Odalisque (22 page)

Constance was puzzled. “Why?” she signed. “I thought he had an open marriage.”

“He does. But she doesn’t know about you. It’s a long story. Just play dumb.”

Just play dumb.
That was a really insulting phrase to someone who chose not to speak. Long ago, Constance would have been described as deaf and dumb. No one used dumb anymore, except as a synonym for stupid. Constance knew Kai didn’t know any of that, but she still seethed inwardly as Mason approached with his sexy, glamorous wife. Constance knew who she was, of course. Jessamine Jackson had a big film that had just come out, about some mistress of international intrigue.

Up close, the starlet looked smaller than she did on screen, more brittle. She had tiny lines beside her eyes. Constance thought she was probably already conferring with the plastic surgeons. Mason looked suave and haughty beside her. It annoyed her, the playacting. His eyes swept over her, feigning polite curiosity. Constance frowned back.

Kai greeted them and introduced her the same way he’d introduced her to everyone else.
This is Miss Constance Flynn.
They both shook her hand. Mason was a consummate actor. He acted exactly like someone who’d never met her before. Who’d never fucked her or spanked her or fixed her with nipple clamps to a huge iron bed. Jessamine sized her up openly and then gave Kai an assessing look. Kai deflected it with a question.

“How long are you two in New York? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Jessamine rolled her eyes. “We were bored.” She said more, but it was hard for Constance to read her lips. She had a pinched way of talking, and a lot of flirty business going on with her mouth that obscured the syllables Constance needed. Instead, Constance looked at Mason. He might have been blushing a little. Constance sidled closer to Kai, wishing she was anywhere but here. It bothered her that Mason was sneaking around with her behind his wife’s back. Constance had assumed it was all in the open. It bothered her more that she was forced to play along now, right in front of his wife’s face.

Kai nudged her. Jessamine had asked a question. He asked it again, signing at the same time. “Jessamine asked if you come often to New York.”

Constance shook her head. “Just tell her the truth,” she signed to Kai. “You dragged me here.”

Kai chuckled and told Jessamine that Constance had come along on the trip to support him. Jessamine made some more flirty remarks about Kai having a new love and keeping secrets from her.
No
, thought Constance.
It’s your husband keeping secrets.
Through all this, Mason stood in silence. Before long, Jessamine turned her attention to him, and in that moment Constance knew that, despite Mason’s acting, his wife suspected something.

Jessamine looked back at Constance, who tried her best to appear rich and blasé. Constance turned to Kai. “Tell them whatever you want. I’m going to the ladies’ room.” She escaped the little pow-wow with a sense of relief. She stayed in the bathroom until it started to empty and then found Kai as everyone sat down for dinner. To her relief, Mason and Jessamine were a couple of tables away. Constance gave Kai an arch look.

“Did Mason keep himself out of trouble?” she signed.

Kai gave her a harried smile and flicked his napkin into his lap. “I had no idea they’d be here. I’m sorry if that was awkward. They have a...complicated marriage.”

“It would seem so.”

Constance let Kai do all the introductions at the table, and all the talking. Sometimes being deaf came in handy. None of the other eight people at the table were brave enough to draw her into conversation. She got painfully awkward smiles whenever she looked around, so she kept her eyes on her plate. Of course, then she started wondering,
how much did this gourmet lamb cost? How much for this china and silverware? How much for this gold-dusted dessert?

After dinner they filed into the adjoining Metropolitan Opera House, a confection of a theater with tiers of balconies like some wedding cake. The whole auditorium glittered when everyone was in their seat. Mouths moved everywhere. Constance thought it must have created a din, all that talking, but then the lights went down and all the heads turned to the stage. Constance tried to read the playbill by the dim glow of the runner lights.
Faust
, an opera about a successful man making a deal with the devil in order to gain unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Ironic. She searched the theater for Mason and Jessamine, but it was impossible to pick them out from all the other people in the dark.

Constance turned her attention to the stage instead, following the action with the help of the opera summary. It wasn’t easy, since a lot of the time people were just standing around singing. There was some bit with jewels. Faust trying to seduce a lover, Marguerite, with gifts and diamonds. Hmm.

By the fourth act the opera descended into melodramatic craziness. Marguerite got pregnant and killed her child, and some other nonsense went on, with Faust going to hell in the end and Marguerite to heaven. The two main characters sang a long, histrionic duet to close the opera, and Kai gave her a sideways look from beneath his lashes.

“You’re so lucky you can’t hear this,” he mouthed.

Constance had to smother her laughter behind her hands.

*** *** ***

Ugh,
Faust
. Kai had spent his irritation with the bloated opera in Constance’s arms afterward. He’d left her sleeping, curled up in a nest of pillows, and was headed down to the hotel bar for a much needed drink. Kai thought he was a lot like Faust, only he hadn’t made a deal with the devil for worldly pleasures. He’d made a deal with Sebastien Gaudet, and Constance Flynn, of course. She was Marguerite. She would go to heaven at the end, with his money, and he’d be left in hell.

Such thoughts. He was turning into an ass, wallowing in self-pity. He had to pull himself out of this slump. Kai headed across the bar to find Mason already seated at a table.

“What are you doing here?” Kai slid into a seat across from his friend.

“Same thing you’re doing. Trying to get that opera shit out of my head.”

Kai laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Where’s Jess?”

“With some female she knows in Tribeca.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s better than her being here, asking a lot of questions.”

“You should have gone too. Must be fun to watch your wife with another woman.”

Mason shrugged. “We’ve been married six years now. I’ve seen it a million times. What are you drinking?”

Kai flagged down the waitress for a vodka tonic, then listened as Mason launched into a scathing deconstruction of the night. By the end Kai was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, as Mason re-enacted both the male and female roles from the opera they’d watched.

“The food was good anyway, wasn’t it?” Kai asked.

“Oh hell, the food was delicious. Speaking of delicious, your odalisque seemed uncharacteristically cranky tonight.”

Kai wagged a finger at him. “I don’t think she approves of you keeping secrets from your wife.”

Mason snorted. “Oh yeah, that would have been a scene, if Jess had found out she was an odalisque I’d been seeing behind her back.”

Kai stirred the ice in his drink. “You know, she’s going to find out eventually, Mace.”

“Yeah, yeah, she’ll find out. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. So really, Constance disapproves? She told you that?”

“She didn’t have to. I know her well enough by now to tell. You said yourself she looked cranky. I don’t think she liked having to pretend for your sake.”

“Hm.” The idea seemed to puzzle Mason. “I love pretending. Anyway, she’s a sex slave. She doesn’t exactly have a moral high ground to stand on.”

“Oh, but she does, my friend. Constance is all about honesty and frankness. She follows that damn odalisque code obsessively. With
religious
zeal.”

“And I’m sure you’re fucking her with equally religious zeal, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up and stop whining? Oh, that reminds me. Jess wants to organize a scatter party for New Years Eve, and she wants to hold it at your house.”

“Oh, yeah? Nice of you to let me in on the plan.”

Scatter parties, one of Jess’s favorite perverse pastimes. A group of couples showed up, scattered, and had sex with whomever they ran across. Kai had been to a few in the past. He always hoped they’d be exciting and erotic, but they were usually more awkward than anything. Kai shrugged. “I guess it’s okay. I don’t have any plans yet for New Years. Who’s she going to ask?”

Mason shrugged. “Let her handle that. She knows all the beautiful people. She won’t invite any gremlins.”

“I wasn’t worried about gremlins. I’m more worried about how many people are actually going to be fornicating in my house.”

“Well, what do you want to cap it at?”

“I don’t know. Some reasonable number.”

Mason chuckled. “Jess is never reasonable. How about we tell her eight? Eight couples. Too many? Me and Jess, you and Constance, and six beyond that. I know Jeremy and Nell are itching to get out and swing a little now that they’re back in L.A. And maybe the sheik and his odalisque...”

Kai gave Mason a suspicious look. “Who’s planning this? You or Jess?”

Mason held up his hands. “I swear, it was her idea. But I might have encouraged her. Some of us have to get by in life without odalisques. It’s not fair, you know.”

“You get plenty of use out of mine.” Kai punched at the lime in his drink with his fingertip. “And not everything about odalisques strokes the ego. Constance is very insistent about the fact that she only cares for me as her owner, for instance. She never lets me forget it.” Kai clamped his mouth shut. He had apparently had quite enough to drink. He was getting sloppy. And bitter.

“Huh? Hold up.” Mason looked befuddled. “Are you saying you want her to care about you as
more
than her owner?”

“Well, no. I mean… Look, the whole thing has just been--” Again, Kai shut his mouth.

“What?” Mason prodded. “Better or worse than you expected?”

“It’s not better or worse. It’s just not what I expected, and I’m not sure…”

Mason’s eyes went wide. “She’s not doing it for you? Really? When you shelled out a million bucks?”

“No, it has nothing to do with her. It’s--it’s probably my problem.”

Mason blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, man. That really sucks. Can’t you, I don’t know, exchange her or something? Try another girl?”

Kai sighed. “Let’s just drop it, Mace.”

“But--”

“Why don’t we start talking about you and Jess’s problems then?”

“Fine, I’ll drop it.” Mason hunched over his drink. “Hey, if you’re just going to hang out here boozing and bitching, mind if I go up?”

Kai looked sideways at his friend. “Without me?”

“I don’t need you there to get hard, bro. No offense.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m not supposed to give her to other men if I’m not there to supervise.” It wasn’t really a hard and fast rule. In fact, Kai was pretty sure he’d just made it up. He was jealous that Mason could still look at Constance like some commodity to be shared. Mason was the one who should have gotten an odalisque. He would have been great at it. He wouldn’t have been fighting himself, like Kai, to stay in the right mindset.

Kai rubbed his forehead and gave Mason an exasperated look. “It astounds me that someone with such a hot wife is always sniffing after my girl.”

“Ah, but my wife is not here, and your girl is.”

“Constance is probably sleeping.”

Mason rolled his eyes. “If you don’t want to share, Kaivalyan, man up and say so.”

Kai wanted to say so, but another part of him wanted to prove to himself that he could be as matter-of-fact about Constance’s status as Mason was. As Constance was herself.

“Okay,” Kai said, draining the last of his drink. “But only a quick fuck. No big play scenes. I’ve had enough theater for one night.”

“Spanking?”

“No, you pervert. What’s wrong with you?”

They stumbled into the hotel room in the dark, and before Kai could stop him, Mason shook Constance and startled her. Kai knew Mason didn’t realize how deeply she slept without the intrusion of sounds. Kai watched Constance, hoping for some kind of overt reaction. Distaste, resentment, indignation. If she had reacted with any kind of negativity he could have sent Mason away with a clear conscience, but she turned and opened her body to them before she was even fully awake. Mason was naked in a heartbeat, rolling on a condom and sliding into bed behind her.

“You fucking her too, man?” he asked, running a hand over Constance’s hip.

“No. Help yourself.”

Mason frowned slightly and gave him a look, which Kai ignored. His friend slipped his fingers between Constance’s thighs. She arched back against Mason in a sleepy feline stretch. She had grown close to him. It was beautiful to watch, and yet disgusting. No, he was disgusted with himself. Mason was an excellent lover. Let him have her. Let her have the pleasure. That was what she was made for, what she was trained for.

Kai undressed, hanging up his tuxedo pants and Mason’s too. Fastidious details to distract him from the soft moans on the bed. Kai hesitated a moment, and then joined them, lying against Constance’s front. Why not? She belonged to him. She stroked his shoulders, smiling her graceful smile.

Kai kissed her softly, drawing her close even as Mason drilled her from behind. Finally Kai pulled back and fingered a twisting lock of her hair. It was still wet from the shower, cool and silken in his fingers, in contrast to her body heat.

Mason was fucking her harder now. Constance reached between her legs, her eyes glazing over. Kai knew she could orgasm from penetration without clitoral stimulation, but she told him it felt better when she had both. He added a third sensation for her, pinching the taut peaks of her nipples with ruthless ferocity. Her mouth fell open in a gasp of pleasure. When she came, her whole body shuddered. Mason came soon after with a jerk and a shout. Kai watched, fully aroused but too conflicted to follow Mason into her pussy. Not tonight.