Paul Dellit has written some excellent political articles for The AIMN, so it came as some surprise that he is better known for his screenplay writing. Thomas Keneally, in a recent review of one of Paul’s screenplays I wrote: “I liked your screenplay and plot very much” and went on to describe it as “a very interesting and well-wrought script”. This particular screenplay – a spy thriller set in 1992 involving a MI5 mission directed at uncovering the source of stolen Russian radioactive material – has been turned into a novella (with input from Mr Keneally) and prior to publishing in hard copy has been offered to The AIMN.

We are pleased to ‘publish’ Paul’s novella. Being over 40,000 words, it will need be published in weekly installments.

Today we offer Part 8 (picking up where we left off from in Part 7).

Chapter 4 (continued)

IX

The phone call complete, Emma and Oliver are sitting side by side on kitchen stools facing in the same direction, with glasses of white wine in front of them on an island bench top.

“Both bedded down and locked up. We’ll need more of those sleeping drafts for tomorrow night.”

“Plenty there.”

“Now we wait for Feint to arrive. He should be here in about two days. Then tomorrow we have your friend Glasely to look forward to.”

“How did Venner react to the change of plans and the bit about our ‘disposal’?”

“I sat him at the desk in his room with his laptop setup in front of him and stood behind him and removed the tape from his eyes. I told him what I wanted him to tell Feint. I said this was a test and if he was believed, we would send the ‘money for freedom’ email. He was squinting and seemed a bit disoriented. I think he’s reached the point where he’d do anything I tell him to do. The email was fine – went off without a hitch. We’ll probably have Feint’s response tomorrow.”

Emma looks wistfully into the distance. “You’re enjoying this … you’re good at it.”

Oliver pauses then speaks reflectively. “What at day! Wait ‘till I tell the chaps back at the office.” He smiles reflectively.

They sit silently for a moment. Emma seems lost in her own world. Oliver glances at her then tries to engage her in conversation.

“This spy capper – makes a change from merchant banking. Seriously, though, can you believe what has happened in just one day?”

Emma speaks softly, still looking away from Oliver. “F*ck me.”

“My sentiments precisely! Took the words right out of my mouth!”

Emma, now looking directly at Oliver, speaks softly again. “F*ck me, Oliver.”

Oliver nods sagely, “Indeed, indeed.” He pauses. “And I really appreciate your gesture, but, diphthongs aside, and just to get you on the right track, the Australian expletive you are attempting goes: ‘F*ck’, exclamation mark, pause, ‘me’, an even more emphatic exclamation mark’. And then you shake your head from side to side for emphasis.” Oliver shakes his head from side to side to demonstrate.

Emma’s eyes flash as she exclaims, “Oh for god’s sake!!” And bearing the determined look of a woman on a mission, she walks over to Oliver, takes him by the hand and leads him to the stairs leading up to the main bedroom.

Oliver responds with sheepish surprise: “Oh! – I’m not usually this slow on the uptake. I thought you were exclaiming but you were using the imperative grammatical mood.”

“Shut up.” Emma opens the bedroom door and they enter. She turns and immediately kisses Oliver who reciprocates. She pushes him away and begins undoing his shirt, then stops. “It’ll be quicker if we undress ourselves.”

They begin undressing themselves very quickly, Oliver happily entering into the spirit of things. Oliver sits on the end of the bed to take off his shoes and socks, while Emma, now naked, pulls down the bedclothes and gets under the sheets. Oliver stands and takes off the rest of his clothes and joins her. They begin to kiss. Oliver gently places himself on top of her and kisses her neck, then slowly progresses to her breasts, then down to her tummy, then slowly down to her vagina.

Emma speaks in an intimate whisper: “I’m already ready for you.”

Oliver gets up and pulls her legs slowly down the bed and moves to the floor at the foot of the bed. He pulls her further so that her bottom is near the edge of the foot of the bed so that her feet, on tip toes, are touching the floor. Emma lifts herself up on her elbows, looking surprised. He kneels down and begins kissing her vagina.

Emma isn’t ready for this: “I’m … Oh … Oh! … Owwww.” She continues expressing her rising pleasure with increasing urgency.

Oliver continues relentlessly, licking, sucking, gently caressing with his finger before inserting it into her, and continuing with his tongue to make her spasm with each pass of his tongue across her clitoris. She writhes and orgasms and calls out for him to enter her until he stops and lifts her back up the bed and again places himself above her and enters her slowly. She begins to orgasm almost immediately as he moves slowly and deliberately within her. She feels each movement he makes as if in three dimensions. She knows there is nothing that will stop his relentless movements, nothing to stay his rigid penetrations of her, nothing to stem her pleasure. She has become ecstatic as his rising pleasure becomes manifest in the low growls that he has begun to make. They become more insistent, of higher pitch, of more masculine urgency, more intensely, erotically evocative, more definitive of his masculine presence within her feminine body. Her orgasm becomes the more intense, his ecstatic cries more urgent, her ecstatic feminine responses the more urgent, until they climax together. It seems to them to last forever, with spasms of pure pleasure continuing long after. He slowly, gently withdraws and lies beside her, drawing her to him. She curls into him with her head upon his chest. They lie together and are soon taken into a deep sleep so peacefully beyond their experience. But Emma awakens as from a dream. Her mind will not let her remain at peace, yet her body craves rest. “He … why … this shouldn’t have happened … he … I can’t sleep after what he just did …” She becomes angry. “How dare he.”, she thinks to herself. “How dare he!!!” And so she lies beside him, fuming impatiently. “He can’t be allowed to get away with this.” And so, she moves beneath the covers to his penis.

Oliver slowly awakens to the pleasurable sensation of his penis being slowly caressed by Emma’s lips and tongue. And as he becomes erect, he watches in pleasing awe as she climbs on top of him and places his penis within her moist vagina, and begins to writhe with increasing pleasure. After a brief interlude of this lovemaking, he manages to slide down the bed between her legs so that she is now above his mouth, his head upon a pillow. Again he begins to caress her vagina, her clitoris, with his tongue and place a finger into her to move around to all of her most sensitive places. She acknowledges his deftness with cries, her eyes glistening, her head thrown back, until she needs him within her again and moves back down to find his erect penis slowly entering her again. She orgasms again … and again … and again … until he orgasms with her, again in a state of ecstasy that is more profound, ineffable, more completely satisfying than any sexual experience she has had before. Again they lie together. Again he sleeps the sleep of exhaustion. Again she is unable to heed the pleas of her aching body, and again finds herself unable to sleep. And again, as one unable to believe what had just happened, she bides her time and again licks and caresses his penis with her lips and tongue and hand until he is again erect. And again they make love. Again she curls into him. But this time, her head upon his chest, she finds peace and sleeps.

Morning light finds its way into their bedroom and its warmth and brightness awakens him. Oliver looks at her sleeping form, so femininely unselfconsciously graceful, even at rest. He feels himself lost to her. He knows that he must be with her whatever the cost. She slowly wakes up. She smiles in her semiconscious state; then her demeanour changes to a more serious aspect. She sits on the side of the bed, her head slumps forward. She looks a little sad and resigned to her sadness.

Oliver is sleepy, still lying down in bed. “Good morning.” he says with a light spring in his voice.

Emma does not respond, her head still slumped forward.

Oliver persists: “How are you, this bright morning?”

Emma ignores his attempts at good cheer. “It’s after nine. There’s fruit juice in the refrigerator. Perhaps you could take them a fruit juice and I’ll cook them some eggs, or something.”

Oliver moves across the bed to Emma and sits by her and takes her hand and kisses it. They are both naked. She doesn’t move and doesn’t look at him as she says, “I’ll have a shower while you take them their fruit juice.”

He pauses before speaking softly, obviously concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Please don’t, Oliver. I can’t … I can’t …” She is obviously very upset. “Why did you have to be like that! Why couldn’t you just f*ck me as I asked you to!”

“As I recall, I obeyed your command – three times.”

“No you didn’t! You made love to me – three times! It was … yesterday, I shot someone dead, twice!”

“Technically, you . . .”

Emma begins speaking in a rush, her state of unhappiness apparently about to reach a crescendo. “Shut up. Then I discover that my late husband, whom I cared for greatly, even if it wasn’t love, was incinerated. Then how Katie, Claire and Danielle – how they died instead of me. Then we learn that there is a whole brothel full children being raped by repulsive old men and we have confirmation that radioactive material is being sold for making dirty bombs, no doubt to terrorists who will indiscriminately kill people and children … and then you have to go and make love to me!

“Well, isn’t that a good thing … at the end of all those bad things?”

Emma’s crescendo now becomes shrill. “No it’s not a good thing! It’s not a good thing! It’s a very bad thing!

Oliver replies softly, a little timidly: “Why is it a …”

“Because you were supposed to . . . give me an orgasm so I could get to sleep. There was a lot of sexual tension – and don’t pretend you didn’t notice that – and there was all that adrenalin charging around … stuff happening all day, one after another. So logically, if you did what I asked you, you would have jumped on me, like any typical male, and satisfied yourself in no time at all, and that’s all I needed. I would have reached orgasm – a couple of typically inexpert strokes was all I needed – and we could both have nodded off, had a good night’s sleep and awoken … refreshed. But no! You had to do all the … things you do, and take your time about it, while I have multiple orgasms – which I’m sure makes you very proud of yourself – and after you, eventually, climax you happily drop off to sleep. I, on the other hand, have a body that is exhausted and aching for sleep and a mind that is racing and won’t let me. You had no right . . . no one else has . . .”

“Two ‘inexpert strokes’ …?”

“I hadn’t been with a man for a very long time, obviously!”

“Of course. Yes. Yes, I understand.” He pauses. “I am sorry that I’ve upset you. You were right – emotional intelligence of a gnat.”

“No . . . no, you were very sensitive – you were wonderful – you – bastard.” She pauses then smiles. “Thank god all of these rooms are soundproofed.”

“To be fair, you woke me up to be wonderful again – twice.”

She smiles. “Well I wasn’t going to let you get a good night’s sleep if I couldn’t.”

“For the record, it was a new experience for me too – so easy to … so naturally, ah … it was as if our bodies had known one another forever. Lots of chemistry. I suppose that’s why the sexual tension was so strong.

Emma sighs and slumps forward. “Oh god.” She pauses. “What do we do now?”

“I’ve no idea.”

They sit side by side, holding hands and not speaking. Oliver puts his arm around her. She snuggles into him.

Suddenly she lifts her head and, now with a serious expression, looks directly at Oliver.

“Yesterday was enough to disturb anyone’s equilibrium.”

“It was that.”

“Adrenalin is like a drug which forces you to take extreme actions which you wouldn’t even contemplate in normal circumstances.”

“Oh, it is.”

“I really don’t think we can say the way we acted, either of us, is typical of our reactions to one another, if, say, we had just had a routine day filled with – mundane activities.”

“Quite. And I suppose you could say that the sexual tension could have been heightened because, from the very moment we met, everything has been on edge to a greater or lesser extent.

“Precisely … partly.”

“I think we need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“An agreement, an understanding about the change in our relationship, how we act, what our expectations should be.”

Emma smiles. “You’re good with plans. But you’re also an expert negotiator. Do you promise it will be a fair agreement?”

“Of course, now listen. One night of passion, however profound, does not a relationship make! But we have to allow that it might signal the beginning of one.”

She replies with a wry smile: “Of course.”

“By that I mean an intimate relationship. We already have a professional relationship.”

“We do.”

“So this is no time to be declaring undying love for one another, but rather the beginning of a period of ‘let’s see how things work out.’”

“Agreed so far.”

“We have an important mission to complete. You are the more experienced in this field, so I see no reason for changing the current command structure, with you in the lead.”

“Well that’s very gratuitously male of you. Should I be grateful?”

“You misunderstand me. I mean, I assert there is no male primacy in our intimate relationship. In fact, I believe that the male has a duty – one of the French existential philosophers, can’t remember which one, said that the mark of a true gentleman is one who ensures the needs of his paramour are met before his own – you must have heard or read that.”

“What on earth are you …?”

“Anyway, it would be presumptuous of me to assume that our equality as lovers should extend beyond that to our professional relationship.”

“Hmm … well I suppose you males are conditioned to make such assumptions, so I grant that you are trying to be reconstructed.” She smiles condescendingly and speaks as a kindergarten teacher to a child: “Very good boy.”

“Then there is the matter of the sexual tension which we have hitherto experienced. Whatever the reason, it seems to have become entrenched. I submit that this will be greatly relieved if we agree that we will be sleeping together from now on.”

She is open-mouthed with affected surprise. “Oh Oliver! How sweet! You made up that very long, very detailed plan, just to persuade me to sleep with you again. You make me embarrassed. All I said to get you to sleep with me was: ‘F*ck me.’”

Oliver kisses her and gently lowers her back onto the bed.

“No Oliver. No, I’m serious … We don’t have time. Oh Oliver, you …”

“Just following orders.”

To be continued …