London Broil Page 12

  20.

  The Superiority of Venchi Gianduja

  “Do you know why I brought the gianduja?” he asked, when she’d finished the whiskey. “Is that why you put it in hot water when I arrived?” She nodded, and they slowly disentangled themselves until they were standing, then went over to the kitchen where the jar was waiting in its warm bath. “The first time you open it, you have to stir it,” he said.

  “Oh, like good peanut butter. I rarely see that here. Don’t you like it?”

  “Until recently it was strictly for Yanks, but that’s changed in the past few years,” he said. “I don’t quite know what to do with it.”

  “Ooooh. Grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Elvis’ favorite. You’d love them,” she said, feeling the impact of the whiskey.

  She used a stray chopstick to mix the gianduja to a smooth consistency and set it onto a plate, which she carried carefully into the bedroom and placed on the bed, while he followed with the whiskey bottle. “I can read your mind,” she said. “You’re cringing at the thought of chocolate staining the bedding. In fact, what you’d really like to do is throw down a waterproof tarpaulin over the entire bedroom. I’m going to pull off the duvet. And as for the sheets, they’re cheap scratchy ones that I bought when I found that Celia didn’t leave me any. Heaven knows what she did with her sheets. Maybe they were 700 thread count and she couldn’t bear to leave them behind.”

  He didn’t answer, but put his finger in the warm chocolate, and pulling back her hair, drew the finger all the way down the side of her neck. He bent to taste the chocolate, working his way from her ear down to her shoulder. The feel of his lips and tongue made her leg muscles rubbery. He steadied her in his arms, and tugging at her stretch pants said, “Take these off.” She pulled them down along with her black panties and left them on the floor. He laid her crosswise on the bed and dipped two fingers in the gianduja, trailing them along her thighs. “Open your legs and raise your knees. I’m going to lick this off your thigh,” he said. She followed his instructions, and felt his warm tongue moving rhythmically on her flesh. “You’re not relaxed enough yet,” he said, handing her the bottle. “Take a good swig.” She took a second generous mouthful of the whiskey straight from the bottle and handed it back to him. He set it on the nightstand and then settled himself over the length of her, supporting his weight with his elbows and forearms. “So you like to feel me on you?” he said. “I’m fourteen stone. That’s not too heavy for you?” and he let his chest press down on hers while he levered his pelvis against her.

  This was incredible. “Gods, James,” she panted against his shoulder, trying to lift her hips against his, “for gods’ sake, fuck me now.”

  “Oh no. I have something to teach you now. Put this beneath your bum.” He slipped a pillow under her. “Now put your hands on my head.” She tangled her fingers in his hair and felt his hot breath moving to her breasts, along her belly, and downward to the inside of her thighs. His hands gently spread her legs wider, wider, and then his open mouth covered the most intimate parts of her, licking, sucking, wet, and warm. As the critical moment approached, she pressed her fingers into his scalp and he increased the pace until she crested in an exquisite few seconds. While the lesser tremors were still coursing through her, she rolled off the pillow onto her side and kissed him, tasting herself on his lips. Not fishy, she thought. Not unpleasant.

  “What do I taste like to you?” she asked.

  He gazed up at the ceiling, considering his answer. “A wine, I think. There are some Moscato d’Asti wines that have a sweet smell but are on the dry side, and they have more complex flavors than you expect. A hint of musk. Though you also have umami. That’s why I still say you’re like the crispy edges of fat on a good steak.”

  Shaking her head, she pushed him flat onto his back and helped him pull off his briefs. His penis strained up from the nest of dark hair and his balls, fragile like two quail eggs, lay beneath. She grasped him, savoring the velvety, soft feel of his skin, and dipped her finger in the gianduja, anointing the head of his penis with a generous dollop of the dark, rich confection. Then she tentatively tasted it with the tip of her tongue. Why, there was no comparison with Nutella. This had a much stronger hazelnut component, and the chocolate flavor was far more robust. In a word, delicious. She took him into her mouth, sucking him like a lollipop. She could hear him moaning softly. Finally he said, “Laura. Ride me.” His hands pulled her up by the shoulders and moved to her hips.

  She felt completely uninhibited now. She straddled him so that she could feel him pushing at the lips of her vagina, and then impaled herself on his hardness in one smooth motion, causing him to gasp. “Christ, Laura!” She pressed two of his fingers into the jar of warm gianduja, and then leaned forward over him, sucking the sweetness from his fingers while moving herself up and down, up and down over him. She looked into his eyes as his right hand reached up to caress her left breast. But after only a few more strokes, he lifted her off, and before she knew it, he had flipped her underneath him. He parted her legs with his knee, then surged into her. She felt his climax approaching, as he changed the angle of his pelvis and his strokes became shorter and sharper. She wondered whether it was possible for sex to be any better than this.

  Afterward, James said, “You should drink a big glass of water before you go to sleep.” She agreed. “Hangover prevention. Want one?”

  “No, I’m fourteen stone, remember? What are you, nine?”

  “I’ve no idea. But I take your point: you can enjoy a lot more to drink than I can without suffering the consequences.”

  They filled the bathtub with hot water and took turns soaping each other with her buttermilk soap. Then she lay back against his chest and he put his arms around her. The water was still pleasantly warm.

  “Laura,” he said hesitantly, “when we were talking about fantasies earlier, about rape, I heard a note in your voice at one point that made me wonder. Has anyone ever hurt you that way?”

  She was silent for a few moments, holding her water glass, and then said, “Yes. As you said, it’s not that unusual. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the girls I knew in college had been abused in some way. My friend Cecily had a stepfather who used to come into her bedroom at night and touch her when he thought she was asleep. And Juniper was raped by one of her cousins.”

  “Does it upset you to think about it? You don’t have to tell me, but I’d rather you did, so I don’t unknowingly do something that hurts you.”

  She paused to gather her memories. “I was a freshman in college. I went to a small women’s college in Georgia because Pappy was teaching philosophy in Atlanta. I wanted to get away from my parents, but not too far away. There was a fraternity chapter at the large university across town that was known for its bad behavior. They used to get drunk every so often and raid our campus, barging into the dorm rooms to steal panties or throwing girls over their shoulders and running around the courtyard fountain, yelling at the top of their lungs. That particular weekend I went to a party across town. I noticed that a certain boy was following me with his eyes. He had a cup of beer in his hand and stood with a couple of others off to the side. He had red hair and looked a bit like Prince Harry, but bigger and more menacing.

  “On Sunday in the late afternoon, when none of the adults were on campus, they arrived and started running all over the main building and the courtyard. One of them had their chapter flag and was waving it around. They were grabbing girls right and left. Several of us ran into the women’s restroom, but they followed us in. I remember being shocked at that. The others were dragged out, and I was left alone with this red-haired boy. He didn’t say a word, just threw me down on the tile floor, pushed my skirt up and dragged my panties down and off. I struggled, but he was much bigger. He smelled like stale beer and had terrible breath. I knew screaming wouldn’t do any good because there was so much noise outside already. He put a hand over my mouth anyway and rammed into me. It felt like he was sho
ving a shoe up me. Afterward, he just stood up, zipped his pants and left.”

  As he listened to the story, James was gripping her shoulders and upper arms rather tightly. “Were you hurt in the struggle?” he asked.

  “Nothing more serious than a lump on the back of my head, where it hit the tile, and a bleeding scratch on my thigh where his fingernail scraped me when he was ripping off my underwear. I felt a bit sore all over.”

  “The bloody little prick. I’d like to smash his face in.”

  “He’s probably a very respectable attorney on Peachtree Street these days.”

  “What about emotionally? How did it affect you?”

  “It was difficult. My main fear was pregnancy, but luckily I got my period a couple of days later. It didn’t occur to me to tell anyone what happened. Back then, and at that school, it would have spread like wildfire, and I would have been blamed. I lost interest in sex for quite a while after that. But with time, things got better. Besides, I had revenge of a sort. Those morons left their flag in the courtyard, and by the time I went outside, it was eerily quiet and nobody was there. So I unhooked it from the pole, folded it and stuffed it in the waistband of my skirt. I hid it under my mattress, and nobody knew I had it. Pretty soon we heard an announcement that whoever had the flag was requested to return it because the college had received a threatening letter from the chapter’s attorney, and we were given his address. I took my sharp little nail scissors and over a period of about a week, I managed to cut the flag into hundreds of little one-inch squares. I put them in a big manila envelope and took the bus into town so nobody would see me, and mailed him the flag. I wish I could have seen their faces when they opened it.”

  “Well done,” said James. He hesitated and then asked, “That wasn’t your first time, was it?”

  She laughed. “No, but my first time was only marginally better. When I was a senior in high school. In the back seat of a car parked off a dark country road, with a boy I had a crush on. He didn’t know what he was doing, and I knew even less. I wondered what all the fuss was about.”

  “What a shame that your first experiences were like that. But… does it bother you when we’re together and I start telling you what to do? I probably sound like a total wanker sometimes.”

  “You mean when you go all bossypants and masterful on me?” She smiled, thinking of his probable expression at the way she characterized it. “No, it turns me on. I suppose if you ordered me to scrub the floor or stand on my head, it wouldn’t be quite so sexy.”

  “Stand on your head? Now, that has possibilities.”

  21.

  Vestals and Pontiffs

  Nolly was as good as his word, securing an invitation for her and James to visit Belmont Hall in north Yorkshire as the guests of his lordship, Baron Belmont-Speck. Googling the family, she found that the barony had been created to elevate a man who had married an heiress, the illegitimate daughter of a duke, in the early eighteenth century. The present Baron was the eighth to hold the title.

  Laura had no idea what clothing to bring to a country house weekend, though she’d read enough English novels to expect minimal heating and antiquated plumbing. She brought her Fall clothes, some corduroy trousers and wool sweaters, with socks and her rubber rain boots in case they went for walks. After some hesitation, she added a grey pencil skirt that she could wear with her black cashmere twinset and pearls if there was a dressier dinner. Finally, she packed her silk kimono, which would serve as a robe in case she had to walk down the hall to the bathroom.

  The train from London to York took two hours, and upon arrival they rented a car for the drive to Belmont Hall. Laura was awestruck by the beauty of the moors, which at this time of year were covered with rosy pink or purple heather blooms. The landscape was almost devoid of trees, so the heather looked like an uninterrupted pink carpet, stretching as far as she could see.

  Her first view of Belmont Hall was from the end of a long drive leading to the house through green lawns. It was a three-story structure built of greyish brown stone in a U-shape, with the wings set at right angles to the main body of the house and jutting forward around a set of steps. Ivy covered the east wing of the house, which had a substantial addition in a lighter colored stone. Lady Belmont-Speck, a diminutive woman with silvery hair cropped close to her scalp, met them in the front hall, an impressive room with black and white marble tiled floors and large family portraits. She was wearing jeans, a sweater and a barn coat, and her tiny feet were encased in boots. A swarm of floppy-eared, pointer type dogs accompanied her. All had white pelts relieved by reddish brown spots about the head and shoulders.

  “Welcome,” she said. “Please call me Angela. It’s such a novelty for me to have visitors who aren’t here for the grouse. We must get to know one another better, Laura, and James of course, but right now I’m off to pick up some supplies for tomorrow’s dinner. Emily will show you your rooms. Nolly’s already here and you’ll find him in the Saloon having a drink, I’ve no doubt. It’s just behind us. Please do let me know if you need anything while you’re here. We’ll have cocktails at six and dine at seven en famille in the Red Drawing Room.”

  Emily, a young woman who was apparently a member of the staff, took them up a grand staircase to the bedrooms and assigned one to Laura and one to James. “Gentlemen use this bath,” she said, pointing to a door, “and ladies use one that you’ll find if you go through the Pink Parlor here.” She showed Laura the bathroom, which was pretty but had old fashioned plumbing that appeared daunting. There was a clawfoot tub rigged to work as a shower, with a curtain around it, and a toilet with a tank of water sitting high up on the wall. She wondered if she would be able to figure out how to flush it.

  Returning to James’ room, she said, “Are you going to shoot the grouse with Nolly?”

  “I’m no good with a shotgun, and not very keen on shooting, but I’ll probably go out to cheer him on and take a shot or two. Do you object?”

  “No. I gather that it’s a big part of the culture here and helps preserve the moors from development. But it doesn’t seem very sporting to have the birds driven toward you by a line of beaters.”

  “Oh, it’s sporting all right. You have to be quite a good shot to hit one.” He moved closer to her. “I’m going to visit you tonight after dinner.”

  “Are you sure? They gave us separate rooms. Maybe they have an objection to unmarried people sleeping together.”

  “Toffs? No, I’ve been to country houses before, and after dark the hallways in these places see more traffic than Victoria Station. You and I were raised in middle-class households, so we’re far more prudish than they are. They have their codes of public conduct, but they’re not very judgmental about what people do behind closed doors.”

  “Oh. Well, I hope the walls aren’t thin enough for people to hear us.”

  He chuckled and put his arms around her. “I hope you won’t hold back. I like the sounds you make.” And he gave a ridiculous imitation of her, squeaking “oh, ooh, ooh,” in a high voice.

  “You’d better watch out, you— you tosser, or I’ll find some pretext to switch rooms with Nolly, and you’ll be creeping into bed with him.”

  “Do you even know what a tosser is?” he asked.

  “No, but I heard a young woman say it to a man who bumped into her in the street, so I know it’s something bad. Like asshole.”

  “Something like that.”

  **

  Laura dressed for dinner in her grey skirt, a white shirt and a pink wool cardigan. She saved the black cashmere for Saturday, which would likely be a more formal affair in the dining room with the grouse-shooters. They gathered in the Saloon for drinks and Laura was introduced to Rodney Belmont-Speck, a massive, sullen-looking fellow with a shock of dark hair. He gave Laura a reluctant handshake and a grunt, quickly turning away to speak to Phoebe, the petite blonde who was Nolly’s date for the weekend. Laura looked around rather self-consciously and noticed that Nolly and James were deep
in conversation with Angela. Then his lordship, a lanky grey-haired man in his sixties with a tweed jacket and a twinkle in his eye, came forward to meet her.

  “Nolly says you’d like to use the library,” he told her. “By all means, feel free to spend as much time there as you like.”

  “Did you collect many of the books?” she asked.

  “No, that was the seventh Baron, my father. He died in 1992. He used to spend every minute in the library, or in London looking for books. I’ve never been bookish myself. I’m more interested in outdoor pursuits. Tell me, do you have a garden?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, at my home in Parnell, in Pennsylvania. It’s loaded with perennials. But I’m afraid they’re being sadly neglected this year while I’m away.”

  “Oh, but that’s dreadful,” he said, shocked. “Who will cut them back for the winter? I fear you’ll have disease next season. Now, if you travel a great deal in the autumn, I recommend Asclepias, Chrysanthemum, and Heuchera— Coral Bells, you know. They like to be cut back in spring.” Once the Baron embarked on the subject of flowers, it seemed, he was reluctant to stop, and she chatted easily with him about the glories of his autumn garden until it was time to go in to dinner.

  The dinner was served in the Red Drawing Room, an area that the family kept for its private use, apart from the paying guests. The Baron sat at the head of the table with Laura on his right and Rodney on his left. Angela, the Baroness, sat at the other end of the table with Nolly on her right and James on her left. Phoebe sat between James and Laura. She was delicate and small-boned, perhaps in her late twenties, with a feminine figure, natural blonde hair and eyes the color of soft blue hydrangeas. Her voice was high and childlike; Laura thought she sounded like Blossom Dearie and could be a jazz singer in that style, if she happened to have the talent.