By Justine Elyot
No part of my body is off limits to him, nor his to me.
The mouths crash and the hands clasp whenever the urge strikes, be it in St. Mark’s Square or the still of the Black Forest.
Seclusion is celebrated always by the meeting of organs and orifices. My body is a map, and I guide him to the destination, unless he has already decided where he plans to visit. His explorer’s hands climb the hills and plunge into the valleys, sometimes seeking out the popular attractions, sometimes taking the road less traveled.
Not a pore of skin has escaped his attention, not a pinch of flesh or a sweet, wet space. He has drawn me in exquisite detail, and I could mark his pleasure spots just as accurately.
But a question still remains. We know each other. We know our bodies and our minds. We have them memorized in perfect detail.
All the same, do we know where we are?
“Where are we?” I ask him one evening. We are looking out over the Amalfi Coast to the isle of Capri, sitting in each other’s arms on the picnic rug, drinking Chianti.
“Sorrento,” he says, retracting his head to give me a look of concern. “Are you okay, Lisa? It’s been a hot one.” He puts a hand over my forehead.
“No, I mean where are we? And where shall we go?”
“Pompeii?” he says, shrugging, still not quite catching up with me. “Maybe Naples.”
“After that. After all that.”
He puts down his glass.
“Oh,” he says quietly. “I see.”
“Divorce settlements and redundancy payments don’t last forever.”
“I can sell the house.”
“Even so…”
He sighs. “I don’t want this to end.”
“Neither do I. It’s been six months. I can afford maybe six more.”
“Then what? You go back to your suburban semi? Get a job as…something?”
“I don’t want to go back. Ever. But I need to think about where I do want to go. Have you really not given it a thought?”
“No. I like living out this fantasy.”
“So it is a fantasy. It’s not reality, is it?”
“Oh, reality.” He looks cross and disappointed, picking up the wine glass again and swigging. “Reality’s overrated.”
“So what do you think we should do?”
He looks out over the sea.
“You’ve got the opposite of itchy feet,” he suggests. “You want to settle somewhere.”
“You don’t?” I ask gently, fearing what might be coming next.
“Settling didn’t exactly work for me last time. But I do want to do something, I suppose. Make something of everything we’ve done over the past six months. Perhaps write a book or teach or…I don’t know.”
“Shall we look for a place? Do you want to stay with me?”
“Of course,” he says, incredulous. “Of course I do.”
We start a tour guide business in Barcelona, taking groups of interested English-speakers to explore the more hidden Bohemian haunts of the city. The job is exciting, fun and interesting, but it is only a few months before we start to feel restless again.
“What can we do?” I ask Nick. “I want to travel again. But I love it here and don’t want to give it all up.”
“There are other ways to satisfy your wanderlust, you know,” he says.
“Are there?”
He comes to stand behind me on the balcony, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and holding my hands in front of me.
“I sometimes feel guilty,” he says, “that being with me denied you the chance to indulge in some of the attention you got from all the men we encountered in our travels.”
“What?”
I turn to stare at him.
“Do you remember Enrico in Pisa? He would have killed me to get to you, I think. And what about Jens in Copenhagen? He asked me if we’d be interested in a threesome.”
“You never told me!”
“Would you have been? Interested?”
“I’m not sure…part of me would have been. But I’d have worried about hurting you—upsetting the balance of what we have.”
“Yes, I thought so. But what if I told you that I wouldn’t mind? What if I told you I’d like to think of other men having you?”
“You…would?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want other women?”
“Not necessarily. Lisa, I’m happy to be with you, and you only. I’d do whatever you want. You saved me, you know? That means everything to me.”
“I didn’t save you. It was happenstance.”
“Fate.”
“If you say so. Do you actually mean that, though? About seeing other men?”
“Yes, I do. Think about it. I want you to be contented, satisfied. I don’t want to stifle you.”
I think about it. I think about it for three weeks, along with much soul-searching conversation with Nick, and an inordinate amount of sex. The idea of giving me to other men seems to send him into overdrive; he is in constant heat.
I make my decision and find myself, one sultry August night, sitting outside a pavement café with Jordi, a sinuous snake of Spanishness from the apartment across the corridor. Nick returns from the bar where he has been chatting to the proprietor and paying our bill and says, “Well, then, are we ready?”
“Sure,” says Jordi, taking my hand and helping me up, an old-fashioned gentleman on his way for some newfangled fun.
“Ready, Lisa?”
I can only nod.
The three of us head back to the apartment, Jordi with his arm around my waist, his hand rubbing my dress up and down an inch of hip as if he is impatient to wear the fabric through and get to my flesh. The heavy heat of the night adds to the erotic expectancy, the city air a stew of sea salt and prawns tossed in garlic oil and exhaust fumes and sex.
Inside the flat, Jordi makes to kiss me, but Nick pulls him off, holding up a hand.
“I need to do this properly,” he says, clamping my shoulder. “Jordi, meet Lisa.”
“We have met.” He sulks, but Nick shushes him.
“Lisa wants to travel. She likes variety and she likes excitement. I want to help her by getting her fucked by as many men as she likes. If you want to fuck her, you can. But I want to watch. Do you accept this offer?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Then here you are.” He lets go of me and releases me into the hungry arms of Jordi.
We are on the bed in moments, my clothes ripped, my hair mussed, my lips kissed into stinging swollen cushions while he thrashes about above me.
Nick settles into the wicker chair by the balcony door, crossing his legs and watching with one finger to his lips, his other hand at his crotch.
When Jordi finds my pussy, it is twice as hot for Nick’s eyes on us, and he speaks up, encouraging Jordi to finger me, then to eat me out.
Jordi does not take kindly to instruction, but he does what Nick says anyway, and I lie in disarray, legs spread, panting and moaning, while Nick smiles down at me, calling me his best girl.
“You could lick her all night, couldn’t you?” Nick remarks, watching my body spasm a third time, a melting mess on the bed, dizzy and flying. “I think you should fuck her now. She likes it hard.”
I do like it hard. I like the bedsprings to creak and the headboard to clatter. Jordi can do all of this, and he can make me come again, my fourth orgasm, wrenched from me, splitting me open, laying me bare.
He thanks me as he zips up his fly, then he thanks Nick.
“My pleasure,” says Nick. “We must do this again.”
I look up at him, squinting, misty-eyed as the door bangs.
“Was that what you wanted?”
“Yes,” he says, sitting down beside me, putting his hand over my soaked pussy. “Because the best thing about traveling, Lisa, is the homecoming.”
He bends over to kiss me and we make the bed squeal until dawn. Does travel broaden the mind? I have to say yes.