The Red Collection by Portia Da Costa Read Free Book Online Page B

embedded harmonies that lesser mortals just aren’t equipped to hear. I can hear them, because I was a musician of sorts before I pissed most of it away, but I can’t do with this music what Maria does.
    Fuck, I want her so much.
    Maybe that’s why my own feet and limbs just won’t work properly. Because my hard-on is so ironclad it’s almost agony. It’s as if I’ve been disconnected from all rhythm and coordination.
    She doesn’t look at me. Which is probably a good thing. She seems ensorcelled by the beats, her white arms lifted to heaven and her eyes closed.
    And yet, from time to time, when her eyes do open, she does look at somebody.
    We’re close to the edge of the dance floor, and when – with enormous difficulty – I can shake my eyes away from her for a few seconds, and follow her eye line, I see that I’m not the only one who’s watching her swirl and shimmy.
    Lounging at a table, alone, is a large, stocky man with darkish, greying hair, a broad, stubble-shadowed face and intense, gleaming eyes. For a fraction of a second his attention strays from Maria and fixes on me … and I feel almost the same sense of shock I get from her.
    I’m not gay.
    Really I’m not.
    OK, so maybe once … or twice … when I was pissed or high, I had a fumble around with Christian, the guy in the band who was bent. But that doesn’t mean I’m homosexual or even bi.
    Yet there’s something about this guy who’s watching us that seems to grab me somehow. Makes me want to shudder and look away, and yet look again. I miss yet another beat and stumble in my pathetic attempt to match Maria’s moves. Torn between her and him, I get strange flash visions of being in a room somewhere, doing dark and dangerous things. With her, and also with him.
    As my dick gets harder, I feel scared, yet infinitely excited. It’s like I’m filled with a sense of anticipation of I know not what. I glance at the happy fetish crowd around me, who all seem to know what they want and why – and I envy them.
    Maybe I want what they want? I wish I knew … I’m just feeling more and more confused. Like a disenfranchised stranger in a very strange land indeed.
    And it’s right at that moment – as if she’s read my mind – that Maria suddenly halts, mid-gyration, and fixes me with a steady blue stare. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’ With that she walks from the floor, not looking back, just leading me with her lithe, silky stride in her perfect black heels, and the muscular undulation of her gently swaying buttocks.
    I couldn’t not follow if my next breath depended on it.
    Like an eager, panting puppy, I almost trot after her, out of the function room, across the lobby and to the lift. She doesn’t check if I’m following, not once, and I have to run and almost fall into the lift carriage behind her in order to avoid it closing in my face.
    ‘Maria. What on earth are you doing here?’ I babble, still to her straight, smooth back and shoulders, ‘Look, I’m sorry –’
    Whirling like a ballet dancer, she cuts me off, mid-grovel, by the simple expedient of pushing hard on my chest, backing me up against the lift wall, and kissing me. Hard.
    And as her tongue pushes imperiously into my mouth, her hand unzips my jeans with astonishing deftness, negotiates my underwear, and takes hold of my cock.
    I’m so shocked I almost come all over her fingers.
    Yet still, inanely, I try to speak and apologise … or something. She allows me my mouth for a moment, even while her fingertips do something infernal to the head of my penis, but her eyes utterly quell me. I can’t utter a word. Somewhere in those periwinkle blue depths there could well be the answer to the meaning of the universe, but all I see is a blend of amusement and disdain, coupled with a disquieting foreknowledge of something I daren’t even think about.
    Then she’s kissing me again, and almost dispassionately handling my equipment as if it’s some mildly amusing