Dark Secret (21 page)

‘All right,’ she said briskly and then she was climbing into the freezing snow. For a moment she quite literally couldn’t breathe as the biting cold snow covered her sweat-drained flesh.

Now the two men began to move the women around in the bath. Lewis worked on his wife, massaging the snow into her breast and belly, moving his hand between her thighs to press the freezing flakes against her sex mound and as he worked Rowena sighed voluptuously, relishing the shocking contrast after the jungle heat of the steam room.

Chris worked just as assiduously on Harriet. At first her body shrank from him, but then a wonderful glow started to suffuse her body and when he turned her on her face in the snow and rolled tiny snowballs up and down her spine every part of her began to tingle so that she felt more alive than ever before in her life.

‘Our turn,’ said Chris at last and the two women stepped out to let the men in. Now it was their turn to massage the snow into the men and when Harriet filled her hands with snow and then ran them up and down Chris’s penis he gasped with excitement and reached up for her breasts, tweaking the rigid nipples and instigating blissful darts of excitement.

‘How do you stop the snow from melting?’ asked Harriet.

‘The bath’s really a kind of fridge,’ explained Rowena. ‘I paid a fortune for it, but it was well worth the money.’ She looked at Harriet’s body. ‘You seem to appreciate it as well. I hope you like the final part as much!’

‘I thought this was it,’ said Harriet. ‘Ella’s never
said there was anything more.’

‘Well, whoever Ella is she doesn’t know everything,’ laughed Rowena.

Lewis and Chris climbed out of the tub and then shepherded the two women out of the cubicle and back round the side until they were at the side of the swimming pool.

‘Lie face down on the loungers,’ said Chris, producing two blindfolds. ‘It’s always ladies first on these occasions.’

The blindfolds were fastened and Harriet and Rowena stretched out on the slatted loungers, whose soft cushions had been removed. The slats pressed into Harriet’s breasts, already tender from the sauna, but she didn’t like to protest because Rowena seemed quite happy with her position.

The air around the swimming pool was pleasantly warm, and Harriet slowly started to relax after the contrasting heat and cold of the sauna. Her limbs felt heavy, and the darkness of the blindfold lulled her towards sleep.

She was drifting off, her thoughts full of Lewis and the night’s events, when her body was stunned by a fierce stinging sensation across her buttocks. She jerked back into wakefulness and started to move from the chair. ‘Keep still,’ laughed Chris. ‘This is the best part of all.’

Again she felt the piercing stinging sensation, but this time it was on her upper thighs and she closed her legs to protect herself. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, and even as she spoke she heard the sound of something falling against Rowena’s skin too.

‘It’s only the birch twigs!’ said Chris. ‘They get your blood flowing again.’

He was clearly an expert at applying the bunch of sticks because each blow fell in a slightly different place until the whole of Harriet’s back was smarting and pricking. She wriggled and at once the slats of the chair pressed into her lower belly.

‘Now turn over,’ said Chris, the excitement clear in his voice.

Part of Harriet didn’t want to. She felt that she should refuse, tear off the blindfold and walk out of the room, but she could hear Rowena’s tiny cries of rising excitement and knew that her own body was slowly responding in the same way.

At first the burning stripes had been uncomfortable, close to pain, but already that was changing and she was trembling with the beginnings of that dreadful need Lewis had kindled in her. She tried to imagine how the twigs would feel falling on her delicate breasts and belly and suddenly she wanted to know, to experience it for herself and so she turned and Chris looked down at her long, slim body and his legs went weak with desire.

Lewis paused for a moment, despite Rowena’s pleas, and glanced at his brother-in-law. It was impossible for Chris to disguise the lust on his face and when he felt Lewis’s eyes on him he turned to look at him defiantly.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ asked Lewis coolly.

‘Very much,’ retorted Chris, and Lewis watched the fair-haired young man raise his arm high in the air and bring the birch twigs down across Harriet’s unprotected abdomen. She jerked with the impact, but her nipples were visibly hardening and as the tiny red marks
appeared on her skin she thrust her belly up as though begging for more.

Chris was happy to oblige, and Lewis had to look away, angered both by Chris’s excitement and Harriet’s response. His blows on Rowena increased in force and she squealed with delight, lifting her buttocks high into the air to present an easier target for him.

Harriet was in an ecstasy of excitement. Her breasts were aching for what she now thought of as the caress of the birch twigs, but Chris continued to apply them to the lower part of her body until she grasped her breasts in her hand and pushed them up with a moan of need.

Seeing her like that, begging him to strike her in the way he liked best, Chris longed to take her there and then without consulting the others. He no longer cared about the rules of the plot, he simply wanted to take Harriet but first he allowed the twigs to strike her where she so clearly wanted them. The crispness of the blows across her breasts precipitated a sudden and unexpected orgasm in Harriet whose body shuddered and trembled before her arms and legs sprawled limply over the sides of the lounger.

At this Chris lost control. He hurled himself on top of her, moving roughly against the marked skin and nipping at the flesh of her throat and shoulders. Harriet, lost in the world of darkness and pleasure, was taken by surprise. She tried to push him off because this wasn’t what she wanted, but Chris was beyond stopping. He reached under her and she felt his fingers moving urgently between her buttocks. Clenching herself against him she went to close her legs but found
that he had a thigh between them and his erection was already nudging at the entrance to her vagina. He was heavy and rough, his hands careless of her needs as he struggled to achieve his own gratifaction.

‘Stop it!’ cried Harriet. ‘I don’t want you. Get off.’

Lewis, who hd been applying the birch twigs to Rowena’s inner thighs, was suddenly alerted to what was happening. He dropped the switch and crossed over to where Harriet was struggling.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he asked Chris.

‘She’s enjoying it,’ muttered Chris, still trying to force the cheeks of her bottom apart.

‘Get off her,’ Lewis’s voice was filled with icy contempt. ‘Can’t you ever do what you’re told?’

‘She’s not yours,’ panted Chris, pressing down on Harriet’s shoulders.

‘She isn’t yours either,’ said Lewis coldly. ‘Harriet belongs to herself. Now get off her.’

Rowena tore off her blindfold, sat up and looked over at her half-brother. ‘What are you doing?’ she cried in disbelief. ‘That wasn’t part of the script.’

Chris stared at his sister in a daze of sexual frustration. ‘I want to do it my way. I want to hear her scream like you scream for me. I want…’

‘You bloody fool,’ said Lewis scornfully. ‘She isn’t like your half-sister. Any idiot could have worked that out for himself.’

‘She is!’ insisted Chris. ‘She liked the twigs, she liked the pain, she…’

‘Hurt
me,’
said Rowena softly. ‘Come here, Chris. I want you to hurt me now. Please, I need you.’

Harriet lay quite still, more shocked by what she was hearing than by anything that had happened to her since she came to the house. They were talking as though this was some kind of play or film, not real life. And as for Chris, how he could have thought she wanted the kind of thing he and Rowena did she couldn’t imagine.

Lewis watched his wife closely. She was holding out her arms to her half-brother and her need was there for them all to see. Very slowly Chris got up off Harriet and stumbled over to Rowena.

‘You can do anything you like to me,’ she whispered. ‘Take me to your room. I want you to do everything you can think of. Take me further than we’ve ever gone before. I need you, Chris; she doesn’t. She’s no different from Lewis.’

‘But if I had her, you could stay with Lewis!’ protested Chris. ‘We’d both be free then. Isn’t that what you wanted?’

Rowena shook her head. ‘What I thought I wanted and what I need are two different things.’

‘But I want Harriet!’ he protested.

Rowena stared at him. ‘You can’t do! Don’t you understand, she isn’t like us and she never will be.’

‘I’d change. I’d be what she wanted. She excites me, Rowena. There’s such sensuality in her response – she’s so open to new experiences it makes everything more exciting. Like starting my sex life all over again.’

Rowena looked at her husband, her eyes bewildered. ‘You can’t both want Harriet!’ she said in horror.

Lewis gave a twisted smile. ‘Why not? I never promised you a happy ending.’

Chapter Ten

HARRIET STILL DIDN’T
understand what was happening. She turned to Lewis. ‘What do you mean, “happy ending”?’

Furious, Rowena decided to attack both men in the way that would hurt them most, by telling Harriet the truth. ‘You don’t really think my husband is in love with you, do you?’ she sneered. ‘He isn’t in love with anyone. Lewis lives for his work, and you were just a part of it.’

‘But I didn’t do any work for him,’ protested Harriet. ‘Only a few letters and phone calls. It was you who employed me.’

‘When I
employed
you it wasn’t to write stupid letters for either of us. You were chosen because Lewis thought you were attractive, and exactly right for the role of innocent pawn.’

None of this made any sense at all to Harriet, who hadn’t understood a word Rowena said. ‘Lewis wasn’t there when you interviewed me,’ she protested.

‘He was watching through one of his two-way mirrors. I’m sure you know all about them, after
all you did use one to watch me with Chris, didn’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’ gasped Harriet.

Rowena laughed. ‘Because it was all part of the plot, darling!’

‘What plot? You aren’t making any sense.’

‘Lewis’s film, the one I’m meant to star in, is about a brother and sister who are in love with each other. In the film the sister marries but the husband can’t stop her continuing her affair with her brother. Both he and his wife want the relationship to end, only the woman is too caught up in the dark sensuality of her incestuous affair. Are you with me so far?’

Harriet nodded. It was beginning to make a horrible kind of sense.

‘Good. Well, Lewis had the brilliant idea of bringing the film to life, and only writing the script as events happened. We had the perfect cast here, except for one vital ingredient – the other woman. He thought it needed an outsider, a catalyst, and that this young woman’s presence would force all the characters to re-appraise their lives.

‘Of course, in order for it to work the men had to become sexually involved with her, which Lewis did rather too convincingly I’m afraid, and then the heroine would decide which of the men she wanted the most. I was meant to choose between Chris and Lewis after watching them both with you. Do you understand now?’

Harriet stared at Lewis. ‘So you never really felt anything for me? You were just playing out this charade in order to make your film truthful, is that it?’

‘It’s called
cinema vérité,’
said Chris helpfully.

‘I call it a cheap, despicable trick,’ said Harriet furiously. ‘How dare you take someone into your home and then use them physically and emotionally for your work! Haven’t you any conscience at all?’

‘Not much,’ admitted Lewis.

Harriet jumped to her feet. ‘I hate you all. I think you’re sick, and if this is what they call art I don’t want anything to do with it. I hope the film’s a flop and you never work again.’

Lewis reached out an arm and grabbed her by the wrist. ‘Don’t you see, Harriet, you changed everything. What Rowena says is true, but once you were here, once I got to know you, it didn’t go the way I’d planned.’

‘Really? How disappointing for you!’

‘No, it wasn’t. I didn’t mind. Harriet, I do feel something for you. Sure the first time I took you to bed it was acting, but once we were together, once we’d made love, it changed. I tried to tell myself it hadn’t, that I was just caught up in the role-playing, but deep down I knew even then. I don’t want to lose you, Harriet. You mean more to me than any woman’s ever meant.’

‘According to your wife that isn’t saying very much,’ retorted Harriet. ‘Tell me, does your work still come first?’

‘No!’ he protested, and Rowena drew in her breath in astonishment. ‘Harriet, if you leave, I’ll come after you. I can’t let you go. When I saw Chris on top of you just now I could have killed him. As for watching you with him earlier, on the stairs, it was agony because I felt that you should be with me. I didn’t want to go on with it all any more.’

‘But you did, didn’t you?’ Harriet pointed out. ‘You never stopped and told me the truth.’

‘There was too much riding on it, I couldn’t. But now it’s finished, we can—’

‘It’s finished all right,’ said Harriet, fighting back her tears. ‘I’ll never forgive \ you for what you’ve done to me. I want to leave now.’

‘Wait!’ interrupted Chris. ‘Let me come with you. There’s so much I could teach you. We’d be happy together once you admitted the truth about yourself. You know that you’re fascinated by me, I can tell by your responses. Don’t back away just when you’re finding out who you really are.’

‘None of you knows anything about truth,’ retorted Harriet. ‘You don’t live in the real world, and you never will.’ As she fled from the poolside the other three looked at each other in silence.

Up in her bedroom, Harriet started throwing clothes into suitcases, her heart pounding with shock and grief. She knew that nothing they’d told her had made any difference, that she was still as obsessed by Lewis as he claimed to be by her, but she didn’t know how she could ever trust him again, even if he meant what he’d said about coming after her.