Kensington Gardens late on a warm summer night was a magic place, peopled with the shades of Peter Pan and Captain Hook, and some stirring in a secluded patch half enclosed by bushes suggests that fairies might also be about. Veronica was a little doubtful about strolling - she was not really much of a fresh air girl, and she still smarted from Chloe's sting. But whilst she toyed with the idea of heading back to her cramped little bed, she also feared the humiliation of an early return, and so plodded bravely instead hand in hand with Hunter from the Serpentine to the Round Pond. Both were silent as they walked, contemplating parallel scenarios of defeat: Hunter feared that he might have wasted all his charm, together with a dinner at the Belvede, whilst Veronica wondered how she could possibly claim a new conquest when her target seemed so patently pre-booked.
But soft night zephyr breezes and lingering alcoholic eddies soon combined to warm their almost formal companionship into something rather closer: Hunter tentatively tightened his grip on Veronica's hand, and they slowed to a halt, she smiled up at him invitingly, and they linked in an embrace wholly echoing their Belvedere clinch.
‘I'm sorry you were so embarassed.’ Hunter paused for breath, and steps back a little, sliding his hands down Veronica's shoulderblades and cupping them under her breasts, shielded by the thin silkiness of her golden shift.
‘She was very rude.’ Veronica's cupidbow mouth turned down at the corners. But then she smiled, to show that she was no longer displeased, and gently pushed his hands away, because she had no wish to return Gabrielle's dress bespeckled with marauding fingerprints. ‘She seemed very fierce and aggressive.Was she really so good in bed?’
She looked up questioningly and her voice was no more than a whisper. Hunter smiled down at her, and it was a moment of truth, because now performance would now be sole criterion. He shrugged lightly.
‘Some people always want to be winners.’
‘But you won't judge me against her?’
It was an invitation, and Hunter felt desire well within him. He took hold of both Veronica's hands, pulling her against him. ‘I won't judge you at all.’
Twenty minutes later they were purring upwards in the lift from his basement garage to his flat, locked tightly together in a most enflaming embrace. Veronica was vastly impressed both with the block, which relegated High Street Ken to something of a slum, and the deference shown Hunter by the porter, and pictured herself playing gracious resident in her own right. She toyed with the idea of sliding a hand down the front of Hunter's trousers, which seemed suddenly to have grown rather bulky, but then contented herself with dabbing the tip of her tongue into his ear, for she firmly believes that passion was best paced. Perhaps she would sweep him off his feet, and he would propose in a matter of days. Perhaps he would pamper her quite lavishly, and even let her drive his rocket of a car.
She jerked out of these interesting daydreams as the lift halted, and manoeuvred herself deftly so that she could get a good look at Hunter's flat. This was a tricky exercise, because Hunter was rummaging in his pocket for a key, and she was loth to loosen her hold. But she matched her body adroitly to his in a kind of tango curve as they crossed the landing, and purred to herself as his flat door opened to reveal an expensive grade of fitted Axminster and a pretty little hallway table with the elegant grace of a real antique.
She curved again as Hunter closed the door, wrapping herself even more tightly around him. Now it was time to play a most capturing role, seductive - but at the same time holding something back to allow for escalating pleasure. She probes back into Hunter's ear, and then swirled her tongue down along his jawline with its faint crest of bristlings and into an expectant and hungry mouth, taking an opportunity at the same time to snatch a quick glimpse over his shoulder at what looks like a rather smart little drawingroom. Hunter's rating was now climbing very rapidly indeed, and Veronica pondered how best to ensnare him and hold him snared as she pressed her mouth on his, flickering her tongue like a serpent seeking its prey, working the back of his neck and his shoulders with her palms and the tips of her fingers.
She always thought of men as being like locks. Each might be opened with a key, and the keys varied little: sex, and plenty of sex, and possibly more sex, could open the most timid doors. Here Veronica suppressed an inner smile, because she pictured sex opening legs. But she was really quite a proper girl at heart, and would not have liked to be thought vulgar.
Hunter was now backing into what looked like his bedroom, and Veronica took another quick look to scan for hairbrushes, or indeed any other signs of prior claim. But the room seemed comfortingly unadorned, bare in the rather cold stern way that men chose when they lived on their own, and she slid her hands down onto his hips, and let herself pant a little, because she knew from experience that every man liked to think that he alone had the power to set a woman ablaze. Her hands cupped Hunter's buttocks as her fingers foraged like tendrils towards his genitals, and she rotated her pelvis against him, and now she could feel herself being carried away by the role she was playing, and she wanted to be flesh against flesh, and experience the heat and the drive of his penetration, and she prayed that he would be able to do it, and maintain his ardour until she reaches her own completion. She slipped quickly out of Gabrielle's golden tunic, because even in the heat of her passion she remains attuned to all perils.
Afterwards, as they lay entwined together, she purred again. Veronica had not been to bed with a very great number of men, but she had sampled a few, and not all had pleased her. The man with the Chanel had been charming, and really quite wealthy, but prone to premature ejaculation, with an irritating habit of rolling limply away just as her heavens promised to open. She had also dallied briefly with a senior mandarin as part of her abortive campaign to spy for Britain. But the mandarin had been heavily into rubber, with a penchant for robing her in a slithery hooded cape, and wanting her to prance, in a way that tended to rank fantasy way ahead of action, before engaging in intercourse between latex sheets that all too often liquified sex into a form of turkish bathing.
But Hunter possessed the knack. Veronica smiled to herself again, running a lazy hand along his flank, and kissed him absentmindedly. She was filled with a warm feeling of contentment, and yet was still a long way from being sated, and it was a good combination. Hunter was a man prepared to wait for a girl's passion to wax rampant, and nurse it along, to pace himself, and take pleasure from the creation of pleasure. He really was a good ... Here Veronica was about to articulate a crude word, but she caught herself in time and suppressed a giggle.
Hunter opened his eyes at the sound, but she closed them again with a brace of quick kisses.
‘You were wonderful.’ She breathed the words in her most golden tone, hoping that she was not echoing the nightclub floosy. Hunter was a tempting prize, but it was plain that he had gained a deal of practice in bedding girls, and Veronica knew practised men were also the most evasive. She must work on him, and excite him and sate him, and furnish him with so much satisfaction that he became bound to her. She let her hand drift along his flank again, noting that he was still engorged, and dabbed at him with her fingertips, and purred again as he rolled over to cup his hands around her breasts and rub her swollen nipples gently. This was good sex, doing it slowly, gently, letting it build and grow. She caressed him, feeling him swell between her fingers, until the veins hardened on the underside of his penis, and the head was a rounded bullethead seeking a target, and it was time to open herself and enclose him again, and his heat was a fire to set her ablaze once more.
She burned, and it was an enchantment, for Hunter made no attempt to act on her like a piston, but pressed down on her gently, caressing her with just the tips of his fingers, and her passion gathered like the coming of a distant train, inexorably approaching, closer and closer, and she could feel her body straining to him, more and more tightly, until she had to let out the full sweetness of her straining in a long groaning sound, and a magic wave gathered up, and broke over her, and engulfed her wholly, and she was left drained and empty, and yet somehow wholly fulfilled, and it was a fruition.
She must have then slept, for something caressed her gently and she surfaced from drowsiness to find Hunter stroking her. She smiled up at him sleepily, and her smile was contentment.
‘You're a fantastic lover.’
Hunter looked pleased, but she was too sleepy to fashion a fresh daydream. She closed her eyes, ready to drift back into unconsciousness, and then realised that his fingers had begun to caress her breasts again, and could feel herself starting to smoulder into a new burn, and then he was rocking against her and inside her, and the long slow magic wave began once more to gather and unfurl, but this time she had no need to cry out, because she was enfolded in a half waking, half sleeping glow irradiating and suffusing her, and perhaps it was a single time, or perhaps it was several times, or even many times, but she had no need to distinguish, because she floated in a sea of pleasure, of which the horizons were boundless.
Then she slept soundly, to wake as the sun was rising. Hunter was curled up alongside her, and she raised herself on her elbow to smile down at him fondly, because his face was clear and innocent in the emptiness of his sleeping.
She thought for a moment of returning to sleep herself, but curiosity was a stronger urge. Hunter's flat was hers for exploring whilst he slumbered, and might even, by careful study, throw up some useful pointers towards conversion from a rather stern bachelor pad into a cosy new home. She decided to have a good look round, and slipped out of bed to wrap herself in his discarded shirt, snuffling momentarily at the stale acridity of his body on the crumpled cotton, before setting out first to find a bathroom and brush her teeth, and then to probe every nook and cranny.
Her exploration proved both a voyage of discovery, and a joy, for everything Veronica found filled her with pleasure. She approved both Hunter's toothpaste and his soap, and the neat way he kept his kitchen, with its castiron French pots and pans. She was also impressed by the fact that his best china was Limoges and his best cutlery all silver, and she discovered some interesting strawberry-flavoured goatsmilk yoghurts in his refrigerator.
Some more rummaging located a tin filled with coffee beans and a grinder, and she set to work. She would make a Hunter a tasty little breakfast - a boiled egg, perhaps, and a couple of slices of toast, a glass of orange juice, and fresh coffee, of course - though she noted a little disapprovingly that he plainly drank it black, for his refrigerator was totally bare of any form of milk or cream. She would also arrange everything very prettily, and it would be a little treat for him, and a small flag for her own home-making skills.
Then she hesitated. Home-making was admirable, but curiosity was an even more powerful force, and she still had the rest of his flat to explore. She turned off Hunter's kettle to pad out of the kitchen into his drawingroom, testing his sofa for comfort, before admiring a collection of watercolours adorning a wall, and marvelling at a small army of silver ornaments crammed into a breakfront cabinet. Both pictures and ornaments looked valuable, and signalled the kind of comforting prosperity that might easily run to really quite a fashionable wardrobe for a companion hostessing smart little parties. She was less happy about Hunter's television, which seemeds a touch on the small side, and her brow clouded just a little as she noted a total absence of video recorder, which might prove cramping for a girl wanting to watch alternative programmes. But these were matters wholly capable of correction.
A quick peek into a tiny room equipped as an office and she padded back into Hunter's kitchen. She had inspected, and approved, and now she must do everything within her power to charm her way into residence.
Hunter was still deep in sleep as she returned to his bedroom. She decided to wake him first, in case he surfaced randily, and then provide breakfast as a nice afterthought. She made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed, and began to stroke him along his flank and around his genitals, ever so gently, watching with interest as his penis began to swell out of flaccidity as though imbued with a life all of its own.
After a moment Hunter woke, shaking his head, to eye her with a kind of bewilderment, as though trying to place her. Then he smiled. ‘Good morning.’
Veronica looked coy, and continued her stroking. Now Hunter was quite rampant, and had quite a fierce expression in his eyes. She bent over him, closing her lips around the end of his penis, very lightly, to dab at it with the tip of her tongue, and then looked up at him, along the line of his stomach, and saw just the expression she was seeking, a look of urgent need that showed he must release himself, or be released. She straightened up, lifting herself to crouch over him, and lowered herself gently down onto him, and now it was time for her to rock on him, moving herself gently backwards and forwards, and Hunter's body jerked rhythmically as she manipulated him, and he was momentarily her slave.
Afterwards, when he was sated, she padded back into his kitchen, to return with his breakfast tray, and she had found herself a black and white PVC apron slithery enough to have lashed her mandarin into quite a frenzy of desire.
She placed the tray carefully so that he could eat in comfort without upsetting anything, and then stood back from the bed, posing provocatively.
‘Am I better than her in bed?’
Hunter beamed. He was being pampered, and it was a great way to be treated. But he had a feeling that pampering might come with strings attached.
‘Am I?’ Her voice was insistent.
He shrugged, his mouth full of boiled egg and toast. ‘She wasn't much good.’
‘She looked bossy to me.’ Veronica smiled to show that bossiness was the very last quality anyone could hold against her.
Hunter glanced at his bedside alarm. He had no wish to discuss Chloe's merits and demerits, and time was moving on. He must shower and shave, and get busy. But Veronica's body was also most enticing, and he did have a few minutes to spare. He finisheed munching, drained his coffee, and wonders whether he can cram in another quick bonk.
Veronica intercepted his look, and decided to raise her bidding. ‘I bet she can't cook like I can.’ She prided herself on her kitchen skills, learned during a winter working as a chalet girl in Switzerland. ‘People say I've got a fantastic way with pork fillet in a cream sauce spiced with apple and a dash of cinnamon - and I'm pretty handy with a Swiss plum tart as well.’
She noted the way these interesting tidbits diverted Hunter's attention, and pressed home her attack. ‘I could cook for you tonight, if you like’.
Hunter suddenly realised that she was campaigning, and a warning bell rang. ‘What about Singapore?’
Sex may be a key, but fear can often prove an even stronger force. Veronica shivered. She gazes at Hunter imploringly - she would throw herself on his mercy, and do every last thing in her power to enchant and sway him.
‘I don't want to go.’ She forced a trickle of tears in a bid to gain Hunter's sympathy, but then the enormity of her sentence gathered within her, and her tears began to flow unforced. ‘I want to stay in England, and forget how stupid I was. I want to make a fresh start, and learn to enjoy life again.’
She peered out at Hunter through her damp eyelashes, and her voice was small, and very humble. ‘I'm never going to be a diplomat, or a top spy. I just want to find somewhere where I can be useful, and make somebody happy.’
It was a cry from the heart. But Hunter remembered Elaine, and pictured Alice Carew, and the French girl with the deep tan and raven hair, and the army of girls he would have when Cradock made him famous, and he was not persuaded.
Veronica sank to her knees. ‘Please. Let me come and stay for a couple of days, and cook for you, and be good to you, and then you can make up your mind.’ Her words choked in her tears, because now she could feel victory slipping from her grasp, and she was desperate. ‘I'll make love to you every morning and night, and all day on Sundays, and I'll try my very best to make you ever so happy.’
She dropped her apron to climb onto his bed, because she could see that he was still swollen, lowering herself onto him, and looking down at him pleadingly.
‘Please. Just let me stay tonight, and then you can decide.’
Hunter was touched, and the warmth of her enclosing him was pleasure, and after a long moment he nodded. Perhaps Veronica would prove more malleable than Elaine, perhaps she would fall by the wayside. Either way he was on a hiding to nothing, and only a churl could refuse.
Veronica pauses in her moving. ‘Can I stay?’
He
nodded again, for now they were both moving towards completion, and she smiled,
for good intentions would shape everything in the fulfilment of her desire. A
voice at the back of her mind also reminded her that men could possess have
soft hearts, and the voice sounded a promising omen.