We stood naked together, surrounded by the images of ourselves, lovers who had found each other during an orgy in a house of glass. Naked couples stood around us, immersed in themselves, half-hidden behind the doors. We were watched by the lenses of a dozen cameras, multiplied and dismantled at the same time. I held Cleo’s breasts in my hands, touching the blue veins that ran past her broad nipples, and caressed away the pink grooves left by the wiring of her brassiere. I kissed a small scar in her armpit, relic of a childhood I had never known, and ran my lips through the shoal of silver stretch marks, like seeds of time spilled across her abdomen by Ceres herself as she sowed her fields. She held my penis in her hands, rolling it gently between her palms, her fingers drawing on my scrotum. Phallic corridors receded from us, an erotic labyrinth in an impossible palace. When I kissed Cleo’s nipples a battalion of lovers bent their heads. I sat on the bed as she knelt on the carpet between my knees, her forearms resting on my thighs. She took the head of my penis in her mouth, touching the tip of my urethra with her tongue, then sank deeper to hold the shaft between her teeth, biting lightly on the swollen muscle.

I drew her beside me, kissing her thighs and hips. With her firm hands she pressed my shoulders to the pillows and knelt astride me, long hair falling across my chest. I lay back, happy to share Cleo with the mirrors, but she stretched out and kicked the wardrobe door with her heel. The house of glass vanished into the cupboard, a collapsing concertina of light.

“Just you and me, Jim … I think that’s all we can manage now…”

She returned to the pillows and lay beside me, brushing the hair from her eyes, knees raised in the air as I caressed her vulva. Engorged with blood, her labia rose like coxcombs around her clitoris. My fingers parted the mottled crests and moistened the stiffened nub. I soothed the hot pad of her anus, pushing back the soft upholstery of a small pile. Lying beside her, I masturbated her affectionately. When a sudden fluxus drenched the sheet she gasped at the ceiling and bit my shoulder, embarrassed at herself. She rested for a few breaths, held my hips, and drew me between her legs.