by Primula Bond
I look up at Gustav as a new, terrible thought strikes me. ‘This is all my fault. If you hadn’t met me, if we hadn’t got together, got engaged, none of this would have happened. Pierre wouldn’t be in hospital. And you—’ I run my fingers over his forehead, stopping above his swollen eye.
‘Me?’ He grabs my hand and turns it to kiss the palm of it. ‘I would be lost. Empty. My life would be totally meaningless if I hadn’t met you.’
And then I’m in his arms again. His hands are tangled in my hair, his lips are moving gingerly over my head as he presses my face into his chest. I can hear his heart battering beneath my ear and it’s like a message, an urgent message.
This is my man. He’s mine. Margot so nearly succeeded in turning me against him. How could I have listened to the venom dripping from that crooked mouth?
Never mind forgiving her. I’ll never forgive myself.
I came within a hair’s breadth of losing the love of my life.
In a minute I’m going to kiss him and then, if we’re strong enough, this night is going to end with him deep inside me again.
‘We’ve wasted so much time, G. I’ve been in utter darkness since they got me out of the riad, thinking I’d lost you.’ I look up at him. ‘Polly knew what had happened to you. Why didn’t she tell me?’
‘Polly told me that you’d seen Margot’s film and you were out of your mind with grief and fury every time my name was mentioned, so in the end I asked her not to say anything. Ordered her, if I’m honest. Me and my stupid pride. I hoped she’d keep you calm until I could tell you all this myself. But I’ve been out of it for more than a week. That woman had stolen my phone. I shudder to think what messages she sent you. Dickson and Crystal tried to call you, but your phone wasn’t picking up either.’ He closes his eyes. ‘How close we came, yet again, to losing everything.’
‘I’m so sorry she hurt you like this.’ I run my fingers tenderly over his bruises and brush my lips across his mouth. ‘But why all the Lawrence of Arabia stuff with the horses?’
‘You looked so beautiful when Polly dropped you off earlier. So sad and lost. I panicked. I thought you would refuse to listen. Never forgive me. And look at me. Christ. I’m hardly Lawrence of Arabia now, am I? Utter stupidity to go galloping about like that. My face is aching like hell. I’m going to have to change this damn dressing.’
I can see a seep of blood. The sudden bloom of red contrasts with the equally sudden whiteness in his face. I pull the scarf off my head to dab at it and my hair springs into damp curls. I flush and close my eyes tight. He’ll hate it. If I close my eyes he won’t be able to see me.
There’s a pause, and then Gustav’s fingers are running through the new little waves, lifting my hair away from my scalp.
‘Polly told me what Margot did with those scissors, Serena, but you are as beautiful as ever. More so, if that’s possible. Because you’ve come back to me.’
He stands up and staggers through a curtain. I follow him into a dreamy chamber furnished with a big bed heaped with red pillows and sheets and draped with a mosquito net. Tall glass lanterns stand about the sandy floor, and stone steps lead down into a bathroom that’s been hewn out of the surrounding rock. Modern chrome and glass units surround a sunken bath where petals float and more candles flicker.
The other side of the chamber is open, and a silver crescent moon is riding up the sky.
Gustav steps down into the bathroom and leans on the square basin, tiled in pink and grey. We stare into the mirror. We are both an absolute mess. Our hair is dry and windswept, dirt and dust are smeared in rings round our eyes, and I’m not wearing a scrap of make-up.
Gustav peels down the white dressing.
A long, jagged scar runs from the corner of his eye, across his sharp cheekbone, then, like a hairpin, it doubles back towards the bottom of his ear. The line of it across his cheek has dried into a narrow surface scratch, but the lower part has been stitched. It looks angry and sore, and beads of blood are oozing from between one or two of the stitches.
He starts to dab at the wound, wincing as the antiseptic stings. I take the cotton wool from him and start to do it for him.
‘At the riad, Margot told me you were waiting for her,’ I say, staring at the savage mark Margot has gouged into her ex-husband. ‘Well, you’re here with me, G, thank God. And she’s – where the hell is she?’
His black eyes close briefly in pain. Even his good side has shadows carved into it, violet with exhaustion. But that flicker of vulnerability makes me move closer and wind my arm round his waist.
‘That’s just it. They don’t know where she is. We’ve got security at the hospital in London. And security with me here, actually. I even asked them to plant someone in the ashram to look after you when Maria said she would have to leave and you were asking to stay there for good.’
I shake my head in disbelief. Someone’s been watching me. Watching us. Gustav has had to go to all these lengths to keep that woman away, but it will never be enough. She’ll always track us down.
Eyes and ears everywhere if you pay enough.
I glance out of the tent to where the palm trees are bending elegantly to the command of the evening breeze. Gustav says we’re safe. So why can I not stifle the idea of someone with evil intent slipping through the shadows outside this circle of fire?
‘She had this book in the riad, Gustav. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Bought at the same sale in Paris. You’d written a love note to her in it.’
‘Tomas or whoever she got to track us was even better than I gave him credit for, then.’ He stares at me, but his eyes don’t waver. ‘She has hoarded countless letters and notes from me over the years. That note was forged.’
A cloud passes over the sky and disappears.
‘My darling, we’re safer at this precise moment than we’ve been for months. Certainly since Christmas.’ Gustav clears his throat. ‘The police went to the riad, but she’d gone. She’s slipped through the net.’
‘Holy shit. Polly mentioned the police, but I paid no attention. Why were they involved?’
‘Chérie, this isn’t a game any more. Margot Levi is a wanted woman on the run. She kidnapped you in broad daylight and held you against your will. I’m scarred for life, and my brother’s in hospital.’ Gustav holds the new dressing away from his face and we both stare at the deformity scoring his beautiful face. ‘This is grievous bodily harm, at the very least. With intent. As for Pierre? She could have killed him.’
We are both silent as I finish cleaning the wound. I decide to leave the loosening stitches that will drop out soon, and carefully cover it again with gauze and a fresh white dressing. He stares at me in the mirror, and we both speak at the same time.
‘But he’ll be OK?’ I ask.
‘Pierre will be OK,’ he says.
We laugh quietly at our synchronicity and Gustav pulls me close again. ‘We Levis are indestructible. He’ll be knee-deep in sexy nurses by now. Talking of which—’
He tips my face up to his, and the dirty, dangerous gleam in his eyes lighting up his white face as he runs his lips across mine sends a surge of desire through me.
‘Who knew you had the healing touch, Serena?’
I pull him back into the warm, dark bedroom. I sit him down on the bed and pull off his dusty boots, his socks, his crumpled shirt. There are bruises on his neck and left shoulder where Margot must have caught him with the sharp edges of those handcuffs when he couldn’t defend himself. I swallow the surge of anger, crawl on to the bed and kneel up behind him, bending to kiss the scratches.
As my lips make contact with his warm olive skin, I realise how much I’ve missed him.
But not yet, not yet. I arrange him so that he’s sitting straight but relaxed, his hips and shoulders aligned, and then I start to knead the knots of muscle and sinew under his skin, tight as bailing twine through his body. He tries to look at me.
‘Eyes front, signor,’ I whisper in his ear, his silky hair tickling my
face. ‘You move when I tell you to move.’
‘We’ve not been apart that long. When did you learn to massage like this?’ he murmurs, his head falling forward as if it’s too heavy, his black hair covering his face. Making him look for a moment like a doomed martyr.
‘A few sessions with Maria Memsahib is all it took. I daresay it’s her party trick to get girls into bed,’ I murmur back. ‘Not sure that’s what you intended when you sent her to look after me? But she did look after me, ooh, deliciously. Turns out she has many skills in her repertoire.’
‘Sounds like you have more sins to confess to me, signorina,’ he groans, as I rotate his head firmly. I give it a tweak. ‘You can’t help yourself, can you? You’re still so naughty.’
‘I said, no more talking.’
My body heats up with desperate longing now I have my hands on him once again, but I keep it slow, oh, so slow as I come round to the front and push him down into the pile of snowy pillows beneath the mosquito net and start to unbutton his tight-fitting jodhpurs.
His hands wind up into my shorn hair, and my scalp tingles as he plays with it, but I’m not going to be deflected. Leaving his trousers still loose on his hips, I stand up to wriggle out of my jeans and kick them into the corner. He grins as I unbutton my blouse and slip it off to show him that all I have on now is my underwear. The lingerie he bought me in Paris, in pale-green and cream lace.
His tongue runs across his lower lip as I sway in the candlelight then turn my back to unclip the bra. This striptease is like the very first time I was in his London house. The first time I danced for him. The first time I took him in my mouth.
‘Lie back for me, but whatever you do, don’t you dare pass out,’ I order him, yanking the jodhpurs right off, then his boxers, reaching out for him as his glorious length, already hard, springs up into my hands. I settle myself on his legs, just in my little green lace knickers. I lean forward, and the soft round end of my prize bumps blindly against my cheek with a jumping life of its own.
His hands slide under my hair. He can still wind it round his knuckles to pull me closer, but because it’s so short now it hurts, waking my lust. He slips smoothly inside my mouth. So long. So hard, despite his tiredness, his injuries. It jumps over my tongue. His hands close over my ears so now I can only hear the thick pulsing of my own blood.
He pushes into my mouth hard, right to the back of my throat. My man is desperate for me. Desperate for release. The first time I sucked on him like this, after dancing for him in his house, was the first time I’d ever given head to any man.
Polly was in my mind then, just as she’s trying to get in now, directing proceedings. She did this when we were teenagers, sitting on the beach in Devon with a peeled banana and pushing it down her throat. Guys love you to swallow, she said, biting into the soft bend of the poor fruit so that it almost squealed with pain. How I giggled and spluttered.
If you swallow, they’ll be your slave for ever.
I pull him out carefully.
‘I have one other question, Gustav. Those times you were away, or at meetings, and I didn’t know where you were?’
‘You’re asking me that? Now? When I’m in your mouth about to explode?’
I rest my teeth on him, ready to bite.
‘I’ve been working on a wedding gift, but it’s not complete yet. That’s the truth, on my life. On your new head of hair. Pierre and Polly, Crystal, Dickson, they’ll all back me up, but please don’t ask me to spoil the surprise!’
I nip at him enough to make him wary, then suck him into the wetness. What goes around comes around. This is like the very first time. He bucks and starts to grow even more.
The first time I sucked Gustav Levi he turned me away when I offered to sleep with him. Well, that’s not happening tonight. His obvious, thrusting pleasure is turning me on too much. I’m already too wet. Gustav’s big warm hands are jammed over my ears. He’s stiffening and swelling in my mouth as I suck. His hands tug at my head, moving my mouth up and down, he’s rougher now, yanking at my hair.
My mouth loosens, lips losing their tight grip. I start to nip the taut surface, daring myself to hurt him.
He moans. His grip on me grows weaker and elation surges through me again. He thrusts deeper into my mouth. I will myself to exercise control for a little bit longer and start to fondle the soft balls, reacquainting myself with the feel of him, taking possession of every inch. He’s filling my mouth. He’s pushing at the back of my throat, forcing my mouth down over the velvety surface.
I nip once, nip a little harder, then suck, but suddenly he groans and falls away from me.
‘Am I hurting you, darling?’
He shakes his head, a sleepy smile on his lips, battered yet so beautiful against the white pillow. His serious face has settled into dark shadows. Some healer I turned out to be.
As I lean over to kiss him, he suddenly grips my hips with all his old strength and slides me on to the hardness I’ve prepared. My body clenches tight as he enters me. But I don’t want to be the dominant one swooping down on him right now. It doesn’t feel right when he’s so bruised and fragile.
Understanding that, he rolls me so that we’re face to face, the soft bed giving beneath us. I hook my legs around him so that we’re pressed together, so tight. So tender. The angry lust that burned him up in the last few weeks has ebbed away. We start to rock, eyes closed, mouths pressed together, damp, barely breathing. How did I ever think I could live without this? Without him?
We rock together in the dreamy red bed under the Moroccan stars. Our sweet rhythm has never been so gentle. He’s hard and hot inside me, I’m squeezing him so tight, yet if he thrusts too hard I’ll come. Every touch or sensation threatens to make me explode. And I’m already crying.
‘Chérie?’ he whispers, throbbing urgently inside me. ‘You want to stop?’
‘Quite the opposite! I’m on fire!’ I rub his nose with mine, feel a tear running down it. ‘But I’m scared. Of loving you so much. Of ever losing you again.’
‘You’ll never lose me. We’re together for life.’ Gustav runs his finger under my eyes, tastes my tears. ‘No need to be scared.’
‘Well, I’m scared of hurting you. Your poor face—’
He kisses me, takes my hips to rock my body away from his, then pulls me hard in against him again. I gasp as he plunges up inside.
‘Hey, my face may be hurting, signorina, but you’ll just have to be gentle with the rest of me,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘How do you think scorpions make love?’
I shake my head, unable to stop myself moving against him, unable to stop the ragged gasps tumbling from my lips as that delicious deep pressure grows and grows inside me, heating us both.
‘I don’t know, you crazy man, but you’re going to tell me anyway.’ I pummel at his back and he responds by tipping his hips and thrusting more forcefully, to lock himself inside me.
My tears are still hot, but the release as they flow is ecstatic. I’ve missed him so much. I’m so sorry for the bereft girl I was a few hours ago. His body inside mine feels so good. The hand inside the glove.
The tears add to this ache of pain and pleasure. Gustav licks them off my cheek then draws back, tenses, teasing me, all the muscles in my thighs tugging him back where he belongs.
‘So tell me, lover,’ I gasp. ‘How do scorpions make love?’
Tears are softening his face now, too. He pushes, hard, and when he’s safely inside I explode with wonder. He doesn’t stop moving until we come together, our mingled moans and the tears at what we’ve nearly lost rising like smoke to dissipate into the starlit sky above.
‘Very, very carefully!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
New York is sweltering in a July heatwave. It’s almost as hot as it was in Morocco last month, but at least there you could rest in marbled courtyards or under the spreading arms of a palm tree. Here, from quite early in the morning, the heat beats up through the pavements, comes at you sideways off th
e brickwork buildings, weighs down from the burning sky. I’ve started to gauge which are the best awnings on my route, or the best struts of the High Line, to seek shade.
Sometimes on the way to the gallery, despite the fact that it means he’s disobeying Gustav’s orders, I get Dickson to drop me off at one of the Hudson River piers so that a walk along the river can shake off the lethargy that has been creeping up on me since we got back from Marrakesh.
If it’s the heat, then it doesn’t seem to affect these New Yorkers.
On the wide straight sidewalks they march shoulder to shoulder, crossing like a determined herd at the intersections, eyes and minds always forward, focusing on the working day ahead. Down here by the piers they use any free time to hone their bodies as they run, or improve their team spirit as they play volleyball on the grass or the man-made beaches. Even families are taking this weather seriously, getting out elaborate picnics now that temperatures are rising.
Sometimes Dickson drops me in the heart of Chelsea so I can stroll through the quiet streets and peep through the tall windows of family homes or apartments, seeking out celebrities getting their kids ready for school or having coffee with equally shiny people.
I haven’t mentioned feeling out of sorts to Gustav because when we’re together I’m in utter bliss. I love padding barefoot through the apartment, breakfasting on our wrap-around balcony or heading out on a balmy evening to catch some jazz at the Carlyle Café. At work I’m enjoying the intense concentration of being closeted away with Crystal, studying the shortlisted portfolios for the Serenissima gallery’s Young Talent exhibition.
Maybe I’m running on half a tank like this because my low-grade paranoia is presenting in physical form. The other morning as I got dressed, I noticed dull jabbing pains in my sides, my ribs, in my breasts, everything hurting as I lifted my arms to put on my bra . Gustav doesn’t know about that. He continually tries to reassure me, like he did before, that there’s no danger, but I know he’s instructed Dickson to stay within a few yards of me at all times. Sometimes I sense someone is following me as I wander along Eighth Avenue, darting from doorway to doorway like a thief in the night. Once, I even hid in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel when I was convinced that Margot, in owl-like Jackie Onassis sunglasses, wide-brimmed hat and a full-length white belted raincoat despite the heat, was standing beside me at the flea market, picking through a clattering collection of old picture frames.
