Façades Page 8

  Wanting the best for his daughter, Doug insisted on sending her to a private school for her secondary education, notwithstanding the financial burden that this involved.

  Nadine was a good student, and did well in her examinations, but, even as a young child, she had had a tendency to fantasize and to embellish her circumstances. This tendency became more marked during her attendance at the private school, where she apparently felt the need to impress her fellow students who generally came from more affluent backgrounds than she. Accordingly, she gave them false impressions of her family circumstances, and never invited any of her friends to her home, lest they discover the truth and think less of her. She used her father’s ill-health as an excuse for this behaviour, despite the fact that, although he was not well, he would have welcomed such visits. It was a source of some sadness for her parents that Nadine felt ashamed of them and their circumstances.

  After finishing her schooling, Nadine had no trouble finding and keeping employment, but her private life was not always as stable. After a couple of failed de facto relationships, interspersed with periods back at home, she met and fell in love with Mark, lived with him, and eventually gave birth to Samantha, who was Doug’s pride and joy. Unfortunately, he died only about six months after her birth, and then, a little over twelve months later, Mark offended, and was sent to prison, leaving Nadine no choice but to return, with Samantha, to live with June.

  Although June was angry with Mark for his thoughtlessness in putting himself, and therefore his family, in the position in which they now found themselves, she secretly wondered whether Nadine’s compulsive shopping and her attempts at social climbing may have contributed to his gambling, and therefore to his incarceration.

  June’s reminiscences were interrupted, then, by Nadine’s entry to the kitchen, where she ate a quick meal, before retiring to her bedroom to complete her preparations for her secret weekend away with Lee.

  Early the next morning, Nadine hugged and kissed her mother and Samantha, as she prepared to leave for her assignation with Lee at the Misty Mountain Lodge.

  “Be a good girl for Grand-ma, Sam,” she exhorted her daughter, who clung briefly to her, before allowing herself to be passed over to June. “I’ll only be away for two sleeps,” added Nadine.

  “If Mark rings, Mum,” she said, “tell him I’m in bed with the ‘flu and laryngitis, and can’t talk.”

  June made no reply, but rolled her eyes, before cuddling Samantha and helping her wave goodbye to her mother, as Nadine’s car drove off.

  Lee departed quietly and early for his rendezvous with Nadine (his purported seminar), leaving Simone still in her bed. Although she heard his muffled movements, she did not stir or give any indication of being aware of his departure. As he tiptoed out of their shared bedroom, Lee cast a backward glance at his apparently sleeping spouse. An uneasy feeling of guilt settled over him as he did so, but it was not strong enough to deter him from the course to which he was already committed.

  CHAPTER 9

  As he drove towards his rendezvous with Nadine, Lee’s mood was anything but relaxed, or feverish with anticipation. Rather, it was apprehensive. From time to time he had to fight the urge to simply turn his car around and head back towards the comparative safety of his home. He found it increasingly difficult to shake off the feeling, which had begun to creep over him from the moment he reversed his car out of the driveway that morning, that he was embarked upon a course that would take his relationship with Nadine to a new and dangerous level, one from which it would be extremely difficult to extricate himself if, as he had recently begun to feel, he should wish to do so. At the same time, he felt a strong sense of obligation towards her, arising from the intimacy that had developed between them, for which he felt by far the major responsibility.

  He also had a strong admiration for Nadine, both as an able assistant, and as a single mother who had striven to improve herself in order to support herself and her child after the child’s father had abandoned them. Yet he also felt that he had been manipulated by her into this major escalation of their liaison into which he was now being drawn.

  These conflicting thoughts and emotions were still bouncing around in his head as he turned his vehicle into the grounds of the Misty Mountain Lodge, and brought it to a halt outside the unit, the number of which Nadine had previously given him. Hesitantly, he left the car and, overnight bag in hand, approached the door of the unit. He began to knock gently on it, but it yielded to his touch, opening sufficiently to admit him. Crossing the threshold, he found himself in a comfortably furnished sitting room, but before he could fully orient himself, he heard Nadine’s voice, from an adjoining room, calling, “I’m in here, lover. Come in, and shut the door behind you.”

  Upon entering the adjoining room, he found Nadine, half lying, propped up on pillows, on a king-sized double bed, sipping a glass of champagne, the opened bottle of which stood in an ice-bucket on a bedside table next to a second, as yet empty, glass. His eyes took in the alluring picture of Nadine that caused a sharp, involuntary intake of his breath.

  She was dressed in a fetching black and pink satin torsolette, a matching pair of French knickers, black, silk, lacy-topped stockings held up by suspender straps attached to the torsolette, and a pair of long black gloves. On her feet she wore a pair of stiletto-heeled black patent leather shoes. The pink top of the torsolette showed off her generous bust, and its deep cleavage, to great advantage. The entire ensemble highlighted the glossy, soft curls of her blonde hair.

  As Lee stared, speechlessly at her, she purred softly to him, “Come here, my love. Pour yourself a glass of this lovely bubbly, then unwrap the gift package and collect your present!”

  All Lee’s doubts and reservations were, in that moment, subsumed by a testosterone-driven rush of lust, and he moved quickly to respond to Nadine’s tantalizing invitation. Sitting on the edge of the bed, on Nadine’s left side, he poured himself a glass of champagne, and, as he sipped at it, he allowed his eyes to drink in the sheer sensualness of her carefully prepared appearance and posture.

  Luxuriating in Lee’s appreciative attention, and emboldened by the champagne she had already consumed, Nadine stretched out, seductively and, lifting her right leg, gently positioned it so that her shapely ankle rested on his left shoulder. At the same time, she slid her left leg across his right thigh, revealing to him, even more than before, the crotch of her translucent French knickers. Returning her now empty wine glass to the bedside table, she slowly, and deliberately, removed and discarded her long black gloves.

  Reaching up, and behind his neck with his left hand, Lee removed Nadine’s right shoe, and tossed it carelessly to the floor, before removing her left shoe, which was nestled almost in his lap, and tossing it to join its mate. Then, draining his glass, he too replaced it on the bedside table, before running his hands gently up Nadine’s left leg, where he unhooked the stocking top from its suspender. He then began to roll down the stocking, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, his eyes, all the while, fixed on hers. As he was so engaged, she lowered her right leg from his shoulder in preparation for his removal of that stocking, which he achieved in quick succession to the other.

  Leaning forward, then, she pulled him down towards her, his face brushing firmly against her breasts, before his mouth found hers, and the two began a long and passionate French kiss. After a few heady moments, she began tugging at the back of his shirt, and he relaxed the embrace sufficiently to allow her to pull it up, from under the restraint of his belt, and remove it completely, by taking it off over his head. It quickly joined her shoes, gloves and stockings, at random positions on the floor around the bed.

  Now fully aroused, Lee freed himself from her grasp long enough to kick off his slip-on shoes, remove his slacks and underpants, and fish frantically in a side pocket of his nearby overnight bag to extract a packet of condoms, one of which he placed strategically on the bedside table beside the now forgotten champagne.

 
This last movement caused Nadine to silently roll her eyes in frustration, but she instinctively knew better than to make an issue, at this delicate moment, of his customary, but, to her perception, unnecessary, caution.

  Fully naked, now, Lee proceeded to remove, first her torsolette, and, last of all, her knickers, all restraint now jettisoned in an all-consuming surge of lust.

  After a period of further passionate kissing, and frantic foreplay, Lee retrieved the condom from the bedside table and, with slightly shaking hand, rolled the latex sheath onto his rampant penis, a movement watched, impatiently by a now fully aroused Nadine.

  Then, pushing Lee firmly onto his back, she quickly straddled him, her knees on the bed either side of him, before lowering herself gently onto his shaft. She then guided his hands onto her thighs, placing her own against his heaving chest, and began to gyrate her hips in a circular movement, much like a belly dancer in action.

  Before this deliciously unusual movement could bring Lee to climax, he suddenly, and unexpectedly, had a mental flash of Simone, stifling a giggle with her hand, in just the way she had done after Sasha told them the tale of Harold’s clandestine sexual encounter, and he remembered the urge to kiss her which he had then experienced, but suppressed. To his subsequent amazement, he then found himself fantasizing about his long-neglected wife, whilst thrusting himself, over and over, into his gyrating paramour, to bring himself to a shuddering climax, just as she was experiencing her own pinnacle of ecstasy.

  Afterwards, Nadine lay back on the bed, enjoying the warm after-glow of satisfying sex, enhanced by her firm belief that she, alone, had driven Lee to the height of passion that she had instinctively felt emanating from him during the closing moments of their coitus. Her feeling of self-satisfaction would have been badly shaken had she known the extent to which Lee’s fantasizing about Simone had contributed to his satisfaction.

  Returning from the bathroom, and seeing Nadine lying, naked and vulnerable, on the bed where they had so recently fornicated, Lee was struck by an overwhelming sense of guilt. He realized, only too well, how his burst of passion, culminating in their mutual sexual release, would be interpreted by her as evidence of the growing strength of his love of and commitment to her. But, the truth was that his previous doubts and reservations had now returned, only stronger than before. Nevertheless, he responded to her soft smile, and her gentle patting of the bed at her side, to slide onto it, and accept her offer of another glass of the still-cool, but now less lively, champagne. They drank in silence for a time, before each, in turn, slipped into a deep sleep.

  Awakening slowly from the depths of his post-coital slumber, Lee was, at first, quite disoriented. His newly re-opened eyes frantically scanned his immediate surroundings for some familiar object, while his mind tried desperately to orient his body in time and space. After a few moments, the sight of a naked Nadine, sleeping peacefully beside him on the ruffled bed, and the almost empty champagne bottle with two adjacent empty glasses on the bedside table, began to jolt his senses back towards reality. When his eyes also took in his own stark nakedness, the full impact of where he was, and what had transpired there before he drifted off to sleep, hit him like a glass of iced water thrown into his face.

  Instinctively looking at his wrist-watch, the only encumbrance to his otherwise naked body, he realized, to his surprise, that he had apparently slept for some hours. He was at once conscious of a heavy-headedness, coupled with a gnawing uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, the latter magnified by the apparently contented expression he observed on Nadine’s sleeping face. As he quietly observed her, his mind began to fill with remorse that he had allowed himself to be so easily seduced into behaviour, which could only serve to strengthen the bonds of emotional dependency that Nadine was developing towards him. He felt that the longer he stayed with her, and the more intimate their interactions became, the deeper he would be descending into an emotional quicksand from which it would be impossible to escape without great trauma.

  As quietly as he could, he slipped off the bed, and began to dress. He had not progressed far with that task when Nadine stirred, stretched herself languorously, opened her eyes, and extended one hand lazily in his direction.

  “Why are you dressing, darling?” she asked, before adding, with an elfin grin and an arching of one eyebrow, “Come back to bed. That was delicious. I want seconds, now, please.”

  “Not now, Nadine,” he replied, continuing to dress. “I’m starving. I need real food. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Who cares what time it is! We’ve got all day. Come on – come back to bed.”

  “No, Nadine,” he responded, more emphatically than before. “Remember? The whole point of this weekend was to get to know each other better. You were the one who complained that all we had was a few quick bangs on my dental couch! Why don’t I order us a really nice lunch, from room service, and we can enjoy that here together, and talk.”

  “Oh, alright,” she pouted, before sliding off the bed. “Order me lobster and chardonnay,” she added, with a toss of her head and an imperious wave of her hand, as she marched off towards the bathroom.

  After a quick, refreshing shower, Nadine stood in front of the white porcelain hand-basin of the bathroom vanity, carefully inspecting her face in the large mirror affixed to the wall above it. After a few moments, she sighed softly, picked up her eyelash curler from the vanity, and began to devote her full attention to the application of fresh makeup to her face. As she worked at this now largely instinctive task, her mind gradually began to wander.

  Mark is so much more exciting than Lee, she thought, not just sexually, but in every way. No way would he have ever knocked back another wild romp in the hay in favour of lunch!! A faint smile etched her lips at that thought.

  I really enjoyed his care-free, adventurous spirit, including his risk taking, but one day he could take me on a wild ride to the moon and back, and the next, he couldn’t afford a bottle of Coke! Besides, as Mum says, when he does get out of gaol, he probably won’t be able to get a job. Lee, on the other hand, can afford to give me and Samantha the best that money can buy, including a first class private schooling for Sam! If I play my cards right, once Simone is out of the picture I could be the one driving the flash BMW sports, and wearing designer clothes.

  As she was putting the finishing touches to her makeup, her reverie was interrupted by Lee’s voice, calling from the living area of the unit, that their lunch had arrived. She paused, then, to take in the full effect of her handiwork, as revealed by her reflection in the mirror, which included the image of the soft, round curvature of her naked breasts. All of this she admired, with a slight smile of self-satisfaction. Then, pulling a soft bathrobe loosely around her nakedness, she floated out of the bathroom as lightly as she could, to join her lover for the lunch to which she now suddenly looked forward with eager anticipation. And, when she saw the mouth-watering lobster, tantalizingly displayed with an array of bright salads, on an intimately small table, laid with a starched white tablecloth, and decorated with an exquisite, single, red rose in a tall flute, she silently re-affirmed to herself that this was, indeed, the life she wanted for herself in the future.

  Lee had just finished pouring chardonnay into the two long-stemmed glasses that were resting on the room divider beside the table. He turned slightly away from her to replace the wine bottle in the ice bucket that stood nearby, and as he did so, she threw open her robe, and sat down at the table, so as to reveal to him, again, her full frontal nudity.

  “Oh! This looks delicious, Lee, darling,” she gushed, giving him a flashing smile, and pushing her naked breasts, provocatively, in his direction.

  “Oh! For goodness sake, Nadine, put on some clothes!” he admonished her, with a slight scowl, and an irritated wave of his hand. “How on earth can you expect us to get to know each other properly if you keep running around naked?”

  Pouting, she snatched up the edges of her robe, and drew it loosely around herself, at
the same time saying, in a voice dripping with frustration, “Ah, Lee! You can be such a nerd, at times!”

  Without responding to Nadine’s barb, Lee took his seat at the table opposite her, handing her a glass of wine, and taking the other for himself. He then immediately raised his glass to her in salutation, with the words, “Bon appetite!” She responded with a slightly perfunctory raise of her glass, before taking a generous mouthful of the golden liquid, the piquant flavour of which quickly brought a much more agreeable expression to her face. The two then fell, with obvious relish, upon the exquisite meal laid out before them, with little thought for further conversation beyond occasional comments upon the quality of the fine repast they were sharing.

  As the food began to disappear, and their hunger to diminish commensurably, both began to feel the need for more meaningful conversation.

  “Tell me about your life, outside work,” began Lee.

  “I’m a single Mum, Lee,” she replied, with a shrug. “I don’t have much life, apart from my daughter.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about her?” invited Lee.

  As Nadine responded to that invitation, with obvious enthusiasm, the depth of her feelings for Samantha soon became abundantly clear to Lee. She regaled him with extensive tales of her daughter’s exploits and foibles, with increasing excitement apparent in her voice and in her facial expressions, and a heightening of the colour in her cheeks. As she warmed to her subject, Nadine became increasingly imbued with the hope, and belief, that, one day soon, Lee would come to take on a parental role and responsibility towards Samantha.

  “Do you ever hear from Samantha’s father?” asked Lee, at an opportune moment in Nadine’s discourse.