Those Wicked Pleasures (5 page)

The exquisite tinkling sound of Scarlatti played upon a harpsichord shattered the silence. And then a violin, a cello, a flute. A string quartet and a flute playing at the top of the grand staircase. The music, sweet and ethereal, like that of the pied piper of Hamelin, drew the guests from everywhere in the building to assemble for dinner.

For several generations the Stantons had been wealthy collectors, conservative masters of impeccable, refined taste. They had always been generous and philanthropic.
The museum had been a beneficiary of that generosity from its inception in 1880. Their connection with it was family history. And this evening, in thanks for their constant support, they were dined in a Georgian Room, itself the gift of a Stanton, seated around several Chippendale masterpieces, yet another family donation. The collection of chairs, Chinese Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Adam, were priceless gifts from other Stantons. The Queen Anne silver, Charles I porringers and priceless Tudor silver pieces were displayed down the centre of the table between arrangements of white roses and peonies. The guests drank from an array of sixteenth-century glasses, Venetian, English and Dutch. The linen, Edwardian and Irish, all once belonged to Stantons. The silver-gilt candelabra had dazzled the guests at Napoleon and Josephine’s banquets.

The trustees and curators involved in designing this extraordinary evening were not displeased at their guests’ reactions. Lara sat between Jamal Ben El-Raisuli, one of her cousin David’s oldest friends, and Sam Fayne. Through five courses of delectable food served by waiters dressed in livery and white gloves, she flirted with her dinner companions. Both men, though obliged to behave with impeccable decorum, slid helplessly under her teasing spell. Finally, Jamal Ben El-Raisuli whispered in her ear, ‘Ah, so the little girl I have known for these past thirteen years seems to have flowered into a young lady. If you were not the sweet virgin cousin of my best friend, I might pluck you from this table for my very own. It can be dangerous to flirt with men of oriental sensibilities, you know.’

‘Ah,’ she mimicked, and struck quite perfectly, the sensual tone, the faint Arab lilt, that still remained after an education at Choate and Harvard, and years of living in and out of Morocco, ‘and suppose I was no longer
sweet? Or even a virgin?’ she teased. ‘Would I then allow you to pluck me for your very own?’

A long look from Jamal chilled her. A novice among sexual teasers, she could not cope with that look. It excited, but frightened. However, pride would not allow her to retreat. She stood her ground and stared back at him, adding a tilt of her head, a raising of her chin. There was a challenge in the look she was giving him, more explicit than she realised.

‘You are ravishingly pretty. For some time now I have seen boys like Sam watching you. Choose one of them soon, girl, or I might have to put my friendship with your family aside and deflower you myself.’

She felt the blood rush to her face, a blush that was impossible to hide. Jamal pressed his advantage and stroked her thigh under cover of the table. He added, ‘Not a sweet virgin? I don’t believe it. But
if
you have already been relieved of that particularly delicious burden, all the better. We can play, you and I, with love and lust.’

His touch was exciting. She did not pretend to dislike his hand caressing her. Reluctantly, Lara removed it and boldly placed it on
his
thigh with a teasing caress of her own. Seduction was a two-way game now, and she was enjoying it. She could afford to be fearless because she knew she was safe, sure to be the winner in this game. Time, place and the presence of the family ensured that. She laughed, and bent close towards Jamal. She had always thought him the most handsome and sexy man of all David’s friends. He had seemed exotic and generous and very foreign. Just above a whisper, she told him, ‘How presumptuous of you, Jamal. And what makes you think I would have you as a sexual playmate?’

All this under the cover of sixty people dining and chatting, the flautist’s haunting music, the pomp and
circumstance of the dinner. It added a piquancy to the evening for Lara. She had the attention she wanted, and at the same time a chance to wield her newfound feminine power. Their flirtation burgeoned as Sam bent forward, reached for her hand, took it in his and addressed Jamal.

‘OK, go play the old seduction-scene on someone else. Lara’s with me this evening.’ Then turning back to her, he squeezed her hand and warned, ‘You had better be careful. Jamal thinks all women are fair game.’

‘Well, aren’t they?’ asked an amused Jamal.

At that moment Sam was distracted by the woman seated on his right and was obliged to turn away. It was then that Jamal whispered in Lara’s ear: ‘In answer to your question, you will have me as playmate because I know how to unleash your libido, how to excite you sexually. That’s what you are looking for, but don’t know where to find it. You will call me one day, and I will be there for you. And I will make love to you with sex more exciting than your sweet virgin dreams can imagine. That I promise you.’

It was shortly after that the guests withdrew from the tables to be served coffee in yet another of the splendid show rooms, this time a French salon. This enabled Lara and Sam to effect their exit from what remained of the evening’s entertainment. The excuse was Louis Armstrong at The Blue Angel. It worked. Henry, a jazz aficionado, knew that an evening with Louis must take precedence.

But they had other priorities: they allowed themselves to fall in love, declare their feelings and act upon them. It all happened so fast, that long after the evening was over and they were in their own respective houses, they were unable to believe that such happiness had been theirs.

They had meant to go to The Blue Angel. There was
a table waiting for them in the small, chic, Eastside night club. Sam helped Lara into her burgundy maribu waist-length jacket, and they walked through the dimly lit museum corridors towards the front door. They were chattering about the spectacular evening when he chanced to remark that the feather down of her jacket sent shivers through him. ‘I find it almost sexy, the feel of your jacket.’

‘Just the feel of my jacket?’ she teased.

‘No, as a matter of fact. I find you incredibly beautiful and sexy tonight too. Even more than usual.’

It was she who stopped. She took a long look at Sam. He suddenly looked terribly virile to her. Something clicked for them at that moment. He took her arms and slowly pulled her to him. His hold on her was hard and rough, but his kiss was slow and long and easy, filled with love. She felt her body give in to him, her lips eager to return his kiss. They had kissed before, many times, but it had never been like this. He released her and stroked the arms of the maribu jacket.

‘Then let’s do something about it,’ she suggested.

He took her in his arms again and asked, ‘Like make love?’

‘Like make love,’ she answered, excited by the prospect. She placed her arms around his neck and pressed herself tight against him, ‘I want you to love me, Sam, and make love to me. I want you to fuck me, Sam, and make me want you.’

He knew a place to take her. ‘I’ve been waiting for you for so long. I always wondered if it would happen for us. I’ve had so many dreams of how it would be to take you for the first time, to open you up and bury myself inside you. I want it to be perfect for you. Every woman I have ever had was only there to bring me closer to you. They enabled me to wait for you. They taught me how
to love women, how to be a good enough lover for you,’ he told her as they rushed arm in arm from the museum, down the stairs. He paused only to kiss her, touch her, love her, and then rush on again.

With every word of love for her she wanted him more. How had she not seen him before as she saw him now? His sensuality made her tremble.

In the street he hailed a taxi. At the Hotel Pierre he rushed in with her in tow, unwilling to leave her in the taxi alone. Suppose she changed her mind? He spoke to the concierge. Money changed hands and he went to the bank of telephones and made a call.

‘Don’t you think we’re being rather conspicuous?’ she asked, embarrassment in her voice.

He was quite hurt that she should think he would compromise her in the slightest. He let her go and she wandered away from him while he made his call. He placed an arm around her and they walked to the flower shop. It had been opened for them. He chose forty-inch long-stemmed white roses for her and whispered, ‘I love you.’ They were placed in an enormously long clear cellophane box and tied with a gigantic white satin ribbon. Then he whisked her back into the waiting taxi and off they went to the Sherry Netherland. They walked straight to the elevators. The concierge seemed to know him, several of the porters greeted him.

‘Don’t look so shocked and nervous. They have known us since we were children. You must have come here to visit my aunt Bidi a hundred times. It’s the most natural thing in the world for us to be here. Aunt Bidi is in her house in the Adirondacks and I have access to her suite.’ Then he whispered in her ear, ‘I want this night to be one you will always remember as romantic and beautiful. Not some sleazy sexcapade.’

Lara would never forget that night, nor making love
and having sex for the first time. She was reminded after it was all over of what she had read earlier: ‘The Stantons are fortune’s children’. In Sam’s arms, and giving herself up to him and her own lust, she believed that and was grateful for it. Her thoughts were fleetingly of David, and how grateful she was to have had him prime her for sex. She had been able to enjoy the pleasures of that night with Sam thanks to David. Her sexual freedom, an adventurous sensual nature, were all thanks to him. She was magnificent in her lust, a tribute to both teacher and pupil. And she and Sam fell deeply in love.

There was only one sad thing about the evening. No one had been there to tell Lara not to equate romantic love and good sex with true love; that because someone loves you as much as Sam does, and you are so starved for what he has to offer, there is no reason why you have to love him in return. Just a little thing like that might have made all the difference in Lara Victoria Stanton’s and Sam Fayne’s lives. But no one told them, and because of the events of that day, and Lara’s sexual precocity and the unloosing of her desires, her constant hunger for love and more love all the time, new beginnings were mapped out for her.

Chapter 3

It was dawn before Sam brought Lara home. Only Hastings, the night watchman, was around to let her in. Otherwise the house was quiet. She made hardly a sound. The last thing she wanted was to share her first real love affair with anyone. She slipped into the library and slid the large cherrywood doors closed behind her. Embers were still glowing in the fireplace. She fanned them with the bellows and flames shot to life. She placed several logs on the fire. They caught and she lay down on her side on the old, worn, black leather Chesterfield. She stared into the fire, happier than she had ever been in her life.

Sam loved her more than life itself. How had she not seen that before? Or had she seen it yet been indifferent to it because she had David? How had she been so blind to the virile, exciting man in Sam? He had been a generous lover. Eager to bring her to orgasm several times with hands and lips and tongue, nurturing her craving for sexual intercourse.

She had not believed that it could be so blissful, his penis easing slowly deep inside her. She had known the joy of David’s fingers there, but this – well, this was something other. And to feel the beat of cock for the first time, to the rhythm of a man’s passion for fucking, was to this virgin a taste of the sublime. To feel that first slow penetration quicken to primitive, even crude, animal
need, mixed with protestations of love and adoration for her, was a renewal of self. To have her first man come inside her, feel the heat of his sperm, the scent of sex, the flow of his orgasm. Unimagined new sensations. She wanted to suck his come into her womb, her soul, to lose no drop of that special elixir that sent her into spasms of ecstasy.

It was not at all as several of the girls at school who had gone all the way had told her it would be. Yes, she felt a soreness. Sam had a fine control of himself and so their intercourse was long, especially long for a virgin. But she found even her soreness sexually thrilling. That feeling of being riven, stretched open to accommodate Sam, her cunt bursting with cock – not frightening at all, as her smugly deflowered girlfriends had implied. But then she had had David for years to whet her desire for every morsel of sex that was to be hers.

Lara reached for the cashmere car-rug, trimmed and lined in beaver, shook it open and covered herself. The feel of the amazingly soft fur was almost as sensuous as sex. There was no sleep in Lara. She lay there, eyes open, daydreaming of life with Sam.

How painful it had been for both of them to part. She could think only of their date to meet for lunch, to spend the afternoon and evening having sex in Aunt Bidi’s suite of rooms at the Sherry Netherland. Her imagination took flight; she wanted to try everything, have Sam teach her how to give as well as receive great sex. What an adventure their life would be. She thought of the white roses she had left in the Lalique vase in Aunt Bidi’s room at the Sherry. So romantic of Sam to have rushed her into the Pierre to find them for her.

It surprised her that she herself barely felt romantic. Well, she could improve. Her thoughts jumped to things she and Sam had done together all their life. Now, as
lovers, those would be even better. Maybe they would take a year off from college and sail around the world together. They had talked often about her ambition to do that. She hugged herself, liking the idea of making love wherever in the world she and Sam chose. She began to smile.

Sam, three years older than Lara and in graduate school at Yale, might want to finish university first. Well, she could understand that, and wait. Now she began to conjure up a picture of her lover Sam as a man. Handsome, a football jock for Yale. Light brown hair and dark sexy eyes, a face that was big and square but with a softness to it. The dimples when he smiled … certain expressions of kindness and patience were responsible, she thought, as if he needed defending for looking and being such a nice guy. But then, she also knew him to be intelligent, a likely alpha student with ambitions for an academic life. His current dream was to teach philosophy at his alma mater. On the other side of his character, he was like his father, a golf-playing social lion at the same clubs, a deb’s delight on every mother’s in-list.

She sat bolt upright. Women! How many women had he had while waiting for her to grow up and choose him? And did he have a woman other than her now? She slumped back among the cushions, her moment of anxiety gone. It didn’t matter. She remembered he had declared himself in love with her and only her enough times for it to ring true.

He was there at the breakfast table with the family when she came down at nine o’clock. The moment their eyes met she felt a warmth course through her body. No one seemed to notice the way they looked at each other. They both imagined everyone knew they were in love, seriously in love, that their years of puppy love were over.
She at least expected to be teased about the way he kept picking up her hand and kissing it. A new intensity in the way he flirted with her, and suggested that she be his guest for the Yale-Harvard football game around Thanksgiving-time, should at least have given a strong hint of their new relationship. The look of surprise on his face when Max and David said they would like to see the game as well, and sure they would bring her, should have told the family but they got nothing; not even the sexy twins picked up the signals the couple were sending out. The family, as always, took Sam Fayne and his friendship with Lara and them for granted. The antennae of her nearest and dearest tended not to be raised at breakfast time. Lara was almost displeased.

At last Sam had her alone. He closed the yellow sitting room doors and taking her in his arms and kissing her passionately, pressed her up against them. ‘I thought breakfast would never end. I couldn’t sleep a wink. Are you all right? Happy?’

She laughed. ‘Yes, very happy, and I’m fine.’

He looked terribly embarrassed. He stroked her hair and hesitated before asking, almost sheepishly, ‘You’re not still hurting, I hope? The bleeding, it’s stopped?’ She kept nodding her head, reassuring him she was perfectly well. He seemed not to want to believe her. ‘It will be better this afternoon. The first time is always the most difficult. And you will get even greater pleasure, I promise.’ He kissed her again, this time hungrily on her still sensitive nipples, bruised and sore from their earlier encounter. He sucked them so hard, she squirmed with the pleasure and pain. He pulled away and reluctantly covered her naked breasts, tugging her soft pink cashmere blouse down over them. He was panting with passion for her and crushed her to him again. ‘Tell me you love me. Tell me,’ he pleaded.

She said nothing. She could only think of how much she wanted him. She felt moist with desire for him. Her heart raced. She wanted to feel him inside her. Earlier, when she had dressed, she had remembered what Luan had said to Max. To be like Luan for Sam, she would discard panties. She wanted always, like Luan, to be ready to receive a man. All through breakfast she had found it agreeably sexy to be naked under her skirt, to be open and ready.

Now she raised her skirt and changed her stance, legs wide apart, her breathing heavy with expectation. She closed her eyes and tried to control herself. When she opened them she saw the shock in Sam’s eyes. He caressed her hips, grazed her soft blonde mound of pubic hair with the palm of his hand and quickly lowered her skirt for her. He gave her a more gentle kiss this time and tried to cover his embarrassment. But it was too late. His eyes gave him away. She hardly had time to feel his rejection because he was so quick to tell her: ‘I love you. I want you all the time. But no, not here. Later. Much as I would like not to, I have to go now.’ And he asked her to walk him to his car. Arm in arm they walked through the house and to his Maserati.

All morning the comings and going of the family and their Chinese guests kept the house in a state of bustle. Lara just rolled along with it, thinking only of her rendezvous with Sam. Eighteen house-guests were due at Cannonberry Chase for the weekend, plus the entire family. It was under cover of all that activity of changing houses and making arrangements with cars, that the lovers had planned to slip away. They felt secure in the knowledge that Emily and Henry would accept their absence, only too pleased not to have to think about accommodating Lara in the day’s busy schedule. All seemed set for their afternoon of love-making.

However, that was in the morning. By mid-day, it seemed to Lara that the entire world was conspiring to keep her and Sam apart. They were still thwarted after every change of plan they were obliged to make. It was David who found her in Myling’s room, watching every move the Chinese girl made while instructing her maid in the packing of the famous wardrobe. He was amused at Lara’s change of attitude towards the lovely libertine. He sat down on the sofa next to her and placed an arm around her. His first inkling of real change in their relationship was when she pulled away ever so slightly from him. There was nothing hostile in the action, more a case of a cooling of love. The second was the ease with which she accepted the innuendos about how glorious it would have been for Lara to have joined them in their love-tryst the day before.

He told her, ‘Oh, Sam called. He asked me to tell you lunch is impossible, but he will pick you up at three o’clock.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why, Lara.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Only that in the excitement of asking you to lunch, he had forgotten he’d promised to lunch with his father at the club, and it was impossible to break the date.’

The look of disappointment in her eyes was hard to miss. David understood they were lovers by the way she defended Sam for having to break the date, the softness in her voice when she spoke about him. He was happy for her and teased her about Sam, and her change of attitude towards him. The look that passed between them before he took her in his arms and hugged her told him she was pleased that he knew. She was grateful to him, and that they still loved each other but differently. Their happiness was infectious. Myling suggested that they
should go shopping since she was free. Elizabeth, who had been standing at the door, announced she had an hour to spare, and so, with little enthusiasm for the change of plan, Lara went off with the women.

When she arrived home, Sam was waiting for her. Just the sight of him made her heart leap. His arm around her, he kissed her on the cheek in front of Henry and Emily and John, his clear intention to display some heightened involvement with her. Lara could not understand how she could be so happy with Sam and yet feel somehow he was slipping away from her. He gave no outward indication of that. Henry and Emily looked not at all surprised by his behaviour. She wondered if they guessed just how intimate the relationship had become. She didn’t think that would go down very well. Emily could be the worst prude she had ever met. Her eyes and ears were closed to her sons’ reputations as womanisers. No hint of sexual gossip was permitted in her presence.

While musing on that, Lara took Sam down to the kitchens for a raid on the refrigerator. Shopping had been a spree, and more fun than she had expected. Both Myling and Elizabeth were for spoiling her with a new look, which they insinuated she would be needing. It appeared in the form of six beautiful new outfits. For Lara, snack-hunting in the refrigerator with her lover kissing the back of her neck, life was fast becoming a wonderful roller-coaster ride. So it came as a great shock to her when he announced, ‘We have a problem. Aunt Bidi called – she’s on her way back.’

Lara swung around. Sam kissed her eyes and then her lips ever so gently. ‘Where can we go?’ she asked.

‘It’s not a matter of where. There are other places we will be able to use. But we can’t today, Lara. All we have is an hour. It’s too unfair, but that’s the way it is. I have
to go to the lawyer’s with my father this afternoon. I had no idea. He told me at lunch. The trustees are having a meeting and are making over some property to me. I must be there.’

‘And after?’

‘We’re leaving directly for the country. But there’s the entire weekend. I’m free then and we can be together. We can make love on your boat, on the beach, in the stable, the boat-house, in my room and yours at Cannonberry Chase. It will be wonderful. I love you, Lara. It’s only begun for us. We have a lifetime to make love to each other.’

Sam did not understand how much she yearned to be taken by him that afternoon, on their own, away from anything that had to do with family or their everyday lives. Yes, fucked. Not just made love to as he was doing now. He simply had no idea how sensual a lady she was. What her needs were. She herself had only confronted her sexuality and accepted it in the last twenty-four hours. David knew. Why, even Myling and Luan understood, and yet the man she loved and had wholly given herself to didn’t understand. She felt a twinge of sadness. But Sam’s protestations of love, like a soothing balm upon a wound, took the sting away. There was after all the weekend to look forward to, and his love and sex then. These were new beginnings for them both. Thus did she rationalise, not for the last time in her life, as a way to cope with disappointment.

Emily, from the window of her upstairs sitting room, watched Lara and Sam sitting on a bench in the garden. It was her fondest dream that they should marry. A merger of the two families would delight the Faynes as much as the Stantons. Sam had always been like one of the family. She loved him as much as her own children already. One less outsider to bring into the clan. What
a lucky girl Lara was and only three weeks before her departure for school. Just enough time for the couple’s newfound love to blossom, and not enough time for them to get into trouble with it. Then home, and Lara’s social coming out. After Smith College – all the Stanton women went to Smith – and a year at home and in society, a grand wedding. Perfect! Emily was well pleased with herself. Lara had been slotted into her plans beautifully.

Emily’s tea that afternoon took place without most of the family who had already departed for Cannonberry Chase. It was served in the library in front of the fire to Emily, Henry, David, Elizabeth, Jamal Ben El-Raisuli and his mother, a gloriously beautiful French woman whom his father had stolen away from a French Minister of State. She had never been accepted into the house except at tea-time, for scandals were never forgotten by Emily, no matter how many years of good behaviour went into atoning for them.