A ménage à trois produces strange undercurrents.
I open a door to an apartment I know well, pretending I don’t know it at all. Her petite frame stands in the middle of the lounge, looking unsure, squeezing a glass of sparkling wine so hard, she’s at risk of crushing it in her palm. You stand next to her. The room is illuminated by many lamps glowing with the dimmed purple light I know you like to fuck to.
“Lila, this is Eve.” You introduce me to the girl while putting your arm around her shoulder affectionately.
“Nice to meet you, Lila.” I walk over to the white stools with curved seats standing along the kitchen bench
and put my handbag there. It’s where I always put it.
“Nice lights Damien.” I say with a smile, pretending to be surprised.
“It softens the mood,” you say and I realise that I’ve missed your voice.
Although I knew what to expect, because I watched you groom this girl on social media for a few months, this is the first time I see Lila in person. She’s in her late twenties, slim, flat chested, with brown hair flowing down to her waist, white skin, big dark eyes encircled by enthusiastically blinking lashes. She moves with gliding gestures that she likes to film and post online as tantalising dancing performances accompanied by lush poetry, which made her the perfect target to be debased in an apartment filled with soft lights and music. The music is playing but not off vinyl, because vinyl is fiddly and would interrupt the flow of the evening.
“May we sit?” I direct the question at you, the host, and you gesture for us to sit on the sofa, while you make yourself comfortable in a grey armchair nearby. You will now let me set the pace of the action, ensuring Lila is comfortable in my company, something you trust I’ll do well.
Lila leads me to the two-seater navy blue sofa, where we sit down at opposite corners, far enough not to touch, but close enough to allow intimate conversation. I’ve already noted you haven’t renewed the sofa, which is old and tattered, barely holding shape, with cushions sliding out from their intended spaces. I glide my hand over its faux suede, thinking about all the stains that, despite your fastidious precautions, had to be wiped off it many times, because it’s hard to control everything that gushes and squirts amid fucking that’s so violent and deep.“I heard you’re a dancer and a poet!” I say with bright insincerity.
“Yes, I write about nature and all things spiritual; connecting with people brings me so much joy!” I let her chirp on about the virtues of the arts, giving me a chance to look around to see if much has changed since my last visit. The floor lamp with a shade of dangling crystal teardrops still stands in the corner, signifying that your wife hasn’t left you yet, despite the incessant humiliations you put her through. Lila is oblivious to your wife’s existence, which you meticulously sponge out of your public profile and this apartment. But I’m aware of it. I can smell the combined scent of her hand creams, her home-made candles and her menopause lingering in the air. Despite your best efforts, she’s hard to erase from every crevice of this place – or your bed sheets.
“Have you been with a woman before?” asks Lila faintly, interrupting my thoughts.
I look at you to try to work out what you told her about me. We haven’t had much contact lately. The few lines of communication you used to bring me here were brief and to the point “I’ve found someone special, are you up for it?”. Anything more would have ended in a full-blown emotional row between us.
“I’ve kissed a few women and had sex with one in a threesome, but normally I have sex with men,” I answer, tilting my head coquettishly. I can feel your eyes burning through my pink dress, unclothing me. I think back a few months, to my last time on the sofa we’re sitting on, my face lost between the thighs of a beautiful blonde escort with heavy round breasts.
“I’ve never been with a woman. Damien thinks it will be a good lesson in love and trust for us as a couple.” Lila finishes her sentence in a higher pitch, perhaps hoping you might have changed your mind, but you only nod affirming your commitment.
“I’m sure it would,” I say reassuringly. “But we don’t need to do anything tonight. We can just talk and see how things go. It’s all about having fun, right?” I gesture for you to refill our glasses, mine is hardly touched, but hers is empty.
“Let me do it.” Lila offers, but you have already heaved yourself out of the armchair with the energy of a big brown bear. Leaping out as if to catch a ball flying through the air, like the catches we saw at that cricket game, when you wore the expensive blue linen shirt that I’d bought you. I bought it because I was lost in the warmth of your attention, the same way your listeners become lost in your velvet voice that makes them feel like they’re the only thing in the world.
The last time we were in bed together, after you’d spent your every last drop inside me, you said, “You’re passed your best and I make your life interesting: be grateful.”
You lay on your stomach, resting on your elbows, your face in mine, my cheek fitting perfectly against the contours of your face.
“Do you really think you make anyone’s life more interesting by lying and feeding your vanity behind your wife’s back in hotel rooms?” I retorted as I got dressed. “No. You don’t: you just break things.”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t love it! I’m just giving you what you want,” you said with annoyance. “Anyway, you knew what you were getting into.”
As your words ring in my ears, I marvel at how good you are at snagging pretty, young things despite being forty and having your athletic years behind you. How, in the space of just a few months, you have this hopeful, dreamy girl sitting next to me in your apartment, duped into doing whatever you ask (such as fucking a stranger in a threesome), because you convinced her with smoke and mirrors that it’d be a life-enriching experience. But she hasn’t come here for life-enriching experiences. She’s here to nail a relationship with a guy whose carefully curated public profile promises a glamourous life. The wishful thinking blinds her to the red flags: why hasn’t she met your family or friends? Why have you asked her to curb her enthusiasm towards you publicly? Why is she still spending Saturday nights on her own? Instead of heeding these warnings, she lets your constant texting make her feel special: ‘Show me you’; ‘Lose the top gorgeous’; ‘Good girl x’; ‘Mmmmm’; ‘I want to fuck you!’.
If the uncertainty you create is slightly unsettling, it also has its allure. The wine, the purple light, the heat coming off me and her despite our legs being closed, the tightness of the jeans around your groin, are intoxicating. You and I have hardly locked eyes since my arrival. I can’t believe Lila isn’t unsettled by our seamlessness, but then again, caught in my stare, she has no time to think.
“Damien is absolutely smitten with you,” I say, leaning back to give her space, so as not to make her feel besieged. It also gives me a chance to take a breath, fill my mouth with wine and, eyes closed, enjoy the cool, sweet sensation in my throat – before it’s replaced by a warmer and more savoury one.
She throws you a look that shimmers with adoration. I notice she forces her lips together into a circle, in an unnatural gesture when she speaks, perhaps a nervous tick, which makes her mouth look like a wrinkled, pink anus. A comical association, which nearly makes me spray out the wine I’m swirling around my tongue.
“Oh no, it’s me who’s absolutely in love with this incredible man. He has already given my life so much colour and movement.”
“You’re a lucky girl.”
My lips curl upwards in an almost imperceptible smirk at her mention of colour and movement. Instead, these are more likely to become emotional scarring and trauma.
“So how do you two know each other?” she says, turning to me, made braver by the champagne. She is neither a wife, nor a friend, nor a presumed stranger like me. She hopes that she’s graduated to being ‘the girlfriend’, but she can’t be sure because of the constantly shifting reality you create.
You jump in with an answer.
“We worked together some time ago. Turned out we share similar interests, so we’ve been friends ever since.”
“Oh, are you a writer too, Eve?”
“Not as accomplished as Damien, but yes, I do write. Do you have that short story I sent recently?” I ask you. “Could you get it?”
“It’s in my email,” you say, showing no intention of getting it.
“Oh – I would love to read it out loud to Lila. Could you print it out please?”
You know that, while you are gone, I could blow up the mirage you have created around this girl with just a few words. But you have no choice except to leave the room as I asked, because any other reaction could damage the safe space being woven. As you leave, you give me a daggered look which I ignore and I move closer to Lila. Without you in the room she begins to look anxious.
“Would you like to kiss me, Lila? It might help you to decide if you like this or not.”
Lila licks her lips, so I close my eyes and wait for her to come to me. In the next room I can hear the printer punching my words onto paper, as she presses her thin, wine-cool lips to mine. Everything about her feels thin: arms, legs, neck, the fleeting kiss, which has no flavour, no taste – just a pressing of slender flesh. I open my eyes and we both retreat from each other, but not completely. I can sense you holding your breath in the next room, as she and I take another sip then lean in to fold our lips into each other, this time with more courage. I lick her upper lip then pull back. With the next kiss I let my tongue enter her mouth slowly and subtly hooking around hers. My free hand slides under the shimmering gold of her skirt, gliding along towards her pubic bone, to discover the white tank top which hugs her slim torso is a one-piece suit that unclips at the bottom of her crotch. Nor is she wearing a bra, causing her erect nipples to struggle against the taut fabric.
I let her lead the kissing, offering my mouth to be explored at her pace, making sure the experience doesn’t feel urgent, just like my fingers which glide up and down her crotch, in slow and gentle strokes that are more like soft patting than fingering. She pulls back when she hears you come back into the room, and I hold her in my gaze. She doesn’t close her legs, letting me push her gently into the corner of the sofa, while I rub my hand against her clit. I take another sip of the wine and spray the cool fizz into her mouth. She closes her eyes and lets me work on her body, while you sit down in the grey armchair and put the freshly printed story that I wrote about us on the side table, never to be read out loud to anyone.
You adjust the uncomfortable hardness in your jeans, as I press my palm into her sex, like it’s the only thing I ever want to touch.
“Lila, are you ok?” you ask and stroke her hand gently because it’s important to make her feel safe. To make her think all the sensual caresses are about her. Her underwear is soaked, as I unclip the buttons of the body suit. My fingers dive deeper, separating the soft lips and rubbing the wetness into all her folds, firmly but not hard enough to give her what she wants or needs. Lila, now lost in the moment, groans, and tilts her head backwards making her long brown hair sweep over her chest and shoulders, exposing her swan-like neck. I come up to lick it, while stretching out my hand to pass you my champagne flute, now hindering my actions. You kneel on the floor in front of the sofa, as I gently spread her legs.
“Is it ok if Damien licks your divine femininity?” I ask, mimicking the dainty language of her online posts, but also wrapping her in a cocoon of familiarity. She nods and you pull her hips closer to the sofa’s edge. You lick her for a while and she immerses herself in the tingling, euphoric sensation building around her clitoris. I pull her top down to free large coffee-coloured nipples; you come up from between her thighs and unzip your jeans.
The lights of the harbour and the bridge that moves the city around are streaming into the room through the naked floor to ceiling windows. Were anyone to look through binoculars from the buildings across the dark water, they would make out three shapes immersed in tantalising foreplay. Lights are flickering over the black horizon, as if it was a mirror ball; ‘mirror ball’, coincidently, is our safe word, but we won’t need it tonight, because tonight is all about mellow fucking of someone new. There won’t be roughness, broken ear drums, black eyes, golden showers, forced penetrations, a belt around the throat until someone passes out.
“May I?” you ask, and she whimpers as you push your cock inside her. Her cunt juices glisten on your mouth and chin, and her legs dangle over your shoulders as I pinch her nipples, and watch you push yourself in and out, groaning heavily with every breath. I can tell you’re working hard not to sound too hoarse, not to startle her out of the trance. Your hands hold her slim buttocks in place for a few more pumps, but then you pull out, and I make her follow me down to the floor as you rise up.
“Shall we both lick him?” I ask, pretending I need her permission to put your cock in my mouth, even though I’ve had it there as many times as there’re stars outside. I let her take you into her mouth first, keeping my fingers on her clit, watching her bob up and down over your thick erection. She’s not sucking vigorously enough, but I don’t ask her to change pace, because you’re rock hard as you massage the back of our heads and alternate between our mouths.
“Stop Lila – or you’ll make him come too early.”
I pull her, now intoxicated, into the bedroom, where the lights throw a soft glow onto the bed that you sleep in with your wife. Here the dimmed lights are warm orange, good for blurring the details of our bodies and the snow-white covers enveloping a light doona. I see our reflection in the gilt mirror that rests on the floor, as she and I strip off our clothes and slide onto the bed. I can hear you collecting the glasses in the lounge, which I know you will refill and bring into the bedroom, but not before giving me enough time with her first. Time with her breasts, two flat formations of white flesh with nipples sticking out like the mouthpieces of blow-up mattresses, narrow hips and a bare pubic bone. A flawless body, with no freckles, no scars, no skin tags, unmarked by life’s experiences.
“Would you like to explore my body?” I ask and bring her hands to my breasts, which she cups, curious about ones that have had milk in them. My body couldn’t be more different to hers. Every part is round, full and warm. All of my deepest, softest crevices that have been owned by your mouth, tongue, hands, cock, Lila now explores with her cold, slim hands. You come into the room and sit next to her on the bed to hold her in your lap as I go down between her legs. It’s my turn to lick her senseless. As you caress her lips with your fingers, I drive my tongue into her and suck hard. I spit loudly onto her clit then suck it all back up, making her wail and clutch to you. It’s pleasure and pain, over and over as I bite and lick, eventually asking her to turn over onto all fours. The mirror on the wardrobe door reflects her arse curving upwards on the edge of the bed, time for you to lower your jeans down to your knees, grip her hips in your hands and take her from behind.
I jump off the bed and go to my handbag in the kitchen to retrieve a tube of lube.
“Do you like anal?” I whisper into her ear when I get back.
“I’ve never done that,” she whimpers, nearly crying, but not asking for it to stop.
“It’s ok, you don’t have to. I’ll just rub it in with my fingers. You will like it, I promise.”
I rub the lubricant into the hole that reminds me of her mouth, which isn’t occupied by your cock, then reach underneath her stomach to work on her clit, feeling the shaft of your cock going in and out of her tight cunt. With all her holes pleasured at the same time, she moans loudly throwing her head back: she’s about to erupt. I rise onto my knees to reach your mouth. We don’t kiss, just let our tongues entangle and lick with a hungry wanting that can never be sated. I know you won’t hold off much longer, so I pull my fingers away from your cock and rub her clit and arsehole vigorously. You groan heavily and she screams as you pump deep into her, but you don’t cum, because you know you must save it for me… because we’re here to hurt each other, to see who will crack first.
After her final yelps, I push Lila away and make you lie in the middle of the bed, which you do while cradling her in one arm. I take your cock into my mouth, hard and deep just the way you like it. I moan loudly as my diligent licking cleans her off your long shaft, round tip, vulnerable slit, tight balls. You kiss her mouth gently to keep her occupied, while rising up and down, oozing precum into my mouth. I sit on top, hugging you with my thighs. You put your free hand on my hip. I guide your cock into me through my dark forest of curls, where it fits perfectly, the same way my cheek fits your face. Resting my hands on your shoulders, I start to rock up and down with my eyes closed.
I sense Lila’s watching us anxiously, her breath quickened, her post-orgasm bliss not enough to distract her from what she’s seeing. But I don’t care about that now. I reach down and squeeze you, feeling your hard cock sliding in and out of my gushing cunt, remembering you’ve told me how much you love how my warm wetness sometimes squirts as far as your face. I scoop the juices now with my hands and spread them over your belly, reaching up to your chest, pinching your nipples so hard it makes you jolt. In this moment, I feel my body flood with the familiar tingling, an overwhelming sensation that travels from my cunt right down to every nerve in my fingertips. Our bodies are rapturously immersed in each other, but the shock is in the connection between your hand and my hip, where your palm is flush with my skin.
It’s where the love hides.
I open my eyes and let it happen, when I orgasm like I never do with anyone else. That you can bring me to this state, a rapture that only you own, breaks you too, and we howl in a moment that feels like an eternity, but lasts only seconds. Seconds during which nothing else matters. I fall onto your chest, where I lie, euphoric, motionless, with my face turned away from Lila, silently absorbing my pounding heart and pulsating insides, and your little spasms still emptying into me. With the intimacy away from her, a palpable unease seeps into the girl lying on the other side of you. It makes me glide down along your stomach to suck my juices and last drops of cum off your cock. I’m not doing it to pleasure you, I’m doing it to remove any trace of me, before leaving you and Lila on the bed, naked and exposed.
When I come back from the bathroom dressed, you’re under the covers with Lila resting on your shoulder. I come up to her side of the bed and touch her shoulder gently.
“It was great to have met you,” I say, and she sighs with relief as I leave the room without looking at you.
“Wait, I’ll show you out.”
When you come out of the bedroom fully dressed, you find me standing by the sink drinking water, with my handbag slung over my shoulder ready to leave. The atmosphere in the room feels perfectly balanced. There is nothing else here, just you and me and the air flowing in and out of our lungs. I let you put your arms around me and press me into you as we stand in the middle of the kitchen, where we have fucked so many times. Cunt, mouth, arse, from the front, from behind, most of which you had filmed, keen for the camera to catch our pounding silhouettes reflected in the bathroom mirror. I let you sweep me into one of your famous hugs, melt me into your big ex-boxing shoulders, with which you could end my breath in one squeeze. Then I realise you’re sobbing into my hair. There’s nothing I can do, but to let you heave against me in little tremors and to kiss your neck which lets us forget about the pretty stranger in your bedroom. When we dissolve our embrace it’s my turn to forget about it all; I leave and close the door of the apartment I know well.