzanna into a slumber. But not today. Today her response was unusually meditative. Yesterday’s encounter had touched more than a nerve. And seeing the aircraft arrive, leave, not touching or connecting, was stirring something. She thought she saw his plane taxi along the runway, taking him off into the distance, away from her. The comfort and anonymity business travel gave her had been disturbed. Some emotion was rising to the surface – an emotion she’d prefer to leave dormant. It messed around with her idea of freedom.

It was his parting shot that had really troubled her.

‘See you again?’ he’d asked as they left the hotel.

She’d heard that line often enough before. Even with that same, common twinge of hope. Post-coital hope. She was used to it. Men who thought with their dicks. Who’d just enjoyed mind-fuckingly good sex and wanted to repeat it.

‘Yes, of course,’ she’d usually say. She was polite, brought up to respect good manners. She’d hand them a card with a false name and number printed on it. She’d smile as they tucked it carefully into their wallets, between the photos of their wife and kids. Easy enough to explain away possession of a medical sales rep’s card if you’re a doctor.

And, sometimes, she had seen them again. Just by chance. She’d shrug off the false name and address, make up some excuse.

‘Busy, these conferences, eh?’ she’d ask. ‘Mistakes are easily made.’

It would be in another time, another country, another conference. And she’d fucked them again too. But that had been it. No attachment. No romance. No strings. Nothing. Just fucking for pleasure, and moving on. That was her life.

And that’s what was bothering her now. She’d managed life so far without touching the sides. The only child of a tough, remote army family, she’d lost count of the times they’d moved. The friends she’d almost made, then left behind. It toughened you up. Made you remote from emotion. Enabled you to develop a patina of steeliness. She was able to project a ‘who gives a shit what people think?’ persona. But it made you remote from love too.

Not that your sexual needs didn’t need fulfilling. Quite the opposite. Suzanna had a constant desire for sexual adventures.

She’d first indulged this desire at university, when studying medicine. That first day, week, month, she had felt afraid. For the first time in her life she was out of her depth. It had been an academic stretch to get there, and it didn’t feel right. Not least that she’d now be expected to stay in one place for a number of years. Put down roots. She didn’t fancy that – making connections. She didn’t know how to do it. It was so much easier to just keep moving on. Be an explorer.

Her sexuality confused her too. She was drawn to both men and women, watching them cross campus, wondering, in more than a merely anatomical way, what their bodies were capable of. Examining their curves, their sharp edges, wanting to feel their touch, their warmth, their hardness.

She started with her roommate, Melanie. Or, at least, Melanie started with her. Melanie was rooted, certain, living 50 miles from the town she had been born and brought up in. Bolting the door one evening after a drinking and flirting session with a gang in the student union, Melanie demanded that she strip.

Suzanna was too taken aback to refuse. It was a request that brooked little argument. She stripped slowly and shyly, standing before Melanie, who appraised her, touched her, stroked her.

And so her sexual awakening had been quick and intense. And it had all felt very natural. Going down on her roommate soon became second nature. Taking it in turns to stand bare-breasted at the window whilst the football team ran past in training became an often-practised dare. A dare with the added thrill of having a girl’s tongue pressed between your thighs. That way Suzanna discovered how much her breasts, and those of other women, delighted her. Melanie’s were full, with big, dark nipples. Her own were smaller, pert, her nipples pink. She would pinch each of them, press them against the cold glass to make them harden, squirming with delight as Melanie’s tongue slid across her clit.

For the first time in her life Suzanna thought she was beginning to feel something approaching love. Melanie offered her more than just sex. She offered affection too, and Suzanna was under her spell. She would do anything for Melanie, who listened and responded to Suzanna’s doubts. Encouraged her.

Some nights they would lie together, limbs entangled, in a post-coital glow, whispering, sharing dreams, intimacies, hopes. Things she had never shared with anyone before. But it was not to last.

Their discovery was apparently accidental. Melanie’s boyfriend, Jake, walked in on them, in flagrante.

‘So, that’s what you two do when I’m in football training. I’d heard rumours. There have been sightings. Not good for training, hard cocks.’

He was still in his kit, although he was pulling his shirt off over his head.

Would he be joining them? Suzanna wondered, pulling a sheet around herself. Melanie lay back on the bed, her thighs raised and parted, her cunt shining from the mingling of her own juices and Suzanna’s saliva.

‘It’s fucking rude to interrupt, Jake.’ Melanie’s tone was lazy. Suzanna was astonished to see her right hand feel between her lips, parting them, giving him a full-on view.

Her own cunt tightened with desire, and surreptitiously her fingers found her nipples.

‘It’s rude to cheat on your boyfriend, Melanie.’

His tone was lazy too. His hands were in his shorts. Suzanna could see the outline of his erection. Again her cunt tightened.

‘And with another woman. What do you think my mates will think?’

Melanie had shrugged.

‘Who cares what your mates think? And if you’re that bothered, join us. I bet they would.’

Her tone was challenging, questioning. He grinned, as though this was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

‘Hey, Suzanna, you first?’

He was stepping out of his shorts now, openly stroking his cock. She could make out a glistening drop of liquid on its tip.

She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. Her cunt had never experienced cock before. Not that it was virgin cunt. Not by any stretch. She and Melanie had experimented – first with fingers, fists, hairbrush handles, and finally with a vibrator.

Her cunt was ready to take anything.

‘Go, girl.’ Melanie sounded encouraging, and was now kneeling beside her, pulling the sheet down, massaging her nipples, making long, warm strokes down her body, widening her thighs, tangling her fingers in her pubic hair, tugging it. Preparing her.

‘Suck him first, he likes that.’

‘Don’t all men?’

So, once Jake had approached, Suzanna bent her head and licked the drip of come from the tip. Jake inhaled. Then she took his length in her mouth. And improvised. From the sounds he was making she guessed she was kind of getting it right. Cupping his balls, stroking between his thighs, using her hand to enhance the feeling her mouth was bestowing on him.

And he, in return, ground his cock into her mouth, pushing, thrusting.

She thought he must be close.

‘Finish off inside her,’ Melanie demanded, having slipped easily into the role of director.

Suzanna fell back onto the bed. Jake groaned. She suspected he would have liked to do both. Come in her mouth, and fuck her, and Melanie too if he could. But he looked willing enough to enter her, falling to his knees between her thighs.

And Melanie appeared willing to help, parting Suzanna’s lips, helping ease Jake’s cock inside her, giving Suzanna tiny, encouraging kisses, on her breasts, her mouth, her belly.

Suzanna was on fire as Jake hammered into her, burying his cock deep, and her cunt welcomed it, drawing him in. Her clit tingled and tensed, responding to Melanie’s fingers strumming across it.

And then the familiar ripples began, starting in her belly and pulsing downwards. She threw her head back, and let herself go. And he, in return, convulsed into her, his cock pounding now, then slowing as his release was almost complete.

‘Well done, you two,’ said Melanie, smiling, her fingers firmly buried between her own thighs, flicking and circling. ‘I like it when my friends become friends.’

And the afternoon had continued in the same vein. Jake watched Suzanna go down on Melanie, followed by a quick fuck between boyfriend and girlfriend before Melanie rushed off to a lecture.

‘She told me to come up, you know,’ Jake told Suzanna, as she dressed, feeling shy now, alone with him in the room. ‘Promised you to me. I’ve watched you at the window, knew she had her tongue inside you. And she offered you up. On a plate. That girl doesn’t give a shit, you know.’

And that betrayal had ended Suzanna’s brief medical career. Her trust had been broken. She packed her bags and left one afternoon, when Melanie was in lectures.

‘Thanks for nothing, bitch,’ read the note she left behind.

Which was somewhat disingenuous. Because she did have something to thank Melanie for. And Jake too, if she was honest. He was her first taste of cock, after all. They had both contributed towards her burgeoning sexual confidence.

Years later she’d wondered if what Jake had told her had been the truth. Melanie liked playing games, sexual ones, she knew that. But betrayal? That had come as a surprise to Suzanna. Melanie had appeared genuinely astonished when Jake came into the room. And she’d complained about his jealousy in the past. Had said she was thinking of dumping him because of it. Suzanna wondered if, rather than betraying her, she had indeed merely been sexually opportunistic on Jake’s arrival. Getting off on the thrill of it all. As Suzanna had too.

But this didn’t occur to her at the time; she was too young, too naïve to see through Jake. She left university and the UK, travelling first to Paris, then further afield. Singapore, Sydney. Meeting people, and fucking them. Like a sailor, she had a man or a woman in each port. And that was how she made up for the lack of love in her life – by fucking strangers. Living from a suitcase; ever transient. She was self-aware enough to realise what she was doing. For her, fucking became love, in its many and various forms. For now, she wanted to remain remote from the entanglement of emotions you felt when someone drew you in, then spat you out. She was no way ready for that, not now, probably never.

And she transformed herself into Suzanna Parker, Sales Rep for a pharmaceutical company, which gave her ample opportunity to fulfil those needs.

She’d always committed to long-haul flights, but never long-haul relationships.

So, when she hadn’t known how to reply to his ‘See you again?’, it had thrown her. She’d always been so nonchalant before. This time she’d been made to hesitate, almost thrown off course. Because, for the first time since Melanie, she had wanted to see someone again. Not just happen across him by accident. But actively seek him out. And fuck him senseless. Like they had done last night. More than once. And maybe even get to know him. This was anathema to her.

It had all started on the plane, like it so often did. They were in business class, seated next to one another, sipping champagne, on their way to Hong Kong. They’d started chatting, and it soon transpired they were both delegates at the 25th International Congress on Men’s Health. They were staying in neighbouring five-star hotels. Suzanna was a good sales rep; she demanded the best of her company.

‘Hey, that’s a stroke of luck,’ he said, as they compared notes. Turned out he was giving a keynote speech. Mr Jones, no mere Dr, was an expert in his field. An Australian doctor living in the UK.

‘But give me a woman, and then I’m fucked,’ he said with a smile. Give me a woman, and quite often I’m fucked too, thought Suzanna.

She glanced over at him. Was he her type? Did she have a type? Not really. He looked less like a doctor than some. Dark wavy hair reached his shoulders. He wore a sports jacket, shirt, no tie. Informal. Suzanna liked informal. But then Suzanna liked men. Was he even a doctor? – many had lied before, as she had too. But this time she’d been truthful. There was something about him that suggested sincerity, a friendliness in the tone of his voice, an openness replacing the arrogance she often encountered.

She smiled, inviting a smile in return. Most of all he looked nice. And sometimes nice was good. Sometimes nice relished the thought of getting down and dirty. Nice men were often far less practised at the art of transient fucking, and were keen, willing to please. Suzanna could do nice.

So, an hour or so later, she was more than pleasantly surprised to find that nice was doing her. Once the meals had been cleared away, the lights dimmed, the seats transformed into something approaching a bed, Mr Jones, Simon, was reaching over, his hand working its way under her blanket, and stroking her thigh.

She wondered if he was asleep, dreaming, thinking of his wife or lover.

It didn’t matter. She could be that person.

She turned her body to him, her eyes hidden behind the mask. His touch was feather-light. She guessed he was a surgeon, although he hadn’t confessed his speciality. She parted her thighs, and his fingers worked their way under the hem of her skirt, pushing it upwards. And then they stopped. Fuck. He wasn’t some kind of surgical control freak, was he? A doctor with issues, meaning he couldn’t identify with a highly sexual woman? That would be one major turn-off. Because, although she had imposed limits on her sex life, telling herself it was just about the physical satisfaction, she didn’t want to be a patient. She felt desire but she didn’t expose her soul.

No doubt a psychiatrist would have a field day with her life story. She steered well clear of them.

But apparently, having reached the tops of her stockings, he was merely waiting for the flight attendant to pass before he continued. His fingers were inches away now from her bare pussy. And her pussy was ready and waiting for him. Moist and welcoming, warm and sweet. His hands started to travel again.

Public sex excited Suzanna most. After all, that was how she’d got caught years ago. The athletics and gymnastics of different positions, even the relative danger of being tied up, gagged and bound by a stranger, rarely excited her; but lying on top of a man on the sand, or with her legs around the waist of a pretty woman in the sea, could blow her mind.

And a touch of mutual masturbation on a plane – well, that would do her just fine for now.

His fingers were stroking her shaven mound. She wondered if he was expecting that. They began insinuating their way between her lips.

It was time for her to reciprocate. It was only fair.

She found his flies with ease. She could feel his satisfying hardness, and thought it deserved to be released.

Slowly she undid the zip, the belt and button. The plane was silent and she was quite sure she heard a sharp intake of breath from him as she stroked his cock, feeling its warmth and girth, wondering how it would feel buried deep inside her cunt, or between her ass cheeks. Whatever his pleasure.

She suspected it would feel good.

They got a rhythm going. His fingers flicked across her clit, rubbed over her smooth mound, parted her lips and pushed inside. Expert fingers. Fingers that had done this before. So his looks belied his experience, then? Suzanna liked being taken by surprise.

She squeezed her hand around his cock and pumped, letting go only to fondle his balls, pleased to feel them tighten, and then returning to his cock to finish him off. Unable to see his face, she could just hear the tiny gasps and groans that indicated he was close. And then he came, with a sigh. She smiled. Aeroplane fucking was so much easier for women. In a moment her cunt would tighten round his fingers, her clit would ensure the explosion of her orgasm. And that would be it, done.

And that happened sooner than she expected. He was very good with his hands. His fingers moved more urgently, delving deeper, parting her pulsating cunt. Her head fell back onto the headrest. Her breath was coming in tiny gasps, her hips bucking. She had gone beyond the point when she cared if the flight attendant became aware of their actions.

And then her orgasm came in a torrent, flooding through her. It was all-consuming, intense. And then it subsided, and was over.

‘Thanks,’ she whispered, pulling the mask away, meeting his eyes for the first time since his fingers had found her thigh.

‘No worries,’ he replied.

They chatted for the rest of the journey. He asked questions about her, a rarity amongst doctors in her experience, who generally enjoyed telling her about their achievements. Which helped preserve her anonymity.

And then they landed. He handed her his card. She reciprocated. With a real one.

‘Call me,’ he said. ‘We could meet. For a drink. Or something.’

She was surprised to see him blush. Most conference delegates were like her, people of the world. Used to shedding responsibilities, being anonymous for a few days. Confident and often arrogant. Simon Jones was different. An enigma. Was he married? Not that that bothered many men or women she met. Quite the opposite. On a nine-hour flight he had intrigued her. He made her think of Melanie.

The memory of her face and body nudged its way into the forefront of Suzanna’s mind. She tried to ignore it, dismiss it. But Melanie kept returning, smiling.

And encouraging. It was like she was saying, ‘Go, girl,’ again.

She didn’t call him. She wasn’t sure why. The days were busy. The nights too. There was one fuck. On the first night. It had started out as a fumble in the lift between her and another sales rep. A woman. They’d shared a martini in the bar. Suzanna had gone back to the other woman’s room. And they had fucked, quickly and efficiently. Without much pleasure or desire. It was a mechanical act. Suzanna tried to summon the image of Melanie again, but it was elusive, like she’d been teasing her, beckoning and running away.

And then they met. He was in her hotel lobby, apparently questioning the receptionist, when she came back on the final day, ready to drop into bed and sleep through. She felt a frisson of excitement, but crept past him, despite Melanie’s voice whispering, ‘Go, girl,’ in her head.

‘Ms Parker,’ the receptionist’s voice called her. ‘Ms Parker. I have Mr Jones here for you. He says he has an appointment.’

Suzanna raised her eyebrows. An appointment?

‘Hey, Suzanna, you’re still here. I was hoping you’d call.’

This was the first time a fuck partner had tracked her down again. It had all been down to chance in the past.

‘You know,’ she shrugged. ‘Busy, busy, busy.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘How was the keynote speech?’ She thought it only polite to ask.

‘Nerve-wracking. But apparently well received, if the bastards aren’t lying to me and sniggering behind my back.’

‘I guess you’ll never know that.’

‘They will be. It’s a dead cert. Either through professional envy, because it was good, or because it was crap after all.’

They both smiled.

‘Goodbye drink?’ His voice was hopeful.

She hesitated, then nodded.

‘Come up to my room.’ She’d made her mind up. It wouldn’t hurt, would it, to fuck him properly this time? Still no commitments. Just a goodbye, we won’t see each other again, fuck. Like all the rest.

He followed her. Their lift journey was silent. They stood well apart. In her room, he stood by the window overlooking the bay while she found two small, cold bottles of champagne.

‘Can I kiss you?’

She nearly giggled at his formal, old-fashioned tone.

‘If you must.’

His kiss was light at first. He cupped her chin, just touched his lips on hers. Then they lingered, and parted hers, his tongue pushing inside, suddenly more insistent, far less formal. He began to unbutton her blouse, slip his fingers into her bra, twist her nipples, making her groan.

Now she wanted him. Really fucking wanted him. The tiredness had oozed from her.

‘Go, girl.’ Melanie’s voice again. She could hear it because he was the first person since Melanie to have really touched her. And she knew Melanie would have been OK once she’d left. She’d have ditched Jake, moved on to someone new, but stayed where she was, physically. Melanie was rooted. Solid, beautiful and happy in her skin.

They fell onto the bed, tearing off clothes, discarding them in a molten pile on the floor.

The first fuck was quick, routine, urgent. He was already rock-hard. She parted her thighs and welcomed him. He thrust into her, she pushed against him. He came quickly then withdrew.

For a fleeting moment she feared disappointment. She closed her eyes, unable to believe she was trying to suppress tears. But then she felt his fingers run down her sides, circle her flat belly, dip between her thighs. And then he flipped her over. Things were looking increasing promising. She felt the woosh of air as his hand flew down to slap her arse. Her cunt tingled with desire. This was more like it.

‘That’s for not calling me.,’ His voice was curt.

Another woosh. Another slap.

‘And that’s for trying to creep past me in Reception.’

She took the punishment, almost coming from the slaps alone, burying her head in the soft, plump pillows, crying out with pleasure. Her arse was stinging, and she hoped his hands were too.

‘And this is for saying yes to that drink.’ His voice was soft now. He was stroking her arse, down the back of her thighs. She shuddered with pleasure. His hands moved between her arse cheeks, tracing a line down to her cunt, forward to her clit. She raised her arse to welcome his touch. She felt his lips on the curve of her back, his cock, hard again now, pressed against her side.

‘Fuck me,’ she whispered.

And he did, raising her arse and pounding into her, gripping her hips. Her fingers strayed to her clit, and she began touching. His hand pushed hers away, and he touched her instead. Gentle circles. Round and round. Her arse writhed against him, matching his rhythm, and this time they came together.

Her orgasm was delicious, waves of frenzied spasms rolled through as he groaned and thrust until he was spent.

They fell back on the bed, hot and satiated.

The night ended how it had started, with them entangled on the bed, whispering to one another, sharing. And it felt good. Like the sex. Then morning came, and time for them to part.

‘See you again?’ he’d asked. She hadn’t replied.

And now she was here, waiting for her plane. He had returned to Australia, on a lecture tour. She took her phone from her bag and turned it around in her hands. Did she want to be tied down, not literally – she always wanted that – but metaphorically? Did she want to feel rooted? She thought that, at last, she might. She’d never stop travelling. That was in her soul. And she doubted she’d stop adventuring in the near future, at least. She wasn’t ready, yet, to be exclusive.

She began texting.

‘Yeah, see you again Simon, Suzanna x.’

And this time she was quite sure she would.