Kitabı oku: «Melina Breaking Free», sayfa 6

CHAPTER 7

The trip to Athens was long and tiring, in spite of the comfort offered by the expensive car. Repeated bends, the bumpy road surface and the quick succession of images made Melina dizzy, begging Paris to stop often as everything was swirling round in her head. She vomited twice, hiding behind dense bushes. At last they were out of the mountains and ravines and were in a populated area. They stopped at a roadside restaurant to rest. Paris told her to eat something and not to drink a lot of liquid, despite her thirst. He bought a travel sickness pill from the counter to overcome her dizziness. He ate a steak and fried potatoes and ordered spaghetti without sauce for her. She shouldn’t tax her stomach with foods that would make her sick.

Two hours later they entered Athens, the capital. Melina looked around her eagerly at the densely populated areas they were passing through, the dozens of cars, trams, buses, and at all the people walking briskly along the pavements. But at the same time her stomach was in a knot despite all these new impressions, and she knew that she had taken a giant step by following after a man whom she hardly knew. She hadn’t any idea as to what risks she would be taking in the future and where her daring actions would lead. She tried to convince herself that this was exactly what she had wanted for so many years and that everything would work out for her. At least in the capital some paths would open up for her, however difficult things may be at first. Lost in her own isolated world in the village, all roads had been closed to her, and would remain so for ever.

They reached the upscale Kolonaki area and Paris parked in the private garage of his elegant apartment building. They took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Melina had never been in a lift before and was frightened by the confined cubicle that moved with such speed. Paris smiled to observe her reaction and he stroked her shoulder. He was amused by the manner she reacted to everything that was new to her with the curiosity and suspicion of a small child. When they entered the apartment Melina let out a cry of admiration. It was furnished with large comfortable deep blue sofas with a large carpet whose primary colour was blue and other elegant fittings and pieces of furniture that complemented the décor. Paintings, light fixtures, small tables and side lamps matched each other in harmonious unity. The apartment had nothing in common with the houses of the wealthy residents of her province which were furnished with identical pieces to those of their neighbours since they had all been commissioned from the one and only furniture maker in the small town who specialized in heavy classical items without any breath of diversification or change. And this huge balcony at the front, full of beautiful plants and bamboo furniture was a dream because immediately ahead stood the rocky hill of the Acropolis with the magnificent Parthenon monument radiant in the afternoon as the setting sun hung over the luminous horizon. Melina stared enraptured at the vista that reached beyond the sea. In the distance she could see islands and the Peloponnese. When Paris told her he was going to take a shower and then leave to attend to an urgent errand she jumped up, startled, absorbed as she had been by the new and wonderful things she had been observing. She would rest until he came back now after eating and drinking something .

Paris came out of the bathroom a little later, wrapped in a toweling bathrobe and walked to the end of the corridor. When he reappeared he was wearing a smart pair of beige trousers and a matching shirt. Melina admired his carefully chosen clothes and thought he looked very attractive. Paris kissed her hair and advised her not to open the front door to anyone while he was gone. Melina went to the refrigerator, filled a glass with orange juice, ate a piece of cheese and a rusk she found in the cupboard and went back to the living room. She sat down making herself comfortable, intending to enjoy the view that had impressed her so much. She didn’t look for long towards the horizon. Her head slipped sideways onto the sofa’s armrest and she sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Two hours later Paris came back loaded with presents. Looking at the young woman as she slept he admired for one more time her natural unaffected beauty. He nudged her gently, causing her to sit up with a start.

“Don’t be startled, Melina darling, it’s me, Paris. It’s time for you to wake up and have your bath. We’re going out tonight…” Melina sat up and looked around her. The lit side lamps bathed the room in a gentle light. From this distance the city looked like a huge cavern full of fireflies as the street and house lights went on one after another.

“Before you go to the bathroom come and let me show you your room!” said Paris, picking up the parcels. He led her to a bedroom adjacent to the one she had seen him entering earlier to change. The bed was huge with a pale blue, white and black bedcover. The curtains, with a similar background covered almost the whole wall. On the floor there was a thick blue rug and next to the bed a small two-seater couch in front of which there was a highly polished coffee table. The surface of the dresser was covered with a selection of neatly laid-out bottles.

“What a lovely room!” Melina exclaimed.

Paris put the parcels on the bed and started to open them one by one. “This is underwear, these are trousers, nighties, blouses and dresses. The shoes are size 38. Isn’t that your size?”

Melina nodded. Never in her life had she seen so many beautiful items, starting from the delicate underwear and stopping at the elegant dresses.

“But you didn’t have to buy all these very expensive things for me!” she said, somewhat anxiously. “How will I pay him back for all this?” she asked herself, worried. She had hardly completed her thought when Paris, as if he had read her mind, said to her, “I wanted to buy them and I did, because I want you to be the most beautiful woman in the world when you walk by my side. Tonight I want you to wear this white dress and these sandals and carry the matching white handbag.” He pointed to an exquisite white dress held up on one shoulder by a thick plait of the same cloth.

“It is a masterpiece!” exclaimed Melina, stroking the expensive material. Then she turned her back, giving Paris a look of gratitude and went into the bathroom. For a few moments she struggled to discover how the bath system worked and how to set the water at the right temperature. You see they didn’t have a bath at home, like so many of her fellow citizens. She examined various bottles on a glass shelf and found bubble bath foam, shampoo and a hair conditioner with a wonderful aroma. She took a sponge and some towels from the cupboard, hung them on a hook and then sank into the luxury of the scented bath water.

“This is the life! This is how every day should be, for everyone, this inimitable delight!” she said to herself as she washed her hair and rubbed her body with the natural sponge…

She lazed for a while, deep in the bathwater, and then rinsed herself off with copious amounts of water. It was not like her village where even the buckets of water were limited when they washed because the gas ring couldn’t heat up the water container and she usually ended up stepping out of the tin tub having only partly rinsed off the soap suds. She dried her hair and her body with thick fluffy towels. Wrapping herself in a toweling bathrobe she went to her room. She heard sounds from the room next door. It seemed that Paris was getting ready. She explored the various cream jars, the deodorants, the colognes and perfumes, testing their scent on the inside of her wrist. She thought the first two were too strong for her age. She found a third one, a light cologne with a label that read Eau de Calandre by Paco Rabanne to be superb. She spread a light moisturizing cream over her face that in a few minutes had made her skin as soft as velvet. She pampered her body with body lotion and afterwards painted the nails of her hands and feet with a light pink nail varnish. She dried and shaped her hair with a hairdryer, noticing that the after-shampoo lotion had made it soft and smooth as it tumbled onto her back in a thick dark-brown cascade.

“How a little attention can change a person!” she thought, looking at her image in the mirror with satisfaction. “I came into this place, and will step out as a different person!” Looking at all the beauty enhancements she could not avoid thinking, with a touch of jealousy, of how many women must have passed through this room, for Paris to have gone to all this trouble for their beauty…

The white dress with its unusual cut fitted her like a glove as did the high heeled sandals. She put on a little mascara that made her already thick and long eyelashes even longer and more prominent and applied a pink lipstick of the same shade as her nail polish. She stood for a moment, almost not recognising those huge, because of the make-up, olive-green eyes, the attractive and shiny mane of hair and the tall, slim body that showed off its enticing curves inside the stunning white dress. Melina was tall, but now she towered with the extra height that her sandal heels gave her.

“This is what I wanted my whole life and luckily I have it at this moment, as for tomorrow, we’ll see…”she reflected, opening her door. Paris was already waiting for her in the living room and sipping a drink. The dark suit, his blue shirt with platinum cufflinks and his expensive silk tie made him the very paragon of masculine elegance and charm. When he saw Melina he cried out with genuine admiration, “You are very beautiful, dear Melina, and the dress is radiant on you!” Melina was delighted. The compliment coming from this cosmopolitan man was worth a thousand admiring comments from the lips of ordinary people.

Paris went and brought a box from his room. He took out a bracelet, a necklace and a ring, all made of platinum.”This ring will be for our engagement, if you agree. You must have realized by now that I am in love with you, and I hope that you feel something for me too…” Paris said tenderly.

Melina was overcome with emotion. She didn’t know if what she felt for Paris was real love or whether she had been attracted to, or rather, swept off her feet, by a man who had nothing in common with her. A completely different social circle, an easy manner and lifestyle, knowledge of the world, generosity, beauty and fine manners were all characteristics Paris had, but in the final analysis he possessed, as it appeared, everything that the girl had sought and dreamed of her whole life. He was the very embodiment of change in her life, not for the better, but towards something exceptional.

“I too felt things for you Paris, from the first moment I saw you, and I am very happy that we are going to be engaged. Thank you for all these wonderful presents, but especially for the ring.

“My sweetheart, my love,” murmured the man, kissing her on the lips, sending shivers through her whole body. He then said to her jokingly that they should hurry up and leave, otherwise they may never leave the apartment…

With his arm around her waist he led her to the car and then drove her to the seaside nightclub where he had booked a table for them. Melina was entranced by the surroundings and the well-dressed people around her for whom places like this appeared to be a part of their everyday lives. Paris greeted a number of people and Melina noted with the delight of female vanity which was fed by repeated looks of admiration cast at her by the males present, that she was in no way inferior in looks to the many attractive and elegantly dressed women around her. “I’m worth something too!” she thought, greatly flattered.

They ate, danced, and at around three in the morning they went back to the apartment. As soon as they entered Paris squeezed her in his arms and started to kiss her in a manner that excited her. Melina responded to his kisses feeling her blood coursing through her veins. The fine wine that she had liberally consumed helped of course to put her in high spirits, making her now feel relaxed and susceptible, and driving her to seek something more with which to top up the wonderful evening. She wanted Paris to make love to her, not only because she liked and desired him, but to complete her conquest of this so very desirable man. Besides, he was now her fiancé, according to his unforced personal choice. Witness to this was the platinum ring that shone on her finger in the dim light.

With a quick movement on the part of Paris her dress slipped off her shoulder and left her standing in her lace underwear. Her youthful body with its rich curves, though slim, took his breath away. It had been a long time since Paris had seen such a sensual body, such natural feminine beauty, and it was this beauty that was offering itself to him to explore and conquer.

His fingers stroked her wonderful upright breasts whose weight didn’t affect their capacity to stand proudly upright and her nipples to tickle his chest.

“These are the breasts that plastic surgeons should photograph to advertise their work!” pondered Paris, enraptured by a sight which was rare for him, despite the long list of women who had come into his life and whose bodies he had intimately explored. A moan escaped his lips and he immediately picked her up in his strong arms and carried her to the bedroom. He placed her on the bed and quickly shed his clothes. Naked, he stood in front of her. His smooth body, beautiful as a statue, rippled at his every movement, with well-exercised muscles appearing everywhere and with a perfect erection that betrayed his pressing desire for Melina’s gorgeous flesh. He kneeled on the bed pulling her close to him and putting her legs around his hips. He kissed her on the lips, on her neck, on her nipples, with deep experienced kisses. His hands caressed her private parts with ethereal movements that increased the young woman’s desire for him to progress as quickly as possible. Paris drew out the sensual game of his tongue on her body which shuddered now in anticipation and suddenly he lifted her up and with practiced hip movements entered her, drawing her into his embrace. When his member filled her vagina he started to make the lower part of his body fluctuate very slowly, very sensually, going into her and pulling back to a degree, without interrupting his rhythm. Melina groaned with each movement when he entered her. Stuck to him she kissed him behind his ear, on his neck, on his shoulders. She wanted, if possible, to hold onto this eruption of sensations, this storm of pleasure, forever. Her body however wanted to be free, to reach the highest pinnacle of bliss and it acted independently of her own will and logic. With a deep spasm from the depths of her womb came a violent climax whose echo spread through the inside of her vagina.

Paris, sensing the contractions that signaled the girl’s climax, let his own force break loose inside her; his release expressing itself through a hoarse half-choked cry coming from a superb feeling of total satisfaction. They stayed together in a tight embrace until the spasms in their bodies had died away. Then, slipping out gently from inside her, Paris lay on his back, pulling Melina to him while trying at the same time to recover his breath.

“The young one is like fire!” he thought, stroking her nipples which were still taught and hard, kissing her cheek. There was also another thought in his head. He himself didn’t know how to explain it, but he had expected Melina to be a virgin, and had been surprised to see how familiar she seemed with the sexual act, as if she had been indulging in this procedure for years. “It seems she’s been dabbling at this game from when she was very young,” he thought cynically, but he quickly drove the thought away. It wasn’t something of the moment, and if it came to that, it wasn’t his job to check on the past sexual activities of his partner. Maybe later on she herself would tell him of her sexual adventures. On the other hand, perhaps, in the village, she had been in a long term relationship which had broken up. For some inexplicable reason, perhaps because of selfishness, it annoyed him that another man, or woman, had conquered and entered this superb body before him. And for the girl to exhibit such a deeply rooted response it was obvious that the previous lover, or lovers, were well versed in the game of love and had early on woken up the young girl’s desire for sex with their experience and skill.

He drove aside these silly, according to his logic, reflections rooted in his masculine conceit. “Can you imagine me now entering into competition with provincials!” he said to himself, as if he knew whether his predecessors had been villagers or people from the capital, and that skill in bed was the exclusive territory of those who dwelled in big cities.

Paris and Melina spent the following days and months like a married couple. The young woman asked him if she could tell her parents about their engagement. He gave his assent but there was an almost imperceptible trace of annoyance in his eyes when he replied. He announced that he would be leaving for New York and would take Melina with him if she wanted to accompany him. The girl was overcome with joy. She was even more delighted when he told her that he intended to marry her in America, after which, conventional things like telling relatives, friends and their social circle, would follow. Melina booked a phone call to speak to her mother. When the phone company connected them she could hear her mother at the other end of the line trying to hold back her anger and to talk in a calm voice. Melina apologized for the way she had run off with the unknown, to her parents, man.