Chapter 7

She fought back a tear, which she then wiped from the corner of her eye with a beautifully stitched silk handkerchief. "I am under no illusion as to what my fate will be here, monsieur. It will be awful, unthinkable, humiliating; but it is better than what awaits me outside."

She blushed, playing with the cuffs on her dress. "I have to confess that in what awaits me you may find me na‹ve. While I have seen what a man does to a woman when he rapes her, that is the extent to my knowledge, because as you would expect of an unmarried woman, I am a virgin and inexperienced in performing the sexual act."

Again I looked at the way she wrung her hands and how her fingers twisted and turned round and round as she spoke, and I could feel their hunger and longing. "Come with me," I said suddenly, deciding that it was time to test whether those fingers and hands were being truthful with me, and so I took her to a small, cramped cave where it's possible to glimpse one's future and past simultaneously. I call it the Gateway. It's some distance from the Cathedral and difficult to get to, and so I escorted Christine through twenty lightless caverns, each smaller and more cramped than the last. We ducked and weaved and at the end, we squeezed through an opening. We were compelled to compress ourselves into the rock, the earth, even the clay around us to get in, until we fused and melded and became clay and rock ourselves.

I led the way in, flowing through the opening like water through limestone, and Christine followed, wriggling, nervous and awkward. The walls pressed hard against us as we entered. They whispered and hissed and menaced, deathly and cold, threatening to digest us and tear us apart.

There was barely room to get through this opening, and once inside, it was even more diminutive and cramped. Our bodies were touching, legs and hands - other parts too - rubbing and caressing, unable to prevent.

At first Christine found this proximity awkward and uncomfortable. It repulsed and embarrassed her because she'd never been close to a man and she didn't understand the sensations of her body, but I reminded her that she'd told to me that she'd come to the cave to die and this was assuredly preferable to that. She listened, and gradually she began to relax.

"I call this place the Gateway because it's a Gateway to Outside," I murmured softly, lifting my craggy face to the light and pulling Christine's face and body to my own. Above us there was a hint of blue sky and the sound of children laughing and old ladies walking contentedly in a street.

Christine followed my gaze, lifting her face to the light and I caught the glow in her eyes and the flush on her cheek. Her breasts were pressed against my chest, and, as she held them there, I was able to hear the warm flutter of her heart.

"I come here regularly to think and be alone, but instead I hear voices and life and people," I murmured, caressing her hips and looking through her eyes into the chaos of an unnatural world. "I sometimes feel that if I shriek loudly enough someone up there in the street will hear me. They must. They will, but although I shout every day as loudly as I can, they never do."

I touched Christine's ass and her breasts. I caressed her buttocks and I kissed her lips, and although she mumbled something and screamed and banged at my chest, she didn't manage to stop me. I'm that she'd have been disappointed if she had because we were two parts of a single thought now. We were sharing the same slither of blue sky and the same six feet of earth as my tongue probed against her mouth, forcibly conquering her will.

"It's a miracle," I added, bending her backwards and kissing her neck, at which I heard a noise from deep inside her chest and suddenly she was no longer fighting me. Instead, there was a gasp of surrender and she was unashamedly grinding her hips against my groin. There were tears in my heart as I kissed the hollow of her neck, for I could taste the soap that she'd used that morning, just as I could smell the sandalwood in her hair. "You're forcing me," she muttered, her strong back arching into me and her pelvic thrusts becoming stronger and harder, and her breathing becoming harsh. "I can't help it. Oh God! You're making me do it. You're making me fuck you!"

"I'm forcing you," I murmured as our tongues combined in a lover's embrace and her feminine electricity discharged through our clothes. It was loud and sharp, like a clap of thunder, and she jumped away as if I'd hit her and hurt her.

I ran my dirty fingers through her hair, clutching the individual strands in my grasp. "I used to come here often and I'd imagine a beautiful young farm girl who'd fallen down the hole," I growled, and I pulled Christine's face to my lips. "Or a gypsy girl or a nun, pregnant by three or four months. They'd be frightened and jittery and I'd calm them. I'd tell them that they had to undress and I'd help them and then I'd make love to them."

Christine's body blended into mine as she thrust her hips through our two sets of clothes, wrapping her legs around my waist and impaling herself on my cock. "Oh God!"

She squeezed her legs together, tightening them until the sensation on my cock became quite dizzy and turgid. Her lips were parted and she was hot and breathless.

Her lips parted wider and her long angled nails dug violently into my shoulders. She gripped me firmly and then jerked her lower body into my midriff, thrusting it against my big iron cock.

"Monsieur. Father explained that if I came here that you'd peel off my clothes and admire my naked body and that you'd do it without shame or regret because you are a man of the dirt. He said that you'd force me to undress and that you'd rape me and he asked whether I could bear it. What a question! I thought for a while and then I told him that I wasn't sure. How could I know? How could I be certain? I told him that the only thing I can be certain of is that I'm a realist and that this is a country in revolt. It's a country of felons and brigands. I told him that I have money, breasts, position and a virgin pussy, and with these four unfortunate bedfellows I'm at the bottom of the food chain and a temptation to every man in France. Every one of them knows he can undress me and maul me for that is les Droits de la femmes. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity. What a joke! What outrage? For me, there is no equality, liberty or brotherhood. Apparently, rape is the first natural, inalienable, sacred right of aristocrats, and the scaffold is the other. Those are my rights, for I am defenseless, friendless and without protection. The man who lifts his thumb to shelter me places his neck on the block."

Ah! ‡a ira, ‡a ira, ‡a ira!

Les aristocrates, on les pendra!

Et quand on les aura tous pendus,

On leur fich'ra la pelle au cul.

Her thrusts became harder and urgent, her movements more wild. Her teeth were ground harshly together and her face was strong and demanding. "If it wasn't you who did it, it would be another," she gasped, pinching my arms with her nails, biting my shoulder. "So why not? Being raped is my fate and this is the lesser of the evils. I know there is also the matter that you eat women but by then I'll be dead, and so what? Monsieur, if you want to sink your teeth into my soft sexy flesh, feel free. Father predicted it and I'm used to the idea."