‘Babe! I’m back!’ Tony yodelled, slamming into the lodge with a burst of energy that made her jump. She walked out of the bathroom to meet him; he was running up the staircase, colour in his cheeks from the sunshine, eyes shining with excitement.
‘We bagged a rabbit, plus two trout!’ he said triumphantly. ‘I’ve booked a private chef from the hotel to come in tonight and cook dinner for us here, in the lodge! Romantic, huh? And eating what I caught for us, how cool is that! Wow.’ He reached the top of the stairs, taking in her appearance. ‘You look unbelievable. I’m getting a massive hard-on just looking at you!’
Amber smiled happily, sitting down on the big, luxurious bed with its red coverlet and matching suede pillows.
‘I need to wash before I can even touch you!’ Tony apologized. ‘I must stink of fish. Lemme go shower and I’ll be right with you . . .’
He bounded into the huge bathroom, cursing as his head cracked against the beamed ceiling, and turned on the power shower. Amber listened to the water pounding down, the happy noise of Tony humming to himself as he soaped thoroughly, and his bare feet padding across the floor as he emerged again, naked, his cock rising at the sight of her, a large, shit-eating grin spreading over his face.
‘Boy, oh boy,’ he said happily, ‘what a weekend I’m having . . . Where’s the DVD player?’
‘Oh, I completely forgot,’ Amber said guiltily, looking around.
‘No worries, babe.’
He pulled it out of his travel case and set it up on the mirrored dressing table, clicking open the screen, inserting the DVD, lining everything up so he had a good view. Then he pressed Play, and the DVD whirred on, sultry music issuing from the speakers.
‘Here you are!’ Tony said proudly.
Amber turned her head to see the screen. It was a DVD that Sports Illustrated had filmed while they were shooting her for their famous yearly swimsuit issue, the one that could make the career of unknown models and give the ultimate seal of approval to established ones. You had to be healthy, curvy and sexy to appear in Sports Illustrated; no skinny high-fashion types allowed. And as Amber appeared on the screen, her hourglass figure emphasized by a cutaway pale pink swimsuit, lifting both hands to flip her hair, walking across a sandy beach, a setting sun glowing behind her, Tony moaned aloud in excitement.
‘Come here,’ he said, pulling her onto his lap, kissing her thoroughly, his hands running through her curls, his cock stiffening even more against her thigh. ‘God, you’re so hot . . .’
He eased the silk bra strap off her shoulders, kissing down the gilded skin, his mouth hot and wet, his hands all over her, caressing her breasts, kissing her nipples, easing her back till she lay on the bed, raising her hips so he could slide off her silk knickers. His mouth dived between her legs, making her moan back at him, and he slid his tongue into her, licking her, getting her wetter and wetter until she was gasping for breath, grinding into him, his big hands on her hips pulling her against his mouth.
‘You’re so fucking beautiful!’ Tony gasped back, climbing on top of her, reaching for a condom, positioning his dick, guiding it into her, her legs wrapping around him. ‘Oh Jesus – this is so fucking hot . . .’
Amber’s head fell back as he drove into her, her hair streaming over the end of the bed. If she tilted her head back even further she could just see what he was watching so avidly: herself. Lying on a sand dune, back arching, sand rippling beneath her. Walking into the sea, twisting back to look at the camera, smiling seductively over her shoulder, arching to make her waist look even slimmer, her bottom thrust out even more sexily. It was a turn-on for her as well, though she’d never have realized it before Tony proposed the idea. Her entire life revolved around her looking perfect, sexy, desirable, and here was the ultimate proof of that; a man who loved her beauty so much that he wanted multiple versions of it simultaneously. If he could have surrounded them with TV screens all showing Amber on the beach in her swimsuit, he would have done.
I shouldn’t suggest that to him, she thought, smiling despite herself. He’s crazy enough to do it . . .
She looked up at Tony as he fucked her, his hands running up and down her stocking-clad legs, but his eyes staring greedily at the image of her on the screen. She knew that he was imagining all the other men who’d watched the video and reached down to pull on their stiffening dicks, pretending that they were just behind the camera, about to step forward, see Amber smile at them and pull the swimsuit straps off her shoulders and lay down in the sand so they could have sex with her. Pretending they were the man she wanted, the man she was tossing her hair back and blowing kisses to.
She knew that the thought of how many other men wanted her was the single most powerful reason that Tony got so turned on by her, and she understood why. That was what she was selling, after all. Desire. The DVD wasn’t just a way of Tony seeing multiple images of Amber. It was to reinforce the hot rush of knowing that Tony was where every other man, and not a few women, wanted to be. It was his ultimate fantasy.
‘I’m fucking you . . .’ he moaned. ‘I’m making you come . . .’
Actually, he wasn’t; but Amber slid her hand between her legs to take care of herself, bucking as her fingers stroked her clit, turned on enough by Tony rearing inside her, ramming her hard, for her to reach climax almost immediately; a scream escaped her lips as she came, rubbing herself against him.
‘Oh, yeah – look at you coming, you’re so goddamn beautiful . . .’ Tony groaned.
There were three Ambers in the room. The Amber on the screen, walking out of the sea now, salt water dripping from her perfect skin, her smooth stomach, smiling at him seductively. The Amber reflected in the mirrored dressing table, her hair spilling down the red coverlet, her legs in their pale blue translucent stockings wrapped around his waist. And the Amber below him, her body jerking as she came, her pink-glossed lips open, panting, her eyes closed, lost in her own orgasm. He wound his fingers in her hair, pulling her head up so he saw her face as clearly as he saw her on the screen, unable to hold out any longer.
‘This is the best fuck ever!’ Tony yelled as he spasmed hard inside her.
Amber felt him come, and tensed immediately, but Tony was always careful, and he barely got his breath back before he was easing out of her, holding the condom as he slipped it off. No one wanted her to get pregnant. He dumped it on the bedside table and collapsed on top of her, mumbling into her hair: ‘Babe, you are one hot fuck.’
‘I try,’ she said sleepily, already in a doze.
‘Ever since I saw that DVD –’ Tony raised his head for a moment, just to take a final gloating look at the screen image of the woman he’d just had sex with – ‘I knew I had to get with you. Remember when I asked you if you’d mind me playing it? I was a bundle of nerves. I couldn’t believe it when you said it was OK.’
Amber shrugged beneath him, drifting away on a cool blue sea. ‘It’s still me,’ she mumbled.
‘It sure is!’
He rested his head between her breasts. ‘Nap time,’ he said contentedly. ‘And then we’ll head up to the bar – I gotta show you off all dressed up – and you can have another one of those crazy purple cocktails you liked last night.’
‘Parma Violet,’ she said drowsily.
‘And then we’ll come back and have dinner in front of the fire. Jeez, this is the best weekend ever!’
Petal
‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Petal demanded imperiously.
The doorman looked down at her, rifling through pages of names on the VIP list, waiting for her to announce who she was; but Petal just stood there, blue-fingernailed hands on hips, fringe hanging into her face, ruffled top falling off her shoulder, her dangling resin earrings trembling in the night wind. He needed to work out who she was; she wasn’t going to help him along.
‘It’s Petal Gold!’ the PR hissed at him.
‘So that’s under G, is it?’ The doorman rifled back through the list.
‘It’s Pe
tal Gold! She doesn’t even need to be on the list! Just let her in!’
As the doorman rushed to unclip the red velvet rope, the PR mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ at Petal and her entourage.
Petal smiled graciously at her as they sailed on through, Petal’s best friend, Tasmeen, snapping at the doorman: ‘You need to read Heat magazine, man! You’re ignorant!’
‘What is she, a singer or something?’ the doorman asked the PR as they went past.
‘She’s got a handbag line or something – she writes a column for Downtown – she’s Gold’s daughter, you idiot!’ the PR snapped back.
‘Oh fuck! Sorry,’ he said guiltily, looking after Petal, trying to see a resemblance between her and her extremely famous father. With her pale skin and thick, unevenly cut bob of red-tinted hair, her eyes heavy with dark blue eyeliner and her lips matte with pink lipstick, Petal looked like plenty of other skinny and sulky London girls in the Camden set. The look was striped T-shirts, bright layers – as if they’d just pulled on some random clothes from their bedroom floor – slouchy boots and artfully disarranged hair.
But the reason Petal looked like all the other girls was because they copied her frenziedly; Petal only had to be photographed in Grazia or Heat wearing anything to have a ton of teenage girls storming their local shopping parades, looking for a cheap version of her top or her jeans or her bag.
‘I’ve seen her in the papers, come to think of it,’ the doorman admitted. ‘But her hair’s different—’
‘You’re sacked,’ the PR said flatly.
‘God, can you believe that guy!’ Tasmeen said to Petal.
‘I know. Total ignorance. I mean, what’s he doing on a door? He should be, I dunno, working for London Transport or something . . .’
The girls broke into giggles as they made their way to the VIP area, where luckily the bouncer was considerably more au fait with the latest hip young London girls about town.
‘All right, Petal,’ he said, waving her and her entourage – Tasmeen, her hairdresser, JC, and JC’s boyfriend, Rudy – up the steps into the crammed, slightly smelly, but much-prized corner of the club designated for VIPs.
‘I hate my name,’ Petal sighed.
‘You’re kidding!’ Rudy exclaimed. ‘You’re so lucky to have a one-word name! You’re like Cher! Or Britney! Or Liza!’
‘You are so gay,’ his boyfriend muttered.
‘Her full name’s Petal Serenity Dream Gold,’ Tasmeen blurted out.
‘Tas!’ Petal elbowed Tasmeen furiously, utterly embarrassed.
‘Serenity Dream?’ Rudy was already saying. ‘That’s wild. Your parents weren’t even hippies, were they?’
‘I need a drink,’ Petal said, changing the subject. ‘JC?’ She fished some cash out of the little clutch bag hanging from her wrist. ‘Get them in, will you?’
‘God, this place is a bit of a dump, isn’t it? And smelly!’ Rudy complained, wrinkling his pretty nose.
‘It’s very exclusive,’ Tasmeen reprimanded him.
Rudy looked around him, adjusting his neon-bright T-shirt over his skinny ripped jeans. They were closer to the ceiling on the raised area, which meant less air circulation than down below, and the jammed-full little club in Hoxton, with its painted black walls and ripped plastic upholstery smelled of sweat and perfume and hair products, and the occasional sneaky cigarette. But mostly, it smelled of sweat. The walls were beaded with it.
‘Honestly,’ he said dismissively,‘you can make anything exclusive these days, can’t you?’
‘Whatever,’ Petal shrugged at him. ‘KillBuzz are playing. It’s a secret gig. That makes this the coolest place in London.’
‘Sorry,’ he said placatingly as JC returned, narrow green bottles of beer dangling from his hands. ‘I love your hair, by the way.’
Petal softened. ‘JC did it.’ She reached up a hand to ruffle her fringe. ‘It’s really cool. The messier it gets, the better it looks.’
‘Wash and wear, darling,’ JC said, handing her a Stella. ‘Listen, I want to take you blonde next week. The press’ll go crazy. Really yellow-blonde, like neon.’
‘Really?’ Petal said doubtfully. ‘I like the red . . .’
‘You have to keep changing your look!’ JC insisted. ‘That’s the only way they’ll keep wanting to take your photo!’ He grinned at Rudy. ‘She’s my muse,’ he said. ‘All that lovely thick white skin, you can take her any colour you want. She’s like this amazing canvas.’
‘Eww! Thick skin! What the fuck, JC?’ Petal complained, taking a pull at her beer. ‘Also, don’t muses, like, do something?’
‘I meant thick like cream,’ JC said quickly. ‘Heavy cream.’
‘Mmm, delicious!’ said Rudy, picking up his cue. ‘So lickable!’
Tasmeen shot Petal a do-you-believe-this-guy? glance. Petal grinned, swallowing her beer. Tas was endlessly critical. She had a bad temper and a non-stop, twenty-four-seven fuck-you attitude. It was one of the things Petal liked best about Tas: she always said what was on her mind, she never sucked up to Petal because Petal’s dad was rock royalty, so famous he was known only by his last name.
Petal had grown up with film stars and rock legends and real royalty, and though her father had gone all Zen in recent years, she remembered the wild parties in her early teens all too well. She’d seen too many world-famous people trashed and behaving badly to have much respect for anyone any more. When you were ten, watching wide-eyed from your window as a gorgeous female singer, famous for her perfect marriage to a film star and her super-healthy macrobiotic diet, had got drunk on tequila, stripped off her clothes, jumped into the pool naked, hit on a member of a girl group, and then thrown up over herself, it sort of did your head in about believing anything anyone ever told you. She’d heard ‘do as I say, not as I do’ so many times in her childhood it was like her dad’s mantra.
Until he got Zen Buddhism and a mantra for real, of course.
‘You’re a bit of a twat, aren’t you?’ Tas was saying to Rudy, who bridled.
‘Don’t let her get to you, Rudy,’ JC said, wrapping his arm round his boyfriend’s narrow waist. They were both fashionably thin, their skinny jeans dropping off their narrow hips. JC, as befitted an up-and-coming hairstylist, had bleached his hair, dipped the ends in pale green, and razored it in a style that, if hanging just right, gave his round friendly face an angularity that it lacked naturally. Mascara and a hit of lip gloss added to the edgy look that he was desperate to cultivate; he would have given anything to have a sullen, bony face rather than the chubby cheeks he couldn’t lose, no matter how much he dieted.
‘She’s mean,’ Rudy sniffed, drinking his beer. Rudy looked like all the other boys JC had dated over the years: super-elegant, with smooth beige skin and big dark eyes with ridiculously thick lashes. He pouted prettily with resentment.
‘Oh, she’s a total key merchant,’ JC said. ‘Likes to wind everyone up.’
‘I just say what I think,’ Tas said, shrugging.
She never apologizes, Petal thought. I love that about her.
Also, Petal loved that Tas was definitely on the curvy side, and it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Petal was so obsessed, so driven to be thin – not too skinny, of course, or the tabloids would say you had an eating disorder. But if you were too skinny, they’d still photograph you; while if you were too fat, you’d get one photo in a ‘Who Ate All The Pies?’ section of a gossip mag, and then they wouldn’t bother with you again. You needed to be able to get into sample sizes for fashion shoots, wear up-and-coming designers’ tiny clothes out partying, so that next day you’d be ‘Petal Gold, rocking Christopher Kane’s stretch neon mini at the launch party for Chanel’s new range of mobile phone charms!’
It was all about the press coverage. That was the one thing she’d truly learned from her mum and dad. If you didn’t get the column inches, you might as well be dead.
‘They’re on!’ Tas yelled, barrelling her way over to the balcony, which gave an uninterrupte
d view of the little stage.
This was a secret gig, of course, like all the best ones, with an invite list of London’s youngest, trendiest opinion-formers: DJs, models, music journos and celebrities like Petal, famous solely for dressing up and partying hard and being photographed at the launch of the hottest thing that week. KillBuzz, the band playing tonight, were a new discovery from Newcastle, four cool boys whose songs about going out on the lash and trying to pull were, if their record label was to be believed, anthems for the new generation of club kids.
‘He’s all right!’ Tas shouted to Petal over the roar of feedback as the boys, heads ducked, hair falling into their eyes, launched into their first single, ‘Sod Off If You Can’t Take a Joke’.
Petal looked where Tas was pointing and rolled her eyes. ‘Not another drummer, Tas!’
‘It’s OK for you,’ Tas yelled.‘You can have anyone you want! I’ve got to know my limitations!’
Petal couldn’t deny the truth of what, with her usual brutal honesty, Tas was saying. In the normal, civilian world, normal boys mostly liked girls who looked, well, normal, with a bit more meat on their bones than Petal. Girls with boobs and bums, girls with sexy curves, girls who ordered dessert when you took them out to dinner.
But in Celeb World, the rules were all flipped on their head. The thinner you were, the better it was. Because the thinner you were, generally, the better you photographed. You had to lose at least the ten pounds the camera put on, and then some more. Tas was brave to hang out in Petal’s circles, where her size fourteen figure made her a comparative elephant. She was very striking, with her strong features, thick black hair and rich red-brown skin, but she had to put up with a lot of sarkiness from girls with legs the size of pipe-cleaners and collarbones so prominent you could have hung earrings from them.
Bad Girls Page 2
