Naughty Bits: Too Hot to Print (6 page)

Well, those days were long gone. She was what everyone in fashion dreamed of being: size zero. The awareness was as heady as a drug running through her veins. Coco reached down and, through the
silk of her robe, tried to pinch that place above the hipbones, below the waist, where the last ounces of fat always clung.

Nothing. Her fingers couldn’t get any purchase. Not a lump or a bump. Nothing at all.

Heart beating fast with anticipation, she crossed the bathroom, passing the floor-to-ceiling glass window set into the brushed-concrete wall, into the bedroom, which also had floorto-ceiling
glass windows. This apartment building had been thrown up just last year, and the developers knew exactly what their hyper-rich, hyper-trendy customers wanted: cutting-edge design that was as
stripped-down and sleek as themselves, a dazzling array of built-in gadgets and devices, and huge walls of glass windows that were perfect for exhibitionists who worked out every day of their
lives, watched their weight like hawks, and were more than happy to show off their slim, toned bodies for the benefit of their neighbours across the narrow street – who, of course, were doing
exactly the same.

The Halston was in the hippest area of what insiders called ‘the city’ and outsiders called Manhattan. On the Bowery, once a slum best-known for its drunks and dive bars, it was a
forty-storey glass and steel palace, towering over the wide avenue, signalling clearly that the Bowery and the Lower East Side were the latest destination for the torrent of gentrification dollars
that were flooding through the city, sweeping out the crumbling buildings, filling up disused lots, throwing up fabulous edifices into which the next generation of Manhattanites were ready to move.
The starving artists, the performers, the drag queens, had colonised this section of the city which once had been full of sweatshops and cheap brothels: now they were moving on, priced out of the
city, crossing the bridges to Brooklyn and Hoboken, washed away by the green river of new money.

Coco’s bedroom floor was dark walnut, underfloor-heated in winter, smooth and cool in summer. She dropped the robe onto her wide, low bed and padded naked to the far wall, which was
entirely filled with fitted cupboards, discreet lighting snapping on as soon as she slid open the frosted glass doors. Flicking through the carefully-curated racks of clothes, knowing how lucky she
was to have this apartment, she still couldn’t help a twinge of envy when she thought of her boss, Victoria, who had an Upper East Side townhouse. It was large enough for Victoria to have a
whole room dedicated to her wardrobe, the corridor which connected it to her bedroom lined with shoe racks on one side and handbag shelves on the other, all velvet-padded to protect her priceless
accessories collection.

Very soon, Coco thought, ambition fizzing in her like bubbles in carbonated water, very soon I’ll have everything Victoria has – the job, the house, the no-limits expense account,
the status right at the top of the New York society pecking order. Just as soon as I get married, I’ll have everything she has – and more.

Coco reached for a padded hanger at the very end of the cupboard, a black silk dress, fragile as a whisper of cloud, draping from it.
No hanger appeal
, said her razor-sharp fashion
editor’s brain, slicing through categories of clothes.
Has to be seen in movement
. It was trimmed in charcoal lace, elaborate, exquisite hand-made lace that was marginally heavier than
the silk to which it was appliquéd, a slip of a dress that billowed around the shoulders and narrowed to a tiny, clinging skirt.

It was Chanel, of course. A present from her fiancé. Coco had never been able to do up the zip before; now she stepped into it, easing it up over her protruding hip-bones, slowly and with
great care to avoid snagging the delicate silk, slipping her hands into the wide draped armholes, shrugging the dress over her shoulders, settling it into place before she dared to reach around
behind her back – a gesture that made her collarbones jut out as if they were about to break through the paper-thin layer of skin that was their only covering – and start to raise the
tag of the concealed zip.

It kept sliding up. Past her almost non-existent buttocks, past her waist, up each visible knob of her spine, right up to her shoulderblades. One hand was pulling up the zip, the other holding
the dress up at the nape of her neck, almost unable to breathe, sucking in everything she could as she went. Until the zipper tag found no more teeth to slide up, until it snicked to a halt at the
very top . . .

Coco spun to look at herself in the mirror, letting out her breath, her heart pounding. The dress was perfect, a sexy, flimsy wisp of silk that ended high up on her slender thighs, managing to
be both seductive and elegant, its sleeves double-lined chiffon, gathered at the wrists to hide the reddened skin there.

Perfect with my new Balenciaga shoes, she thought instantly. The shoes were high-cut, fastening around her ankles, concealing the restraint marks. She raised her hands to the nape of her neck,
lifting her beautifully-streaked light brown hair, hand-painted by her colourist in artful shades of butterscotch, ash and honey.
Definitely hair up and back to show off the neckline. And those
huge Lara Bohinc earrings I got in London, with the crazy faux-pearls in rose gold
.

Oh God, he’s going to love me in this
.

She turned slowly, appreciating with a professional eye the way the skirt clung to her bottom, making it seem positively minuscule, the superbly cut float and drape of the silk over her
shoulders. You could always, instantly, spot couture. This dress had been made specifically to her dimensions, but she had never been able to wear it before, never been able to draw up the zip with
such effortless ease – because it had been tailored to the measurements she would have when she was a perfect size zero.

After all this effort, all the extreme dieting and the exercise and the ironclad self-denial, here she was, standing in her perfect designer apartment, in her perfect designer dress, the perfect
designer size. This was it.

Coco Raeburn was finally perfect.

And as she looked at her image in the mirror, she had to press her left hand against her bony chest to calm herself down, reassure herself. On her fourth finger was her engagement ring, an
enormous, two and a half-carat princess-cut diamond in a simple platinum setting, so big it made her hand look impossibly fragile, so big it looked as if it weighed almost as much as she did. In
America, the rule was that the fiancé should spend two, possibly three months’ salary on an engagement ring. But Coco’s fiancé was so rich that, as her friend Emily had
commented in awe, she could never have, for daily use, a ring that had cost him that much money; she’d have to be shadowed by a pair of bodyguards wherever she went.

Size zero. She had reached her goal. Their goal. She was beyond excited, into some realm of high altitude that made her head spin with exhilaration and terror. Coco recognised the sensation: it
was the same light-headed dizziness she experienced when he fucked her, when he held her down, tied her up, slid the ball gag between her lips, fastened the eye mask over her face. Deprived her,
utterly and completely, of any freedom, any ability to move, to speak, to protest anything he might choose to do to her.

Coco had given herself over to him completely. The gigantic ring was a symbol of her dependency, just as much as the bruises on her body and the chafe-marks on her limbs. She was too tiny now,
and the ring was too huge. Everything in her life was out of proportion. She was caught now, carefully and skilfully brainwashed by him, pinned down in his net, starved to skin and bone. Bucking
under him as he dripped hot wax on her, her pain and pleasure sensors so blurred together by everything he had done to her in the last months that she could no longer have said whether she would
have screamed in ecstasy or distress, would have pleaded for him to stop or go on, if she could have made anything beyond a flicker of sound around the firm rubber sphere of the ball gag fastened
between her lips.

With him, she was wordless, sightless, but never deaf. He wanted her to hear the sounds he was making, his grunts and moans of pleasure, the snap of the match as it lit the candle whose melting
wax she was about to feel, the flick of the rubber whip as he tested it against the post of the bed before bringing it down on the backs of her thighs. He wanted to hear her try to gasp in
anticipation, to guess where she would feel him next. To see if she would recoil at the unmistakable sound of him returning from the bar in the living room, ice cubes clinking in their metal
container, knowing that he would be merciless with them, would slide them over her body and trail them, slowly, tantalisingly between her legs, making her jerk and try, futilely, to escape their
burning cold on the most sensitive areas of her body. Hoping that his hot mouth would follow them, licking and biting her, sending her into spasms of orgasm that seemed even more intense because
she couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, could do nothing but buck against her bonds, coming over and over again, feeling him drive her beyond anything she had thought she could take, over a
dark precipice where she nearly fainted with the intensity of one orgasm thudding after another, all the while knowing that his teeth and lips would leave her wincing and sore.

Or nipple clamps, a tiny little snip of sound as he flicked them open and closed before attaching them to her, pulling the soft pink flesh, hearing her whimper. Bending over her, listening to
the tiny sounds she was struggling to make, before he pulled out the ball gag, tossing it aside, and straddled her, giving her barely any time to gasp a breath before his weight settled heavy on
her chest, his cock hot and wide in her mouth as it drove into her, her lips eagerly closing around it, sucking and pulling hard, hearing his groans of encouragement above her. Knowing how much she
was pleasing him, trying to make him come as hard as he had just made her writhe with orgasm, drinking his come down with fast, practised gulps as he flooded her mouth with hot, salty,
almond-scented liquid. She had learned to suck it down swiftly, a series of short, frantic swallows so that she didn’t choke, her mouth distended with his stubby thrust of cock, her throat
full of come.

Eighteen months ago, Coco had been a girl who had a well-developed sense of humour, a quick wit. But she was too tense now, too skinny, her nerves too on edge for her to be able to relax enough
to see the funny side of anything, to think ironically:
This is the only time he doesn’t worry about the calorie content of what I’m eating. The only time he rewards me for
swallowing something – instead of gently pushing my plate away when I’m halfway through, and telling me I’ve had enough, that I still have more weight to lose . . .

He’ll be happy now. Surely he will. Now that I’m perfect
.

But beneath her pride in her achievement was a creeping fear. Not so much of him, but of herself.

Because she had been starving herself for so long that she was frightened that she wouldn’t know how to stop.

The waiting room was full of clones. Slim, elegant girls with their hair pulled back into chignons, wearing crisp white shirts tucked into tailored trousers or skirts in shades
of grey or beige, their wrists loaded with wide bangles, their makeup simple and discreet. They sat in the moulded white chairs that lined the walls, their legs crossed to show off their high
stiletto-heeled cage shoes, heavy with straps that reached up to the start of their calves. On their laps were the latest It bags, or very good imitations, decorated with buckles and tassels and
zips. They were all staring straight ahead, not deigning to notice each other’s existence, as if they were the originator of their style and all the other girls were inferior copies.

Jodie stood in the doorway, her portfolio under one arm, looking at the clones with disbelief that gradually morphed into panic. No one had bothered to look up at her: it would be beneath their
dignity to show interest in the new arrival. And the assistant, sitting behind her glass desk, tapping away at her computer, didn’t look up either. Why should she? Jodie was simply the sixth
girl to be interviewed this morning for the coveted job of Victoria Glossop’s assistant, one in a long line of Identikit young women who had done their best to dress like their idol’s
poorer, younger sister. It was for Jodie to go over to the desk, to give her name in a hushed voice, to sit down next to one of the other Victoria Glossop replicas and wait for her turn, her chance
to show Victoria that she was different from the rest of them, the stand-out applicant whom Victoria really had to hire . . .

Sod this
. Jodie’s hand clenched tightly around her portfolio, sinking into the leather. It was real, and even though she’d bought it on sale from Bilberry it had cost an
absolute fortune. She was proud of it: dark green, patent, embossed, with a heavy brass clasp, she’d been planning to lay it on Victoria Glossop’s famously immaculate desk and pull out
her layouts. At least it’s not beige, she thought savagely, glancing from one clone to the next. But it was the only thing in Jodie’s possession that wasn’t. The clones were so
upsetting because Jodie had, exactly like them, dressed to replicate Victoria Glossop’s famous style, her hair pulled back, her clothing colourless and perfectly tailored. Victoria’s
hair was always in her signature chignon. She wore white, beige and grey, with touches of black-and-white fur: snow leopard, zebra, sable. Victoria loved heavy bangles. Victoria
loathed
hoop
earrings. Victoria—

Jodie took a deep breath. She’d never win if she took these girls on at their own game. Most of them were thinner than she was: Jodie was a size 12 – on a good day, and in a label
that had a more generous definition of that size than one that sold to skinny teens or model wannabes. A Marks & Spencers 12, rather than a Lipsy or Stella McCartney. And at five foot six, that
was a perfectly happy weight for her – or it was, till I came to London to work on fashion mags, she couldn’t help thinking. Because none of these girls was over a size 10, and
she’d bet that several of them, at least, had independent incomes, rich boyfriends, or much better PR contacts for free-bies than she did. She’d already spotted a Marc Jacobs bag, a Miu
Miu skirt, and some amazing Zanotti heels, minimum £450 retail.