Those Wicked Pleasures (16 page)

‘I take offence at that, Dad.’

David went to her. ‘La …’ But she shrugged away from him.

Elizabeth came to her father’s defence. ‘Don’t carry on so, Baby. Dad is only trying to show you the way things are.’

Rage stiffened her, but Lara controlled herself. She raised her chin and, in a calm, icy voice, quite slowly said, ‘Elizabeth, fuck the way things are,’ and stormed out through the library door.

It was a fairly comprehensive blasphemy so the boys allowed Lara her exit before they burst into peals of laughter. Then one of them called out after her, ‘Right on, Lara!’ Emily looked very dour.

‘That expletive may be fashionable, but we can do without it in the library. The sooner Sam Fayne marries Lara the better, Henry. You spoilt that girl. All you men have. She has ruined a very nice evening for me. I am going to bed. Don’t be too long, Henry.’

He was unruffled but saddened to see, once again, his daughter make a minor scene because she was challenged
with the reality of a situation. And she had shown to him once more that edge of vulnerability he worried about.

By morning it had mostly been forgotten. Missy was there as usual to check Lara’s diary and answer letters. The phone never stopped ringing and she was going for her pilot’s licence. Only David knew about the lessons. He had arranged them for her, and would be waiting to hear the result. Life was sweet and she was happy. While she was dressing, Cherry the maid arrived with four dozen long-stemmed white roses. No card.

Lara buried her face among the open blossoms and was deliciously enveloped in their scent. Sam? Who else could the mysterious man be who courted her with flowers and anonymity. If she were to mention receiving flowers from someone who preferred not to make himself known, he would never admit to having sent them. Jamal? Possibly. He would never sign a card for fear the family might find out. She and Jamal had not spoken in more than a year, nor seen each other since her coming-out party. He had been abroad, out of the New York social whirl, except for several fleeting visits, during which their paths had not crossed. The only news of him came from David. They remained friends and stayed in close contact. No, Jamal was an unlikely source. A stranger, more like. She had so many admirers that to spot the culprit was nearly impossible. So she chose to think that they had come from Sam. Had he not given her white roses in exchange for her virginity?

Summer moved in fast on Lara’s life. And it was one of those idyllic summers: long hot days and nights broken by just enough showers and rainstorms to keep everything green and fresh and interesting. The summer of 1976 at Cannonberry Chase was one long house-party peopled by glittering youth, distinctive men and women, enlivened
with races and tournaments, and discreetly peppered with charity concerts.

Lara drifted in and out of the house with her friends, dividing her time between Cannonberry Chase, Newport Rhode Island, and the Hamptons. There was a race around Martha’s Vineyard, another around Nantucket. By midsummer she had brought home racing-cups from Newport and both the islands off Cape Cod. Somewhere along the way she resumed her sexual relationship with Sam. They began to date. Love was still there, and friendship; it was as easy as it had always been. Too easy. They continued to date other people as well.

She heard the news before he reappeared in the swirl of New York society: Jamal was returning to live once again in New York. She tried to keep him out of her mind, but it was difficult. His name kept cropping up. Lara was surprised to detect many of her new friends, girls who had never met him, surreptitiously seeking ways of meeting him. It seemed his reputation as an exciting, extravagant man-about-town, sexually irresistible to women, had hit the city before he had.

Once, in a powder-room at The Plaza during a charity ball, she heard two women much older than herself – beautiful, elegant, sophisticated women, the sort of dazzling beauties that she and her friends would like to emulate – talking about him.

‘Jane dear, it’s too much. The thought of that gorgeous cad being here in New York again, and my not being with him. Bed with him was … well I can’t really explain. I was like his slave … and did I love it! Me! Can you imagine? Me, who’s always wound any man I ever wanted round my little finger. And now I can’t land Jamal. He made me feel I was the only woman in the world he really wanted, the only one to make him the man he always wanted to be. What a joke! And the laugh was on me. I
feel such a fool still wanting him. But what am I telling you all this for? I guess that you know the pain. Still in love with him?’

A closed door and the blessed blur of drink left the two women unaware of Lara. Sometimes it is better not to hear things. She was left conjuring visions of her own relationship with Jamal. She had one of the more furtive gods to thank that they had at least kept their sexual liaison secret. Exposure as just another sexual conquest would have rankled to the point of acute shame. She sat in the marble-lined booth, trying to banish from her memory vivid pictures of Jamal. His weighty penis erect and cupped in one hand, while experienced fingers probed her cunt lips to find and excite her clitoris, to tease her into begging him to plunge himself deep inside her. She actually whimpered, remembering the exquisite, slow, tantalising pressure of him. She could almost feel that divine sensation of being slowly rent open to be filled with cock.

Lara covered her face with her hands. She took a deep breath. Then she was all right again. There was a chance she might gain control of her emotions, stand up and compose herself enough to face the women who shared her very own desire to be enslaved by Jamal. She tried to put aside her feelings of self-loathing for being unable to off-load her sexual attraction to him. Her desperate need to be able to give herself sexually, her passion for the brief voyage to oblivion with him, was still there. Why did he have to return? She had managed nicely without him. She thought he had been replaced by other lovers. She had talked herself into believing her passion for sex with him was yesterday’s whim.

That night, fired up with sexual passion gone crazy, she and Sam had sex – sex that had little to do with love and everything to do with need and the unleashing of desire. The joy of sex unbounded.

Chapter 12

Naked under grey terry-cloth robes, Sam and Lara were walking barefoot and arm-in-arm along the deserted beach where he had a house: Fayne Island, just off the mainland near the tip of Long Island. His launch had brought them there the night before. A romantic inspiration, prompted at Lara’s return from the powder-room to their table in the ballroom by a whisper in his ear. ‘I want you to whisk me away from all this to the most quiet place on earth, and then make love to me like it was for always.’ Three hours later, he was carrying her in his arms under a full, white moon from the dock up the sandy path that wound between scrubby pines and blueberry bushes.

His was the only house on Fayne Island except for a lighthouse that had been made over for the caretaker to live in. But that was on the other side of the dunes. Sam’s large, unpretentious, weather-worn shack lay like a heap of driftwood between sand and a dwarfed, wind-swept wood. It was his private hideaway, and Lara his first guest. It had water, but no electricity. Everything had to be hauled over from the mainland by the caretaker or Sam.

A romantic inspiration? He could not but wonder, as he walked with Lara under a hot sun and the soft breeze coming off the Atlantic Ocean: how had it come about that the romance died the moment he had closed the door
behind him and lit the fire and the kerosene lamp? The lust of two sexually hungry people had snuffed out love and romance like a candle in the wind.

Debauchery, depravity with Lara of a kind hitherto confined to the imagination, had been thrilling. Even now, walking with her in the sun, with the rippling foam of once-crashing waves running up on to the shore and over their toes, he could not recollect what had tipped them from romance into lust without love. They had not just wandered into a world of sensation and release. They had both been steeped in it, wanting it never to stop. And Sam was somehow lost in it. But, when morning came he found himself, he detested the memory of having used Lara as he had rarely used even a whore.

He was forced to off-set his feelings of detestation with the fact that Lara had seemed to revel in such usage. Sexually sadistic! That he could do what he had done when sexually uninhibited had not been part of his profile of himself. Such heightened pleasure for them both – but was that reward enough for perverting his soul? For allowing Lara to descend from the pedestal of adoration he had placed her on? He could not rest easy with their corrupting influence on each other. Where had love gone? It had hardly been part of that wild sexual ride towards oblivion.

Awake before Lara, he had raised himself against the pillow and watched her sleeping. Who was this woman he had loved so well? The woman he had chosen to be his wife. Only with difficulty could he equate her with the Lara of the night before. Sam had to ask himself, was he one of those men who couldn’t love the women they slept with, and couldn’t sleep with the women they loved? He had friends like that, but had always prided himself in the belief that that was no problem for him. And yet …

He had watched her for an hour before she opened her eyes. In that time he came to know he was not one of those men. That he loved Lara, on or off her pedestal. She had said ‘Good morning’ to him so sweetly, he thought his heart would break. He had bent down and kissed her. It had blocked out the night before.

He had made them bacon and eggs for breakfast, and they ate with ravenous appetites. The aroma of hot black coffee was the scent of their fresh new day. Their caffeine-high had pumped life back into their exhausted bodies. It blew away the cobwebs of their minds.

On the beach next to her now, Sam realised that they had hardly said a word to each other since she had opened her eyes. They had smiled and touched each other in a loving fashion, but there simply had been nothing for them to talk about. Anything about the night before seemed superfluous to where they had gone together in their quest for bliss through sex. The present appeared to demand silence, both of them needing a space of their own to live with themselves. And yet they were sure in the knowledge that they were together.

He could not easily keep his mind off the night before. Sexuality seemed to have been dominating both of them. He admitted to himself that it dominated him – made him fall in love with unsuitable women all the time until now. But was Lara really any different from those women he lazily dubbed unsuitable? They had controlled his libido in an unfathomable way, and so did she. And what about Lara? Perhaps she too was controlled by her sexuality. If the night before had been some indication, now he had to know the answer. What had they been doing last night – beyond the sex? he wondered. He chose to think that their rabid exploitations had been a kind of courtship display. Or did that simply insult the animals of the bush?

He bent down to pick up a shell and dusted the sand off it. He washed it in the surf, dried it with the belt of his robe, then handed it to Lara. She held it up to the light before placing it in her pocket. Her arm found its way through his once more, and they resumed their walk. He understood her silence, and that he could hardly exaggerate the importance of sexuality. For now, it governed their lives.

Some time later they dropped their robes in the sand, ran naked into the surf and swam a good distance out into the ocean. The water was icy cold, and they floated for a while and let the hot sun warm their bodies as they drifted back towards shore. When Lara’s feet touched sand she stood up. The water lapped around her chin. She threw her head back and shook her hair so that it shimmered on the surface of the water like a fine golden net. Sam ran his fingers through it. She dipped her head below the water, came up again and smoothed the silky wet hair from her face. Hand in hand they walked towards the beach. A large wave slapped into them and Lara lost her balance. Sam caught her by the waist. Their eyes met but they didn’t speak: they too seemed mute as the sea and the sand around them.

He lifted her high above him, from her shoulders a waterfall. She threw her head back and looked at the sky, stretched her arms out as if to face the heavens, and laughed. Once again he plunged her under the water and raised her high above him. ‘Glorious,’ he heard himself say.

He wrapped her legs around his waist and she lay back on the surface of the water swishing her hair from side to side. He caressed her breasts and her shoulders, and, slipping his arm under hers and around her back, pulled her to him for a great loving hug. They could feel each other, sex rubbing against sex, his erect and hers craving.
Yet neither of them felt compelled to seek release. The ocean, without warning, turned rough. A huge wave rolled over them and they were thrown off balance. Their hands still joined, their feet found the ocean bed. Toes digging into the gritty sand, they pushed forward and were able to wade into shore. They ran to where they had dropped their robes, spread them out and lay naked. Under the lazy heat of the sun, they soon dozed. Some time later Lara touched his arm. ‘I’m famished.’

‘Me too.’

They walked back to the shack, stopping to eat blueberries from bushes warm with the sun. Sweet, juicy berries stained their lips and fingertips blue. Lara delighted in memories of when she and Sam as children used to fill their tin sand-pails with berries for Cook to make into a pie. She stopped to watch him holding a handful of the blueberries above her and letting them fall in a stream into her open mouth.

Lara had been surprised more than once by Sam since she had whispered in his ear at The Plaza. The sex, yes, but still more the island: how secretive he had been about it. A strange, remote place it was. Yet there was something amazingly sensuous about it, and about his behaviour there. She had enjoyed the fruits of him and his hideaway and yet she had discovered something rather disturbing: Samuel Penn Fayne had a life all his own that she knew nothing about. A life where, until last night, he had never admitted her, of which no hint had escaped him.

Their eyes met. He picked a handful more of the berries and brought them to Lara. He took her hand in his, opened it, and transferred the berries. Then he picked them up one at a time and fed them to her. Once, between mouthfuls, he kissed the tip of her nose, then tapped it with his finger.

There was something in the gesture, and in Sam’s gaze, that Lara found disturbing. He scooped the remaining berries from her hand. Tilting her chin, he dropped them all at once into her mouth. She made a gesture of delight and said, ‘I am a pig for blueberries.’ This with a juicy smile.

‘A pig, yeah.’

‘Swine. You didn’t have to agree.’

‘Lara.’

There was a tone in his voice she didn’t like. Something akin to a chill ran through her. She suppressed any outward sign of it. The smile left her lips. She stood her ground, facing him. ‘Just come out with it, Sam.’

‘I should have told you last night. I’m going away for a while.’ He placed his arm around her shoulders and they continued to walk towards the shack.

‘For long?’

‘I don’t know.’

Lara felt a hollow in the pit of her stomach. He was leaving her. They both knew it. He was not going to tell her outright. She could not bring herself to confront him. She attempted composure, the refuge of silence. But the blow was too hard on her, she was in pain. She wanted him to see she was not stupid. To see she was wised-up on the way men walked out on you.

‘You didn’t know last night, Sam.’ She placed her arm around his waist. They walked on, silent.

Then, before pride could take over, she asked him, ‘Is there no chance that you might change your mind?’ That was the closest Lara could bring herself to asking him not to leave her. His silence confirmed her worst fears. He could not cope with their sexual excesses. She tried to control the panic she felt at losing him. She had used the man she loved as a safe stud. Inevitably, Sam had picked that up. She was as certain of that as of anything.
And she could think of nothing to say or do that would make it right for him. She had wanted Jamal, and had settled for Sam. Not a crime, but not very honourable either.

They were walking up the steps of the shack when he grabbed her by the arm and abruptly turned her around to face him. ‘About last night …’

‘Forget last night.’

‘We were two different people last night.’

‘No, that’s the trouble, Sam. We were not two different people last night. Let it go.’

She broke away from him. He caught her just inside the screen door and pulled her roughly to him. And again she broke away. He was suddenly very angry with her. He lunged. ‘You damned well listen to what I have to say!’ He tore her robe open and pushed her on to the kitchen table. He swept the breakfast dishes away. They clattered to the floor. He tore off his own robe. And forcing her legs apart, he pounced on top of her.

‘Don’t do this to us, Sam.’

She felt him penetrate her, hard and angry, with one fierce thrust. Then, pinning her down by the shoulders, he told her: ‘We were not the Sam and Lara I know. We used and abused each other sexually. It was fantastic, but I wish I thought it had really been us. Who’s the man? How long has it been going on? How could you give yourself up to sex, wallow in it with such abandon, debase yourself for cock with men who could never love you as I do? You were better than any whore I ever had. You made me do things to you that I cannot reconcile with the image I had of myself. We brought out what’s base in each other. We revelled in it. You made me look into myself – and I know I am not the man I was last night. Nor do I think I want to be. I need to go away for a while, to get away from you. Loving you has been my life. But
after last night I don’t think I know who you are. How can I have spent my life loving someone I don’t even know?’

There were tears in his eyes. Lara could see the pain. She wanted to feel sorry for him, but at her own expense? No. Much as she might want to, she couldn’t. If he has truly loved me so long and so hard, then why doesn’t he know me? There was the question. No point in repeating that it had been Lara and Sam’s sexual bliss last night, no one else’s. If he couldn’t face loving her as she was, without imposing his image of what he wanted her to be, that was too sad. And not just for her, but for them both. Two people, friends and lovers for years, with no room for others in their thoughts of the future, destroyed by a glimpse of reality. She could think of nothing to say to Sam.

He was choked up when he whispered, ‘I don’t want to go away without making love to you. And I need you to make love to me.’

She placed her arms around his neck and kissed his eyes, then his cheeks. Her lips nibbled at his. Her hands roamed freely down his back, over the flesh of his buttocks. Their lips opened and they kissed deeply. He began to move lovingly in and out of her. They were turned on by love and affection, by good sex, as they had been so often, and they shared an orgasm as intense as any they had experienced the night before. They fucked under the delusion of love, to calm the anxiety of their separation.

Two days later he called to say goodbye. She panicked. It was as if her safety-net had collapsed, and she would have to scale the high points of the remainder of her life without it.

‘Don’t go. I need you.’

‘Don’t make this harder for me than it is, Lara.’

A silence that had to be ended. Neither could find the right words. Finally it was Sam. ‘Friends?’

She hung up.

Lara’s anger at Sam for leaving her, combined with her fear of losing him, had shown in her blanking him out. No tears. Just one frustrated kick at the bed-post, and a determination to find a man who could love her for herself and not for love’s sake. One who would give her what she had hoped for from Sam: a successful relationship that would culminate in a marriage capable of producing a vital, loving family. One as constructive and monumental as her own. Was she destined always to lose the men who loved her and leant her emotional stability? Her father, David, and now Sam.

So far, it looked that way. What to do now to reverse her track-record? Cultivate her own emotional stability, her own successes? Not live like some appendage of the men who loved her? She would go for it, but it did seem like the hard way out. Mercifully the heart of her life, the ostrich-covered date-book was completely filled for weeks in advance and partially for months. Sam would be replaced.