Satin Dreams

by Davis, Maggie;

  Princess Jacqueline Medivani, her leggy body nude from the waist down, was sprawled on the bed.

  Karim gave a hoarse cry and rushed to her.

  The woman in the evening gown looked disapproving. “You’ve got a car, haven’t you?” she asked Alix.

  The maid and the boy left hurriedly, not meeting their eyes. Kneeling on the disordered bed, Karim took the princess’s wrist between his fingers, looking for a pulse.

  “My God, what happened?” Alix cried. The Arab boy was almost sobbing over the inert girl in his arms. “She’s not dead, is she?”

  The woman in the gold dress looked Alix up and down, scornfully. “Don’t be stupid. Would I call you to come get her if she was?” She started after the maid and the boy. “Just be quick, and get her out of here.”

  The door closed. Alix swayed, dizzy with revulsion and fright. She could not escape the harsh reality, boldly multiplied. She saw herself dressed in a blue wool suit and coat for a party at the Sorbonne, and Karim with the naked body of Princess Jacqueline Medivani in his arms reflecting crazily like some hideous cinéma vérité.

  “Is she alive?” Alix repeated stupidly.

  “Yes.” The Arab boy tenderly brushed the princess’s short black hair back from her forehead. He crooned, “I know where she goes. I follow her in case she needs me, like this.”

  He followed her. The idea of Karim tracking Princess Jackie like a faithful watchdog all over Paris made Alix want to scream. The princess had rolled to one side. Her blood-stained bare bottom was exposed.

  Alix stared, feeling sick. “Karim, what have they been doing?”

  He lifted the girl, her head lolling. “I think they were taking cocaine. Mixed with other things.” He looked up at Alix. “She has to go to the hospital.”

  “But she’s bleeding!” Now that Alix was closer to the bed, she could see that not all the objects had been picked up by the maid and the boy. “How can she be bleeding? What were they doing here?”

  Scattered about, some folded in the tumbled sheets, were plastic probes for all the body’s orifices. Dildos in every size and grotesque form imaginable. Pincers. Surgical clamps. Enough equipment for a torture chamber.

  The room swam. Alix grabbed the edge of the bed. “Were they going to let her die?” Her voice was edged with hysteria. “Before they’d call a doctor?”

  “No, this is what they come here for. Pain and sex.” Karim wound the sheet around the princess’s half-naked body. “I’ll carry her. We must hurry.”

  Before he could lift her, the door slammed open noisily. “What the hell are you doing here?” a male voice growled.

  Alix saw only a very tall and dark man in a tuxedo.

  “Get out, don’t come in,” she screamed, flapping her hands at him. “Wrong room!”

  Nicholas Palliades strode inside. “How the hell did you get in this place?” Over her head he saw the Arab boy trying to lift the unconscious princess. “Don’t do that,” he ordered, “give her to me.”

  For Alix, reality had dissolved. It couldn’t be Nicholas Palliades. The mirrored walls, the mirrored ceiling, and the figures of Nicholas Palliades and Karim and herself seemed to revolve slowly like a crazy carousel. “What are you doing here?” she managed hoarsely.

  No one paid any attention.

  Karim faced Nicholas obdurately. “She doesn’t need you. She needs to go to the hospital!”

  The taller man swept him aside. “Dammit, you idiot, they called me to come get her.” He bent over the bed and lifted the unconscious girl in his arms. “I’m a friend of the family.”

  Alix put her hand to her throbbing head. Where else would one expect to find someone like Nicholas Palliades but in a Paris sex club? “Don’t let us interrupt you,” she cried.

  He gave her a furious look before he started for the door, the unconscious girl in his arms. “The Medivanis have been looking for her all over Paris. Come on.” He jerked his head. “My car is downstairs.”

  Karim trailed him uncertainly. “M’sieur, she needs a doctor.”

  “Shut up and take care of her.” He indicated Alix with a nod. “Don’t let go of her for a minute.”

  In the hallway, Nicholas Palliades shifted the girl in his arms and looked down at the Arab boy. “I know what you’ve been doing, following her. You can’t help her, fool. I know all about it.”

  Karim dragged Alix by the wrist, his eyes on the princess, whose head dangled over Nicholas’s arm. At the elevator, the tall man swung the princess’s feet in first as Karim held the doors open.

  The princess moaned. Karim, still gripping Alix’s wrist, used the other hand to tuck the sheet in around her.

  Nicholas Palliades looked up as the indicator lights began blinking their descent. “I’m going to kill you for bringing her here.” His tone was matter-of-fact; he didn’t bother to look at Karim.

  Before Karim could open his mouth, Alix cried, “Damn you, it was the only way he could get inside. He knew they wouldn’t stop me!”

  Nicholas Palliades’s coal black eyes raked her. “Naturally, the way you look, they thought one of the clients had called for you.”

  His words hung in the air, as numbing as anything Alix had endured that night.

  A cold wind was blowing as Alix and Karim walked along the Passy sidewalk looking for a taxi.

  “I should have gone with her.” Karim knitted his brows. “M’sieur Palliades said he was taking her to her father’s house in Fontainbleau. But I think he should have taken her to the hospital.”

  Alix said nothing. She was too exhausted to think.

  She found it hard to believe it was still Christmas Eve. Across the River Seine they could hear the church bells pealing for midnight mass. If they were lucky, on their way back through the Bois de Boulogne perhaps they would see their guardian angle of this nightmarish evening, the transvestite hooker, standing on the curb holding a Christmas tree.

  Fifteen

  “Wake up,” said a voice in the darkness. “Wake up!” A hand shook Alix’s shoulder. “Why isn’t your real name on your passport?”

  She came awake with a barely suppressed scream on her lips. A hand at her shoulder held her down, but she sensed a dark shape bending over her. His heavy clothing radiated faint cold from the winter right.

  “Dammit,” the same voice accused, “your name isn’t Catherine Alixandria Brown.”

  The hand lifted to snap on the lamp on the night table. Instantly yellow light bored into Alix’s head, straight to the back of her brain.

  She clapped one hand over her eyes.

  “How did you get in here?” Alix lifted her fingers enough to see the clock radio on the night table, and moaned. Only three-thirty. After that terrible evening looking for Princess Jackie, she’d only had three hours sleep!

  Nicholas Palliades sat down on the side of the bed. His black, curly hair was disheveled, his eyes heavy-lidded with fatigue. He still wore his tuxedo and overcoat. The hand that had shaken her into wakefulness held the extra set of door keys he’d obviously bribed the concierge to give him. Nicholas Palliades had enough money and power to open the Tuileries at this hour if he wanted to.

  “There isn’t even a social security number under that name.” The lamp’s glow revealed anger in the hard, grooved lines of his mouth. “Do you hear me? I want an explanation.”

  Good Lord, what was he talking about? Alix wondered groggily. “Not everybody has a social security number. There’s nothing wrong with my passport.”

  He watched her narrowly, waiting for some telltale reaction. Slowly, as she came awake, Alix realized Nicholas Palliades had had her investigated. She raked her hair back with one hand to peer at him. Here he was, in her apartment in the middle of the night. He’d even persuaded the concierge to let him in, violating her privacy, even her safety.

  “The princess,” Alix croaked as her mind began to clear. “What happened to Princess Jackie?”

  “She’s all right.” His tone was dismissive. “That’s
not important now.”

  Beyond him, Alix saw his chauffeur, tall and impassive in his gray uniform and polished English boots. She drew the coverlets up to her chin. “All right? Not important? Is that all you can say?”

  She suddenly sat up, heedless of the blanket that slipped down, revealing her bare shoulders. “After what I went through tonight—last night? Getting her out of that horrible, disgusting place you go to—”

  “Shut up!” His drawn face was contorted. “You’re not answering my questions.” When she only glared at him, he shouted, “Godammit, you lethal witch, you knew what was going to happen, didn’t you? You set me up to get killed!”

  Her mouth fell open. “What?”

  He stood up abruptly and strode across the room to stand at the window, his back to her. “Your friends missed me ... but the Daimler has a couple of bullet holes. We were shot at in the Bois, just after we left the Medivanis’.”

  Alix knelt in the middle of the bed, the covers clasped to her chest. “But that’s impossible.” She didn’t really believe him. “Shot at your car? You must be mistaken. Who would do such a thing?”

  He whirled on her. “That’s what you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?”

  “Me?” Alix recoiled. “I don’t know anything about it. Good heavens, this is Paris—things like that don’t happen here!”

  “No?” He cocked a black eyebrow at her. “You don’t know who would try to ambush me? Kill me?” He bit down on each word, deliberately. “Now that they’ve realized I can’t be blackmailed by a beautiful, conniving virgin?”

  Alix stared, dumbfounded. She’d learned to expect anything from Nicholas Palliades, but this was the limit. A beautiful, conniving virgin? “I’m not part of any plot! I wish you’d stop saying that. You know where I was most of the night—trying to get Princess Jackie out of that—that sex house you frequent!” She asked quickly, “Did they take her to the hospital? What did her father say?”

  He hesitated, his hard, handsome face suffused with anger. Then he turned away, hands rammed into his trouser pockets.

  “Tonight wasn’t the first time this has happened.” His voice was rough with tiredness. “She goes to the Roman club with her friends, and they get into trouble.”

  “Get into trouble?” Alix rose to her knees, and the blanket fell to the bed. “Is that what drugs and sexual torture is called? Didn’t you see her? She was bleeding!”

  He scowled. “You don’t have enough experience to know what you’re talking about. For some people pain and sex is pleasure.”

  “It’s sick!” she cried. “She’s only a kid.”

  He made an impatient sound. “What you saw tonight are the games played by the children of some of France’s most prominent families. They take drugs, they can’t handle it. So the Roman club is going to bar them all. That’s what Marisol told me.” He took his hands out of his pockets. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Marisol? The woman in the gold lame evening gown, Alix remembered, with the businesslike horn-rimmed glasses. She felt slightly nauseated. Nicholas Palliades was on a first-name basis with her.

  “Prince Alessio doesn’t want to put his daughter in the hospital again.” He paced the room, head bent. “They’re beginning to treat her like an incurable.”

  “Did she at least see a doctor?”

  “Of course.” Nicholas frowned at her. Alix was wearing one of her sheer nightgowns, black with embroidered lace inserts over the breasts. His black eyes traveled over her, distracted. “The prince had a specialist examine her. But what the hell good does it do?” He turned and paced the room again. “If she wants to, she’ll buy the stuff again.”

  “But that’s horrible! She’s just a baby!”

  “Horrible?” He gave her a withering look. “We’re all babies until the vultures get to us. Children of the rich have very short childhoods. It’s not something I’d expect you to know about,” he said, turning away.

  He put his hand on the window frame and leaned his head against it. “Wealthy children are like any other—at first. We start out innocent, we don’t know anything, haven’t seen anything, except perhaps for a few family indiscretions. Like walking in on your mother when she’s having sex with one of your father’s best friends.”

  “Niko—” the chauffeur said.

  Nicholas straightened up. “Then you’re away at school, you’re still a kid, but you’re being treated like an adult because once people find out you have money, it begins. Liquor, women, boys, hell—men.” He strode back, fiercely. “You want expensive watches? Fancy jewelry to give the girls at school? Stereos, videos—drugs? Any kind of drugs? If whatever it is doesn’t exist, someone will find it, make it up for you on special order. I had a gun made for me once. I was eleven. It cost ten-thousand dollars.”

  He suddenly stopped pacing and looked around, glowering. “I hate places like this. Why do you live in this hole?”

  Alix bit back an angry retort. “I didn’t invite you in here in the middle of the night.”

  “True.” He turned, shrugged out of his overcoat, and handed it to the chauffeur.

  Alix caught a glimpse of her reflection in the bathroom door mirror just behind him. She was pale with exhaustion, her red hair a disheveled cloud around her face. She wished she could order Nicholas Palliades to leave. From his appearance, his angry pacing, it was obvious he was wound-up, running on nervous energy. She wondered if the story about being shot at in the Bois was really true.

  “My little brother became hooked on cocaine at a very expensive boys’ school in England.” He was pacing again, pulling off his tuxedo jacket, then his black tie. “One of the history teachers was dealing. My grandfather thought the solution was to put us to work on his tankers. He paid his sailors to look after us. Like Lakis.” He jerked his head to indicate the chauffeur. “They had to do it, or their families in Greece would never eat a decent meal again.”

  The chauffeur took Nicholas’s jacket and tie as he had taken the overcoat, silently.

  Nicholas came to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her. “I’ll find out who you really are,” he said, somberly. “So why don’t you save me the trouble and tell me now?”

  Alix didn’t look up. “They knew you at the—at that sex club.”

  “I was at a Christmas party at the Hilton and Mar—the club called me. You and the Arab kid got there first, and they let you in by mistake.” He put his hand to his face and rubbed it, tiredly. “Where were you all night? I tried to find you.”

  “But they knew you at that club,” Alix cried. “You’ve been there before.”

  “I went there years ago, when I was young and stupid.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, lifted one foot and placed it across his knee. “It’s for freaks and crazies and kids who’re curious.” He pulled off one black evening oxford and dropped it to the floor. “I didn’t need to punish myself.”

  “Punish yourself?”

  “For being rich.” He pulled off a sock and rubbed his toes, wincing. “Lakis,” he said without looking up, “go get some sleep.”

  “No! Don’t do that,” Alix cried as he pulled off the other shoe and dropped it to the floor. Too late, she heard the door shut. “Call him back! You can’t stay here!”

  He pulled off the other shoe. “Yes, I can.”

  “No, no, I want you out of here!” Alix was suddenly very aware of his closeness, his very masculine body in the white shirt and tailored black tuxedo trousers.

  He scowled again. “Lakis will come back with the car in the morning.”

  “No! You’re not staying ... and you’re not going to do anything.” Alix slid to the far side of the bed. “Ugh, how can you think of sex after that place!” She shuddered. “Why in the world would a young girl let them do those terrible things to her?”

  He pulled off the other black silk sock. “Maybe she thought she was enjoying it.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  Nicholas sat beside her on the bed in tux
edo trousers, black suspenders dangling to his thighs, and a thin cotton undershirt. The V of the neck revealed a sprinkling of wiry dark hairs. His body was powerful, leanly beautiful, full of confident sexuality.

  She was afraid of him, Alix realized with a shock.

  She was afraid of his tantrums, his Greek trigger temper, his spoiled arrogance, his unrelenting intensity, his irrational accusations, his paranoia—

  He was too much like Robert, she thought desperately. And like all the ruthless men she hated. To love someone like him would be—enslavement. He demanded everything. She couldn’t endure that; she had fought long and hard to break out of her own prison.

  He had deliberately moved into her field of vision. Her eyes met his, submitting to his dark, questioning gaze.

  “Who are you?” he repeated softly, his thumb and forefinger touching her face, turning it up to him. Again that probing look. “Are you planning to kill me, too? What will happen to me, beautiful Alix, when I surrender to your trap?”

  For a long, quivering moment, held in that burning gaze, Alix couldn’t speak.

  “I’m not a trap. That’s so unfair.” She still couldn’t wrench her eyes from the hypnotizing stare that seemed to bore into her soul, demanding the truth. “I—I’m not trying to kill you.”

  “No?”

  “It—it has nothing to do with you.” This was more of an admission than she wanted to make: she felt as though it had been dragged out of her. “Please, leave me alone.”

  He looked at her with resignation. “I’d be crazy to trust you.” His thumb stroked her lower lip absently. “Lakis thinks I am mad. He’s probably outside the door at this moment, waiting for me to call for help.”

  He took her hand, turned it over, and brought her opened palm to his mouth. He kissed it, softly, his lips warm. “Tell me,” he muttered against her palm, “why you were still a virgin.”

  She stared at him helplessly. This heated tenderness took Alix unawares. She was trembling with just the sense of him, the nearness of that hard, supple body, that passionate lightning strength so close to her.