Those Wicked Pleasures (22 page)

‘You didn’t answer me. You don’t have to. I know where you are at.’

He managed the hooks at the waist and let the red dress slip down off her hips to the carpet. She had worn nothing under the red silk, not a stitch. That thin red wrapping apart, she had come undressed, ready to be taken by him where and when he wanted. It had been his sexual demand, made long ago, and she had always answered it. Her stockings were held high up on her thighs by lacy elasticated garters. She stood there, shamelessly ready to submit to this man, seemingly a willing victim, a young woman sexually moulded to please men. She knew better, and so did Jamal. Willing, yes. Sexually moulded to please men, not wholly true. Moulded by sensuous men to enjoy her own sexual appetites would be more the truth of it.

Jamal could make each seduction of Lara like the first
for her. He could create in her the sense that she pleased him beyond all else on earth. That she was the most erotic woman he had ever known. There were his eyes, his words of promise of what was to come, the overwhelming need he showed to master her sexually. That is erotic power for many women. It was for Lara, and it generated in her a yearning to be touched by him. No, much more than touched, to be penetrated, possessed, to be manhandled by him for the delight of both. Caresses, yes, but she demanded violent passion too. The kind where two people can lose themselves and let the erotic take over and transport them to a place beyond ecstasy.

And sex with Jamal was to lose herself in orgasm. It was to float out on a stream of erotic love-making that accepted no bounds. The stream of orgasms this extraordinary lover could induce in her allowed her a sexual submissiveness that she had enjoyed with no other lover. The exception had been Sam, that one night on the island. With Jamal, Lara’s body submitted naturally to anything that would keep her chain of orgasm coming, until she was faint with exhaustion. Only a woman who had complete trust in her lover, as Lara had in Jamal, could give herself up to him, and reap from her submission that very special ecstasy that intense sex promises. Every sexual experience with Jamal was searing bliss.

It meant becoming merely an open vessel ready to receive, or being fine-tuned for the playful touch of such a master. The reward was nothing more than the perfect bliss of orgasm. What woman would give that up? Nothing that Jamal offered or demanded for their pleasure surprised her. At times in their sexual relationship all was geared to giving him pleasure. Those times featured more bizarre sexual games. But tonight, everything sexual was for Lara. Everything to induce
from her longer, more violent orgasms. Multiple orgasms. He nourished his lust upon her comings. Never could she seem to come enough to please him. He would often tell her how he wished she could swim in her cum, he could drink it as from a fountain, bathe in it. When it was like that for them, before the night was over he enjoyed his lust as much as Lara enjoyed hers.

There was a discreet knock at the door. Jamal showed no disquiet. A man entered. ‘I told you I had a surprise for you. Someone who has admired you for a very long time, who wants to be with you. I promise you you will not be disappointed.’

Jamal kissed her. Lara, no longer Lara, but a woman well into the search for some ultimate sexual experience, accepted the man without a word of protest, only open arms. If it had been for her own sexual delight that would have been acceptable, but it wasn’t just that. It was the excitement she saw in her lover’s face, the pleasure she knew he derived from sex with her and another man. The three gave their bodies passionately to their flagrant intercourse. They sought nothing else but giving the best sex. It was a joyous encounter.

The blond Russian stranger made himself known to her as Misha. Within minutes he held her in his arms, kissed and caressed her. He was always touching her, arranging her for Jamal’s pleasure, and Jamal entered her and fucked her in long slow thrusts, while Misha kissed Lara and whispered blandishments to her. At other times it was Jamal who held Lara in his arms, while the handsome virile young Russian, so massively endowed, took Jamal’s place. She came for herself, and for Jamal and Misha, and for Eros and all that god had to offer. Sex was for a few hours an autonomous world where nothing else existed. There came a point in their erotic tryst when they fucked as one body, one heart, one soul. The ultimate
sexual experience. A point, it seemed, of no return.

When she awakened, the glorious Russian was gone. Jamal and she bathed together in his black marble sunken bath. They lay in each other’s arms and sponged each other with the steaming-hot, freesia-scented water. They talked about their night of sex. He always liked talking about their erotic performances. Lara didn’t mind. In some odd way, talking about their sexual excesses took away the stigma of depravity their secret liaisons seemed to imply. It legitimised her sexual appetite, confirmed its naturalness, which she liked. And there was no other man in the world she could be so free with. Once she had thought that about David, and then Sam. She had been wrong.

Afterwards breakfast with Jamal in the glass cage on the roof-terrace of the Fifty-Third Street house. The sun streamed in. Life seemed to Lara at that moment to be incredibly rich and beautiful. Freshly squeezed peach juice and champagne omelettes filled with wild mushrooms, hot, black coffee and buttered toast, kiwifruit preserve and strawberry jam, kindled her palate. Ravenous, she ate with gusto, and was unaware of Jamal watching her, until he said, ‘You seem different. I sensed it when I picked you up at Sotheby’s last night. You were standing with Henry. I saw you from a distance, and knew even then that some subtle change had happened. I have that same feeling now.’

‘Different better, or different worse?’

‘Oh, most definitely different better.’ He raised her hand and held it, then lowered his lips to kiss it. ‘You were incredible last night. You always are, but somehow last night, more so.’ He replaced her hand in her lap and returned to his breakfast. ‘I don’t think I ever thank you enough for being you. And with me. Thanks for last night, you were memorable.’

She said it without thinking: ‘You can thank me by
giving up this idea that what we have together has to be kept a deep dark secret. A trashy dirty affair. Marry me.’

He kissed her on the cheek once more, ignored her suggestion and, still laughing, returned to his omelette.

‘God, that was a condescending, shitty reaction to a serious proposal.’

He looked at her, and could see in her eyes that this was something more than her customary charming anxiety about their relationship. Surprised, he said, ‘I told you it would come to this. You know I am not the marrying kind – the very reason we must keep our sex-life a secret. The ring on the finger and instant hate, that would be the name of that game.’ He began to laugh. ‘One woman in my life? No, never. Not my kind of arithmetic. The very idea is unthinkable. I always warned you that one day you would demand monogamy and all the trimmings. You’re that kind of girl. But you have proposed to the wrong guy.’

‘Then I’ll leave you.’

‘Ah, then this is it?’ He laughed at her and was surprised yet again by how calm she was. She was playing with him. He knew she wasn’t serious. There had to be the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. And her eyes sparkled in a half-coquettish, half-teasing manner. The tormented Lara of the last few months seemed nowhere in sight. Something had changed, and the change intrigued him.

He leaned in towards her and adjusted her robe where it fell open to show a hint of breast. ‘And give up what we had together last night? No, I don’t think so. A very childish idea. What we have is irreplaceable, and you are not a girl who deprives herself.’

‘I will, you know.’

‘Before or after another cup of coffee?’ He refilled her cup.

She leaned back in her chair and thrust her hands in to the pockets of his Turnbull & Asser, red and white polka-dot silk robe, which she was wearing. It fell open and showed some naked thigh. She adjusted the robe. He knew she wore nothing under it. The thought of her flesh stirred his lust again. Instead he teased her by opening his own silk moiré robe. And it was she this time who draped the powder-blue silk over him to cover his erection. She who tied the belt with a double knot and adjusted the brown-velvet lapels. ‘You’re cunt-teasing me again, Jamal. And that, at this moment, is a cheap shot.’

He found her behaviour amusing. But when she tried to continue, he put up his hand to silence her. ‘One more word about it and I’ll sweep these dishes off this table, rip open that robe and fuck you right here for all the neighbours to see. I’ll eat my breakfast from your cunt, Lara, and prove to you, yet again, that you can’t give me up.’

He broke off a piece of croissant, buttered it and spooned strawberry jam over it, then fed it to her. They both began to laugh, more delighted with the idea than they dared to admit. Lara was serious but Jamal didn’t believe her. She herself was surprised to find herself less disturbed by his reaction than she had expected to be. He was quite right: some fundamental change had taken hold in her which she herself could not understand. She could only think that it had come about because of Henry and their evening together. The very idea that she should have to lie to her father one more time because of a love-affair didn’t bear thinking about. She knew she could never do that again. Henry’s love, his trust in her, would not allow it.

There was a commotion of some sort going on somewhere in the house. Some minutes later Jamal’s manservant Mulai entered the solarium and there was an
exchange in Arabic, and then in English. There was a note of annoyance in Jamal’s voice when he told the man, ‘Show her into the second-floor sitting room.’

The interruption was timely for Lara. It broke into the intimacy that was developing between her and Jamal and overshadowing what was for her a serious question: their future. It furnished her with a much needed pause in which to regain her resolve to deal with him on terms other than those he had in mind for them. She rose from her chair.

‘I have to be going.’

Together, hand in hand, they walked down the winding stairs from the roof terrace to the guest room where Lara kept several articles of daytime clothing. To walk through the streets of Manhattan on a bright sunny day in a cardinal-red cocktail-dress would not have enhanced her reputation.

Parting after a night such as they had spent together was always a problem for her. She handled it badly most of the time. But today Jamal sensed an indifference in Lara. Where were the trembling lower lip, the tears that usually lodged in the corner of her eyes? The petulant, ‘You’re a
pig
to send me away like this. The ‘
Cochon
!’ The turn on her heel and the dash from the house? The one call from the first available booth, the different variety of tears, the ‘I’m sorry. You’re not a pig – forgive me. Tonight? I can make myself free?’ The reassuring pattern had been disturbed.

Relieved as he was not to have to go through that same old performance, he did wonder what exactly this dramatic change signalled. And what had prompted it?

Lara’s lack of curiosity about the commotion in the house and the woman sent to the second-floor sitting room was a surprise. Previously, the mere mention of another woman in his life had stirred that streak of jealousy which
could take her over and turn her into a harridan.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her choose a pair of jeans, a red polo-neck silk-knit sweater and a pair of white sneakers. She looked so young, so fresh in the dappled sunlight dancing through the window behind her. She charmed him with her youth and vulnerability, her letting him mould her into whatever he wanted her to be at any given moment.

She sensed his eyes upon her and turned from the armoire to face him. She felt a slackening of her resolve to change their lives or leave him. She was lucky to be there with him at all. He had caught her off-guard, as he sometimes did, with his physical beauty. She knew no other man who possessed so powerful a male radiance, or who affected her with his looks the way Jamal did. She wanted to touch his hair, thick, black and silky, always worn a little too long, as if he were due for a haircut that very day. His skin was bursting with health and vigour, bronze and taut over a frame that could have served as a model for any museum sculpture. That wonderful bony head with its high cheekbones, noble nose and powerful chin. A man’s eyes yet so eloquent, so dark and sultry, with lashes thick and long, perfect for melting down his victims’ resistance. The muscled but slender neck and wide shoulders. The strong, perfect torso and slender, athletic body. How could she live without him?

She took a few steps towards him, unable to drag her eyes from the sharp, intelligent face, the sensuous lips that knew how to make love to her as no other man’s ever had. And what of his own special male scent that she found irresistible? She felt an impulse to touch him, place her lips upon his, to sit in his lap and be held in his arms. She wanted to be embraced by all that male beauty. Simply to dissolve into him, always,
for the rest of her life – was that asking so much?

Jamal could feel her yield to him. The light in her eyes changed. He could see her surrendering to a desperation that was familiar to him now. He had not realised before that he might suffer if he lacked it. It gave an edge to their relationship that excited him. He was tempted to reach out and take her hands in his and kiss them. He resisted. Their time together was over. Instead he handed her the jeans she had placed on the bed next to him.

The pattern was resuming. Dismissal till he next wanted her. She took them from him. ‘Do I have to beg you? Grovel? Why do you do this to me?’ She disrobed.

He liked to watch her. The way she moved while she dressed and undressed. The way she bent over to wriggle her naked young flesh into tight blue jeans. Now she was so close that he could reach out and pull her between his legs by the loops in the waistband. He caressed her flesh with his hands for several seconds before he zipped up the fly. ‘My touch of Venus!’ he quipped. His hands on her hips, he rocked her gently, savouring the movement of her breasts.