Kissing Through a Pane of Glass by Peter Michael Rosenberg Read Free Book Online

all sound so easy. And perhaps, for him, it was. For the rest of us mere mortals, when it came to the pleasures of the flesh, a variation of catch-22 seemed to operate. How could you be confident until you’d had some experience, and how were you to increase your experience unless you were confident? When Jo and I made love, it was easy (once we got the hang of it). Neither of us had any expectations, nor could we make comparisons (favourable or otherwise) with anyone else. In a word, it was safe.
     
    However, as soon as one finds oneself in bed with someone new, a different set of rules comes into play, and the questions, those questions, start popping up in rapid succession. Will I be any good? Will she be satisfied? How do I compare with her previous lover? How do I know what she’ll like? If we try straight sex, will she think me boring and pedestrian? If I attempt anything else, will she think me a pervert? Should I play rough or be gentle?
     
    What about oral sex?
     
    Even for those with a little experience behind them, these questions interlace to form a net suitable for trapping even the most confident of people. To someone like myself, they constituted nothing short of purgatory. The fact is, back in those early days, I simply did not know the answers .
     
    That night in Udaipur I was, therefore, confronted with my first paradoxical feelings about sex. I wanted Liana with a desire and desperation that I had never previously thought possible. I wanted nothing other than to go to bed with her.
     
    And I was scared shitless at the prospect that it might, just might, happen.
     
    To compound the problem, as must now be evident, Liana was no ordinary woman. She made the Valeries and other film-star doppelgangers from my university days look like ugly ducklings. What was I doing even talking to this woman, never mind sitting alone with her on the balcony of her hotel room? What did I honestly think I was up to? Was I mad?
     
    And a further problem. I had known this woman only a few hours, and already I had lied. Not to her; to myself. In my pact with God, I had asked for just one night. But I knew that, even if it were to happen, even if my wish were granted, it would not be enough. If the night was a disaster (and I had heard enough tales of such things to know that it was not an unlikely event) then I would be compelled to try again until I got it right, to prove to her that I was a great lover, a warm, wonderful human being, capable of bringing untold pleasures into someone else’s existence. Someone to spend a life with.
     
    And if it was a success, then of course I would not be able to live the rest of my life without her.
     
    These thoughts flashed through my head in just a few seconds, in the time it takes to walk ten feet, from a balcony overlooking a lake, to a bed in a darkened room. In those few moments I discovered something about myself that I had never before suspected. Far from being a normal, well-balanced young man, in charge of my feelings, my desires, my destiny, I was a cork on the ocean, a leaf in the breeze, totally at the mercy of factors completely outside my control. Yes, I would make the decision, but I did not have the choice.
     
    The revelation when it arrived, was both shocking and oddly reassuring: I was possessed by a demon, and the demon’s name was obsession.
     

Chapter 10
     
    ‘Michael, there’s something you should know.’
     
    Liana bent over the mattress and lit a candle on the bedside table. I stood motionless, my heart in my mouth, Watching her perform this simple task with easy grace. Every movement she made was tinged with the erotic; whether this was deliberate, or merely my interpretation of what was, in truth, nothing but her natural ways, I could not say.
     
    She stood and faced me, then, grabbing the hem of her dress, pulled it up over her head and discarded the dress to one side.
     
    ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she murmured. She was bare, save for