Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

fact beyond belief. Nearly, by then, a million pounds sterling, padded by all the interest it had accrued. How rich she must have been, that pretty bitch of a mother. Unless, like Granny, she had been a clever thief.

Qirri also has a last memory of Laurence Adrian Lewis. In it he too is kissing her goodbye. As with her father, that time by the taxi, she had not thought, during the kiss, that it would mean goodbye at all. Rather she thought, in Laurence’s case, that it meant they would see each other again quite soon, after only a short delay. It was too, this, a very different kiss to her father’s.

Yes, she had intended to screw them all up, all Claudia’s cherished brats, the ones Claudia had kept. And sex, the beautiful new model of Qirri had found, was one of the most effective ways to do it. For by then Qirri knew a lot about sex, a lot about how to enjoy it and how to get hurt, and how to hurt worse in return. And she knew how to spend money, and use people that way as well. For example, buying Granny a nice flat, then using it, and using Granny like a servant, and Granny, the fucking deranged old crow, going along with it all, Granny’s wet black flint eye always on Granny’s Main Chance.

Finding the Lewises was relatively simple. They were not unfamous, especially Laurence and Serena.

Qirri, now well-groomed, gorgeous, gentle, intelligent, charmingly eager to please, altered her name back to Granny’s Kitty, or to Kit, and got herself a job at the BBC. There she soon came into contact with Laurence. Even Reenie-Serena proved very reachable. Qirri had reckoned Serena might be the hardest of the three for Qirri to sink her claws into, but the stupid little cat was the easiest, (easier than Nick, who had seemed cautious). Christ, Serena must have been a closet Les for years, just too much a cretin to realise. Tracing Nick meanwhile, might have been difficult. But Laurence gave Qirri all the clues. Laurence had long before worked out Nick’s sideline as a gigolo, (odd, rather like her bastard of a father), and sneaked a peek at certain names in the secret book Nick kept for appointments. Hence the indirect employment of Sonia. Nick had, in his pale way, turned out attractive enough Qirri wondered briefly if he might be one of the ones who responded to her afterplay in that certain special manner. But he did not. By then she did not care. A fling with Nick would have been superfluous in any case.

Qirri had already found Laurence. She had known from the first time, at her Wimbledon flat.

Obviously he was handsome, if rather older than he looked on TV. But his body, stripped, was very sound, and his darkness (an erotic reference back to her childhood in Greece?) pleased her. They had drunk a generous amount, and in bed the act had been good. He was even a little rough with her, dominating, his face cruel. All this appealed.

But he had to leave early, it seemed, return to an insecure wife. And so Qirri took her chance at once.

As she had done in her letter to Nick, as she had done to uncountable men (and women) in other letters, telephone calls, texts and even emails, now and then face to face, she awarded Laurence a mocking and damning critique of his performance as a lover.

For some while no one, not even those verbally attacked in person - as Laurence now was - had become worse than distressed, or they only walked out on her. Laurence did not do any of that. He plunged straight forward, slapped her twice across the face, forehand and back, and slung her down on the floor. The rest of the sequence, though in its way not unfamiliar to Qirri, was one of the best and most vicious, the most exhilarating and arousing she had ever gone through. The blows culminated presently in what, by then, Laurence may or may not have realised, was a fully consenting rape.

When he would have left her she dragged him back, pleading and cajoling. An hour or so later, temporarily quenched, and Qirri completely delighted by her bruising, (the sight and soreness of it would re-arouse her when alone) they were in total understanding of the type of sex Qirri liked best. To his surprise, Laurence told her, he had enjoyed his side of it. Both silently knew he could not be so very surprised. He must have kept the need generally in check, suppressed it. But Qirri was for him, as he for her, the ideal bedfellow.

Qirri had no idea where her tastes had started. They had been there from the very first, even, in a dilute and incoherent form, long before she ever experienced sex with a partner. Whatever, and wherever, Laurence was for her, of all those who had assaulted her, the paradigm. Not only his fists, but his heart had been in it. He would, and did - as she did - want more.

The relationship became deliciously obsessive. He would sometimes call her, exalting her to orgasm by describing the violence he would do her when next they met. Though he still had other women, occasionally as a last resort even Angela, Laurence and Qirri were quickly mutually dependent. Either love or something masquerading as love, grew from the torrid compost of their brutal congress. They invented games - such as Laurence making sure he arrived in the Angela-watch, and Qirri jealously shrieking at him so he must beat her up to keep her ‘quiet’ - in fact the flats were beautifully soundproofed, especially at the Wimbledon venue; they could be very noisy and go unheard. There were other games where they met as ‘strangers’ in some bar or pub, got drunk and then ended up in some ill-locked park or derelict garage, the potential danger adding to the expected