As soon as he was naked he pushed her legs wide apart and entered her. A constant panting sound, as if from a wild animal, was coming from somewhere, interspersed with a moaning that rose into an eerie shriek. When he realized that these noises were coming from him, he shuddered; he’d never made a sound during sex, had always thought of it as the preserve of flirtatious young women. Into her already soaking wet vagina, which was contracting alarmingly, he released a jet of semen with a gasp of pain, falling forward as though swooning.

—

“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out for her face in the darkness.

“Can I turn on the light?” she asked. She sounded perfectly composed.

“What for?”

“I want to be able to see you properly.” She stood up and walked over to the switch. Their sex had been fairly one-sided, and hadn’t even lasted five minutes, so it was no wonder she didn’t seem tired.

When she flicked the lights on he shaded his eyes from the sudden glare. He waited, blinking, until he was able to lower his hands. She was leaning against the wall. The flowers scattered over her body were as beautiful as ever.

Suddenly self-conscious, he put his hands over his paunch and tried to suck it in.

“Don’t cover it…I like it. The petals look like they’re wrinkled.” She slowly came toward him. She bent over and, as she’d done with J, reached out and began to stroke the flowers on his chest.

“Just a minute.” Still naked, he stood up and went over to the front door, where he’d left the equipment. He set the tripod up, quite low, and fixed the camcorder in place, then pushed the mattress out onto the veranda, and spread the white sheet, which he’d brought with him, out on the floor. He set up the lighting just as it had been in M’s studio.

“Can you lie down?”

Once she was lying down he estimated where their entwined bodies would end up, and adjusted the camcorder accordingly.

She lay stretched out under the blinding spotlight. He carefully lowered himself on top of her. Would their bodies look like overlapping petals, as they had with her and J? Would they seem like one body, a hybrid of plant, animal and human?

Every time they changed position he readjusted the camcorder. Before he took her from behind, which J had refused to do, he first took a long close-up of her buttocks. After he inserted himself, he checked how the image looked in the exterior monitor, then started to thrust.