Lovers (46 page)

“Tell me about the owner’s suite,” she queried, turning away to question Ben. “I didn’t know there was going to be one.”

“There’ll be one on each ship, twice as big as each of the other suites.”

“All for you, poor drone?”

“Only if I’m aboard, otherwise for the most VIP of VIPs.”

“Could I see that first, please? Just the two of us?”

“But—”

“Aren’t you the man who signs the checks?”

“Gentlemen,” Ben said, “I’m going to show Miss Orsini the owner’s suite myself. We’ll join you in a minute.”

The model rooms had been designed to the precise
scale of the ship, so that their walls, like partitions, stopped well short of the high ceilings of the warehouse. As Gigi stepped into the owner’s suite, she heard the solid thunk of the door as it closed behind them, yet at the same time she could hear the conversation of the men who had been left to mill around outside and look for imperfections.

“Alone at last,” she said to Ben, twirling around and around and kicking off her shoes.

“Come on, sweetheart, stop kidding. Isn’t this incredible! Look at it, for God’s sake, have you ever seen anything like it? And this is just the bedroom. Wait till you see the sitting room, the kitchen, the dining room, the sun deck, the baths, and the walk-in closets. There’s almost a thousand feet of space here. Every detail’s complete, except for the things that the design teams are still looking for in Europe.”

Gigi crawled to the middle of the quilted beige silk bedspread of the enormous bed and flopped down so that she lay at full length. “Great mattress. Just come over here first and give me a tiny little kiss. I absolutely have to lie down for a second, I’m dizzy.”

Ben, shrugging in impatience, sat down next to her, bent over, and kissed her briefly on the lips.

“Oh, better than that,” Gigi whispered. “You can do much better. Try to revive me, I’m wiped out.”

Laughing, Ben too lay back on the bedspread and put his arms around her.

“Was it the desalination system that knocked you out, or Renzo?”

She raised herself off the bed and stripped off her jacket. “I think it might have been the elevator ride,” she murmured. With one quick gesture she unhooked her wraparound skirt and flung it on top of her jacket. “Or maybe I’m pinched black and blue. I’d better find out the extent of the damage.” As she was speaking, she rapidly unpeeled her panty hose and her panties.

“What the hell’s come over you?”
Ben hissed at her.
“There are a bunch of guys right outside this wall. They can
hear
you.”

“Not if I keep my voice down,” Gigi said in her softest tone, as she bent over him in a quick motion and unzipped his fly. “Not if you don’t make a silly big old fuss.”

“Stop that!”

She straddled him before he knew what she was doing, and looked into his eyes. “Do you remember that old song,
‘Only Make Believe’?
I think it goes, ‘Only make believe I love you, only make believe you love me.’ Something like that,” she murmured, humming softly. “Only make believe we’re alone, dear, only make believe you want me so …”

“You’re nuts!”

“Yes … oh, yes, Ben, the spirit of the high seas has penetrated me. I’m making believe that the wall goes right up to the ceiling and nobody can hear us,” Gigi whispered with a wicked, merciless smile as she put her warm fingers into the fly of his shorts and imprisoned his penis in both her hands.

“Don’t!”

“Quiet, they’ll hear you,” she admonished him, exploring the dangling length of his limp penis adroitly, each stroke of her hands reaching the soft bulb of its head, lingering there an instant, and circling it before returning to follow its almost instantly expanding length and width all the way down the base. She wasted no time on unnecessary refinements or teasing moments or alternating pressures or interesting caresses. She wanted his penis as big and hard as it could ever get, and she wanted it fast. Fast and quick and now.

As soon as she felt him filled and pulsating, as soon as she knew he was well beyond the point of any self-control and couldn’t possibly push her off and zip himself up, she bent her lovely head and took just the fat, velvety tip of his penis in her mouth and sucked on it as strongly as she could, using her tongue and the succulent pulling membranes of her lips and cheeks with every ounce of savage energy she possessed, while she held his shaft in a firm grip
so that he was imprisoned by her fingers, all sensation concentrated in his most sensitive spot. At the same time, she listened intently to the rhythm of his panting ragged breath. The instant she could tell from the tightening of his muscles and the change in his breathing that he was beginning to approach an orgasm, she pulled her mouth away and slid upward on her bare knees so that she was able, in one quick motion, to take his whole burning penis between her legs, sinking it in deeply and fully, for she had been ready to open easily to him since she’d closed the door of the owner’s suite.

She looked down at Ben as she rode him, her breasts thrust forward under her blouse. His eyelids were clenched together in an ecstasy of excitement. “It’s up to you,” Gigi muttered, as she plunged up and down with relentless animality. “It’s up to you how much noise you make.” She never took her eyes away from his face, watching the stern concentration of pleasure spread over his features in a grimace that grew and intensified every second. His teeth were grinding and he had grabbed her bottom in both of his hands so that he could push upward into her, but she struggled successfully to retain her dominant position so that she could observe him closely. She watched as his mouth grew grimly tighter and tighter in his effort not to cry out, and she redoubled her frenzied motions until he was galloping, all will lost, toward an irresistible climax. He bit his lower lip so mercilessly that she was afraid he’d draw blood. Only then did she cover his mouth with hers so that she muffled the low, barbaric sounds that escaped as he was finally overcome by a huge, wild burst of release. As she felt him coming inside her, she permitted herself the exquisite climax she’d been holding back since she’d taken him in her mouth, but a silent climax that he was too lost in restraining the sounds of his own mad delight to notice. As soon as she could move, Gigi rolled off Ben and looked innocently up at the warehouse ceiling.

He opened his eyes, barely able to focus.

“Why?” he croaked.

“Why? I thought that was what you wanted … the elevator … the hand on my ass … your finger …”

“You’re … simply … crazy.”

“I must have got my signals scrambled. But just think, now you’ve learned how to come without screaming the house down. That could come in handy someday.”

“Bitch!”

“Right on! And don’t you forget it!”

“Oh, God, I love you!”

“Why, thank you, Ben. Oh, dear, I can’t find my panties.”

“Never mind them. Get dressed for heaven’s sake. Oh, shit, the bedspread!”

“I can’t leave this room looking less neat than when I entered it. What would people think?” Gigi found her clothes, piece by piece, exactly where she had thrown them, and dressed quickly. She went to the dressing table that faced the bed and inspected herself, nodding from side to side in disapproval.

“What’s wrong now?” Ben asked imploringly, as he mopped and smoothed the bedspread.

“Being on top has its advantages—my hair’s fine—but I have an unmistakable just-fucked look.”

“Oh, stop, stop! You’ve had your revenge. They won’t even know the difference.”

“Renzo will, and all the others too, even if each one of them is a virgin.”

“Then stay in here and cool down. Take a shower or something. I’ll tell them you don’t feel well, you have a headache.”

“But I feel simply terrific,” Gigi announced as she put on fresh lip gloss. “I’m ready for the rest of the tour. You’ll have to replace that spread, I don’t think sperm comes out with a damp cloth, and I seem to have … ah … leaked.” She slipped into her shoes and walked to the door of the suite. “Coming?” she asked him over her shoulder as she stepped out.

“Gentlemen,” she announced, “the view of the owner’s
suite has refreshed me. I feel like a new woman—shall we continue?”

As soon as Gigi had left for New York, Victoria Frost put into motion a plan she had been mulling over for many months. When Archie and Byron had first tried to hire Gigi, they had promised her never to go after the Scruples Two account. Gigi had been determined not to solicit that juicy piece of business, billing thirteen million dollars a year and certain to grow larger, because she knew that, because of her, Spider and Billy would feel obligated to give it to FRB whether they wanted to or not.

This prospect compromised her bid for independence and her family connections in a way that made her squirm merely in contemplation, she’d explained to Arch and By. She hadn’t even considered their offer of a job until they’d agreed to the condition. Both of them had made sure that Victoria knew that Scruples Two was off limits.

And all of them were dead wrong, Victoria decided.

In the first place, there was no possible conflict of interest; Gigi wouldn’t be doing business with herself if the agency worked for Scruples Two, since she didn’t share in the agency’s profits. In the second place, the copy that Gigi had written for Scruples Two was one of the major reasons that the catalog had been such an instant success. And in the third place, Gigi’s unprofessionally squeamish shades of feeling, such a quaint excess of standoffishness, had no place in the advertising business. Arch and By should never have agreed to her conditions, but at the time they’d needed Gigi too much to make the necessary arguments that would have convinced her how coy and oversensitive she was being.

More than enough time had passed since then—almost a year. Gigi had had far more than her unfair share of success on her own, to make that early agreement as meaningless as it was stupid, Victoria decided. It was time for her to step in. She had done her homework on Russo and Russo, the agency that currently had the Scruples Two account.
There was no need to say anything to Byron or Archie until she’d been successful, she thought, as she telephoned Spider Elliott and made an appointment to meet him in his office.

“Welcome to Scruples Two,” Spider said as Victoria was shown in. “It’s not every day that I meet Gigi’s boss … not that Gigi can be said to have ever had even one, in the usual sense of the word. It’s an exclusive club, you know. A caterer named Emily Gatherum and you and me. And my wife, of course, but she hasn’t been to the office since our boys were born.”

“I’ve heard so much about the twins,” Victoria said glowingly. “When Gigi and I have our girl-talk lunches together, she often tells me what new stunts they’re up to, she even shows me photos, for all the world like a doting aunt. You must be so proud of them.”

“I’m totally gaga, but I understand that’s normal. What would you like to drink—coffee, tea, something cold?”

“Nothing, thanks. Mr. Elliott—”

“Spider, please. Nobody calls me anything else.”

“And I’m Victoria.”

Spider never looked at a woman without automatically redressing her. When he’d been running Scruples, even the most self-assured clients had rarely dared to decide on an important dress without his approval. Victoria Frost, he saw immediately, would never have needed to ask his advice. In her double-breasted coat-dress of crisp beige wool, she projected an ultimate combination of efficiency and authority. She could be nothing but an extremely successful businesswoman in that dress, yet it was so excessively chaste that paradoxically she created an impression of drama. Strange how Gigi hadn’t mentioned that she was a beauty, in the classically severe ballerina mode that other men so often found intriguing.

As Victoria received her first impressions of Spider, she couldn’t help regretting that this was one man with whom clearly she could never enjoy a secret afternoon. Every bit
of knowledge she had about male manners, signals and codes computed into an instant understanding that Spider Elliott would never respond to her on a sexual basis. He was taken. As taken as a man could be.

“Spider, I’m here to talk about the Scruples Two advertising,” Victoria declared, with the kind of confidence that immediately puts another person into a receptive frame of mind, just as the first notes of a great musical performer reassure the audience and settle them down to listen. “I’ve been studying your campaign intensively for the last four months, and I’m convinced that Russo and Russo simply aren’t doing as good a job for you as we could, at Frost Rourke Bernheim.”

“Is that so?” She doesn’t waste time getting to the point, Spider thought.

“It
is
so. They’re not the most compatible mix for you. They fall short of being your ideal marketing partner. I’ll bet anything that the creative team is male.”

“You’re right about that, but bright, bright guys. They do great graphics. I like ’em.”

“With all due respect, bright isn’t enough. Advertising is a business in which it’s axiomatic that only the bright survive. And I don’t have to tell you that great graphics can only go so far. They have to be the
right
graphics or it doesn’t matter how good they are.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re selling a single product,” Victoria continued, feeling herself quickening the smooth rhythm of the pitch, “a catalog that only interests women. The one and only point of your advertising is to get more women to send away for the catalog. No man in the world would look through a Scruples Two catalog unless he were a drag queen, and yet you, a man, are using the creative ability of two fellows with male minds in male bodies. There’s too much testosterone floating around in that creative mix, Spider.”

“You really believe that men can’t write great ads for
women? What about the reverse? Can women write ads for men?”

“Sometimes an extraordinary woman can. My mother, for instance. She had as many accounts that appealed to men as to women. But her heyday was decades ago, and women have changed. People don’t walk a mile for a Camel anymore—or at least they know they shouldn’t—and women today have changed, particularly the women who buy from your catalog, working women, young mothers with jobs, busy women executives who have no time to shop. They’re a whole new breed, Spider, and there’s a whole new set of needs and wants, a new set of priorities. Most important, there’s a new set of fantasies … women’s fantasies.”