Strange Allure

by Susan Lewis

  Still, now was definitely not the time to start trying, so in typical Avril fashion she said, ‘Bastard. I hope his nuts drop off.’

  Carla smiled, but didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘So what about you?’ she said. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’

  Avril’s face broke into a grin. ‘Honey, I’m so happy being single I need a therapist to help me deal with the guilt of it.’

  At that Carla laughed, reminding Avril of how beautiful she actually was.

  ‘I’m serious. Who needs all that shit?’ Avril went on. ‘My way I get to sleep at night. And do you see that guy over there, the Italian-looking one …’

  Carla turned to the wall of windows that separated the indoor pool from the glossy white marble terrace they were sitting on. In their reflection she saw a good-looking man, probably in his forties, with greying black hair, powerful forearms, and a loose-fitting white shirt that enhanced the attractive darkness of his skin, sitting at a table two or three back from their own. ‘I see him,’ she said.

  ‘I’m considering letting him screw my ass off tonight,’ Avril confided.

  Carla bubbled with laughter.

  ‘What’s so funny? I’m serious.’

  ‘How do you know he’s available?’

  Avril rolled her eyes. ‘Carla, didn’t you learn yet that there’s not a man on this planet who’s not available if the offer’s right? Look at Chrissie and Richard. No, OK, let’s not look at them. Just take it from me, all you got to do is choose the man, then decide what kind of offer you want to make.’

  Spotting the waiter hovering, Carla waved to him to bring more champagne. She was enjoying this. ‘Go on,’ she encouraged.

  ‘I’m talking about sex, OK?’ Avril warned. ‘This is none of your True Romance stuff, cos frankly it’s crap, and I just don’t have time for it.’

  ‘So how are you going to let that guy know you want to have sex with him?’ Carla prompted.

  Avril shrugged. ‘I could go about it a lot of different ways,’ she answered. ‘Generally depends on how my schedule’s looking. Tonight I guess you could say I’ve got time, and I kind of feel like dancing. Do you feel like dancing? We could go to Jimmy’z.’

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’

  ‘Not really. I was going to invite him dancing. If you want to come too I’ll ask him to line up a friend.’

  Carla drew back. ‘No, no, not for me,’ she said.

  ‘Oh come on, you’ve got to be dying for it by now.’

  Carla shook her head, repelled by the very idea of anyone touching her but Richard.

  ‘OK, no pressure. I’ll just fix a time with Federico Fellini over there, then we’ll go back to the hotel and have dinner. This may take a minute.’

  Carla watched in growing amazement as Avril sat back in her chair, crossing her legs in a way to make certain her robe fell open to expose her thighs, and a glorious amount of cleavage. Then, after smiling at the man, she crooked a finger to beckon him over. Without hesitation he got to his feet, and as he came towards them Avril moistened her lips with her tongue in such an outrageous manner that Carla had to smother a laugh.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, as he arrived at their table. ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Leetle,’ he answered, putting a quarter-inch distance between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘You know Jimmy’z?’ Avril asked him.

  ‘Sì. Jimmy’z.’

  Avril sighed. ‘Well, you know I want to go there, and my friend here, she doesn’t want to go …’ Removing her glasses she stared pointedly at the bulge in his jeans, then slowly raised her eyes to his face.

  ‘I take you Jimmy’z?’ he offered.

  Avril smiled, then, after a shameless smirk at Carla, she set the time and place.

  Jimmy’z was already swimming with beautiful people by the time Avril and her escort arrived – cool Swedish blondes too pert to be anything over twenty, luscious Italian babes complete with hairy armpits, sensuous belles françaises brazen with attitude, cute little American cupcakes, in fact every nationality, and every description of young, hot, female and available. All the takers had to be was male and rich, and they sure seemed to be out in abundance tonight. It was a bit like the twenty-first century’s answer to slavery, Avril reflected, with the Principality’s reputation capturing the girls, the harbours, nightclubs and casinos parading them, and the men of vast wealth coming in to buy.

  As a space opened up at the bar, Avril pushed her way through and climbed up onto an empty stool. Her escort was right behind her, looking delectable in his tight black lycra shirt and Armani jeans. During the taxi ride from the hotel they’d stumbled through a few amusing attempts to communicate, but since she spoke no Italian and he virtually no English, they still didn’t know much more about each other than the fact that they were going to be making the beast with two backs by the end of the evening. Actually, what else was there to know?

  While her escort ordered a couple of kamikazes Avril watched the teeming mass of dancers and revellers with all their gorgeous suntanned flesh, and sleek healthy hair, and felt nothing short of thrilled that she wasn’t those girls’ ages any more. It was such a downer being young, insecure and poor, no matter how beautiful you were. Thirty, confident and rich was a much more satisfying place to be, so was away from home, since it offered her the freedom to explore and exploit her fantasies in a way she’d never risk back in LA, partly because of the fear of running into someone she knew, but mainly because of how many psychos there were out there.

  Here was different, and her escort couldn’t have been a more obvious gigolo if he’d had a price tag looped round his neck with condoms. She’d already slipped him a couple of thousand francs, to take care of the drinks –and at these prices he was going to need every centime – and later, depending on what she required of him, and how good his performance, she’d slip him anything between ten and twenty thousand more. Oh, life was so much simpler when you could pay. No messing about with all that commitment stuff, or waiting for calls that just weren’t going to come, or humiliating yourself in ways that even Jerry Springer’s guests hadn’t thought of. No, no, no. Monogamy, devotion, heartache, just weren’t her thing. She’d never been seriously involved with a man, and had no intention of starting now, especially not when she saw the kind of mess so many of her friends ended up in. Sure they got over it, eventually, but the pain, the misery, the utter devastation that tore them up like they were yesterday’s trash, that just wasn’t for Avril.

  Shame Carla was buying into it, but then most did, though there weren’t many whose mothers upped and died the very same day as the great love of their life and their best friend decided to go public with the coming of the stork. So it was no great surprise that Carla had been half-demented with grief; Avril wouldn’t even have blamed her if she’d turned into a homicidal maniac. In fact, she’d probably have paid for her defence. However, mercifully, that hadn’t been necessary, and it had to be said that Avril was a whole lot happier about helping to fund Carla’s comeback than she’d have been throwing money at a murder rap. It was just this renewed contact with Richard that was bothering her. Not that she had anything against the man personally, until he’d taken the gold for asshole of the year of course, and now all this messing about with Carla’s head via the email when he was in no position to offer her anything except a whole lot more grief … Well, Avril wasn’t liking what he was doing one bit, because there was just no way Carla was over all the shock and pain of it yet, so this cryptic shit he was luring her in with was almost guaranteed to skew her judgement and could, ultimately, prove the death of her revival.

  The question was, how to get Carla to jump on the man’s face like it was going to trampoline her off to the stars? No doubt Avril would come up with an answer at some point, she usually did, but right now she was much more interested in downing a few more kamikazes, lapping up even more attention than her transparent black dress was already attracting, and spinning and rocking around the heaving
dance floor, before going off to her own appointment with the stars.

  By two in the morning she was breathless from dancing, several degrees right of tipsy and ready to leave. It was perfect timing for the fantasy she’d chosen to live out tonight, and though she wouldn’t have minded swapping her Italian for the sombre, suited business guy who’d been eyeballing her almost since she’d arrived, she didn’t much fancy the scene it might cause if she tried. So, after a seductive smile in the businessman’s direction, she took her Italian’s arm and left.

  Her suite at the Hotel de Paris was a lavish enclave of Renaissance splendour, or was it fin de siècle? For all she knew it could be both, and more, with so much gilt and fancy wood-carving, thickly brocaded draperies, and imposing four-poster bed with enough swags and canopies and fringes to get lost in. She wasn’t big on interior design, and antiques didn’t do much for her either. All she was interested in was clean sheets, reliable plumbing, the technological wherewithal to connect her to the outside world, and a spectacular view. In this suite she had it all.

  After closing the doors that led into the suite’s bedroom, she turned to the Italian who was oozing testosterone now that his real skill had been released from its zipper. Avril had taken it out herself, in the lift on the way up here, then she’d made him walk with her, arm in arm, along the corridor, like any married couple. They’d passed no-one, but at that time of night she hadn’t really expected to, it just gave her a kick to think they might.

  She smiled as a dozen tremors of lust eddied through her. She really got off on looking at a man with his cock out, waiting to be told what to do. And she’d made the right decision in leaving the businessman behind, because this guy’s body was so hairy and hard that when added to his inability to speak English, she knew already she was going to be in for one hell of a session.

  To her delight he proved an impressively fast learner, and in a matter of minutes she was naked and flat out on the massive leather-topped desk, while talking on the phone to her office, who were just getting ready to wrap it up for the day. As she spoke she watched him roll on a condom – trousers round his knees, shirt hanging open – then, grabbing her legs to pull her buttocks to the edge of the desk, he made ready to push his cock up inside her. Already it was blowing her mind, and to think it was only going to get better!

  She didn’t look at his face as he entered her, she just listened to her PA, and felt his hands massaging the huge, hard ampleness of her breasts. She was somewhere else, disconnected from what was happening, yet getting so damned turned on by it she could hardly stand it. Then his fingers were squeezing her plum ripe nipples, pulling them and flicking them, as the motion of his hips began picking up speed.

  ‘Just get on to Conrad and have him do it,’ she told her PA, as Signore Italiano jerked her up and down the surface of the desk.

  ‘He’s out of the office through Friday,’ her PA responded.

  Avril arched her back, then almost gasped as the Italian shoved her knees up to her shoulders and began ramming violently.

  ‘Get on to him at home,’ Avril said, barely able to keep her voice steady. ‘Tell him the commission’s up five per cent, so it’s worth getting out of bed for. Oh shit!’ she suddenly cried, as the pasta man’s thumb began delving around for the hot spot. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Hang on,’ her PA said. ‘I’ve got a message here from John Rossmore letting you know how to get hold of him.’

  The Italian was banging her so hard now, she could barely speak. ‘Put it on the email,’ she gasped, then almost dropped the phone as he abruptly withdrew his cock, flipped her over, and getting onto his knees behind her drove into her again. Somehow she fumbled the phone back on the receiver, then grabbed on to the edges of the desk as he began galloping her towards the peak.

  ‘Yes! Oh yes!’ she cried, climbing fast now.

  His hands alternately circled her waist and grabbed her breasts. Then the hair on his chest was scraping her back, and her legs were almost giving way beneath her. It was time to come, and knowing exactly what would do it, she turned her head so that she could see his face and managed to pant, ‘By the way, what’s your name?’

  Chapter 6

  ‘A CRISIS IN India! What do you mean, a crisis in India? Just what the hell do you think’s going on here?’ Chrissie’s eyes were glittering with fear as she glared across the kitchen at Richard. She’d been expecting this. For the past two days, since the riots had started, she’d been waiting for him to come and tell her he was going, and the entire time she’d been working herself up into a riotous state of her own over what she could do to stop him.

  His handsome face was calm, his pale blue eyes showed how unsurprised he was by her outburst. ‘Darling, it’s what I do,’ he said reasonably. ‘Political uprisings, guerrilla …’

  ‘Don’t patronize me!’ she spat. ‘I know what you do, but how can you even think about going away now, when I need you here?’

  He came further into the spacious, high-tech kitchen. The dull, drizzly weather outside was darkening the place, so he flicked a switch, flooding the white cabinets, black granite worktops and stainless steel sinks and cooker with too much light. This, and Ryan’s room, were the only two in the house they had got round to renovating; the others, some with bare floorboards, others with half-painted walls and torn wallpaper, would remain works in progress until Chrissie made up her mind how she wanted them to look.

  The heavy black travertine table was between them, bearing half a dozen baby bottles into which Chrissie had been expressing her milk. She was looking at him nervously, but defiantly, ready to defend her actions over the milk, and the assignment. But he was so good at arguing, and lately she’d been having trouble turning her thoughts into clear and coherent words.

  As he walked round the table towards her, her eyes narrowed with caution, and when he raised a hand she cowered sharply away. ‘No! Don’t you dare hit me. Just don’t …’

  He stared at her in surprise. ‘Chrissie! I’ve never hit you, so what are you talking about?’ he demanded.

  ‘But you want to hit me, don’t you?’ she cried. ‘I know you do.’

  ‘I don’t want to do anything of the sort. Now please, for God’s sake, try to pull yourself together.’

  With a jerky movement she pushed back her hair. ‘I am together. In fact, I’m very together, thank you very much.’

  ‘Good. Then understand that I have to go. It’s how I earn a living, and this house has taken up the best part of my inheritance.’

  ‘I can earn a living too! So why don’t you stay here and let me go out to work?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  Fury blazed in her eyes. ‘I’m an actress, for God’s sake! I can get work as an actress.’

  His eyes went down, as he tried to work out the best response to that. But she hadn’t finished.

  ‘And I’m a director! I directed three episodes of There and Beyond, and if you hadn’t sold my programme to your ex-girlfriend then I’d have something to work on now, wouldn’t I?’

  He took a breath. ‘Darling, it was a decision we came to together, to sell the programme …’

  ‘No! It was you! You decided, because you felt sorry for her and didn’t want her to end up with nothing.’

  ‘Nor did you. But Chrissie, it’s all academic now, and it isn’t getting us any closer to …’

  ‘I can still act,’ she cut in belligerently. ‘I can ring up my old agent and tell him to get me some work.’

  Richard’s response was slow in coming. ‘Do you think you can earn as much as I do?’ he said in the end.

  At that she snapped. ‘Stop it!’ she screamed. ‘Stop making me feel inadequate and useless and ugly and …’

  ‘You’re none of those things,’ he barked. ‘I’m just trying to point out that the bills need to be paid, and my work as a foreign correspondent …’

  ‘War! It’s war you report, Richard, and I can’t stand it! I don’t want you to get killed. I want
you here, where I can see you, and where Ryan can see you too. Do you want her to grow up without a father? Don’t you care about her?’

  Richard sighed, and pushed a hand through his hair.

  She stood staring at him, sweat beading on her face, hysteria burning in her eyes. Somewhere, behind all this, she knew she was repulsing him, driving him away and making sure he’d never want her again, but there was nothing she could do about that. She was desperate for him not to go, not only because she didn’t want him to get killed, but because she was terrified of what she’d do to the baby if he wasn’t there to stop it. Even now, as they stood there confronting each other in the kitchen, Ryan was upstairs screeching, and Chrissie couldn’t stand it any more.

  ‘Then go!’ The words erupted suddenly and bitterly from her mouth as her face twisted with anger. ‘Go on! Go! We can manage without you. In fact don’t bother coming back, because we can manage better without you.’

  There was sadness and pain in his eyes as he looked at her, and a kind of helplessness in his tone as he said, ‘Darling, you have to get help. I know it’s not what you want to hear …’ He broke off as she suddenly rushed towards him and began beating him with her fists.

  ‘Stop treating me like I’m crazy!’ she raged. ‘It’s you who makes me crazy. And her! That monster upstairs that never does anything but scream and shit and drive me up the wall every minute of the day and all you care about is a fucking crisis in India!’

  Managing to grab her hands, he held them tightly against his chest and tried to force her to look at him.

  But she wasn’t seeing him. All she was seeing was the horror of her life billowing up around her in great big black waves, like the ones that had tried to drown her many years ago, when she’d been so afraid that all she’d wanted was to die. And like a horrible echo bouncing through distant, invisible caves, she could hear someone screaming, yelling abusive words and hissing like a snake, and though she knew it was her, it was as if it wasn’t her, because there was nothing about it that she could control. All the venom and paranoia and fear and desperation was pouring out of her in a stream of manic frustration. On and on and on she screeched, more and more abuse and terror, until she was sobbing so hard that no more words would come and her legs were so weak she could no longer stand.