The Gift of Shame (11 page)

‘No!’ she laughed, her protest forcefully loud. ‘I’ve got far too much to do before six!’

Smiling, Jeffrey handed her to the care of Turner before turning back to the attentive Annabel.

‘Think you can handle her?’ Annabel asked.

His answer was a spirited: ‘It’s got to be worth a try, don’t you think?’

‘I’ll say!’ she agreed.

7

STANDING UNDER THE
teeming shower Helen felt like a tired child on Christmas night trying to remember her new presents. So much had happened since she was last in her own apartment that she could barely believe it had been only two days. She knew she was not the same woman who had stepped out from this shower two days before. Not only was there Jeffrey and his exquisite talent for erotic surprise but the change that had been wrought in herself. She could now confidently cope with something like the sad Lesley; been made aware that her body was something in which she could take fierce pride; had, under the eyes of one lover, orally taken another, and then, under the eyes of the other, given herself fully to her true lover. With pride she considered she had carried all before her with creditable aplomb. The excitement was not knowing where else this path, on which she had taken only the first few faltering steps, might lead.

Drying herself and hurrying to offer her hair to the salvage of heated rollers, she realised that tonight she was going to an event she had not even heard of hours before and there, in the company of an enviable escort, would meet again the legend for whom even the President of France turned out, and whom she had sexually satisfied. It was then that the echo of his promise to have her pose for him returned. It was enough to still her hands as they curled up her hair. Was it possible that the face staring back out of the mirror was really worthy of, as Qito had claimed, immortality? Would, centuries from now,
some
man from an as yet undreamt-of generation, look on her body and feel lust for her? Had, she wondered, Mona Lisa harboured similar doubts before going to Da Vinci’s studio when her immortal image was but an idea in the artist’s mind?

One thing was certain, she thought, as she started on her base foundation, no woman had ever been so filled with certainty as she was at that moment.

When Jeffrey arrived she had yet to pack and still to dress and barely opened the door to him before fleeing back into the bedroom, aware of how little time there was before they had to leave.

‘I’ll only be a minute!’ she called out to him as she sat before her mirror to apply an antique golden lip-gloss to her already made-up lips. Then she searched out a pair of silk stockings she’d bought the previous year and never, until now, found occasion to wear. Slipping into the fine silk gown she remembered how it had looked on her the first time she had worn it. How quickly it had responded to her body’s warmth and clung so closely as to even outline her navel. Again she was reminded that to wear anything, even stockings, under the dress was impossible. The thought of going to this event near naked both bothered and thrilled her. Slipping into a pair of elegant evening mules she gave herself one last head-to-toe scrutiny before bracing herself for the presentation to Jeffrey.

‘Well?’ she asked him coyly. ‘How do I look?’

‘Unique!’

‘“Unique”’?’

Jeffrey nodded. ‘There are very few women in this world who can look equally beautiful dressed or naked. You are among them.’

Pleased by the compliment she felt ready to be pedantically teasing. ‘To be “among” a number is not to be “unique”,’ she said with as much false petulance as she could muster.

‘Exquisite, then?’ he offered. ‘Is that better?’

Pretending deep consideration she loftily replied: ‘“Exquisitely beautiful” would be no more than acceptable …’

Jeffrey laughed and, his eyes alight with pleasure, started towards her, meaning to embrace her, but she turned away. ‘No. I’ve spent ages on my hair and make-up and I’m not having you ruin it!’

‘I was just going to remind you that you’re pledged to me,’ he said. ‘What if I want you naked? Now, this minute!’

‘Absolutely no way!’ she cried, and as he reached for her again, she remembered that the gown would be gone in seconds if he got his hands to the shoulder catches, and ran from him in a move which soon became a halting chase.

The chase was ended before it really got started when the telephone rang. She knew immediately, as if sensing it from the sternness of the ring, that it would be her, almost completely forgotten, mother.

Seeing Jeffrey stilled by the interruption she went to the telephone and lifted it.

Her mother’s excited voice poured into her ears. ‘Where on earth have you been? I’ve been calling and talking to that stupid machine of yours for days. Why haven’t you called me back?’

‘Mother, I’ve been busy …’ she looked back over her shoulder and shrugged an apology in Jeffrey’s direction.

‘Too busy to return the messages I left on your machine?’

‘I’m sorry, Mother, I haven’t had time to play them back and I’m in a tremendous rush just at the moment – can I call you later?’

‘No!’ cried her mother. ‘We’ve been worried sick about you …’ With the stream of non-stop complaints ringing in her ears, Helen had dropped her guard against Jeffrey only to be forcefully reminded of that oversight when she felt his hands at
the
fastenings of the gown. The telephone in her hand prevented anything but the weakest attempt to still the downward slide of the clinging silk. Covering the mouthpiece she turned, genuinely angry, towards Jeffrey. ‘No, Jeffrey … we have to … this is my mother … I—’

Determined and unsmiling Jeffrey gently took away the one hand that stopped the gown from uncovering her entirely and she stared helplessly, and pleaded speechlessly, as the gown slid to the floor leaving her facing him, naked. ‘Please …’ she begged, but Jeffrey was implacable.

She was turned and he thrust hard into her from behind. Her gasp at his penetration carried all the way to Eastbourne.

‘Are you listening to a word I’ve said?’ her mother was demanding. ‘It’s that man, isn’t it? The one you brought down here? I suppose you’ve been with him all this time with never a thought that we might be worrying about you? I think I have a right to know …’

Her mother’s words were now only background as the convulsions Jeffrey was creating in her took command and extinguished all will to do anything but respond.

‘Helen?’ her mother’s voice was calling down the line. ‘What on earth is going on …’

‘Mother, please …’ she managed. ‘Not now. There’s someone here …’ she broke off, trying to silence her rising climax.

‘
Who
is there?
Him?
’ asked her mother and then, after a steely silence in which Helen could almost sense the keening ears, added in horrified tones, ‘Oh, my God! You’re doing “it” with him right this minute aren’t you? What on earth …? How
dare
you?’ Helen heard the phone being slammed down in her desperate ear.

‘You bastard!’ she seethed even as her body begged release.

Jeffrey pulled her hips tight to him as she, still holding the telephone in one paralysed hand, bent forward and gave him even greater access. ‘You’re my whore!’ he breathed throatily as he bent over her to sink his teeth into her shoulder.

‘Yes!’ she yelled into his face. ‘Fuck me! Fuck me, fuck me!’ then gave vent to a scream as the onrush of orgasm vibrated inwards before bursting out to encompass her entire body. Within a second she felt him straighten and then, as his grip dug painfully into her flesh, surge into her.

‘God, I must look a mess!’ she said the moment she managed to disentangle herself from him. ‘My hair! What am I going to do?’ she wailed.

‘You’ll go as you are. The “just screwed” look is all the rage this year!’

Turning from the mirror where she was surveying the damage she was enraged. ‘You pig!’ she yelled at him. ‘How could you do that to me?’

‘Because you looked so beautiful,’ he smiled. ‘I had to put my mark on you.’

‘My hair!’ she wailed. ‘My face! I spent hours getting ready and then you have to do that to me. I haven’t packed anything yet, and …’ her voice trailed into silence as she remembered with horror what her mother had said as she slammed down the phone. ‘And my mother heard us!’ she cried.

‘You mean, until now, your mother imagined you were a virgin?’ His tone was so close to sarcasm that she felt a sudden urge to hit him.

‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ she said defiantly. ‘Well, we’ll just have to be late. I’m going to repair the damage.’

Jeffrey physically blocked her progress to the bedroom. ‘There isn’t time,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to do what you can in the car!’

Filled with a sudden need to show anger, she remembered she had once been told how grimly her face set when she needed to express rage. Fully aware that she now wore that expression she decided to let it out. ‘Jeffrey, I’m warning you – I really mean this – get out of my way.’

Jeffrey stayed where he was. ‘Shall I go?’ he asked quietly.

The rush of blood that was carrying an affirmative response to her lips stopped dead in its tracks as with sudden, chilling clarity she saw the space where Jeffrey now stood would, if vacated, be nothing but a yawning void which, she knew, would haunt her for the rest of her life. All anger was suddenly frozen. Icicles, she would later swear, formed in her gut at that moment. ‘No,’ she murmured so quietly that he made her repeat the words more loudly.

‘No, you bastard!’ she yelled at him.

Seemingly much relieved, Jeffrey smiled. ‘Lucky thing for you I changed my mind.’

‘About what?’

‘When I saw how gorgeous you looked I wanted to put my mark on you in another way.’

It took a moment to realise his meaning. ‘You were thinking of spanking me – just before going out …’

‘We aren’t “out”, yet.’

‘
Don’t
think about it!’ Her voice was pitched half way between plea and resolve.

‘All right, but you should bear in mind that you will have to be punished later.’

Annoyed that the threat both warmed and thrilled her she agreed that there would be time in the car to repair her face and hair and, after throwing some things into an overnight bag, happily went down to the waiting Turner feeling that she had narrowly escaped disaster.

* * *

The limousine whisked them to a part of Heathrow she didn’t know existed. This was the area, far from the commercial terminals, from which private planes departed. Jeffrey, she discovered, had rented an air taxi and so, with the minimum of formalities, they were in the air and en route to Le Bourget airport which, she was informed, was even closer to Paris than the sprawl of the Charles de Gaulle.

Waiting there was another chauffered limousine which took them directly to the reception hall. It had all been so effortless and quick that she understood what Jeffrey meant by Paris being only a cab ride away. All it took was money and a willingness to spend it.

Feeling pampered and flattered she took wicked pleasure in thinking of how horrified her mother would be by all this ‘extravagance’!

They were barely inside the exhibition hall and had no time to pick out one face from another when an authoritative voice started calling out that the arrival of the President was imminent, and the person behind it fussily started lining up those who were to be presented.

Falling back among the lesser guests Helen and Jeffrey could now see Qito, who had deferred to the admonitory ‘formal’ dress only so far as donning a black T-shirt under a darkish jacket, and, towering over him, was the unmistakable figure of Carla Colardi. It was only then that Helen was reminded that Carla, still overwhelmingly beautiful, was Qito’s wife of almost twenty years. Dressed in a glittering silver gown, cut aggressively low to display her famous bosom, the glitter theme continued with her jewellery which, all platinum and white gold, flashed in the lighting as if powered from Carla’s own formidable personality – which seemed further emphasised by her ‘big hair’. Two legends in the same household should have been fertile ground for the
gossipmongers
yet nothing had ever been found to besmirch their union.

Looking at Carla, Helen could not help relishing the thought that she had, if only momentarily, shared Qito with her. The
frisson
of excitement this engendered was rapidly followed by the daunting thought of what the formidable Carla’s reaction might be if she ever found out.

It was then that Qito spotted her. ‘Helen!’ he called out with such excitement that she felt all eyes, tensed ready for the arrival of the President, turning to her. Qito was gesturing wildly for Helen to come to him. Aware of Carla’s huge black lustrous eyes searching her out from top to toe, Helen turned to Jeffrey. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘He wants you in the line up,’ Jeffrey smiled. ‘Go!’

Aware that everyone in the crowded room was now looking at her and wondering who the hell she might be, she felt Jeffrey’s hand on the small of her back urging her forward. With a growing sense of unreality that this was really happening, Helen found the crowd opening up before her and the fussy organiser looming before her to demand her name. Having hastily added her name to the official list he ushered her forward to where she found Qito insisting that she stand to his right, between him and Carla.

‘
Cara mio
…’ Qito spoke across the highly embarrassed Helen to the highly interested Carla. ‘This is the English girl I told you about. Isn’t she incredible?’

Carla’s look to Helen was, to say the least, smouldering but, whatever verbal response she might have made was lost in the sudden stirring of interest as the President’s party arrived.

Standing next to Qito, Helen had the unsettling feeling that she was caught up in a fantasy made real. She watched with blurred vision and bated breath as the President’s party paused
in
the doorway, as they were welcomed by the Gallery officials staging the exhibition. Then her vision was filled with the sight of the President making directly towards Qito. It was only then Helen realised she had absolutely no idea how one greeted a President and, since it seemed she would be the first female to be introduced, she would have little chance to learn by observation. Grimly, as the President all but embraced Qito, she thought it would have been simpler if the man had been royalty. Then it would only have been a matter of a quick curtsey. Desperately, her mind raced over the possibilities only to find her brain otherwise engaged when the thought of her recent violation at Jeffrey’s hands chose that moment to leap into her head, creating a stirring in her groin and the resulting fervent juices to start trickling down her thighs.