Free The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro by Paul Theroux Page B

their softness; they were full and heavy and now her nipples were hard. I lowered my head and licked and sucked them and could not restrain myself from nibbling them, and when I did she took her breasts with her gloved hands and lifted them into my face, sighing with pleasure as she touched herself.
    My mind was still set against her—untrusting. At any moment I felt she would reject me. Yes, even as she was pushing her warm breasts against my mouth I suspected she was just perverse enough to stop herself cold and send me away, saying, “That’s enough for you! What more do you want!”
    And though she didn’t, though she was compliant, more than compliant—active and eager—I was using more strength than was necessary, sensing somehow that I needed to overpower her. I thrust her backward, could not reach the bed, got her to the floor, and hiked up her clothes—silks, straps, garters, stockings, ribbons, all the underpinnings of the old-fashioned feminine Europe, a wilderness of lush lingerie and lace. I was surprised and obstructed by her large elaborate panties, and when I found I could not remove them, could not disentangle them from the silken underpinnings, I parted the lacy crotch of these panties, felt with my fingers the wet mouth and lips of her cunt, and drove my purple cock forward. It was then I knew she could not stop me, though I still gripped her arms and pumped, and each time I thrust she moaned like someone being stabbed to death.
    I must not let her stop me, I felt, but the feeling was more intense than the words: I had animal hunger and this was the nearest thing to rape that I had ever known, because I still felt that although she would never succeed, she might try to stop me. She moaned but it was not protest; she writhed but it was not resistance. She wanted more.
    The darkness was dazzling. I was convinced of her hunger now, for she reached down and gripped me with her gloved hand and squeezed her lacy fingers on my rigid cock. I felt the ribs and stitching on my hot skin, her whole glove encircling the stalk of my erection and tugging it, planting it deeper into her body. When I came, with a scream that tore through my guts, falling across her body, tangled in her clothes, she let out a little disappointed ‘Ach” that died away, scraping into silence.
    The first word spoken in the darkness was my whisper: “Sorry.”
    She put her face against the side of my head. Her breath was so hot it scorched my ear. She said, “I want more,” and in the darkness and in her hunger she had never sounded more Germanic. I made a picture in my mind: a forest demon demanding blood.
    But I had nothing more to give her. She clung to me for a while, saying nothing, and when, sighing, she let go, I knew she was telling me to leave.
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    The next day, golden in the golden sunlight, under the brim of her big Panama hat, she was in charge again, sulky and spiteful, perhaps slightly worse than usual, as though tormenting me in revenge for having surrendered to me.
    â€œThat is not what I asked for,” she said when I brought her the Campari and soda she had requested.
    Haroun was there and heard this obstinacy. He smiled—he seemed to understand what lay behind her imperiousness.
    â€œI said Punt e Mes. I never drink Campari at this hour.”
    A lie.
    â€œAnd do stop staring at me. You are making me feel there is something wrong. Get the drink and go.”
    That hot day, the day in Taormina after we had made love in her room at the Palazzo d’Oro, was the worst, the most miserable, I had so far spent in her company. She was a shrew to me—demanding, insulting, unreasonable, reminiscing about ex-husbands and former lovers, mentioning large sums of money and her extensive travels, treating me as though I was another species—reminding me that I was an American, a mere boy, with no money except what she gave me, who could be sent away at any