Free Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You by Nikki Gemmell Page A

centre of your focus while he was on you, that he was merely kick-starting the film in your head. As he pushed inside you’d slip into concentrating on a scenario that would trigger your pleasure. It all had little to do with the person making love to you. You never found the sex sexy; maybe it would come with the next man or the next but it never combusted for you. What was all the fuss about?
    You were much better at it by yourself, in your head.

Lesson 43
    the law for everyone is duty first, pleasure next
    What you want:
    The lights turned off. A touch that’s gentle, slow, provocative, that builds you up, that makes you want it too much. An orgasm; it doesn’t have to be at the same time as the man, just one orgasm so that you know what everyone’s talking about. Eye contact. A quick coming that’s not on your breasts or your face. Holding afterwards, skin to skin. Oral sex, precisely where you ask, for as long and as soft and as slow as you’d like. Sex that’s uncomplicated, with no ties, where the man will do exactly what you want. Claiming happiness for yourself: you’re so used to focusing on your partner’s pleasure at the expense of your own.
    What you do not want:
    To suck a penis. The smell of stale smoke. A tongue in your ear. Underwear involving satin or g-strings or leopard print or lace. The vaginal sex to go on too long. A thrusting so hard that it burns, it hurts. Swallowing. Breast sucking, breast licking, breast anything. To be asked what are you thinking. For it to be pushed upon you when you’re tired, grubby, not yet wet. Being pinned down. A rush to get in. A penis that’s too big. Loud snorting at climax, or groaning, or any expression like ‘ooh yes, baby’ and ‘c’mon’. For the roll-over after the coming to be too abrupt. To be kicked out too quick.
    What you love:
    The arch of the foot, its bones, rake-splayed. Wide, blunt, clean fingernails. Michelangelo wrists. Cleanliness. The nape of your neck nuzzled. Your eyelids kissed. Burrowing deep under the blankets. Clothes to be drawn off slowly, in exquisite anticipation. Cold, smooth walls you are rammed against. The sound of a lover’s breath close to your ear. Your hair pulled back when he’s inside. Your name spoken aloud just before he comes. Connecting, a holiness fluttering within you both. Seduction that’s slow, intriguing, unique, by flattery, extravagant gestures, text: poem scraps on napkins, filthy e-mails that should never be sent, love letters scrawled on Underground passes, a line composed in lipstick on your back as you sleep, written backwards, to be read in the mirror; oh yes, all that.

Lesson 44
    if you have a dog and never let him out the poor fellow will bark and howl miserably
    Cole has a gift. He hasn’t given you one for so long, since Marrakech, when you received chocolates and magazines and jewellery from the souks. You protest but you’re smiling, you can’t help it, for it signals a thaw, a softening back into an easier way. You can both feel it, time is smoothing things out. You both want this.
    It’s an envelope. You slide your fingers beneath the heavy, cream flap.
    Private membership to the London Library. The writers’ library. It’s too ironic, heartbreaking, apt and your heart swells with light and guilt. Your husband’s blackmailing you with generosity and you know exactly what you’ll do, for a writers’ library might, just might, have an actor in it, who’s researching a screenplay, perhaps.
    I thought it might give you a kick start, Cole says. For the book.
    Ah, the book.
    For you’d told him once that one day you’d like to take your cheeky seventeenth-century text and do something with it. It was one reason why he was so insistent you give up the drudgery of teaching, to try something you’d always wanted to do – although sometimes you suspected it was just to keep you all to himself. You’d showed him the section where the author stated that women married not for