With Paul back at sea the fog seemed to lift from Lena's life. She began to see things with a clarity that had been impossible in his presence. She knew not to look down. She stood on a precipice. Everything she had achieved till now, her job, her relationship with Adam, her flat, the entire regulated structure of her life was in jeopardy. A madness had settled in her brain. She was in the grip of a sexual obsession whose destructive power could undo her.
Free of the obligation to hold herself ready and available to Paul she returned to work. As the days went by Lena felt she was walking through a wasteland. At times it seemed that she was not there at all. She had become an absence. An empty shell. She had her hair done. Bought clothes. Spent time creating a shimmering surface that might deflect any reproach. She took this shiny version of herself to the bedroom and sought reassurance among the reflections of her mirrors. But the woman looking back at her seemed to have retreated, her image seemed less substantial and further away than ever.
She waited for Adam to confront her. So far he had not been faced with evidence of her betrayal, though as time went on and her recklessness grew she knew this could not last. But even without the proof he must surely be aware of a change in her, she thought. Her silence. Her reluctance to make love on the few occasions he had sought to initiate. He must surely speak soon.
It surprised Lena that she felt no overwhelming sense of betrayal. After a while she found herself able to rationalise this. After all, she hadn't done what so many of her friends had done, slipped through growing familiarity into some banal and tawdry affair. She could never have done this to Adam. She would have seen the danger and taken steps to avoid it. But with Paul there had been no familiarity to begin with. There had been nothing. She had taken a single step and tumbled without warning into the darkest obsession. No, Paul was not merely someone she was having an affair with. Paul was an aberration. A force of nature. He had arrived in her life the way a natural disaster arrives. An earthquake or tsunami. Something entirely beyond her control that had picked her up and swept her away. And so it was that despite everything that had happened, and was still happening, she managed to retain a sense of herself as a respectable professional woman. She had not sought this upheaval, she reasoned. She had only to weather it and once the storm had passed, surely her real self would emerge once more, no doubt older and wiser. Even so, she found herself entertaining thoughts that would never have come to her in the days before Paul.
When she had set up house with Adam, they had agreed they would be faithful. But she it came to her now she had never once considered the true significance of this promise, a promise that meant he might be her sole possessor. That she might have no other sexual partner, that she would grow old without ever wrapping her legs around another man and pulling him closer, or draw another man's flesh into herself. At times her promise seemed reckless, no more than a conventional form of words to serve the moment. She thought of the the millions of cocks that slumbered silently between men's legs, their different shapes and sizes and girths, that at her prompting might rise engorged to force a passage between her lips. The thought left her dizzy. Had she really foresworn the possibiliities this multitude might offer, all the sweetness and pain they might bring and done so for ever?
One night when she was feeling bereft she again allowed Adam access to her body. He entered her, she thought, like a stranger granted permission to examine an exclusive flat. He tip-toed from room to room, as if afraid to make a sound on the polished floors. He opened cupboards and drawers, handling the owner's possessions with a kind of guilty deference. He was careful not to linger. When she felt him shudder, and lie still, she remembered, in the stillness that followed, the sounds that Paul would make as he came, the sea-creature's tortured ecstatic cry that tore apart the silence in the flat. It thrilled her that she could draw this from him. It was a cry from the ocean depths that rent something inside her, and left her wounded and exposed. When Adam slipped out of her, it was as if he had never been there.
She lay wondering if Paul's studied abuse and her hunger for its return was destined to turn ever other lover into a disappointment. Is this what he wanted? To claim her for himself? She found the idea intoxicating. To be fully possessed in this way, taken, owned, devoured. She wanted to be marked by him, to bear his seal of ownership. One afternoon early in her obsession she had found herself tracing the outline of the fish tatoo with a fingertip.
- Shall I get one of these, she said?
Paul was lying back in a post-coital haze.
- Mmmn?
- A tatoo, she said. A fish like yours. I want one.
She put her lips to his neck, and slowly licked the outline. Paul adjusted his head to give her room.
- I don't think your Adam would be very happy, pet.
She would place it somewhere only her lover would see. On her inner thigh where it would swim forever towards the place she kept for him.
She was enjoying Paul's passivity and let her lips move lower. His body in repose was a new country to explore. She was used to this torso in motion, to it's powerful muscles working against her, placing her where he wanted her, holding her down, opening her to him. So she moved carefully trying not to disturb the resting animal beside her. Her lips made the slow journey across his chest - pausing at the nipple in its halo of coarse hair - onto the slight swell of his stomach. She moved lower feeling the hair on his body thicken until she at last reached what she was seeking. His cock lay flaccid and moist across the top of his leg like wounded creature pulled from the sea. It seemed harmless, benign. When she ran her open lips along its length the creature twitched in its sleep. With the utmost care she took it's softness in her hand and guided its slumbering head into her mouth. She held it there, not daring to move. Slowly she felt the blood begin to return, flesh thickening against her tongue. Gradually the formless, blind creature was reviving. The outline of its head emerged and nestled against the roof of her mouth. She felt it resume its shape and take on a familiar solidity. The transformation excited her. She had done this, created this thing that was filling her and threatening to close off the route to her throat. Now her hand struggled to enclose its girth. She released it from the confines of her mouth and stared at the purple swollen gland trailing saliva, the veins that stood out along its length. Still Paul had not moved. She straddled his prone form without once releasing her hold and guided him into her. She began to slide back and forth against his pubic bone, felt the cock moving inside her. The urgency she felt pushed every other thought from her. She heard herself cry out, felt the surf surge, as the wave lifted her, broke against the rocks and brought her shuddering back to herself.
- You can have that one for free, pet, he said.
As she came off him he put his hand behind her head and guided her down. Still he did not move as her mouth worked on him. She was patient, diligent. She owed this to the creature she had wakened. She waited for the culmination of her act of homage. Paul gave a sudden sharp intake of breath and groaned. Lena felt him come and drank.
Lena was alone in bed when she heard a door close in the neighbouring flat. Adam had travelled north to visit his parents. In the past she would have accompanied him on these trips but this time she claimed a work committment and he made no attempt to persuade her. She was already half way our of bed when faintly through the wall she heard an explosive laugh. She fetched a glass, held it against the plaster and pressed her ear against its base. She caught the unmistakeable drone of voices. Paul was back but he wasn't alone. She wondered what this could mean. She wasn't afraid he was with another woman. The voices had been male, she was sure. But Paul had always existed for her in isolation. Isolation was his defining characteristic and to find him now in the company of a someone else was unsettling. An hour passed before she heard his front door slam. She hurried to the window. A moment later Paul and a second man appeared and crossed to his parked van. She watched as the van pulled away. She did not leave the window until it returned some hours later.
The following day she called in sick. Paul had not messaged, but she felt it important to make herself available. She did not leave the flat, reluctant to miss his summons when it came. But throughout the long day her phone remained stubbornly silent. She was at the window overlooking the carpark when she again heard his door open. It was almost dark by now, but she saw someone who was not Paul cross behind the van and disappear. Ten minutes later a message arrived.
- You free?
She replied with a single 'x'.
-Good. Get over here.
The door was open. Paul met her in the hall and without saying a word put one hand at her throat, the other between her legs and pressed her against the wall. Then he kissed her.
- Hello. Gorgeous, he said. Missed me?
When he released her it was a moment before she could speak.
- You had a visitor, she said.
She followed him through into the living room.
- That's Cy, he said. Cy's American. He's on the oil rigs. We shared a chopper down from Aberdeen. You'll like Cy. I'll introduce you later. But first I've got something to show you.
He took her hand and led her through to the bedroom. There he handed her a glossy carrier bag, handles tied with a ribbon.
- Present, he said.
Inside were some coils of webbing joined by metal rings. There were velcro cuffs with spring clips attached. Lena couldn't at first see how it all went together. Seeing her confusion Paul took it from her and spread it out on the bed.
- This all goes under the mattress, he said.
The webbing was laid out in a star shape. Now she could see.
