Read Online Dark Places by Kate Grenville - Free Book Online

her skirt, bit by bit, miming finicky scientific care. The stocking seemed to go on forever: was the thing one huge garment covering her entire body? Finally the stocking became thicker, and at the next fold of the skirt, flesh was exposed: jelloid pink flesh, dimpled like the surface of a river in flood.
    I nearly abandoned the whole thing, but now the room was urging me on with cries of encouragement, so I wrestled with the rubber attachment until it snapped apart. I pulled, but the stocking was still attached and I deduced there was another rubber fastening at the back. Maintaining the expression of solemnity which was so useful, I gestured for Valmai to roll over to expose this second rubber item, and miming the obedient patient she did so, hiking her skirt up so roughly that I was presented not just with thigh, but with a large putty-coloured buttock, pink-striped from the pressure of folds of fabric, and seeming to my fevered face to be radiating heat like a water-bottle.
    I turned away from the expanse of flesh before my face, and saw that my companions had formed a circle around Valmai and me, and were winking and making small signs with their hands, and Ogilvie was jerking his sideways towards the door behind which was the bed: there was no going back now. Singer was obliged to put a good face on it, and lead Valmai into the other room, winking and making small signs with his hands at his companions as he went.
    But what did you do, exactly, to get the ball rolling? Did you make a little conversation, as you might in a drawing-room, or would they think that was eccentric? Did you undo their clothes—heaven knows where you started with all those hooks-and-eyes and plackets— or would they think that was rude, and slap your hand away? Did you have to kiss them?
    I folded my jacket carefully and reminded myself of the pound notes I had given Ogilvie for the services of this woman, and their image restored me. I turned and eyed her boldly: a thing that you bought did not laugh at you.
    In the end, I did not let Singer down. When Valmai removed some of her clothes—they seemed to fall away as easily as bark from a tree—and I was able to see the precise shape of what was under all those bodices and draperies, I rose to the occasion. Morrison had been wrong about almost everything: Valmai’s titties did not hang down to her waist, and the lips down there did not hang down to her knees: in fact I could see nothing at all in that direction but a neat triangle of black hair. Once I had a look I could see that her body was simply a lumpy version of my own; I could not quite look her big bold nipples in the eye, but there was nothing that made me want to bring up my dinner.
    And when I began—tentatively at first—actually to touch that flesh with my own, I surprised myself by finding it something I wished to do more of. Her flesh was so yielding that I could feel my fingers positively sink in: it felt as if my nails were actually penetrating that thin skin. I could hear the stubble on my cheek grate like sandpaper across her cheek, and when I lay down on top of her, as she suggested in a whisper in my ear, I heard the breath expelled from her chest with my weight.
    She began to sigh and breathe heavily into my neck, like someone who had just run up three flights of stairs: it seemed that I must have found the place, for she panted louder, and I penetrated her.
    At first I thought Valmai might break under my weight, or burst from my thrusts, but I became bolder as she neither broke nor burst, but whipped me on with sighs loud in my ear, and gusts of sounds which I recognised as words, ‘Yes yes oh yes!’ Her appreciation caused me to rise to new heights still, and to be less concerned lest she break or burst: I twisted her arm in its socket, I locked her leg under my own, I grasped her chin and forced her head back into the pillow, and I buried myself in her as far as I could go: still she