The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (book recommendations website txt) 📗

together. Their bodies had been drawn to one another, sliding into an easy rhythm. Then they’d started over again, losing all track of time, eventually drifting off between two embraces. Outside, the sky had turned from bright to faded blue to dusky pink, but inside the room, they’d ceased to notice the movement of the clock, the waning of the day. They fell asleep holding hands, after straightening the sweat-soaked sheet under their languorous bodies. Hunger pangs had woken them up.

Claire shrieks and huddles into Manuel’s chest, shivering, as he turns the water on with an icy blast. He tells her he likes his showers cold, that it’s good for the skin, for the heart. His erection slaps against Claire’s behind, rubs against the backs of her thighs, then her stomach when she turns to face him so he can lather her up. She yelps again when he aims the frigid stream at her head, her scalp tingling under the cold water, which runs down her neck and shoulders, stiffening her nipples into hard points.

When he slides his fingers inside her, she decides she doesn’t mind the cold water lashing her skin after all. He whispers in her ear that she’s very, very dirty and needs to be scrubbed everywhere, all over. His tone is babying, like he’s talking to a little girl, but his touch is shameless, his hand penetrating her with brazen eagerness. He pins her against the shower wall, blocking her escape from the cold, cutting jet that he aims directly at her. She gives herself up completely, wracked with spasms and shivers, her body undone by the ecstasy and the cold. The water offers her a form of violent redemption, and her brain swims with a series of bizarre images as her excitement mounts uncontrollably. When she finally comes, she could swear her body has dissolved into liquid, merging with the rivulets forming at their feet and flowing away through the small holes in the drain.

It’s Manuel who finally turns off the shower. Without missing a beat, he dries Claire off, with the same nonchalance, the same verve as he would himself. He lifts her arms to get to her armpits; he dries her bottom, the insides of her thighs, her neck and the fold of skin under her earlobes. Claire can feel his excitement pressed against her backside, sliding down her legs as he bends over to dry her feet and ankles, his desire seeming to know no bounds. Still trembling from her pleasuring in the shower, she finds herself wanting more. Manuel doesn’t need any coaxing. In one swift motion, he lifts her up and splays her across his hips, her legs dangling on either side. Claire wraps them around Manuel’s waist, nuzzles her face into his neck, crushes her breasts against his slick chest. She lets herself be carried, amazed he has enough strength to support the full weight of her body hanging off him like that. He takes a few staggering steps toward the bedroom, but they don’t make it that far. He pinions Claire, hair still dripping wet, against the floral wallpaper in the hallway. The water streams down her back, forming a wet spot around the daisies and buttercups as Manuel thrusts into her, legs firmly planted, holding nothing back.

Claire feels the powerful ripples rising inside her, like waves swelling inside the cavity that once housed living beings. Inside her abdomen, her uterus quivers, draws inward and upward, and contracts like a heart muscle as the pleasure surges through her body.

*

They leave the apartment to pick up wine, bread, some fruit. The elevator ascends slowly toward them. It’s one of those old-fashioned cage types with the cables, pulleys and brakes all exposed. At each floor, it gives a little jolt, like a mark or a notch that Claire registers curiously in her still-tingling body.

A mother and daughter step into the elevator on the fourth floor. Manuel looks at Claire, and they smile at each other, as much as to say: We reek of sex.

*

They spend the night the same way as the evening, making love.

Claire hooks her legs over Manuel’s shoulders, his body looming over hers, and their voices merge into one, out of control, the room filling with pleasure, sweat spraying off them, their two bodies pounding, probing, pressing, clutching at one another, hair, skin, lips and tongues, flesh, hips urging each other to climax after climax, moans, a long cry, high-pitched squeals, then deep groans, whispers and sighs, they give themselves to each other without shame or reservation. They have only a few hours in this lifetime to revel in the desire that binds them.

And when the frenzy finally subsides, Claire lies dazed and sated against Manuel’s sweaty chest, their bodies slumped together in the dip in the mattress. She thinks about the irascible old lady next door, who’s no doubt been awakened by their cries and the banging of the headboard: old, dark wood against the faded stucco wall. The entire room feels like it’s vibrating: walls, furniture, bodies, curtains, window, shutters, all the way down to the stifling air in the courtyard, which fills with pleasure, fierce, potent and unrepressed.

*

In the dankness of the room, Claire surrenders herself to Manuel’s touch, as he trails his fingers idly over her neck, through her hair, gently, trustingly, as one would stroke the back of a small, docile animal or the downy head of an infant. He runs his hand down the length of her spine to the dimples in her lower back, follows the lines of her body, lingers on the curve of her buttocks, then travels back up again; he explores her with his palm, traces her with his fingernails, so thoroughly that her skin comes out in white lines, like a network of chalk trails against the semi-darkness.

Lying on her side, her body pressed against his, she rests an ear against his bare chest, and it’s her own heart that Claire hears beating,