Sins (36 page)

One look at her had told Emerald that the girl would be no competition. She didn’t have her looks and she certainly didn’t look as though she had her sexuality–or her need–Emerald had recognised, watching the way the girl, thin and with a Sassoon haircut, had pouted and then pulled sulkily away from him when he had reached out for her.

Emerald had kept on watching them, deliberately so, smiling mockingly at him when he had finally felt the heat of her gaze and had looked back at her. There had been no need for her to do any more. Men, or at least
the kind of men who appealed to her, always recognised her sensuality.

Annoyingly he hadn’t been lured to her side to light her cigarette for her as she’d expected. Instead–and this had been something she’d definitely not experienced before–he’d returned her mocking smile, and had then produced two cigarettes, lighting them both and then holding them to cup his girl’s face and kiss her slowly before handing her one.

Emerald now dived into her handbag to remove her cigarettes, remembering that incident. Her hands were shaking nearly as much now as they had been then, with the sexual excitement watching him had brought her. Max specialised in making every public act he performed with a woman resonate with a sexual intimacy.

When she had gone home she had relived his actions in the privacy of her bedroom, only this time she had been the one he had been kissing, not the stupid girl who had been with him. She could still remember how she had felt, lying naked on her bed, with the bedside lamps turned down low, her body spread across the heavy Irish linen sheet embroidered with her personal monogram, the E of Emerald entwined with the L of Lenchester, the whole surrounded by laurel leaves and surmounted with a small ducal coronet, to which, of course, she was not strictly entitled, being merely the daughter of a duke, but then she had always been prepared to break the rules to get what she wanted.

And she had wanted Max, so very badly that she had shivered with aching excitement just thinking about him
as she lay there, her naked body and the bed dimly reflected in both her dressing table mirror and the full-length pier glass to one side of it, the low lighting giving the image a hazy, nebulous, almost Pre-Raphaelite sensuality.

She had taken her time stroking her body as she had wanted to imagine Max stroking it, admiring the smoothness of her own flesh, imagining his male pleasure in it, her heavy-lidded gaze observing the dark thrust of her nipples with triumphant pleasure. Emerald loved her breasts. They were the exact shape that fashion demanded, not too big and not too small, tip-tilted and firm, but it was her nipples that made them so sensually alluring. Large and dark, they looked almost as though they should belong to someone else, a woman with a fuller heavier figure, their sexuality intensified by the fact that her breasts were so prettily feminine. Men adored them. Emerald had easily been able to imagine how a man like Max would react to them; how they would arouse him to licking and sucking them with greedy pleasure, whilst she repaid the favour by reaching equally eagerly for his prick, his cock, the thick hard organ of her own pleasure. How she loved rolling those words around her mouth, tasting them with her lips, enjoying their erotic coarseness; words that were unacceptable on the lips of a well-brought-up woman, just as the desire thinking them aroused within her to treat the organ itself in the same way she was treating the words that described it, rolling her tongue around it, lapping at it with her tongue, sucking on the heavy sac of flesh below it before taking it into her mouth, was
also something that no truly respectable woman should know about, never mind actually do.

What a thrill it had given her to imagine such a scene, to survey mentally, at first with warm languor and then with increasing urgency, the private images being unveiled for her enjoyment inside her head.

Of course it hadn’t been long before her hand had slipped down her body, her fingers smoothing past the soft hair that masked the mound of her sex, to slide into her own wetness, stroking the receptive flesh slowly and teasingly at first, her rhythm quickly increasing, along with her heartbeat and her breathing, until her body was jerking against her expert touch, her eyes finally closing as she commanded her imagination to create for her the presence, the man she really wanted, so that it was he who touched her, who drove her, who captured her with the power he had over her to give or withhold her ultimate release from the savage ache of her pleasure.

Now, remembering that evening, Emerald gave a satisfied sigh of triumph.

Of course, merely imagining Max possessing her was nowhere near enough to satisfy her for very long.

There was no point in Emerald’s book in being well connected if one did not use those connections.

By lunchtime the next day she knew virtually all there was to know about him. According to the information that was in the public domain, he was a crook turned gangland enforcer, now an entrepreneur with his fingers in some very rich pies indeed, which was how he had come to be accepted by society. According to the underground information Emerald had garnered, he was a
man of incredible sexual prowess and stamina, whose charisma and charm had taken him into the beds of a long string of socially prominent women. His preferred choice was married women who wanted to stay married, and intense sexual liaisons that burned out at high speed and were
always
ended by him. Emerald had heard that he was rumoured to have a photographic collection of his conquests that would appal any censor, and that he was ruthless in getting what he wanted–both in and out of bed.

Everything she had learned about him had increased her appetite for him. It was fashionable to break the old rules and taboos, and to ignore the old social barriers. London’s top nightspots were filled with swaggering young men with cockney accents and sexual machismo, unashamedly parading in front of society women whose husbands believed that sex inside marriage was simply for getting themselves an heir.

London was the place to be, and the King’s Road rather like a private and exclusive club for those ‘in the know’. The very air was ripe and loaded with the smell of sex and youth. Girls and rock musicians hyped up on amphetamines, the former to keep them thin and the latter to keep them awake, took to the drug-induced effect of an increase in their sexual appetites like ducks to water. And men like Max watched and smiled their crocodile smiles, waiting for the chance to feed.

He was a user, and some said an abuser, and so despite the fact that he had piqued her interest, initially Emerald had dismissed him as a potential lover, and with difficulty she had put him out of her mind. After all, there
were plenty of other, far more worthy contenders for her favours.

She’d had an appointment that morning with the Harley Street quack who supplied her–and half of London, she suspected–with the amphetamine ‘diet pills’ that kept her as sleek as any eighteen-year-old, and then she’d gone for a late liquid lunch in a popular and upmarket Sloane Street pub, which was where she’d seen Max again, standing at the bar.

She’d affected not to see him, sitting down in a corner and keeping her back to him, unusually, for her, seeking out anonymity. She’d lit herself a cigarette, her hand shaking again, which she’d put down to the diet pills. She’d drunk a glass of wine and toyed with the steak she’d ordered, but for which she had no real appetite, refusing to give in to the temptation to turn round to see if he was still at the bar.

She’d just pushed the meal away virtually untouched when he’d arrived at her table, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite her.

‘I hate to see good stuff wasted,’ he said, and had then tucked into her discarded lunch without another word.

She should have got up and left. There hadn’t been anyone forcing her to stay, after all. But she had stayed, heat coursing through her body as she watched him, unable to drag her gaze from his hands and his mouth. Somewhere along the way he had learned how to eat properly, even if his total focus on the food wasn’t what she was used to or liked. But liking had nothing to do with the feelings Max aroused in her. By the time he had finished the steak, the expensive French broderie anglaise
knickers she was wearing were soaked with the wetness of her arousal, thrumming through her, causing her clitoris to pulse eagerly and with increasing discomfort.

As she’d discovered with the first lover she’d taken after Robert’s birth–the new husband of a smug fellow deb who’d been foolish enough to cut her and not invite her to her wedding–she was easily orgasmic, but not surely so easily orgasmic that she was actually going to come sitting watching a man eat in a pub. Enticing, exciting though the prospect of having sex with him was,
that
certainly did not fit in with her own image of herself at all. Not one little bit. She was all about control.

That had been when she had decided that it was time for her to leave.

She had got as far as the stuffy narrow corridor that led to the ladies when he had caught up with her, reaching for her and spinning her round, and then pressing her up against the wall as he kissed her, thrusting his tongue aggressively against her, and expertly sliding his hand up her skirt and into her wet knickers.

She’d come within seconds, the pressure of his mouth silencing her pleasure.

She’d still been trembling from it when he’d taken hold of her hand and hauled her into the ladies, leaning against the outer door to stop anyone else from coming in.

The ladies was a cramped airless area with a washbasin in the corner and one lavatory, a couple of feet away from the door into the corridor. He’d kicked open the lavatory door with his foot and then turned her round so that she’d had her back to him, pushing up her short
skirt and pulling down her knickers, so that he could take her doggy style.

She had thought herself experienced, but being fucked by Max had been a revelation, because with Max it
was
being fucked. For one thing he was big–very big. She’d heard that but had dismissed it as exaggeration, but it was obvious that she’d been wrong. For another, he was selfish and aggressive, but somehow that had made the whole thing all the more exciting and thus her own pleasure all the more intense.

After he had come, he had washed himself in the basin, and then left.

It was only later, when she was back in her own Cadogan Place house, soaking in the bath, that she had realised that from the moment he had started to eat her discarded lunch to the moment he had left her in the ladies he had not said one single word to her.

She hadn’t seen him again for nearly five weeks, despite the fact that she had virtually haunted both the pub and Annabel’s ever since, hoping that she might.

Seeing a photograph of him in the
Express
, partying with a group that had included several well-known models, had filled her with a savage burst of temper that had resulted in her throwing a very expensive piece of Sèvres china–a pretty plate given to her by a previous admirer–at the marble fireplace of her drawing room.

She’d been on the point of leaving London for Denham with Robert when
Vogue
had got in touch with her, wanting to do a piece on her. She’d agreed, of course, and when the features editor had come round to the house to interview her she’d seen a photograph of Robbie
and had immediately wanted to do something on them both.

Bailey had photographed her, initially with Robbie and then on her own.

It had been whilst she was at his studio that the door had opened and Max had walked in, and she had known then that somehow the
Vogue
shoot had been his idea and was his way of indicating his interest in her. The whole of society, or so it seemed, was entranced by London’s underworld. Certain members of its criminal gangs were now high-profile celebrities in their own right: men like the Kray brothers, for instance, and, of course, Max, who it was rumoured had made a fortune through his involvement in boxing and, so some said, strip clubs.

They had had rough sex on the studio floor whilst Bailey had gone out to buy more cigarettes. That evening Max had taken her out to the Kray twins’ club, laughing at her when she’d told him that she didn’t want to go there. She’d seen and been secretly impressed by the way he fitted as easily into that world–his world–as he did into hers.

She had learned not to question him or push him, because when she did he simply disappeared. He refused to spend the night with her or take her back to his apartment. He liked his sex rough and raw, taken quickly and dangerously, in ways and places that added an exciting edge of risk. He liked sex in public places, where they could easily be caught out: Hyde Park, one morning, when he’d pulled her off the path and leaned her against a tree, pushing up her skirt and silencing her warning
protest with a hard kiss as he thrust into her, leaving her weak with excitement and longing as she clung to him, urging him in deeper, even though she could hear the sound of an advancing crocodile of school children. When he had pulled out of her a split second before the children had appeared, turning his back on them whilst leaving her to cover herself as best she could, all she had cared about was having him back inside her to finish what he had started.

There had been other similar occasions, in darkened alleyways, and once in a taxi when he’d thrust his hand up her skirt and then into her knickers, bringing her so close to orgasm just as they reached their destination that she’d have given anything to have him finish what he’d started, stationary taxi and waiting cabby notwithstanding.

On that occasion he’d been escorting her home after an evening at a private gambling club where he’d won rather a lot of money, by cheating, Emerald had suspected. As soon as they were inside her house she’d headed for the stairs, but she’d only made it up the first few before Max had caught up with her, bending her over so that her hands were on a higher stair whilst he entered her from behind–his favourite position.

He had tried to persuade her to let him have anal sex with her but that was something that Emerald had resisted–so far. Such an act connected far too closely with Lord Robert, the man she had always thought of as her father, for it to have any appeal for her.