Carol (Carol Schmidt Series) (18 page)

The
wives and girlfriends of rich men spend a great deal of their time doing two
things: shopping and waiting around for their rich men. Carol had observed this
again and again over the years, hanging out in the very best hotels on five
continents and developing a keen eye for how the world’s most privileged people
pass their time.

Other than trips to the shops, and dinner at the
inevitable trophy restaurant in the evening, these women tend to spend most of
their time in their hotels. They invariably put in serious time at the gym, and
work their way through the pamper-menu as if the idea of missing out on a mud
facial or a Thai massage is simply unthinkable.

However, what they don’t do
—
ever
—
is
prop up the hotel’s lobby bar on their own. So when Carol ventured down for an
early evening drink to find
Sai Boynes already there, twiddling the
stick in her Perrier and lime and looking bored, there was little doubt as to
her reasons for being there.

“Oh, hi,” Carol said, the space of a single
barstool between them.

Sai smiled, as if Carol’s casual tone, and the suggestion that they
were meeting there by chance, amused her.

“So,” Sai said, sitting perfectly upright on her
stool and dropping the amused expression, “what brings you to New York? I’m
Sai, by the way.”

Carol introduced herself as Sandra, and ordered
a martini.

“Would you believe it, something fantastically
boring: work.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’m a lawyer. It sucks but it pays.” She raised
a hand, as if showing off the decor of the bar. “As you can see.”

Sai took a sip of her water, considered what
Carol had said. Then:

“Is it worth it?”

“What, the boredom of legal work in exchange for
five-star luxury?”

“I guess that’s what I meant, yeah.”

Carol shifted on her stool. She had her story all
worked out, but she didn’t want to seem too keen to share, not just yet.

“I would say so. I mean, I work on some
interesting stuff. It’s just that for every interesting idea, there’s several
very uninteresting contracts to scrutinize, and amend, and...”

She let it tail off.

Sai said nothing, but made it clear that she was
in fact interested in hearing more.

“OK,” Carol continued, “so I work on cases of
plagiarism, mainly music. Sampling? It’s a legal minefield. They sample stuff
and never even tell the company where they got it from. Then, when the claim
comes in, the record companies throw a million lawyers at it.”

“Any big names?”

“Nah. I work out of our Hong Kong office. Latest
case was a German electro group from the eighties. Claimed they’d been ripped
off by a Korean rapper twenty years later.”

“And you defended him?”

“Me? Oh, no. I work the other side. I try and
prove plagiarism. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds, but I guess you do get to
talk to musicians, technicians, sound experts, that kind of thing, so it’s not
all dull... Anyway, how about you?”

Sai exhaled deeply.

“I’ve just spent the last couple months
traveling, I mean, from city to city, hotel to hotel.”

“Sounds grueling.”

“It is. Do you know the thing I can never get
used to? The pillows!”

“Really!”

Sai suddenly broke out into what seemed like a
genuine grin.

“I mean, they’re all good pillows, obviously.
But somehow I can’t get used to a different one every few nights. My neck aches
like hell. I need a massage.”

Carol thought for a moment, nodding in
agreement.

“I just had one in my room, couple of hours ago.
It wasn’t that great.”

“Oh, I was about to get one. Perhaps I won’t
bother.”

“The irony is,” Carol added, “I’m a fully
trained masseuse.”

“A lawyer
and
a masseuse?”

“I know!” she said. “Talk about a weird CV.”

She took a drink of her martini.

“You know, if you wanted, I could...”

Sai was already on her feet.

*

The curtains were drawn in the bedroom of
Carol’s room, which was in fact a modest suite, the smallest two-room
available, in keeping with her profile as a low-ranking lawyer from the music
business.

“We’re gonna do this properly, right?” said Sai,
standing there, confident, elegant, completely at home in the surroundings.

“Yes,” Carol replied. “You’ll need to slip out
of your clothes.”

Their conversation was matter of fact, utterly
devoid of any sexual charge. It was as if the two of them were above playing
games, and only one thing mattered. Yet it was more than that, as if they’d
agreed implicitly that this would be purely transactional, a cold, hard-headed
operation between two adults, the very lack of any sort of seduction a turn-on.
Seduction without seduction: a first for Carol.

Sai let her thin black pants and top fall to the
floor, not bothering to pick them up. She stood there, in a plain black satin
bra and a black g-string. For a second Carol had to stifle the desire to stare,
such was the almost shocking symmetry and poise of Sai’s body. She was slim,
but with the evidence of just enough muscle to give her an electric vibrancy.
And her breasts, pert and full at the same time, were more than a match even
for Carol’s.

It was the first time that Carol had ever felt
so profoundly jealous of another woman’s body, and those pangs of jealousy were
tempered only by the knowledge that she was at least going to touch and enjoy
the full extent of Sai’s perfection.

“God,” Sai said, “I’m ready for this.”

She got onto the bed and lay face down,
arranging the pillows on either side of her head and getting herself comfy.

Carol watched, and just for a moment a doubt
entered her mind. Was Sai only interested in a massage? Had she misread the
messages? There she was, the fine line of her g-string splitting her fabulous
ass, the cheeks as tanned as they rest of her, two mounds of unblemished flesh
that cried out to be caressed and stroked. But was that what Sai wanted?

“You don’t have any oil, do you?” Sai said,
reaching behind her back and unclasping her bra.

“Yes, it’s in the bathroom,” said Carol, almost sprinting
out of the room.

When she returned, she saw Sai’s bra tossed
carelessly onto the floor and her g-string with it. The sight made her gulp, a
sudden storm of butterflies in her stomach. She had an aching desire for this
woman, and it was sending her momentarily dizzy. No, she hadn’t been mistaken;
the two of them were here for one reason only.

Slowly, as if savoring the vision of Sai Boynes,
naked and prone on her bed, Carol knelt down beside her.

Immediately Sai’s hand reached for Carol,
tugging at her clothes.

“Don’t get your things stained with the oil,”
she said, like a mom scolding her daughter.

“Oh, yes. Right, I forgot.”

But she hadn’t. She simply wanted to be sure.
Whatever else she had to do while she was here in the Trump International, and
however much she wanted to avenge the injustice of what had happened to Jason
all those years back, she also wanted this woman. And she wanted her badly.

In a second Carol’s clothes were in a pile next
to Sai’s on the floor, and she returned to the bed, opened the bottle of oil,
and let it trickle into the small of Sai’s back.

Her skin was smooth, and the oil spread across
it easily. Carol ran her palms up and down Sai’s back, oiling her lightly, up
around the balls of the shoulders, then increasing the pressure a little as she
ran her hands all the way down on either side of her spine.

Carol was kneeling beside her, leaning low as
she moved up and down the torso, gradually letting her hands work around the sides,
her finger tips caressing Sai’s armpits and the very edge of her breasts,
before moving down to the base of her spine and working the muscles on either
side of the vertebrae. The thing was, Carol really was a qualified masseuse,
and although she loved to get a good massage, when the body was this good, she
actually preferred giving it.

So now, as Sai’s entire torso shone in the
half-light of the room, its contours like the rolling hills of some hardly
unimaginable erotic paradise, Carol found herself trembling. She poured a
little more oil into her hands, trying to remain calm, but feeling a hard knot
of delicious anxiety inside her, something more than expectation, as if this
really was too much, that the woman lying there to receive her every touch
could not have been more perfect in a dream, a wild, wet and ridiculously horny
dream.

She let her oily palms sit on those buttocks,
which twitched every so slightly. Sai shuffled fractionally, but did not ease
her legs apart; that, Carol knew, would be her job, to coax Sai’s body open,
part of the game.

So she began to make small circular movements
with her hands, watching the butt cheeks as she pulled them slowly and
carefully apart, sensing that Sai was a patient lover, but a pliant one: the
stillness of her body, the lack of any overt willingness, was her way of
letting Carol have her fill. She wanted to be explored, and taken.

Carol now shifted until she was kneeling on
Sai’s calves, letting her own naked crotch brush the skin on the back of Sai’s
legs, as she dug a little deeper into the dual mounds of Sai’s ass. She
squeezed and separated the cheeks, and saw the darkened ring peeping out at
her, then disappearing again, as if it was winking. But beneath it, down
between the legs, which were almost together, she couldn’t make out anything.

Her hands worked the flesh harder, but still Sai
made no attempt to separate her legs. The oil had turned the flesh of her ass
slippery, and it moved easily in Carol’s fingers. And as she kneaded and
stroked, she resisted the urge to run a finger right down the crack and tickle
the butt hole. She wanted to wait, to take Sai beyond her playful passivity to
a point at which she couldn’t help herself.

So on they went, the massage gaining intensity,
the only sound in the room the occasional sticky sound of oiled flesh being
handled. Carol pushed down a little harder each time, until finally she was
able to touch the very bottom of Sai’s sex, fleetingly, before running the
fingers of both hands slowly up between the buttocks, but making sure her touch
was as soft as a feather. Then again, down and back up, but even lighter now,
hardly touching at all, and at the same time blowing softly onto the small of
the back.

Sai’s ass suddenly bucked into the air, just
once, a momentary loss of control. Carol now eased one buttock gently aside, she
ran her other hand down until it nestled deep between Sai’s legs, letting it
rest there, feeling the considerable heat.

Sai moaned, her face pressed down into the bed.
Yet still she didn’t yield. Her body remained right where it was, as if just
having Carol’s hand down there was enough. There was a tenderness to it, an
innocence, the way that she wanted to stay like this, not moving a muscle, as
if she never wanted to move again, content to remain face down on the bed
forever.

And Carol, as she looked down on Sai’s prone,
immobile body, felt a weird anxiety grow inside her. She was turned on, but she
was feeling something else. It took her back to the convent, and to the purity
of her first sexual feelings. There was something different about Sai, and it
was making her emotions coil and twist in ways she had never felt before.

Acting on instinct, she gently removed her hand
and lay down beside Sai, who at first did nothing. But then she slowly turned
her head. Her eyes were full of tears.

“I’m sorry,” Carol said, somehow not surprised
to see Sai crying, although she had no idea why. “You don’t want to do this, do
you? I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to...”

“It’s not that,” Sai said.

Without another word the two of them slid their
arms around each other. As they embraced, their legs entwined and their bodies
came together. Both of them, for their own reasons and in their own ways, sank
into an feeling of intense satisfaction.

There they remained, listening to each other’s
breath, until Sai’s tears had stopped.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Carol whispered.

Sai shook her head.

“It’s not you. It’s me. I hate myself.”

“Because of
this
? I mean, this can stop
now. We haven’t done anything.”

Sai pressed her lips onto Carol’s, and as they
kissed, something ignited deep within her. They kissed with such delicate
passion, reticent yet urgent, that it might have been the kiss of two lovers
meeting after years of forced separation. It might, indeed, have been the best
kiss she had ever had.

The warmth of Sai’s mouth against hers seemed to
communicate to Carol, something almost devotional in its purity. Then, she felt
a hand moving down her stomach and reach for her sex, which, as part of the
Sandra Wells disguise, had been pruned to a severe Brazilian and died blond.