by PIERRE CHODERLOS DE LACLOS
My lover’s an explorer, he’s busy whiling away his time stringing beads with negresses on the Ivory Coast. You can come to my place, 214, rue de Prony—Culculine d’Ancône.
The Eleven Thousand Rods, Guillaume Apollinaire
In Paris, shops close for a long and languid lunch. In Brisbane people eat on the run, at their desks, in the street, the faster the better. In Paris lunch breaks are for afternoon siestas. Leisurely dining on the footpath with a glass of crisp white wine. Or, as both Nin and Apollinaire propose, a quick dash to the house of a lover, there to climb the narrow stairs and tangle with them on their marital bed.
214 rue de Prony is no longer a residence. It is a corner building in a charming street, now converted into a shop. Holly looked around at the gorgeous parquetry. This alone reminded her of the building’s sordid past. Once it had been the site for cavorting. One randy gentleman and two willing female libertines lost in an orgy of spanking and fucking, finding themselves lying spent on the floor in a mess of shit and piss and come. She sniffed. Not even a whiff of past debaucheries.
The shop would be closing soon. It would be shut up for two hours, maybe three. Holly took her time over the bone china. Little egg cups perched on a chicken’s foot, tea cups designed to be lifted by the curl of an iguana’s tail. She liked the surreal crockery on display. More than this, she liked the shop assistant, her hair pinned severely up on her head in a tight bun, her glasses dark and heavy and serious, her brows beneath them darker still and left to mark a single line that dipped in the centre, nodding to the bridge of her strong hooked nose. When she was sitting behind the counter on a stool, her legs crossed elegantly one over the other, Holly had noticed the lace edge of her stockings and the snaps of her garter belt.
Holly lurked by the stuffed head of a giraffe mounted on a bed of moss. Her interest had been piqued. She wanted to see if the woman was wearing anything else under the short silk skirt, which seemed a little flimsy for the chilly weather outside.
‘Puis-je vous montrer quelque chose?’
‘Je suis désolée, je ne parle pas du tout français.’ Holly knew that French was supposed to be the language of seduction but in her mouth it seemed to be the language of comic relief. The woman smiled but restrained herself from giggling at her terrible pronunciation.
‘Can I let you to look at something?’
Holly looked at the woman’s skirt, the black lace garter and stockings just a shadow beneath the fabric. It was an involuntary action but it seemed to have the appropriate effect on the pretty stranger. She shifted her weight, sized Holly up, gauging her proportions with her gaze. The woman picked up a stuffed chicken and held it between them.
‘You are interested in something, yes? A coq perhaps?’
Holly shook her head brusquely. ‘Not today. No. But I am certain you could tempt me with some of your finely crafted wares.’
‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘That is the certain. A cup for the egg perhaps? Or,’ she rested her hand lightly on a ceramic octopus, ‘the fish. The, how you say, mussels? Oyster? You may crack the shell and find the inside jewels?’
‘I am very keen to find the inside jewels,’ Holly said.
As if to test their shared understanding the woman reached out with one pointed finger. Holly noticed that her nails were long and perfectly lacquered with a white crescent at the tip of each one. She rested her finger on Holly’s lips. Then when Holly continued to meet her stare she slipped her finger between them as if to test her temperature. Holly met her probing finger with a tongue and with this gesture an understanding was reached.
‘I am Culculine.’
Holly’s eyes widened. ‘Culculine? At this address?’
‘Oh. You have read Les Onze Mille Verges? I rented this exact address because of my namesake, Culculine.’
Holly nodded approvingly.
Apollinaire’s libertine sauntered over to the door and locked it. She turned the sign over. She pulled a cord and the blinds covering the windows turned till the room was thrown into darkness.
‘My husband will expect that I am home for his coq au vin in an half hour.’
Holly nodded. ‘I am sure we will be done by then.’
The woman stepped towards Holly, leaned closer, brushed Holly’s lips with her own. Holly felt her mouth softening, felt her knees become loose as she opened her teeth to accept the gift of a stranger’s tongue, laced with the delicate lilt of rosewater and waxy sweet lipstick. She felt the woman reach around her to the zip of her heavy woollen dress.
Holly broke the kiss to tut her displeasure.
‘Only one rule,’ she said to Culculine. ‘You must not look at me. You must be blindfolded the whole time.’
The woman’s smile carried the hint of a pout. ‘Each has his own, how you say it, kinked? The twist? But I would have enjoyed the looking.’
‘No looking. But I encourage you to touch.’
She unwrapped the scarf from her neck and looped it around the woman’s face, tying it in a firm knot beneath her tightly secured bun.
Then Holly took her hands and guided them back to the zip. She felt the delicious lick of cold air travel down her spine and across her bottom as the zip was pulled downward. She returned the favour by lifting the woman’s thin skirt. Her black lace knickers had been pulled up over the delicate garters and Holly wondered if this woman was used to a quick tryst in the afternoon. She was certainly dressed for easy access. Holly gazed at the neatly trimmed patch of pale brown hair spelling a V between her thighs. Her own hair had grown out to a wild bush of curling tendrils. She let the woman slip her dress off, down over her hips. She stepped out of this discarded skin and stood in only her bra and stay-up stockings. She took a step closer to Culculine and looked down at their twinned pubises, the dark wild forest and the neatly clipped lawn. She moved her hands up to the woman’s shirt. The top buttons were already dealt with and when she unclipped the four lower buttons she could push the fabric away to reveal the sheer mesh of an expensive bra, the nipples within already tight. Holly dipped her head and let her tongue explore. She executed three pointed laps around the nipple before leaning in and opening her mouth to suck the tip of the breast between her lips. She could feel the excitement of sucking. Her own breasts responded, her nipples snapping tight. She remembered Mandy’s full breasts, darker, softer, all-consuming, and she found herself moaning. Holly was grateful when Culculine slid her hands up the curve of her waist and cupped Holly’s pendulous globes in the palms of her hands, reaching her fingers up to pinch at the puckered flesh at the heart of her desire.
This woman’s breasts tasted of powder. Holly was reminded of a summer day, the sticky sweetness of Turkish delight, that first bite and icing sugar drifting like snow onto her cleavage. She wondered if Culculine’s cunt would taste equally sweet. She slid her hands down, lifting the skirt once more, dipping her finger into the pot of honey, making little circles at the place where she herself would want a finger and, edging the cup of the bra down under her full breasts, painted first one aureole and then the other.
Holly pulled this sweet body closer to her, using the woman’s buttocks for purchase. She opened her mouth and let her tongue slide over the sticky wet tips, first one then the other. Cinnamon, chocolate, cloves. She sucked one breast into her mouth as far as she could take it. The hard point of the nipple rubbed against the top of her palate. It was a rich, complex flavour, but this little taste was less than an entrée. She fell to her knees, wincing at the tenderness of the fresh cuts under her stockings. She reached out with her tongue, stroked the fur of a fragrant animal, tipped it up and around till she felt the edge of the slit, the little nub of a clitoris. Pushing past it, further, where the flavour was strongest, the briny taste of oysters indeed, the fluted edges of a mussel parting at her tongue’s insistence. She sucked at the sauce, covered her lips in the consommé. It took all her will not to bite down on the fleshy parting of the woman’s labia. Her teeth were tingling with excitement. Culculine was making little snuffling noises.
Holly thought of Mandy. She remembered her two friends glimpsed through a window. She knew now the extent of their pleasure. She understood the excitation of a pair of cunt lips swollen beneath your probing tongue. She pressed her nose against Culculine’s clitoris, inhaling greedily, stimulating her with a little nod of her head. The woman’s knees buckled, she almost fell. Holly held her thighs up with her own hands as Culculine bucked her hips down onto the point of her tongue. The cunt began to quiver. Holly quickly thrust her tongue up into the slippery tunnel as far as she was able. The lips began to palpate. They squeezed around her, strong hard contractions and the sound from the woman’s throat was a high strained note like a violin about to snap a string. This was how Holly had sounded when Mandy first licked her to pleasure. This was how she had shaken and trembled. Holly clung in place, letting the sudden gushing juices fall into her open mouth, catching the last of the palpitations with the sensitive probing of her tongue.
She was ready to take her share of the pleasure, more than ready: her own cunt had swelled with sympathetic excitement. Her own clitoris was full and distended. She lay back on the shop floor and the woman collapsed with her, her mouth falling close to position, her lips latching onto a place at the front of her thigh. She licked her way blindly towards her destination. Holly glanced down to see the glow of her vagina highlighting Culculine’s flushed face, throwing a spotlight into her perfect mouth, illuminating her teeth. It was like a painting by Caravaggio. The light so perfectly placed, the darkness serving only to lift the scene with a divine glow. Holly watched Culculine latch onto Holly’s seat of pleasure, sucking her clitoris expertly.
Culculine reached out and pulled her wedding ring, then her engagement ring with its fat diamond, off her finger. Holly remembered the feeling of freedom as she shed her own abstinence ring. She gasped as the woman dropped her rings to the floor and in one swift movement plunged her ring finger up to the knuckle in Holly’s cunt. The fingernail scratched her but she didn’t flinch. This was not the pain of a hymen pummelled out of existence by a frantic cock. This wasn’t the sharp flinch of glass embedded in her knees. This pain was an aspect of pleasure and she let herself groan as Culculine ploughed a second finger then a third into her with hard, deft thrusts. There was more space now to finger her. Mandy had gently navigated the space around her hymen, Culculine thrust past the broken edges of skin. Space now for four fingers, five, elegantly pressed into the yielding flesh.
Culculine sucked at her clitoris until it was tender and swollen and pulsing with an imminent explosion. She let go to drag in a wavering breath.
‘Merde! You taste like cognac. Like drug. Like I am filled up with the fuck. My vagin is like it is stuffed full of you. Like you have your pointing inside me. The fist you know? Like this.’
She made a fist and, as if to demonstrate she held it at the entrance to Holly’s vagina.
‘So wet in your vagin I know I can climb inside you, see?’
She pushed with her fist and Holly screamed.
‘I hurt?’
‘No!’ Holly was shaking her head. She felt a rush of her juices squirt out onto the woman’s hand, lifted her head, her eyes wide, to see the woman thrust her fist once more against her wet and glowing cunt. ‘No. Do it!’ Holly shouted, groaning.
‘I do this.’ The woman pushed her fist once more, straining, pushing, twisting, lubricating her fist in the bright glow of Holly’s sex. ‘But you taste…Your flavour…I must also. I must have this.’
Culculine pushed her mouth back down onto Holly’s clitoris. The pleasure of the sensation was so great that Holly felt her cunt gulp hungrily at the woman’s fist. She felt her flesh stretch wider than she would have imagined it could. The fist slipped easily into her, the knot of it pumping up higher and higher towards her womb, the woman licked and sucked, drinking the juices, agitating her clitoris till Holly could take no more. She grabbed her own breasts in her hands and squeezed. Her nipples were hot and full. Her cunt began to clench on the woman’s fist, the pulse of it so strong that finally Culculine’s hand shot out of its resting place, pursued by a gush of viscous blue liquid that splashed out across her face and breasts. Culculine continued to suck there even when Holly felt the pulsing pleasure subside. Holly tried to dislodge her but Culculine shuffled forward, grabbing her arse and burying her face in the bright blue of her juices. She lapped and lapped and lapped till Holly’s clit was raw and sore.
‘That’s enough now,’ Holly whispered, hoarse, spent. ‘You can stop now.’
But Culculine would not listen. She gulped down the brightly glowing juices, she smeared them on her chin. She cupped her hand and gathered a fistful and drank from that and when it was gone she pushed her lips to Holly’s vulva, snuffling like a pig desperate for truffles.
‘Stop.’ But she would not stop. ‘Stop! Now!’
Holly scrambled away, kicking at her with the naked soles of her feet. Culculine tried to grab at her cunt, stretching her fingernails up to claw at her.
‘Don’t take it away,’ she pleaded, dipping her tongue once more into the font. ‘I need it…’
‘No!’ Holly held her back by her hair. The bun came loose and her hair spilled, damp and blue-tinged, around her shoulders. ‘Stop!’
Holly pulled herself awkwardly up to standing. At her feet was a murder scene from a late-night movie, the phosphorescent blue standing in for blood as if this were an ad for sanitary products. Her lover, face still bound in Holly’s scarf, dragged herself blindly through the gore. Holly didn’t know how to stop her. She grabbed quickly for her shoes and her dress and ran naked towards the door. The woman was reaching up for her, catching her foot just as she felt the doorhandle slip through her fingers. Holly kicked. The woman winced but continued to drag herself towards Holly, climbing her calf, reaching her fingers up towards her thigh, slipping one finger into her cunt, desperate for honey despite the sting of the bees.
Holly slapped at her. She didn’t know what else to do. Her hand connected with the woman’s cheek and Culculine fell back briefly, enough for Holly to escape naked into the street.
She glanced around. The street was almost empty. A mother and daughter walked hand in hand, their backs mercifully turned towards Holly. She ran a few steps and hid in a nearby doorway, struggling to pull her dress back over her head. When she was dressed and dishevelled she looked up to see a man passing by on the other side of the street. He watched her zipping up her dress and he held his fingers to his mouth and pulled a kiss out into the air. Holly stooped to push her shoes onto her feet. She hurried away and her feet left damp and shimmering footprints on the path.