Seduce (2 page)

Sure enough she suddenly began to twist and turn again, but this time she was whimpering with a mixture of pain and pleasure. Andrew kept her legs up in the air as Amber snapped two tight vibrating nipple clamps on Grace’s swollen nipples. Again Grace cried out at the sudden pain, then shuddered as the vibrations caused her overstimulated body to spasm. Seeing this, David flicked the multistranded leather whip lightly over her buttocks, making them tighten around the anal plug.

“Stop!” cried Grace and she started to sob. “That’s hurting me.”

“Do you really want me to stop?” whispered David, allowing the whip to fall more heavily. He was keenly aware that, despite her protestations, her body was excited by the dark pleasure she was experiencing.

“Yes, no… I don’t know!” she replied.

He flicked her buttocks sharply again and then, while she moaned pitifully, he ran his tongue along the red lines that were appearing on her flesh.

The moment he did this, Grace let out a shout of shock and ecstasy as a second climax engulfed her helpless body, which twisted and turned in Andrew’s hands, brought to the peak of pleasure by the red-hot streaks of pain from the whip.

Finally, after what seemed endless minutes to those watching, she was totally still and the only sound in the room was her ragged, exhausted breathing.

“Release her,” said David, “and then leave us.”

“We never do that,” protested Amber.

“There’s a first time for everything,” replied David. Knowing better than to argue with him, Amber reluctantly obeyed and a few minutes later David and Grace were alone in the room.

Setting the exhausted Grace down in the one large chair in the room and covering her with a warm blanket, David stripped off his clothes and settled himself beside her.

“I have to have you,” he said huskily. “I know you’re tired, but I need you.”

“Do I have any choice?” she asked.

“Gracie, you know you’ve had a choice all along, but you chose to stay. I could tell you enjoyed everything in the end too, just as I’d hoped you would.”

While he was talking he brushed her sweat-soaked hair off her face, gazing into her troubled eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with gaining pleasure the way you did,” he murmured, stroking her body tenderly.

“Even so, I don’t understand how you could enjoy watching me with other people. I’d hate to watch you…”

Covering her mouth with his own he blotted out the rest of her sentence, pulling her onto his lap until she was sitting across his thighs, facing him. Then he lifted her up and onto his straining erection, while at the same time his fingers danced lightly over the incredibly sensitive skin of her perineum.

He felt her internal muscles contract around him as he pleasured her in this way that he knew she loved, and his climax came hard and fast. Exhausted, Grace collapsed against him, her body warm and damp. Wrapping his arms tightly round her, David wanted to tell her that he loved her, but he couldn’t. He knew himself, his needs and his low boredom threshold too well, and two more trials still lay ahead of her. For a long time he stayed quite still, holding her close, and hoping against hope that she was slowly beginning to understand both his needs and her desires better. Then soon she might find that, like him, it was a way of life.

“If a man you loved asked you to do something you didn’t want to do, but you didn’t want to lose him, would you do it?” Grace asked Fran when the two of them met for coffee in Balham the following week.

“Do you mean something like potholing? If so, the answer is definitely no. He’d have to go on his own. I don’t think couples have to share all their interests. Actually, I think it’s better if they don’t.”

“No, not potholing, something he couldn’t do on his own.”

“Something like mixed doubles at tennis or golf? I hate sport, so again I’d have to say no.”

“Fran, this is serious, and it’s not about sport. It’s more about, well lifestyle I suppose.”

“This isn’t a general question is it, it’s about your financier lover? What does he want you to do, go to swingers’ parties?”

Grace felt herself begin to blush. “No, but suppose someone you loved did want you to do that. Would you?”

Fran shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t. It’s just not my scene.”

“How do you know?”

Fran looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“If you’ve never been to a swingers’ party, how do you know it’s not your scene?”

“Because I’m too private. I couldn’t have sex with a stranger. For me sex has to be part of a loving relationship. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I wouldn’t do it.”

“Not even to keep someone you loved happy?”

“God Grace, he
has
asked you to do it hasn’t he?”

Grace shook her head. “No, he hasn’t.”

“I heard he’s quite way out sexually,” continued Fran, taking a sip of her latte and getting out her notebook.

“Where did you hear that?” asked Grace sharply.

Fran looked surprised. “My, you’re touchy today, touchy and weird. I don’t think he’s good for you. I don’t know where I heard it, but it was probably at some after-show party. Maybe someone had heard something from Isla after he ditched her.”

“Sorry, I’m a bit tired,” admitted Grace. “Now, that new place in Battersea will be free for your play when
Wanderlust
ends. I should go and see it for myself, it’s had great reviews.”

“I saw it, it’s good. Not as good as my play, but good!” said Fran. “I take it you had a busy weekend then, if you’re tired?”

“Yes, we stayed at a hotel and did a lot of swimming and walking,” replied Grace, grateful that at least the swimming part was true.

“He looks fit. Presumably he’s good in bed? You have a different look about you today,” she added. “I’m trying to work out what it is.”

“It’s called exhaustion!”

“So, he’s not way out but he wants you to do something you don’t want to do,” mused Fran. “That sounds like a good premise for a play.”

“Don’t you dare!” exclaimed Grace. “Anyway, it was a hypothetical question, not a personal one.”

“Right, and my name’s Albert Einstein! If you want to talk about it, then I’m willing. We’ve got the whole morning, and I can drink coffee until it’s coming out of my ears. I could do with coffee stations, like petrol stations only cheaper, where I could fill up for a day!”

“It’s all right, I’d rather we talked about the play,” said Grace, wishing she’d never asked the question in the first place.

“Fine, but seriously, as your friend, I have to say that I think it would be a big mistake to let anyone persuade you to do something you didn’t want to do just because you were afraid of losing them if you didn’t do it. That’s not how relationships work. You know that. If your financier is trying that kind of blackmail on you, then you should cut and run.”

“I would,” lied Grace. “Hypothetically though, don’t you think that sometimes we don’t try things because we’re afraid, but if we can overcome that fear then…”

“ ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway,’ as that self-help book says? Maybe, but it depends on how it makes you feel about yourself afterwards, don’t you think?”

Grace nodded. Without realizing it, with that one comment Fran had answered her question, because Grace was surprised to realize that she felt very good about herself indeed and it was only while they were talking that she’d made that discovery.

Furthermore, she only had to think back to the events of the weekend to become aroused once more. When she remembered the way the crop had stung her flesh and how the red-hot pain had changed to a type of pleasure deeper than any she’d known before she could feel herself growing damp between her thighs.

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said briskly, dragging herself back from her arousing daydream. “We’ve got to sort out casting now, because we need to find out who’s free and who isn’t. Have you still got the list we drew up last time?”

Fran had, and soon they were deeply immersed in their work, and for a time Grace was able to forget the Dining Club and all she was learning there.

Afterwards, when she was back in her apartment that evening, her mind returned to the conversation she’d had with Fran, and she realized she’d been stupid to talk about it, even obliquely. What was happening to her was far too personal and complex for anyone else to understand.

Too tired to make herself a meal she settled for cheese on toast, then sat down in front of the television to watch the news. It was nearly over, but as she went to switch channels her hand froze over the remote control as she saw David appear on the screen.

Astonished, she turned up the sound, just in time to hear the reporter saying that David had made a “rare public appearance” at a dinner for one of his charities, accompanied by his personal assistant, Louise Penfold.

Dressed in a black three-piece dinner suit with a white shirt and black, flower-patterned bow tie, David looked devastatingly attractive. His thick brown hair had been slicked back, emphasizing his cheekbones, and contrasting sharply with his blue eyes. He was smiling the half-smile that always made Grace’s stomach turn over, and although he didn’t linger for the photographers his personal assistant was clearly happy in the limelight.

She was tall, almost as tall as David, and her mass of tumbling blonde hair reminded Grace of Amber, while her elegant gray dress with red beading around the low-cut neckline was stunning. With her arm through David’s she was obviously relaxed in his company, and Grace saw him smiling at her as they moved away.

She felt as though someone had hit her in the solar plexus. It was hard for her to breathe, and she realized that her hands were trembling. Although he’d spoken about his personal assistant, and even had to call her sometimes when he was with Grace, she had never expected her to be so beautiful. She’d imagined her to be middle-aged, very efficient and slightly masculine looking. Now she realized that she’d had no basis for this assumption, which had probably been born out of hope.

Rationally she knew it didn’t mean anything. David liked beautiful things, and would therefore want an attractive woman as his PA. All the same, Louise Penfold wasn’t just attractive, she was stunning, and yet he’d never said a word about her to Grace.

She wondered if Louise was the second woman he’d taken to the Dining Club before Grace, but even though that would mean she’d failed, it didn’t lessen Grace’s rising jealousy, which she realized was based on fear. She wondered why David hadn’t mentioned the charity dinner to her and, even worse, hadn’t invited her to go with him.

She felt as though her world was collapsing. None of it made any sense. Why would he be taking her, Grace, to the Dining Club if he was close to another woman? Or was this Louise, rather than someone who had failed the tests, actually a replacement he had waiting in the wings in case Grace should fail?

It took her a long time to calm down enough to pull herself together. She’d overreacted, and she was honest enough to admit to herself that the reason for this was twofold. In the first place, she was so in love with David that even the sight of him with a beautiful woman was enough to make her jealous, which wasn’t the way she wanted to be, or had ever been before. In the second place, and possibly more disturbing still, she was in thrall to the thrill of the Club.

No matter how difficult she found it, or how far down a dark path the trials were leading her, she wanted to go on. She needed the monthly visits, because it was only then that her body became totally alive. She loved having David watch her as her body was satisfied in so many perverse ways, and she knew the reason for this too. Afterwards he was always emotionally closer to her than at any other time.

The slight barrier, the withholding of himself that she sensed at other times, vanished when they were at the Dining Club. When he had made love to her the last time, after everyone else had left the room, she had never known him to be so tender.

“Forget Louise,” she told herself sternly. “She isn’t the person you have to worry about. The only woman who can ruin things for you and David is Amber.”

When she’d started out as a theater director a much older, wiser director had watched her at work and afterwards had said that the one thing she should remember when dealing with playwrights and actors was to choose her battles wisely. In a moment of clarity she knew that this applied to her fears about Louise and Amber too, and the battle she was choosing was with Amber, because Amber ran the Dining Club. By running it, and catering to all his sexual needs as well as her own, she held the key to keeping David. Worryingly, this meant that she was also in a position to make things very difficult for Grace.

* * *

Amber walked briskly into her office and found that Andrew was there before her. He was sitting with his back to the door, so engrossed in what he was watching on the computer that he didn’t even hear her come in.

Looking over his shoulder she saw that he was watching the tape of Grace pleasuring herself by the swimming pool, rewinding to the moment of her orgasm time after time. Realizing what this meant, Amber decided that she could use the information to her own advantage.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked sweetly.

Andrew jumped with surprise. “I’m watching David’s face. I don’t think he’s ever been as keen on anyone he’s brought here as he is on Grace,” he explained.

“Right, so it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you fancy her yourself then?” she asked dryly.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “There’s something about her that makes me want to get to know her better, but she’s David’s, so I don’t know why I torture myself.”

“I wonder how she’ll enjoy her next visit?” murmured Amber, her eyes fixed on the screen at the far end of her office, where the swimming pool scene was still running.

“She’ll probably enjoy it more than her last one,” replied Andrew. “I always think the pleasure pain session is a tricky one. It seems David has chosen better this time.”

“Much better, and far too well for both of us, it seems.”

“Maybe so,” agreed Andrew, “but there’s nothing we can do about it. The game has to be played to the end.”